24/01/1980 – Wythall, Birmingham – Red/Orange Sphere Sighting

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Year: 2022

Last Updated: 22/07/2026

On New Year’s day 2022 a man named Chris reached out to Birmingham UFO Group via our website sighting report form. He wanted to pass on details about a sighting his grandparents had back in 1980 to get it down on the record. What is particularly fascinating is that their sighting apparently happened just two nights before the beginning of the Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, Kent.

Sadly they were now both deceased, but Chris knew enough information about what happened to warrant this report.

Sighting Details

Back in 1980 Chris’s grandparents lived on Shawhurst Lane, Wythall.

On the night of 24^th December 1980 his grandmother woke up and noticed a light glowing through the condensation on the South East facing bedroom window. She got up and went to the window to find out what it was.

She wiped the condensation off the window and peered out in the direction of Earlswood. Back in 1980 there were less houses as there are today, and she had a clear line of sight to some trees in the distance a couple of miles away. She saw a huge glowing red/orange circular object hovering in the night sky, fairly low above the visible horizon.

She was confused by what the object was so woke up her husband. He got up and joined her at the window. As they watched, the object moved slowly across the sky on a straight path. It then moved down behind the tree line out of sight.

From that moment on, Chris says his grandmother had a huge interest in the UFO subject. On the other hand, his grandfather never wanted to discuss it. Chris says that he was a dental scientist, and because it didn’t fit with his logical brain he preferred not to think about it.

At the time they had no idea that only a couple of nights later UFO activity took place down in Rendlesham Forest. They only found out about this several years later when the story was published in the News Of The World on 2^nd October 1983.

Sighing Analysis

This is a fascinating sighting especially considering the date it took place on. The object seen by Chris’s grandparents obviously cannot have been the setting sun or the moon because they watched it visibly move across the sky.

It clearly wasn’t a normal aircraft or helicopter of any kind. The incident happened decades before drones were utilised so this can be discounted.

It is sometimes hard to correctly determine distance and therefore size of objects in the sky, especially after dark. However, the witnesses watched the object descend down behind the tree line, confirming it was a large object being viewed at distance rather than a small object (such as a sky lantern) up close.

Could the object have been a hot air balloon? While this initially seems plausible, there are a number of aspects which point away from this. Firstly, the majority of hot air balloons are light bulb shaped not spherical, although it could have been a novelty shape. However, hot air balloons only glow after dark when their flame is lit to give them lift. This flame is lit in bursts not continuously. It is also obvious at distance that this flame is positioned near to the base of the balloon:

There is also the fact that this was a night-time sighting. It is only legal to fly hot air balloons after dark if they have a warning light. This is a white flashing light which hangs down from the basket. No such flashing light was observed. I therefore feel there is enough evidence to point away from this as the explanation.

With mundane explanations dismissed, what we are left with is something truly anomalous, potentially a glowing spherical advanced craft. The fact that this took place a couple of days prior to the Rendlesham Forest incident is fascinating. Could the sighing have been directly related, or was this nothing more than coincidence?

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2026