Robert Taylor, a forester from West Lothian, Scotland, encountered a strange object and equally strange smaller objects or “entities”. The rounded larger object, 20 feet in diameter, hovered above the ground. Then, two small objects, which were round but had appendages, “rushed” toward him. These objects each attached itself to one (each) of his trouser legs and tugged him towards the larger object, at which time Taylor lost consciousness. Ground marks were discovered at the scene of the encounter.  

The Evidence

Witness’ Obituary

Published by The Economist, March 29, 2007 

Robert Taylor, a possible victim of alien abduction, died on March 14th, aged 88

WHAT was it about Bob Taylor? He was an unassuming man, steady, phlegmatic, with a thick brush of white hair and a craggy outdoorsman’s face. He liked a pint, and a dram too, but not when he was working. He smoked, but not too many. In his house at the edge of Dechmont Woods near Livingston in West Lothian, where he had worked all his life as a forester, there were very few books. And certainly there was none that could explain what happened to him on November 9th 1979, and why his trousers, of thick navy serge like a policeman’s and with useful pockets in the sides, should have ended up in the archives of the British UFO Research Association. 

Mr Taylor set off that morning, with his red setter Lara, to check the woods on Dechmont Law for stray sheep and cattle. It was a damp day and, after he had parked the van and set off down the forest track, even the noise of the Edinburgh-Glasgow motorway was muffled by thick, dark fir trees. The dog ran, and Mr Taylor’s trudging wellingtons made the only sound. Then he turned a corner into a clearing filled with light, and saw it. 

It was a “flying dome”, 20 feet wide, hovering above the grass. No sound came from the object, and it did not move. It seemed to be made of grey metal, shiny but rough, like emery paper. About half-way down it had a circular platform, like the brim of a hat, set with small propellers. There were darker areas on it that might have been portholes, but the strangest thing was that the dome would be solid one moment, transparent the next, so that Mr Taylor could see the fir trees through it, as if it was trying to camouflage itself. 

Both he and the dog stood stock-still with surprise. But then, suddenly, two smaller spheres dropped out of the dome and came trundling across the grass, one to his right, one to his left. They were covered in long spikes, like navy mines, that made a ghastly sucking sound as they dug in and out of the mud. They grabbed his trousers, one on the right leg, one on the left, ripping right through to his winter long johns, and giving off a foul choking smell like burning brakes. Mr Taylor felt himself being pulled towards the craft; then he blacked out. When he came to, the visitors had gone. 

So far, so impressive a story to explain a dishevelled homecoming on a Saturday night. But it was in mid-week and at midday that Mr Taylor crawled home, with the dog but without the van, with a graze on his chin and his trousers torn, covered in mud and with a thumping headache. His wife called a doctor and the police. Mr Taylor felt no need for the doctor, and after two days of a wild, craving thirst and the weird brake smell, he felt fine. But he took the police to the scene. 

And there was the evidence. A large circle and inner “ladder” marks, which had flattened the grass but not dented the ground, as if a heavy craft had hovered but not landed. Forty little round holes, leaving the circle clockwise and anticlockwise, as if spiky “mines” had indeed rolled out of it. But no track entering or leaving the clearing, making the machine’s arrival impossible unless it was a helicopter or something dropped by a mobile crane; and nothing of that sort had been seen in the area that day or the day before. 

Lights over Livingston 

The detective sergeant in charge of the case did not believe in space visitors. Mr Taylor’s boss at the Forestry Department did not believe either, and thought it was probably some secret device being tested by the government. UFO debunkers thought Mr Taylor might have seen a magnified image of Venus distorted by the earth’s atmosphere, which had made him fall down in an epileptic fit. The press came; and by the time the story reached Edinburgh, it was “small furry creatures” that had poured from the spacecraft to attack him. “I know what I saw,” said Mr Taylor. So doughtily and drily did he stick to his tale (and kept a camera with him ever after, to take the aliens’ pictures if they ever came for him again) that the police opened a criminal investigation for assault, the only one in Britain to arise from a UFO “sighting”. It remains open. 

Mr Taylor’s neighbours proving much more sceptical, he eventually moved away to an undisclosed address. But he also became the most famous “witness” to aliens in Britain. His trousers were taken to spiritualist meetings to be analysed by psychics (“I feel pain from these trousers”), and on anniversaries of the sighting UFO-spotters would gather in the clearing, just on the off-chance. 

The aliens, meanwhile, did not give up. Since that November day they have filled the skies of West Lothian with glimmering discs, strange lights and bouncing balls of fire. The “Falkirk Triangle” now registers more UFO sightings, around 300 a year, than any other spot on Earth. A good many happen outside the Forge restaurant in Bonnybridge, where fireballs sail over the trees and “wingless planes” are seen in the fields. Some experts say West Lothian may be a “thin place”, offering a window from the Earth into another dimension; others say the sightings are linked to the lack of jobs locally, and cheap liquor. But some know the aliens are just looking for Bob Taylor, or his dog, or his van, in the place where they last saw him, suddenly amazing them in a clearing among the trees. 

