Last night, a friend and I were out walking in the country by our villages. We'd been out for a good hour when all of a sudden my friend said, "Woah! What's that?"
I looked up ahead, to see the amazing and frightening sight of a formation of 10 orange lights, moving very strangely, not far from us and slowly coming towards us. Their swaying from side to side made me think of "falling leaf" descriptions I'd heard before; I started to get scared.
Just then, a woman came out of the cottage we were passing to put something in the garden. She saw them immediately and called to her husband. The husband came out and said, "It'll be those Chinese lanterns."
At first I thought, "hmm yeah, Chinese lanterns, nothing to see here" but then, one of the lights went out, and started to gently float down into the field next to us.
Yes, it was a large, 3ft by 3ft square paper box. A candle heats up the air inside and causes it to rise; that's why it came down when the candle went out.
Me and my friend were very relieved. We continued on our walk and it was a lovely sight, every 10 mins, another ten lanterns would come floating over.
Having seen them for myself, and with it being Beijing Olympics now, I can kinda understand better why we've had so many UFO sightings, and them being labelled Chinese Lanterns. I'm not saying every sighting is just paper and candles, but I won't laugh so easily next time I hear that explanation.