Your newspaper and the county have had some good mileage out of it all and it may be time to offer you a more rational explanation of the events, which you may agree with or reject as you see fit.
The various observers of the reported phenomenon are not doubted for the truth of their accounts. The observers seem in awe of what they have seen. It would seem a little more supportive 'evidence' may have been helpful.
The accounts all focus on what they see, with photographic evidence to support it, however, no mention is made of more mundane atmospheric corroborative facts such as temperature, (wet and dry thermometers), humidity, types of cloud, wind etc.
Doubtless local coast
and inland meteorological observations could be acquired.
What may be being seen and reported by your readers is abnormal refraction, or mirage.
This is brought about by an unusual lapse rate of temperature (and density as well) with height immediately above the sea (or land) surface produces a distortion in the appearance of objects near the horizon.
When the surface is relatively cold (and the wind very light) so the density of the air decreases rapidly for a short distance above the surface, light rays from objects low down near the horizon are bent down, the same way in fact as are usually the rays of the sun when entering the earth's atmosphere at low altitude.
A further occasional effect produced when the air is appreciably warmer than the sea, is superior mirage in which an inverted image is seen over the real object; sometimes an erect image is seen immediately above and touching the inverted one. The object and its image in this instance are well defined in contrast with the shimmering object and image of the inferior mirage.
So what was it the good honest people of the fens have been reporting?
A mirage – an optical illusion by which images of distant objects are seen as if inverted, especially in the desert where the inverted sky appears as a sheet of water. But a mirage –
of what?
The shimmering lights, which have been reported by many people are most probably just the visible effects of the atmosphere changing in density between the real object and the mirage one which they have seen. It is possible that the larger UFOs reported were in fact either large offshore accommodation platforms or smaller.

C Cladingbowl
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