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'UFOs' spotted in Cheam

9:51am Monday 7th July 2008

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By Aaron Moon »

Residents have been left baffled after witnessing "creepy" lights circle above their homes for hours last night.

Barbara Goatham, 51, of Colborne Way, North Cheam, was first alerted to the odd lights hovering above her house by her husband and son.

"It was awe inspiring - my mouth was hanging open."

Barbara Goatham

"My son and husband came in from the pub at 11.30pm and told me to have a look," she said. "My son's a bit of a drama queen but my husband is very straight down the line so I went to have a look.

"There were three or four green orbs. It was like the Northen Lights but with precision. They would move together and converge and were individuals because they were moving themselves.

"It was awe inspiring - my mouth was hanging open. My first thought was that it was a Northen Lights phenomenon but the movements were so precise.

"They were very creepy and there wasn't a sound. I got the creeps and came back in and shut the curtains.

"I'm not a drinker, it was definitely there," she added.

Hundreds of residents were left puzzled last summer when Chinese lanterns were released in West Ewell at a wedding reception. The wind carried the orange glowing lights for miles, with some travelling as far as Worcester Park and Epsom.

Did you see the lights last night? Leave your comments below and email any photos to amoon@london.newsquest.co.uk


Your Say YourLocal Guardian

suttonpeopledotcom, Sutton says...
10:49am Mon 7 Jul 08

Is there a photograph then? if the wind carried the lights for miles then surely there was time to either get a camera or alert somebody else who may have a camera?

Simon, Surbiton says...
10:56am Mon 7 Jul 08

My girlfriend saw them in Worcester Park too, as did her friend who lives between Tolworth and Worcester Park. She tried to get a photo but they didn't come out properly.
In this case, I don't think they were moving for miles, more like moving in the same place - I don't think they were chinese lanterns but more like strong lights being shone up into the sky from the ground.

C, SW London says...
11:05am Mon 7 Jul 08

Pft.

Marjory twinkle, Banstead says...
11:28am Mon 7 Jul 08

Grow up you morons. Bloody UFO's. You shouldn't be allowed out on your own.
Pathetic t.w.i.t.s.

Kate Price, Raynes Park says...
11:31am Mon 7 Jul 08

My whole family were watching the lights fronm about 10.45 in raynes Park. Looked like they were over towards Worcester Park. If they were lasers shining on the clouds why couldn't we see the beam? Very odd

Babs, Cheam says...
11:31am Mon 7 Jul 08

We did try to photograph them on mobiles as we only have instant throw away cameras, sadly pictures didn't come out. Re the insult, hope they contained little green men who come to get you!!!!!!!! I have heard of others that saw them.

Amy, Worcester Park says...
11:44am Mon 7 Jul 08

I saw them alright! There were three lights moving in circles and in a particular pattern. These movements, like Barbara said, were very precise. It was no UFO, nor chinese lanterns but more like lights being shone up at the clouds. My guess is that it's some geek who has bought or made some sort of gadget that shines lasers in the sky in that way.

Amy, W.P says...
11:58am Mon 7 Jul 08

There were no beams because the lights were not THAT strong or bright. I continued to watch them but as the clouds broke the lights began to fade. I took several pictures, but none of them came out. Thats how dim the lights were!

Natalie Harries, Feltham says...
12:49pm Mon 7 Jul 08

We saw them over Feltham last night, from 11:30pm - 12:30am. There were 3 lights that were moving in individual orbits, and then all three crossed each other at the same point. I don't see how they coud be lights being projected into the sky as there was no beam. We saw a helicopter in the area that seemed to be surveying. Very strange indeed!!

andy morris, new malden says...
9:08pm Mon 7 Jul 08

I have pictures if you want to purchase them.

charlie, feltham (london) says...
9:13pm Mon 7 Jul 08

i see it aswell and the only thing i can say is it must be a ufo i see one above my house circeling form a small triangle to a big one and there was another in the distence and im nowhere nere the other peeps who see it so i dought it was lights

Andy Morris, New Malden - Surrey. says...
9:35pm Mon 7 Jul 08

I have pictures if you would like to purchase please contact.

