UFO Scotland : The Secret History of Scotland’s UFO Phenomenon

236 Pages·1998·1.61 MB·English

by  Ron Halliday

CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTE

1 WAY UP OVER THE LOTHIANS
EDINBURGH AND THE WEST LOTHIAN AREA
LIVINGSTON INCIDENT · OTHER DECHMONT SIGHTINGS · TARBRAX SIGHTING · RIDDOCHHILL INCIDENT
· ROSSLYN CHAPEL · 1947 SIGHTING · SIGHTHILL, CORSTORPHINE HILL · ANIMAL MUTILATION ·
BATHGATE VIDEO EVIDENCE · REPEATER WITNESS · ARTHUR’S SEAT · PORTOBELLO SIGHTING ·
MOTHMAN · FORTH BRIDGE SIGHTING · ALIEN CONTACT · M.O.D. INVOLVEMENT

2 THE WEST COAST MYSTERY
THE GLASGOW REGION AND AYRSHIRE
MARYHILL SIGHTINGS · 1952 SIGHTING · CLYDESDALE ENCOUNTER · SILVER DISCS · SPIRITUAL
DIMENSION · CENTRAL GLASGOW SIGHTINGS · AERIAL LIGHTS · DUNOON OBJECT · PILOT’S ACCOUNT ·
TRIANGULAR CRAFT · AYR SIGHTING · PRESTWICK INCIDENT · STRANGE SHAPES OVER AYRSHIRE ·
HOSTILE ENTITIES · CUMBERNAULD REPEATER · DIAMOND-SHAPED CRAFT · FLYING RAILWAY
CARRIAGE · MOUNT VERNON ANOMALY

3 THE OUTER LIMITS
ABERDEEN AND THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND
HEBRIDEAN MILITARY ALERT · LEWIS SIGHTING · USOS · LOCH NEVIS OBJECT · ULLAPOOL SIGHTING ·
FLAMING GLOBE · ORKNEY SIGHTING · DYCE AIRPORT UFOS · EARLY ABERDEEN SIGHTINGS · A
RECURRING PHENOMENON · BEAMS OF LIGHT · ALIEN ENCOUNTER · FORT WILLIAM LIGHTS ·
STONEHAVEN INCIDENTS · REPEATER CONTACTEE · ELGIN ENCOUNTER

4 A STRANGE VISITATION
THE DUNDEE TRIANGLE
GLAMIS CASTLE SIGHTINGS · BLAIRGOWRIE—FREEMAN CASE · OTHER BLAIRGOWRIE INCIDENTS ·
DUNDEE SIGHTINGS · RAF LEUCHARS · PERTH CLOSE ENCOUNTER · REPEATER ABDUCTEE
5 UFO BASES TO BONNYBRIDGE
FIFE AND THE BONNYBRIDGE TRIANGLE
CHASED BY LIGHTS · THE FIFE INCIDENT · HOLLOW EARTH THEORY · ALIEN LANDING SITE · HOSTILE
ACTIVITY · SCOTLAND’S AREA 51 · LOW-FLYING SAUCER · IN THE SKIES OVER FIFE · PRISON SIGHTING ·
ALLOA INCIDENT · HILLFOOTS HOT-SPOT · CASE SOLVED · UNDERWATER BASE THEORY · THE
BONNYBRIDGE TRIANGLE · VIDEO EVIDENCE · CLOSE ENCOUNTER IN CRAIL

6 INTERRUPTED JOURNEYS
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, CHANGED LIVES
PSYCHIC CONTACTEE · AMERICAN BIAS · THE LOSSIEMOUTH INCIDENT · ALIEN ENCOUNTER AT
LOCHORE · MISSING TIME · THE A70 ABDUCTION · GREEN GLOW NEAR ABERFELDY · A70 SIGHTING ·
PSYCHIC DIMENSION · PIZZA MYSTERY · REPEATER ABDUCTEE · HYBRID ENTITIES · TWO-WAY
COMMUNICATION

