Speaker 1: Encounter in Detchmont Woods by Charles Lear. When a single
witness reports an episode of high strangeness involving a UFO encounter,
having physical evidence in the form of traces left on
the ground or on the witness really helps when arguing
for the witness's credibility. This was the case in the
nineteen seventy nine report by a forestry worker in Scotland
who said he not only saw mysterious domed objects sitting
on the ground, but that he was assaulted by two
spherical objects with spike like protrusions that rolled towards him.
The case got the attention of Flying Saucer Review editor
Charles Bowen, who made arrangements to have it investigated by
members of the UFO Investigators Network, an organization funded by
f SR and formed in nineteen seventy seven with the
help of Jenny Randalls, who had proposed the idea. The
resulting three part report by EUPHOIG investigators Martin Keatman and
Andrew Collins appears in the November December nineteen seventy nine,
Spring nineteen eighty and September nineteen eighty issues. The case
was also investigated by employees of the Livingston Development Corporation
and local police from two stations. The case is the
cover story in the nineteen seventy nine issue. According to
the report titled physical Assault by Unidentified Objects at Livingston
Part one LDC, forestry foreman Robert Taylor of Livingston, West Lothian,
Scotland reported that on Friday, November ninth, nineteen seventy nine,
he encountered a mysterious domed object sitting on the ground
in a forest clearing. According to him, as he watched,
two spherical objects with spikelike protrusions came towards him rapidly
and rolled over on to his sides, at which point
he went unconscious. When he came to, he heard a
wishing noise and then saw that the object was gone.
He was extremely thirsty, had a headache, pain in his
chin and legs, and couldn't walk or speak. He crawled
back to his pickup truck, which was three hundred meters away,
found himself incapable of driving it, but was then able
to make his way home on foot. Upon returning with
others the next day, there were physical traces seen that
gave support to his claims. According to Keapman and Collins.
They made arrangements on Monday with Taylor's superior, Malcolm Drummond,
to meet with Taylor the next day, who would take
them to the site. They also established contact with all
the other authorities in the area, including the local police
and newspapers, in order to pave the way ahead. When
they got to the area on Wednesday, they went to
the l d C, met with Drummond and Taylor, and
were taken to the site, an area known as Dutchmont Woods.
The sight was covered with snow, but LDC workers had
put up a fence to protect the trays evidence. There
were footprints all around as a result of people coming
to look at the sight out of curiosity, and the
readers told you can imagine our feelings when we were
greeted with the sight of a large snow man built
in the center. Because it was getting dark, they were
unable to thoroughly investigate the site and instead went with
Taylor to Livingstone, where they interviewed him, his wife, one
of his sons, and his daughter. They interviewed Taylor under
rapid questioning for more than three hours and then over
the next three days, and he never feared from his
original story nor did the others involved in this bizarre saga.
The report then goes into the finer details of Taylor's story.
According to Keapman and Collins, Taylor sixty one, was making
his rounds in his Bedford pickup truck with his six
year old Irish setter Lara, and arrived at Detchmont Woods
at approximately nine to fifty five hours, an area he
went to virtually every week. He went through two gates
and drove up the unpaid forestry road to Deer Hill.
He parked three hundred meters from where he said his
encounter took place. Let Larra loose to roam freely and
chase small animals in the forest, and checked on the gates,
fencing and fire paths, searching for anything untoward. He made
his way to an intersection of three fire paths. There,
in a clearing to his right, he saw a large
object quite out of context with the area as he
knew it. He described it as a top were dome
shaped and said it had a flange around it with
evenly spaced vertical cylindrical bars sticking up from it that
had horizontal bars, not unlike propellers on top of them.
He said that between the vertical bars, there were what
could have been portals, but he couldn't see through them,
so he thought they might have just been markings. Keapman
and Colin describe the structure beneath the upper part as confusing,
and say that Taylor recalled it as being like the
upper part, giving the impression of a sanern shape overall, or,
as he put it, a child's top. This sounds more
like a spherical object than a dome, and the illustration
reflects this. Based on measurements taken at the site, they
estimate that it was about seven meters wide at the
flange and about eight meters away from tailor. Tailor is
said to have described the surface as rough, with no
apparent joints or seams, dark gray like carborundum, and to
have said it didn't seem to be metallic. He added, however,
that after looking at the object for about thirty seconds,
parts of the upper section disappeared, allowing him to see
what was behind it, and would then become opaque, first
on the left, then on the right, and then in
the center. It's at this point that the spiky spherical
objects are said to have hurtled towards the startled witness.
According to the report, they seemed to have come from
in front of the lower section and to have moved
in unison on a parallel course before falling onto his sides.
Taylor recalled an overpowering smell, a bad taste in his mouth,
and feeling something tugging on his pants as he was
dragged forwards. It is assumed that he went unconscious and
fell head first on the ground. The additional details of
the aftermath are Taylor having an intense headache centered over
his forehead, pain in his chin as if it were burned,
and itch in his left thigh, and feeling sick. He
tried to talk to Lara, who was near by and
barking furiously, but his jaw seemed to have ceased to
function and he was unable to speak. He was able
to get to his knees and saw that the objects
had gone. Taylor crawled about one hundred meters towards the truck,
staggered to his feet and was able to walk, but
fell repeatedly. When he got to the truck, he called
the LDC, but was still unable to talk. He then
started up the truck tried to turn it around lost
control and reversed it into a shallow ditch. At this point,
he got out and decided to walk one point five
kilometers through woods fields and on roads to get to
his home. He said he was slightly dazed and confused,
and still feeling the physical effects of the encounter. Next week,
The Investigation and the Evidence. Charles Lear is the author
of The Flying Saucer Investigators, available in its second edition
at Amazon dot com.