Steve, Hounslow says...
9:50pm Mon 7 Jul 08

We saw the same as Natalie. I was woken by the sound of a helicopter around 12:45am flying diagonally between the Staines Road and Both Road. About 10 minutes later it came back the opposite direction and then turned on it's search light, it was then I noticed the other lights. There were 3 distinct pale blue/green lights reflecting off of the clouds. Each one was going round in a circular pattern at a constant speed, intersecting at a central point where they appeared to almost 'bounce' off each other.

Adrian, Sutton says...
10:19pm Mon 7 Jul 08

Andy Morris: or you could just show some community spirit and upload them to Flickr.

This all sounds like the lights they used to shine off a roof near the bottom of the high street (about 8 years ago, I'd say). There'd be a ring of round blobs, rotating at different speeds. You'd never see beams... just the reflections on the bottom of low cloud.

Jon, Wimbledon says...
10:42pm Mon 7 Jul 08

Adrian: what's wrong with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit on the part of Andy Morris?

Andy Morris, New Malden says...
10:56pm Mon 7 Jul 08

No, Sorry Thanks.

Babs, Cheam says...
7:37am Tue 8 Jul 08

Hi Adrian. Quite right re the video, wouldn't hurt would it? You mention lights shining off a roof, what and why?? It might explain things
Thanks

C, SW London says...
9:51am Tue 8 Jul 08

Jon wrote:
Adrian: what's wrong with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit on the part of Andy Morris?
Or extortion...?

Jon, Wimbledon says...
11:49am Tue 8 Jul 08

There is no such thing as society/community. There are individual men and women, and there are families. Enough said.

Gary Jones, says...
9:11pm Tue 8 Jul 08

Many thanks to all those who thought they saw ufo's in the sky on Sunday. It was in fact a skytracker which was being used at a private birthday party at Hampton Court house. All those who set the event up that day never realised they would cause this much attention......!

Steve McDermott, London says...
9:41pm Tue 8 Jul 08

I'm very the lights managed to brighten up your weekend. Had I know that the skytracker would have had this much of an impact, I would have used two of them!
FYI
The Skytracker light source was 4 x 2500w Xenon arc lamps, the very same lamps used in a theatrical followspot (Super Trouper) and the 'Nortern Lights' were fourty 400w architectural floods uplighting the surrounding trees.

Steve McDermott
Lighting Designer
JS's 40th Birthday Party

Babs, Cheam says...
10:51pm Tue 8 Jul 08

EVER felt like a divvy???

Dhruv Ahir, Southall says...
11:05pm Tue 8 Jul 08

Amy wrote:
There were no beams because the lights were not THAT strong or bright. I continued to watch them but as the clouds broke the lights began to fade. I took several pictures, but none of them came out. Thats how dim the lights were!
They were beams, the fact that the lights disappeared once the clouds broke proves the lights you and I saw were beams bouncing off the clouds. I saw them, I watched the motion of the 3 lights was fixed and as it was cloudy and very windy the clouds moved fast so if the beam missed the cloud you wouldn't have seen it.

I watched for 20mins or so, whenever there was a break in the clouds they magically disappeared in the break and reappeared when they hit a cloud.

It was a BEAM, they merged and the show was over, no big bright light at all.