7 THE ELUSIVE ‘HOT-SPOT’
THE BORDERS, EAST LOTHIAN, UFO WAVES
HOT-SPOTS, WAVES AND WINDOWS · EARLY DUMFRIESSHIRE INCIDENTS · SOLWAY SPACEMAN · GIANT
CRAFT OVER DUMFRIES · FOCUS ON MOFFAT · FIREBALLS IN THE SKY · LIGHTS OVER LOCHSIDE · ‘A LOT
GOING ON …’ · GEORGE ADAMSKI IN EDINBURGH · DUNBAR ORANGE BALL · THE EARTHLIGHT THEORY
· MYSTICAL ASPECT · CASE STUDY: THE BONNYBRIDGE PHENOMENON

8 THE NUMBERS GAME
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF DATA
SOURCES OF DATA · U.K. VS SCOTTISH REPORTING · NUMBER OF WITNESSES · SEX OF WITNESSES ·
GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION · REPORTS BY YEAR/DECADE · DISTRIBUTION BY MONTH · TIME OF DAY ·
COMPARISON WITH OVERALL U.K. FIGURES

9 AN ENDURING ENIGMA
OVERVIEW OF THE PHENOMENON
A SCEPTIC’S VIEW · OCCAM’S RAZOR · AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE · LIMITATIONS OF
EYEWITNESS REPORTS · THE QUESTION OF SOLID EVIDENCE · ELECTROMAGNETIC HYPOTHESIS ·
SCOTLAND AND EARTHLIGHTS · THE REALITY OF EXPERIENCE · CHANNELLING · ALIEN INTELLIGENCE:
TWO HYPOTHESES · THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW · EUROSCEPTICS · CONSPIRACY THEORY

