AS THE darker nights draw in and the winter approaches, tales of spooky sightings and mysterious objects in the sky often begin to surface.

We are fascinated by the idea there could be life on Mars or aliens flying around in space waiting for an invitation to visit.

This week, Hollywood will tackle the subject again with another alien blockbuster, Arrival, but in East Lothian reports of UFO sightings go back decades, and, in some cases, were so convincing they warranted investigation by the Ministry of Defence.

Perhaps one of the more unusual reports came from a Tranent man who told how he and his girlfriend, now wife, had been walking to their local pub on Hogmanay, 1979, when their eyes were drawn down the hill at Cockenzie Power Station.

He told UFO investigators: “I saw a huge circular object stationary above the power station. It was approx 100m in diameter and bright orange, hovering approx 50m above the two chimneys.

“There was a small, cone-shaped tail, rather like the exhaust from a jet engine, but there was no noise.

“I turned to my wife and asked her if she could see this, as I thought that I was seeing things. She confirmed yes, she could. We both watched this for approximately one minute and it then moved off, slowly accelerating; it then disappeared into thin air with no sound.

“I have only told a handful of people of this until now. I have a Masters degree in engineering and know how things work, but I have never seen anything like this. I am 100 per cent certain that it was not an aircraft but a UFO.”

This reported sighting is not the only one involving Cockenzie Power Station; indeed, power plants around the world are regularly involved in UFO reports.

And in a strange twist at Cockenzie, two separate reports of a further unexplained incident came 29 years later, again on December 31, when witnesses reported seeing four bright lights hovering above it.

One said: “My girlfriend and I saw the same lights in the sky from our home in Prestonpans. As it was Hogmanay, we felt a bit foolish cos we both had alcohol but it’s a strange feeling to learn that someone else saw them too.

“The lights slowly drifted apart from each other in different directions over a period of a few minutes.”

The later sightings may well be linked more to an increasing phenomenon at the time for Chinese lanterns to be released as part of the annual festivities – a phenomenon which sparked numerous UFO reports, as well as sparking a coastguard search of the Cockenzie coast after lanterns were mistaken for emergency flares.

However, that does not explain away the 1979 sighting.

The Ministry of Defence has its own files regarding events reported in East Lothian and include five between April 1998 and September 2006 which it investigated.

They included a sighting in Musselburgh on April 15, 1998, of two bright jellyfish-shaped objects seen “moving in a south-easterly direction”, and another in Dunbar on January 9, 1999, of a bright light with “red, yellow and green alternating lights on it”.

In March 1999, someone in Tranent raised the alarm over a red, green and blue star shape, and in December in 2005 there were reports in Haddington of simply a “UFO”.

In September 2006, they received a report from East Linton of a “big round swirly thing in the sky”.

Whatever people saw or believed they saw on these occasions, they vary hugely in description in a lot of cases. Interestingly, the Ministry of Defence does not reveal the findings of its investigations, merely that they received the reports and investigated.

Have you ever seen anything spooky in the sky?

We’d love to hear your stories.