TRAFFIC came to a standstill when strange lights were spotted in the night sky over Worcester.

Readers called your Worcester News after seeing a mass of unusual orange lights as they hovered over the city on Saturday night.

UFO experts are now examining photographs of the lights to determine whether they were paper lanterns or something more mysterious.

Sally Coleshill was walking with her family when she saw the lights over Cripplegate Park in St John’s.

She said: “We have never seen anything like this before. It was amazing. I have never seen as many cars and people slow down just to watch these go over. There were so many.”

Doreen Jarrett, aged 70, watched as the lights passed over the river Severn from her flat in Warmstry Court, Quay Street, at 9.45pm.

She said: “I counted about 26 groups of orange lights in a triangle formation passing over the river.

“They were quite biggish. They came over in clusters of two or three. They were circular in shape and made no noise.

“I’m not senile and I only had one drink at lunchtime so I’m quite sure of what I saw. I wonder if anyone knows what they were?”

Photographs taken by Mrs Coleshill’s daughter’s boyfriend Nathan Walker have now been passed on to Contact International UFO Research – a group dedicated to collecting reports of UFO sightings.

Last year Michael Soper, a member of the group that has been investigating UFOs since the late 1950s, suggested similar orange lights spotted over Worcester were “certifiably not paper lanterns”.

Sky lanterns are bec-oming increasingly popular at weddings and outdoor celebrations but Mr Soper said the cylindrical shape of the lights seen over Worcester in July 2008 were “rather more interesting than we expected”.

He is now looking into the latest sightings andsaid: “From our point of view Worcester is a particularly interesting area.

“First there are the Malvern Hills which provide a very clear window for spotting UFOs, and then you have the village of Alfrick where there is an awful lot of paranormal activity, specifically ghosts.”