Liverpool Red Spheres

The winter of 2008 was a busy season for strange lights in British skies. Historian David Clarke later noted that UK reports doubled that year, to 208. The Ministry of Defence still ran its UFO desk then, logging what the public sent in. That desk closed in late 2009. Its files went to The National Archives.

Merseyside had its own share. The Liverpool Echo later reported that declassified files showed 31 Merseyside reports to the authorities between 2000 and 2009.

12 January 2008. No time of day survives. The account is brief. A large fleet of UFOs, described as "glowing red spheres", was seen over Liverpool. They were heading east.

An older version of the same line speaks of "a large group" of glowing red spheres. Nothing more is said. No count. No size. No sound. No altitude. No word on how long they stayed in view. The phrase "were seen" suggests more than one observer. But no witness has ever been named.

The case survives as a single entry in Wikipedia's list of UFO sightings in the United Kingdom, tagged as needing a citation. A children's encyclopedia mirror carries the same entry under the title "Liverpool Red Spheres". No newspaper story, photograph or video of that night has been found.

The most likely official trace is the MoD spreadsheet UFO Reports 2008, dated 4 February 2009. Whether it holds a Liverpool entry for 12 January has not yet been confirmed.

Over the following months, Liverpool kept looking up. In June 2008, a Liverpool man filmed lights on his Nokia N95 phone and told the BBC he had seen several UFOs hovering. Merseyside Police said they had no reports. In November 2008, pilots on the PPRuNe forum discussed two very bright orange lights over Kirkby at about 4000ft, with no audible sound. Further reports followed from Netherley and Halewood.

In May 2009, the Liverpool Echo reported three lights over Mossley Hill, Allerton and Garston. Witness Jackie Hardaker said they were "like red balls, they looked like fire."

No one has examined the January sighting directly. But the debate around the Merseyside lights points one way. Chinese and Thai sky lanterns were hugely popular at the time, and Londonist linked the rise in sightings in 2008 and 2009 partly to them. In 2009, Liverpool-born UFO researcher John Rimmer called lanterns the "rule of thumb" explanation for orange lights over Merseyside.

A group of red glows moving one way fits that picture. Lanterns follow the wind, though, and the wind over Liverpool that night has not been checked. Aircraft landing lights near Liverpool John Lennon Airport, parachute flares and fireworks have also been suggested for nearby cases.

The Liverpool red spheres remain a story without a storyteller. One line. One date. One direction of travel. The case sits at the threshold of a season of Merseyside reports, still waiting for a log entry or a witness to give it a voice.