The sighting has raised questions about whether the strange craft were UFOs, military aircraft or something else.

The man who spotted the lights captured them on video.

The video shows still and flashing lights on a craft. It appears to be moving around sharply, but the man attributes some of this movement to using the zoom lens on his camera.

He said the sound on the video was not coming from the craft.

When the video is freeze-framed at certain points, the craft appears to have a triangular shape. The lights of the craft are coloured white and red in the video.

The man, who did not want to be named, first saw the lights while out on his deck, calling his dog in.

He lives in an area surrounded by bush and state forest near the Watagan Mountains, not far from the Laguna area.

“Looking to the north, I noticed three flashing lights coming towards me,” he said.

“All of a sudden one went to the left, the other to the right, and the third one kept coming our way.”

Soon several dozen came over the horizon.

“Before we knew it, there would have been 40 to 50 of them, flying towards us. They were spread apart. I noticed most of them did a U-turn and went back again.

“I thought ‘this is strange, am I in a movie, like one of those attacks from Mars.

“There were so many out there, it was such a spectacle. It was overwhelming. My heart was pumping really fast.”

The man said that helicopters and aeroplanes occasionally fly over, but “this seemed quite odd” because the craft were “flying together”.

“There was no sound whatsoever. Normally when an aeroplane or helicopter goes by, we can hear it – even in the house,” the man said.

“These were quiet.”

In any case, they did not seem like conventional aircraft because “their movements were too flexible”.

“Their movements were quite erratic in that they moved towards us and then fairly quickly turned around and went back,” he said.

The Singleton Military Area is to the north of the man’s property, which was the direction from which the lights seemed to be coming.

A Department of Defence spokesman said Singleton barracks “didn’t have anything going on which they think could have been responsible”.

The man said the craft first appeared in the sky about 8pm on Thursday.

“Most had three or four flashing lights on them,” he said.

“They turned around and went back north. By 8.30pm, they were all gone and the sky was clear of these flashing lights.

“We came back inside because they kind of vanished.”

About 15 to 20 minutes later, he went back outside to have another look. The craft had returned. 

He could see the craft for another half hour or so.

“Some went back and a few more came out and towards us,” he said.

Some time between 9pm to 9.30pm, the last of them had gone.

“At the very end, there was only one or two I could see doing this strange kind of loop,” he said.

“They were coming out from north to south, then they turned around and went back north again.”

Did he think they were UFOs?

“The first thing my wife said was ‘they’re UFOs’, but I don’t really believe in UFOs,” he said.

He thought they could possibly be military drones.

He wondered if someone could help identify the craft.

“I’m curious because it’s an odd thing and I don’t have an explanation,” the man said.

“I’m one of those people that likes to have an answer to these things. Maybe somebody else saw it. If a number of people saw it, there could be different perspectives on it.

“Someone in the aeronautics industry might recognise the lights and know what kind of craft it is.”

The story, UFO sighting in Hunter Valley sky, first appeared on the Newcastle Herald.