Robert, 233-717 says...
1:47am Wed 9 Jul 08

Sorry for my bad punctuation...
I am glad i found some site talking about what i saw. The Sunday just gone 06/07/08. I was in Epsom Surrey. It was 11:30pm when i was walking back to my car. I suddenly could see in the sky towards me these lights. I said wow to myself. I was alone. I then took out my mobile and took a snapshot and video but the picture quality is horrible for night shots. I watched these lights for a bit and then got into my car as i was very cold. I only had a shirt on. I continued watching from my car for about 15 minutes looking through the window of the left front passenger seat. I decided to get out of the car again and looked up into the sky above me. The lights ahead of me looked like beams coming from a high powered oscillating torch on the ground. But then upon further looking I started thinking just what if this is really a UFO. I read up on the TR-3B in the past which is a black triangle. But the thing is this sighting of lights did not block out the stars. But i heard the TR-3B which is a black triangular craft has a see through transparent mode in which you can see right through it and into the stars even though it has a metal body. These lights moving in a triangular pattern could of been it's anti gravity propulsion which is said to move in a triangular formation and then meet in the middle which is exactly the movement which i was witnessing from these lights. Now if there were beams being shone from the ground then I can tell you I did not see any beams of light. It was cloudy where i saw the lights, but i also saw many planes flying higher up coming from all directions. They were a lot of smoke trails from the jet liners and right above me the sky was clear, towards me where the lights were moving in this formation. I notice breaks within the clouds and i did not notice any beams of light. So this can not be from a skytracker otherwise i would of seen the beams. The position of the lights didn't seem too high either. But the distance of all three lights were quite apart. I would say in total about a mile apart. I am not saying that it was the TR-3B which is supposedly reverse engineered ET craft made by the US military black budget program. they are said to be about 600 feet in diameter and sub orbital planes. Anyway in the whole time i was watching this from my car i noticed that the lights would move around in a circular pattern from each tip of like a triangle and then meet in the center and crisscross each other and then repeat the formation of touching each point of the triangle again. If this was really a skytracker then i would love to see this skytracker in operation because i doubt a machine could move like this. This seemed intelligently controlled. Now things get really interesting I decided to follow these lights, i backed out of the side road where my car was parked moving slowly onto another road and i moved slowly until i came to the end of the road which was the back of some school grounds and i continued seeing the lights moving in the same formation. I then drove out the other way back onto the main road and continued at 15 to 20mph looking out towards the right and watching this object which seemed to keep the same speed as me. I was amazed so i pulled into another side road which had no cars and i switched on my cars beam to signal to these lights and nothing happened. Then i continued back on the main road but noticed the lights close by now i was getting worried as the only other thing that could do something like this was when you look at the moon because of the size of the moon we get the optical illusion that it's moving with us when we drive. For something like a small bunch of lights your not supposed to get that kind of effect especially if these are being shone from the ground by people. Then i pulled off into another road and get out this time, the lights continue to make no sound. Then i drove on for about a few hundred meters and continue looking and seeing these lights on my right side, at one point i suddenly see the lights now in my top center part of the windscreen and then it drifts off to the left side. It then moves off to the right again and I come to a roundabout and then i stop for a while as there are no cars around and i see a helicopter in the air quite low, with it's lights on it seems a bit big for an ordinary helicopter. I believe it may of been a chinook. Then it comes to a hover, and i am thinking what if it's trailing these lights, but then i think oh come on this is surrey not some war torn country and think could it just be police and they are using the lights as a reference point to search for some criminal. But then i continue off on the roundabout and now onto the dual carriageway and then i continue seeing the lights and i am thinking now i have covered about 2 miles and it's impossible for these lights to be beams shining from the ground as the lights are not too high in the sky, and each light source is pretty massive for them to be able to be ground light beams. Then i am rushing now towards my home to get to my parents house by the time i get to them it is now 12:01am and i get out of the car and the lights are right above my house i knock on the door and my brother and father get out to see these lights which are right above us and they just said that they were just light beams and that maybe some kids are playing a prank but you know kids cannot afford to get hold of sky trackers and what was with the hovering helicopter and so i continue watching while chatting about the events that unfolded since 11:30. Then we all get inside the house and i decided to go back out and i called my brother just as i left the doorstep and he followed as we took one last look at these lights in just like that second of looking up they vanished, all 3 of the lights just like that. I said to my brother coincedence i think not, they happened to just vanish in a blink of an eye when we came out that night, why did they vanish then and not when we were inside? Lights just don't follow you several miles to your house, this was a UFO. My last UFO sighting and only other sighting was when i was 16 in Guildford surrey, i am now 27. That sighting was incredible i actually saw one aircraft that moved pulling off movements as fast or faster than the speed of light, one second it was here and in a blink of an eye a mile across the other side of the sky. anyway please share your views on this most baffling experience. Many thanks Robert.

