March 2008 – Halesowen – Glowing Orange Discs Sighting

Chairman Dave
Mar 2
3 min read

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Year: 2021

Last Updated: 02/03/2026

Note: For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used

In late September 2021 a man who I shall name “Simon” got in touch with BUFOG via our website’s sightings report form. He wanted to know if anyone else had mentioned to us a sighting of five large glowing UFOs over Halesowen around March 2008. He proceeded to mention some brief details about what he himself saw at that time.

I informed him that we had not had any other reports in relating to this incident, and also asked some additional questions to find out more information. Sadly Simon did not get back in touch, so we only have his initial details to go on.

Sighting Details

Around March 2008 Simon was having a pint at The Royal Oak pub on Manor Lane, Halesowen (Time of day unknown)

He suddenly became aware of a number of people looking up at the sky. He looked up himself and saw five large glowing orange objects. They were disc-shaped and at quite high altitude. Simon estimates they were each about the size of four double-decker buses.

One of the objects appeared to be leading the other four. It was positioned to the left of the others, which were in a rectangular formation. All five objects moved slowly in the sky for a number of seconds. Suddenly the left most object veered upwards with a slight curve and then all of them went.

Sighting Analysis

Despite the small amount of information available this is quite an intriguing sighting. It is not known if it was still daylight or evening time after dark. If it was daytime then perhaps the objects were reflecting the sunlight causing them to glow, if after dark they were clearly luminescent.

Sky lanterns were very popular around 2008, and glow a fiery orange colour as described. When multiple lanterns are launched they tend to drift silently together on air currents, sometimes appearing to be under intelligent control.

Also, according to Simon, they “all went” after the initial object veered off course. The initial object’s sudden change of movement could be attributed to it being caught in a conflicting air current. We do not know what the witness meant by “all went”. If he meant that the remaining objects then also veered off course in the same manner and drifted away out of sight this could conceivably have happened.

However, there are a number of aspects which do not fit with this explanation. Sky lanterns are quite small in size. If Simon was correct about these objects being at high altitude and four times the size of a double-decker bus this would have made them approximately 140 feet wide, far too large to be lanterns.

Distant sky lanterns do not tend to look circular or disc-shaped, they look more like glowing orbs of orange light which sometimes flicker in brightness.

If by “all went” he meant that the objects all suddenly vanished or greatly increased in speed and shot away, then neither of these really fits with them being lanterns. While lanterns can burn out, appearing to vanish, it is unlikely that five would burn out all at the same time.

If they were not sky lanterns, then what else could they have been? They do not sound like distant aircraft or helicopters. Even at high altitude it is possible to see different navigation lights including regular flashing strobe lights. The sighting occurred a number of years before drones were commercially available so this too can be ruled out.

Perhaps at some point Simon will get back in touch and further information can be learnt about what happened. But it is still good to get this incident down on record.

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