APPENDICES

A FURTHER READING
B CLASSIFICATION OF PHENOMENA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION
I have to admit that I wasn’t naturally attracted to the subject of ufology. The
supernatural on the other hand fascinated me even as a child. Hardly surprising
as my grandmother was ‘psychic’ and saw spirits, although I was not
consciously aware of this at the time. But when I thought of the mysterious
world beyond, the images that came to my mind were of ghosts or strange
entities that might be found wandering through the woods. I frightened myself to
sleeplessness by reading at bedtime The Haunting of Borley Rectory and
Psychical Research Today—both, I might say, still worth looking at.
My father was a scientist, and open-minded enough to consider psychical
research a subject that should be investigated. It didn’t have to be believed, but it
should be examined. Nevertheless, the notion of silver discs hurtling through
space, and beings from other planets, just didn’t enter into my mind. On the one
hand I suppose it’s rather strange that it didn’t, but on the other hand it does
suggest that media stories don’t necessarily influence people as easily as might
be thought. I was fed on a regular diet of the Eagle comic with Dan Dare,
Professor Peabody and the evil genius, the ‘Mekon’, who must have been an
early ‘grey’—a skinny, large-headed, grey-coloured, evil extraterrestrial who
rode about on an open chair-sized disc with no obvious power source. I took it
all as fiction, and media frenzy over places like Warminster, and indeed the
whole UFO phenomenon, passed me by so completely that I never noticed it. I
avidly read newspapers and I honestly cannot recall a single UFO story from
either the 1960s or most of the 1970s. When I thought of the ‘paranormal’ I did
not rate UFOs as subject matter worth considering.
Which, when I look back, is rather odd. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that
UFO incidents were taking place, it was just that I didn’t find them anything like
as interesting as the fact that a person might have seen a ghost and the
implications that had for our lives on Earth.
However, I did notice reports of the 1979 Bob Taylor incident on Dechmont
Law. It didn’t attract me to the subject, but it did make me think about the
possibility that UFO sightings and other strange incidents—ghosts, hauntings—
might be linked in the sense that they occurred in the same area or close to each
other. At the time I was working on a book on witchcraft cases and looking for a
clue as to why there were areas where accusations of witchcraft formed a cluster
(a witch ‘hot-spot’). A new avenue of thought had begun to open up for me
regarding the UFO phenomenon, as it seems to have done for many people at
around the same time.
When I first became involved in Scottish ufology there were very few Scottish
investigators, and in fact only Malcolm Robinson and Steuart Campbell seemed
to be active. Steuart Campbell had done impressive work on the Bob Taylor
incident (and other cases), but although a member of BUFORA (The British
UFO Research Association) he was, in fact, sceptical of UFOs as a phenomenon
that could not be explained rationally. He eventually produced The UFO Mystery
Solved, a broad account of UFO incidents with each one explained in rational
terms, mainly as mirages of stars or planets (I paraphrase here—for a detailed
explanation, read the book).
Steuart Campbell has been heavily criticised for his attempt to create a unified
theory of UFOs, that they’re all cases of mistaken identity. But he has pinpointed
a real problem. Do individual UFO cases stand up to scrutiny? I think this is a
key issue because it is pointless referring to the sheer volume of reports as
overwhelming evidence of the reality of UFOs. We have to accept that many
sightings do have a rational explanation, so shouldn’t we be willing to take on
board the fact that all UFO incidents may have a straightforward answer?
If that is your opinion I hope that the events described in the following pages
will convince you otherwise, or at least encourage you to consider the possibility
that some UFOs are just that—unidentified flying objects. I certainly didn’t start
out with the view that UFO reports were a genuine inexplicable phenomenon. It
was the encounters I had with UFO witnesses over the years which convinced
me that something strange was taking place in the skies over Scotland.
Yes, I have met people who have clearly seen what they believe to be a
‘mysterious object’, but is not. One individual rang me up to report a strange red
object she and her husband had watched for some time hovering in the skies
above their house. She was amazed when I told her it could well be the planet
Mars as it was prominent at that time of year and could readily be seen with the
naked eye. UFO investigator Ken Higgins wrote a fascinating account of the
bright lights flashing over the skies of West Lothian reported to him by a family
convinced they were seeing UFOs. Although it was the early hours of the
morning, Ken with typical determination went out to look. After driving round
for some time he located the UFO source. A jeep club were racing each other
round open countryside. The bobbing of the car lights was producing the UFO
lights in the sky. But what if Ken hadn’t bothered to get out of bed to take a
look? Another UFO sighting logged.
So far I accept that sceptics have a point. But where I take a radically different
road is in response to close up reports. Or cases where individuals claim to have
encountered alien entities or strange beings. This is not simply ‘mistaken
identity’. We have events here which challenge fundamentally the accepted way
in which we view the world.
If we take Pat Macleod’s encounter in a built-up area of Edinburgh, we can
hardly dismiss it as a misidentification of an everyday object. The strange orb
she saw hovering over the road has no clear natural explanation. Pat has no axe
to grind on the matter so, if you want to dismiss the incident, you can either
argue that she invented it (which I utterly reject as an explanation) or that she
hallucinated it. I take the latter solution more seriously, but I also reject it
because it is far too simplistic an answer to close up encounters like this. (‘Oh,
saw a spaceship did she? It was obviously a hallucination.’) In my view the
depth and extent of close encounters precludes hallucination as a solution.
People may wish to refer to UFOs as modern day ‘fairy stories’, with the
implication that anyone interested in them dislikes the ‘real world’. In response I
would say that those who reject the UFO phenomenon do so because they cannot
accept the fact that the ‘real’ world may be less certain than they imagine. There
are people who find such uncertainty very disturbing, and who will reject all
threats to their fixed outlook in an attempt to retain their world view.
So on its own, even without claims of government cover-ups and ET contact,
the UFO phenomenon does threaten stability, which is why according to some
ufologists there is a world-wide conspiracy to clamp down on the UFO
phenomenon and also to discredit it. Certainly, the USA is vast enough to hide
secret bases where extraterrestrial technology (the famous crashed discs) could
be stored, copied and tested. In Scotland the MoD owns huge areas of land
where any activity could be carried out. I often wonder why the MoD needs to
hold on to such enormous acreage as most of it rarely seems to be used—though
it may be that I’ve been too shortsighted and some of these sites have been put to
mysterious use. There are parts of Scotland where people just never visit because
access is so difficult. ET flying discs could be stored here as geographically
we’re in a good situation for communication with London, the USA and Western
Europe.
I would also add that I don’t accept the view that national secrets will always
find a way into the public domain. John F. Kennedy, US President, was killed in
public yet those involved in his murder have never been brought to justice. What
we’ve seen instead (for various reasons) is an extensive and lengthy cover-up.
Scapegoating, as in the ‘lone gunman’ explanation, has proved to be an effective