Source: NewsHub

The person was at Karekare Beach on Sunday 31 March when they had the “craziest experience” – “strange lights in the sky”.

“We were on the beach, my boyfriend and I, and saw two bright orange/red lights far on the other end of the beach,” ufomystery123 posted to Reddit.

“In a matter of seconds, one of the lights started moving at full speed, in a straight line, no more that 200m above the water until directly in front of us.

“The UFO had changed from having a red light to a bright white light, somewhat like a torch, shining directly at us.”

After two minutes the strange object moved away, flying “incredibly fast and with perfect precision” until it disappeared. But this wasn’t the end to the strange occurrences.

“We were lying down looking at the stars for a while and then stood up to leave, before realizing there were five surrounding us in different areas of the beach,” they posted.

“One of them was flying up and down and another from side to side. The others were just still switching between red and white spotlights.

“This was when we decided to leave, scared shitless.”

They fled the beach but couldn’t escape the lights. Looking at the sky from Titirangi they saw the lights flying away “like a plane”.

They’ve posted to social media asking if anyone has heard of any UFOs similar to this, or seen any around New Zealand.

One reply suggest a more prosaic answer – “inflatable sports equipment and coloured lights”.

“What you saw was a couple of beach ball with LED inside,” one user commented.

“There’s been a number of sightings recently that have been confirmed to be beach ball with LED.”

Other answers included Chinese lanterns or meteorological equipment.

“The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus,” one person said.

But others believe it is evidence of something unexplainable – and possibly something not human.

“I’ve seen the same UFOs at Whatipu about a month ago which is next beach down basically. Strait up [sic],” said one person.

“They didn’t come up close to me but they were flying around over the water quite low and at a decent but not super-fast speed.

“I didn’t actually think much of it but they were a red/orange colour which I thought was strange. Three or four of them.”