They came from outer Sydenham

A couple of recently spotted South London fortean stories.

Neil Arnold at the Londonist reports a tale from 'several years ago' of an odd supposed sighting in Brockley: 'We saw a figure walking up the street towards us. The word we coined later to describe its movement was 'lolloping' - a kind of up and down bouncy walk. It took a few seconds for the two of us to realise this was no human being. The creature was entirely black and like a cardboard cut-out, flat and one-dimensional. It had no features at all, and it had arms that hung down to its knees. It seemed to be ignoring us, then it seemed to realise we could see it and it began to lollop faster towards us' (full story here).

Meanwhile the Newshopper (16 November 2009) reports strange lights over Sydenham:

'A mother and daughter had the fright of their lives when they saw two strange orange lights in the sky. Nurse Sue Hentschel was driving her teenage daughter Jessica to a dance class when they witnessed a terrifying vision in the sky. Their car was stuck in heavy Sydenham traffic on November 2 at around 6.10pm when they saw two mysterious lights. Mrs Hentschel, of Stembridge Road, Anerley, said: “We saw these two lights which were orange coming towards us. “My daughter looked up and said ‘Mum, what’s that?’ “I didn’t know. I just said ‘What the hell is that? What is it?’” She says they stared dumbfounded for several minutes as the lights hovered over Hazeldene School;.

The comments thread to this story has other people reporting seeing the same lights, but others provide the more prosaic explanation that they were in fact Chinese lanterns rather than spacecraft.