Alien, says...
9:53am Wed 9 Jul 08

Robert wrote:
Sorry for my bad punctuation... I am glad i found some site talking about what i saw. The Sunday just gone 06/07/08. I was in Epsom Surrey. It was 11:30pm when i was walking back to my car. I suddenly could see in the sky towards me these lights. I said wow to myself. I was alone. I then took out my mobile and took a snapshot and video but the picture quality is horrible for night shots. I watched these lights for a bit and then got into my car as i was very cold. I only had a shirt on. I continued watching from my car for about 15 minutes looking through the window of the left front passenger seat. I decided to get out of the car again and looked up into the sky above me. The lights ahead of me looked like beams coming from a high powered oscillating torch on the ground. But then upon further looking I started thinking just what if this is really a UFO. I read up on the TR-3B in the past which is a black triangle. But the thing is this sighting of lights did not block out the stars. But i heard the TR-3B which is a black triangular craft has a see through transparent mode in which you can see right through it and into the stars even though it has a metal body. These lights moving in a triangular pattern could of been it\'s anti gravity propulsion which is said to move in a triangular formation and then meet in the middle which is exactly the movement which i was witnessing from these lights. Now if there were beams being shone from the ground then I can tell you I did not see any beams of light. It was cloudy where i saw the lights, but i also saw many planes flying higher up coming from all directions. They were a lot of smoke trails from the jet liners and right above me the sky was clear, towards me where the lights were moving in this formation. I notice breaks within the clouds and i did not notice any beams of light. So this can not be from a skytracker otherwise i would of seen the beams. The position of the lights didn\'t seem too high either. But the distance of all three lights were quite apart. I would say in total about a mile apart. I am not saying that it was the TR-3B which is supposedly reverse engineered ET craft made by the US military black budget program. they are said to be about 600 feet in diameter and sub orbital planes. Anyway in the whole time i was watching this from my car i noticed that the lights would move around in a circular pattern from each tip of like a triangle and then meet in the center and crisscross each other and then repeat the formation of touching each point of the triangle again. If this was really a skytracker then i would love to see this skytracker in operation because i doubt a machine could move like this. This seemed intelligently controlled. Now things get really interesting I decided to follow these lights, i backed out of the side road where my car was parked moving slowly onto another road and i moved slowly until i came to the end of the road which was the back of some school grounds and i continued seeing the lights moving in the same formation. I then drove out the other way back onto the main road and continued at 15 to 20mph looking out towards the right and watching this object which seemed to keep the same speed as me. I was amazed so i pulled into another side road which had no cars and i switched on my cars beam to signal to these lights and nothing happened. Then i continued back on the main road but noticed the lights close by now i was getting worried as the only other thing that could do something like this was when you look at the moon because of the size of the moon we get the optical illusion that it\'s moving with us when we drive. For something like a small bunch of lights your not supposed to get that kind of effect especially if these are being shone from the ground by people. Then i pulled off into another road and get out this time, the lights continue to make no sound. Then i drove on for about a few hundred meters and continue looking and seeing these lights on my right side, at one point i suddenly see the lights now in my top center part of the windscreen and then it drifts off to the left side. It then moves off to the right again and I come to a roundabout and then i stop for a while as there are no cars around and i see a helicopter in the air quite low, with it\'s lights on it seems a bit big for an ordinary helicopter. I believe it may of been a chinook. Then it comes to a hover, and i am thinking what if it\'s trailing these lights, but then i think oh come on this is surrey not some war torn country and think could it just be police and they are using the lights as a reference point to search for some criminal. But then i continue off on the roundabout and now onto the dual carriageway and then i continue seeing the lights and i am thinking now i have covered about 2 miles and it\'s impossible for these lights to be beams shining from the ground as the lights are not too high in the sky, and each light source is pretty massive for them to be able to be ground light beams. Then i am rushing now towards my home to get to my parents house by the time i get to them it is now 12:01am and i get out of the car and the lights are right above my house i knock on the door and my brother and father get out to see these lights which are right above us and they just said that they were just light beams and that maybe some kids are playing a prank but you know kids cannot afford to get hold of sky trackers and what was with the hovering helicopter and so i continue watching while chatting about the events that unfolded since 11:30. Then we all get inside the house and i decided to go back out and i called my brother just as i left the doorstep and he followed as we took one last look at these lights in just like that second of looking up they vanished, all 3 of the lights just like that. I said to my brother coincedence i think not, they happened to just vanish in a blink of an eye when we came out that night, why did they vanish then and not when we were inside? Lights just don\'t follow you several miles to your house, this was a UFO. My last UFO sighting and only other sighting was when i was 16 in Guildford surrey, i am now 27. That sighting was incredible i actually saw one aircraft that moved pulling off movements as fast or faster than the speed of light, one second it was here and in a blink of an eye a mile across the other side of the sky. anyway please share your views on this most baffling experience. Many thanks Robert.
No

