Thanks for that 'Justified & Ancient:'Came across this and wondered if it also might be of related interest:
https://www.wiltshiretimes.co.uk/news/2272418.wiltshires-ufo-secrets-revealed/
This would have been at a time when general knowledge of Chinese Lanterns was just taking off (no pun intended - much!) so it's not surprising that people paid more attention to looking skyward after the initial reports came out, and of course with that, comes all the misunderstood stuff.
I was carrying out quite a lot of voluntary analysis of photographic evidence not so long ago; one in particular was of a mysterious looking farmyard anomaly - a ghostly form, caught in the frame of a security camera and highly flash lit, which was put out by a well known UFO organisation.
It was said to be some kind of phenomena. When I examined the photo closely over many days - by using various filters, and extracting what I could see and comparing etc, it turned out to be a bat which had flown right up close in front of the security camera - detail was very scant in the photograph as the whole image was of ghostly appearance. It took some time to work out the missing detail of the form and match it to this light-flooded photo of a bat caught in mid-flight chasing after a moth!
The UFO organisation refused to change or alter anything, even though the significance of the bat was so obvious once the same model was put side-by-side for comparison. I gave it up after that.