MORE people have reported seeing strange lights in the sky over Suffolk - but today the mystery was still unsolved.

MORE people have reported seeing strange lights in the sky over Suffolk - but today the mystery was still unsolved.

UFO watchers believe the county is a gateway to the universe - a portal for visiting alien craft - with many reported sightings of unexplained phenomena over the years.

The latest sighting of four balls of light travelling slowly across the landscape from Grundisburgh towards the Mendlesham mast comes at a time when similar unexplained lights have been seen over Cumbria and Scotland.

However, as the lights were seen over Suffolk on New Year's Eve and the early hours of New Year's Day the most likely explanation is that they were Chinese lanterns.

Susan Goldsmith said: “I also saw the lights on New Year's Day at about two minutes past midnight as I was in my garden in Kesgrave watching the fireworks going off at midnight.

“They went over very slowly and I took a couple of pictures. I, however, am not concerned that they are aliens!”

Cliff Brown was on his way home to Woodbridge when he saw the lights.

“You do see some strange things in the skies sometimes - things exaggerated by the atmosphere and made to look larger. I thought it was a bit weird but never even considered it might be a UFO,” he said.

Kim Efishoff, an American reader of our website, said: “With the large number of UFO sightings occurring in the UK, someone should co-ordinate an effort by amateur volunteers to set up a network of backyard optical spotting scopes/cameras in some of the hotter locations.”

The sighting has also led to fresh views on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident in which an alien craft was said to have landed near the Woodbridge American air base.

Reader Adrian Underwood said at the time the USAF was developing the SR-71 Blackbird and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

“I believe what was seen in the sky and subsequently crashed at Rendlesham was a scaled down prototype of the B-2 and the incident was covered up by the USAF,” he said.

Heather Bird said: “In 1958 I knew an airman who was terrified to be on duty on the Woodbridge airfield because of UFOs and word was he would run so fast he beat the air-police truck back to camp. The airman would talk in whispers of UFO sightings way back then.”

It isn't the first time Chinese lanterns have been unmasked as “UFOs” - last year Warren Thomas of the Firework Emporium in Ipswich said he was convinced that an increase in the number of sightings could be put down to the increasing popularity of the lanterns.