Special Thanks

The now defunct/inoperable “UFO Evidence” website. Some of the information above was archived from old mirrors of that site for preservation and research.

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Mysterious footage showing a black UFO hovering over a Scottish harbour for fifteen minutes leaves residents baffled

A man is baffled after capturing some truly bizarre footage showing a mysterious black object hovering over a harbour.

Jamie Cooper, from Ayr, Scotland, said his 13-year-old son James spotted the unidentified entity in the sky for around 15 minutes at 5.30pm on Sunday.

The teenager filmed the UFO, which slightly resembles a chinook helicopter, clearly hovering in the distance over Ayr Harbour.

Throughout the 28-second clip the black object stays very still and there are no obvious indications as to what it may be.

Dad-of-one, Jamie, said his son later sent him the footage after visiting a shop and was concerned by what he had seen.

The 33-year-old said: ‘James was walking home when he took the footage on Sunday, and sent it to me through Whatsapp.

‘I have never seen anything like this before, I think it’s a UFO and James does too.

‘I have no idea what I think about aliens, there’s nothing to prove that there is or isn’t aliens but I think this has changed my view a bit.

‘James thinks it was hanging there for around 15 minutes but could have been longer as he wasn’t looking in that direction on his way to the shops, only on the way back.

‘I’d like to know what it was, it’s definitely not something you’d expect to see.’

Jamie has ruled out the idea that the UFO was a drone and is completely baffled by the sighting.

He added: ‘It can’t be a drone because of the shape of it, if you zoom into the picture you can see it’s not a helicopter.

‘My mum and grandparents have seen it and have no idea either.

‘I also let a friend see it as he works at the port, I thought maybe it was something to do with the port. He said he has no idea either.’ 

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‘UFO spent four hours hovering above our rural home’, claims family after capturing video footage of ‘spinning lights’ in the sky

By Sara Malm

A family has spoken of the terrifying moment they saw a UFO hovering above their house for four hours.

Morag Ritchie, 50, was awoken in the middle of the night by flashing lights in the sky over the family home in rural Scotland.

The grandmother-of-one woke her family up and her daughter’s fiance caught the shocking images of four blinking lights on video.

Morag said: ‘We live in a very rural area so I never have my curtains closed and I like looking at the night sky.

‘I just woke up all of a sudden and looked out of the window to see all these twinkling lights – they looked like they were moving.

‘I was quite apprehensive about it. I’m standing there looking at it and I’m thinking “is it watching me?”, so I went around the house telling everyone and they all came to have a look.’

Mrs Ritchie describes seeing a circular object hovering and spinning around above her home in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire.

‘My husband is a fisherman and he’s spent many hours looking up at the night sky, so he was quite sceptical when I told him, but even he admitted it was strange when he saw them.’

She says: ‘Eventually we all went back to bed. I woke up a further two times, the second time was about four hours later and it was still there, but when I next woke up it was daylight and they had gone.

‘It was there for so long that even all the way out here, someone else must have seen it, but perhaps they’ve been too shy to come forward about it.’

Morag’s daughter, Cara, 27, had got out of bed to feed her baby at 3am on Saturday night when she first heard about the sighting.

She said: ‘At first I thought it was just a plane, but my mum said it had been there for a few hours and there was no noise or anything.

‘I was quite mesmerised by it all to be honest although my fiance Scott, was pretty scared.

‘He was smoking at the back door where you could see the lights from and he was genuinely frightened, he kept the door half open so he wasn’t actually fully outside.’

The mother-of-one added: ‘I didn’t really believe in UFOs or anything like that beforehand. You hear lots of stories, but you don’t really believe them.

‘But this was really really strange. After seeing what I’ve seen, I’m genuinely wondering if there are actually aliens out there now.’

Although 95 per cent of all UFO reports can be explained, UFO expert Malcolm Robinson admitted he was baffled by the footage Scott captured.

He said: ‘I’ve looked at the footage and there appears to be four lights in a line intermittently flashing which could be anything.

‘But it’s strange. Many suspected UFO sightings are actually Chinese lanterns, but it’s not them this time – no way.

‘It’s very interesting to a researcher like me but at the moment we won’t have any answers for a couple of weeks at least when I find out if there were any other sightings or aircraft in the area at the time.’

Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Tony Finnegan said: ‘It could be a light aircraft or military aircraft, but at 2am in the morning, it’s unlikely to be civilian.

‘We aren’t able to find out what aircraft were in the area at the time, but there was increased activity of northern lights last week, so I suppose they would be a possibility.’

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