Forty-seven years ago this morning, a forestry worker walked his dog up a wooded hill in Scotland and came home with torn trousers, grazes on his chin and thighs, and one of the strangest stories in UFO history. It's the only alien encounter that police ended up logging as a criminal assault. Grab a cup of tea, because the Livingston Incident is a good one.
A Normal Friday in the Woods
On Friday, 9 November 1979, Robert "Bob" Taylor was doing his job. He'd worked in forestry for about 15 years, and at the time he was employed by the Livingston Development Corporation, the body building the new town of Livingston in West Lothian. That morning he parked his pickup truck by a road near the M8 motorway and headed up a forest path on the side of Dechmont Law with his red setter, Lara.
Around 10 a.m., he rounded a corner in the woods and stopped cold.
The Dome With Propellers
Hovering just above the forest floor in a clearing was something Taylor described as a "flying dome," roughly 7 yards (about 21 feet) across. It wasn't sleek or shiny like the saucers in the movies. According to his account, it was made of "a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper," and its outer rim was "set with small propellers."
Propellers! On a UFO! That detail alone makes this case stand out from almost every other sighting on record.
Then Things Got Weird
Two smaller spheres, which Taylor said looked "similar to sea mines," complete with spikes, dropped out and came rolling toward him. He said they latched onto his trousers and began dragging him toward the big dome. He noticed a foul smell "like burning brakes." And then he blacked out.
When he came to, Lara was barking furiously and the objects were gone. Taylor said he couldn't get his truck started, so he walked home to Livingston on foot.
The Police Get Involved
His wife, Mary, later said he arrived muddy and dishevelled, his clothes torn and his trousers ripped. She called the police and a doctor, who treated him for grazes to his chin and thighs.
Here's the part that makes this case legendary. Officers went back up Dechmont Law with Taylor and found "ladder-shaped marks" in the ground where he said the dome had hovered, plus other marks he said were made by the spiky little spheres. Because a man had been injured, the police recorded it as a criminal assault. That's why the Livingston Incident is so often called the only UFO sighting ever to become the subject of a criminal investigation.
The Skeptics Weigh In
Not everyone was ready to blame visitors from another world. UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell visited the site with police in 1979 and later noticed PVC pipes in a nearby field. The local water authority had been laying a cable duct within about 100 metres of the clearing, and he concluded that stacked pipes could have made the ground marks. He also suggested Taylor might have seen a mirage of the planet Venus.
Patricia Hannaford, a physician and founder of the Edinburgh University UFO Research Society, suggested Taylor may have had an isolated attack of temporal lobe epilepsy, with the objects being hallucinations. She pointed to his history of meningitis, the smell nobody else noticed, his headache, dry throat, the paralysis in his legs, and his blackout. Physicist Steve Donnelly of The Skeptic also leaned toward the epilepsy explanation. And in 2013, local businessman Phill Fenton speculated that Taylor may have had a mini-stroke, been exposed to harmful chemicals, and mistaken a nearby saucer-shaped water tower for a craft.
The Believers Hold Firm
On the other side, Scottish ufologist and author Malcolm Robinson has said he thinks "it could be one of the few genuine cases of a UFO encounter." And the town itself embraced the story. The Livingston Development Corporation agreed to put up a commemorative plaque, which was installed in January 1992, so the spot where it all happened is officially marked.
Bob Taylor died in March 2007 at age 88, and his story was big enough to earn obituaries in The Telegraph and The Economist.
So What Really Happened?
Here's where I'll put on my speculation hat, and I want to be clear this part is just me wondering out loud. If you were an alien civilization capable of crossing interstellar space, would you really show up in a dome with propellers and send out spiky balls to grab a forester by his trousers? It sounds less like a starship and more like a really bad day at a hardware store. But maybe that's exactly what makes it so compelling. Nobody making up a story would choose details that odd.
Whether it was a medical episode, a trick of the light, or something none of us can explain, the Livingston Incident still sits in a category of its own. A real man, real injuries, real police officers, and real marks in the dirt, all on a hillside in West Lothian, 47 years ago today.
What do you think Bob Taylor saw on Dechmont Law? Let me know in the comments.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Robert Taylor incident" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_incident) and History Scotland's "On this day: The Livingston UFO incident" (https://history.scot/the-livingston-ufo-incident/).
No comments:
Post a Comment