mihaela, croydon says...
10:23am Wed 9 Jul 08

i was smoking in the garden around midnight, there was no light coming from anywhere, i called my husband to see it.. 3 or 4 orb where moving in circle really fast and slow sometime, about 15 minutes i been watching them and i was thinking i am going mad or something, my hubby told me there are military projectors from mitcham military base, but i don't think so.i might be wrong but hey i have seen what you all saw.the lights where going in circles in the same spot, i live on fairholme road, and the other side of road is green side, just seen the lights above the block of flats am still thinking about it and scratch my head, got goose pimples all over.this is very strange and is real and am happy other peoples ahve seen it ..it was 7/7/2008 just on monday night.

Estelle Vessey, Kingston upon Thames says...
11:39am Thu 10 Jul 08

Yes I saw the lights in Kingston too, but they were obviously from a lighting effect, the type you get at a festival, perhaps from Guilfest or some other event that was going on near London.

Babs, Cheam says...
1:17pm Thu 10 Jul 08

It seems that a perfectly logical explanation for the lights has been discovered, however is it feasable for lights such as used for festivals, parties etc would be seen 7-10 miles away ie southall/ cheam??

andy, Waddon says...
4:15pm Thu 10 Jul 08

Tin foil hat wearers, the lot of you

C, SW London says...
3:27pm Fri 11 Jul 08

C wrote:
Pft.
Told you!

Tara, cheam, surrey says...
6:28pm Fri 11 Jul 08

My Mum saw them aswell. when she told me i though thats stupid. but then she says that there in the Guardian so it must be true if many people have seen them.. spookeyyy.

Beth Summers, Carshalton says...
7:27pm Fri 11 Jul 08

See them nightly overhead here, have also seen them in Wiltshire, near stonehenge, creating crop circles. For anyone that has linked this to various natural phenomena - There is a big ley junction at Carew Manor in Beddington. Google "Leylines" and "Zero point quanta"

Robert, says...
8:59pm Sat 12 Jul 08

Tara wrote:
My Mum saw them aswell. when she told me i though thats stupid. but then she says that there in the Guardian so it must be true if many people have seen them.. spookeyyy.
do you have a link for this guardian newspaper article, i cannot find it any where.

thanks in advance

Babs, Cheam says...
10:42pm Sat 12 Jul 08

http://www.yourlocal

guardian.co.uk/news/

suttonnews/display.v

ar.2382069.0.ufos_sp

otted_in_cheam.php

Babs

Georgina, Bourne End says...
3:28pm Sat 26 Jul 08

I saw the lights last night over Bourne end. They were stunning but strange at the same time.

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