Ron Halliday - UFO Scotland : The Secret History of Scotland’s UFO Phenomenon

EDINBURGH AND THE WEST LOTHIAN AREA

THE GLASGOW REGION AND AYRSHIRE

ABERDEEN AND THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND

THE DUNDEE TRIANGLE

FIFE AND THE BONNYBRIDGE TRIANGLE

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, CHANGED LIVES

THE BORDERS, EAST LOTHIAN, UFO WAVES

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF DATA

OVERVIEW OF THE PHENOMENON

APPENDICES

I have to admit that I wasnt 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 Todayboth, 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 didnt have to be believed, but it should be examined. Nevertheless, the notion of silver discs hurtling through space, and beings from other planets, just didnt enter into my mind. On the one hand I suppose its rather strange that it didnt, but on the other hand it does suggest that media stories dont 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 greya 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 wasnt that I didnt believe that UFO incidents were taking place, it was just that I didnt 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 didnt attract me to the subject, but it did make me think about the possibility that UFO sightings and other strange incidentsghosts, hauntingsmight 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 herefor a detailed explanation, read the book).

Steuart Campbell has been heavily criticised for his attempt to create a unified theory of UFOs, that theyre 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 shouldnt 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 thatunidentified flying objects. I certainly didnt 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 hadnt 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 Macleods 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 usedthough it may be that Ive 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 were in a good situation for communication with London, the USA and Western Europe.