Encounter in Detchmont Woods

by UFO History Buff & Author, 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 1979 report by a forestry worker in Scotland who said he not only saw a mysterious domed object 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 Flying Saucer Review Editor Charles Bowen, who made arrangements to have it investigated by members of the UFO Investigators Network, an organization funded by FSR and formed in 1977 with the help of Jenny Randles who had proposed the idea. The resulting three-part report by UFOIN investigators Martin Keatman and Andrew Collins appears in the November-December 1979, Spring 1980, and September 1980 issues. The case was also investigated by employees of the Livingston Development Corporation and local police from two stations.

Detchmont WitnessThe case is the cover story in the 1979 issue. According to the report titled, “Physical Assault by Unidentified Objects at Livingston – Part I,” LDC forestry foreman Robert Taylor of Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland, reported that on Friday, November 9, 1979, he encountered a mysterious domed object sitting on the ground in a forest clearing. According to him, as he watched, two spherical objects with spike-like protrusions came towards him rapidly and rolled over onto his sides, at which point he went unconscious.

When he came to, he heard a “whooshing” 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 300 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 Keatman 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 LDC, met with Drummond and Taylor, and were taken to the site, an area known as Detchmont Woods. The site was covered with snow, but LDC workers had put up a fence to protect the trace evidence. There were footprints all around as a result of people coming to look at the site out of curiosity, and the reader is told, “You can imagine our feelings when we were greeted with the sight of a large snowman built in the center!”

Because it was getting dark, they were unable to thoroughly investigate the site and instead, went with Taylor to Livingston 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 veered 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 Keatman and Collins, Taylor, 61, was making his rounds in his Bedford pickup truck with his six-year-old Irish Setter, Lara, and arrived at Detchmont Woods at approximately 9:55 hours, an area he went to “virtually every week.”

He went through two gates and drove up the unpaved forestry road to Deer Hill. He parked 300 meters from where he said his encounter took place, let Lara 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” or domed-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 propellors on top of them.” He said that between the vertical bars there were what could have been portholes, but he couldn’t see through them, so he thought they might have just been “markings.”

Keatman and Collins 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 ‘Saturn-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 7 meters wide at the flange and about 8 meters away from Taylor.

Taylor is said to have described the surface as rough, with no apparent joints or seams, dark grey like “carborundum,” and to have said it didn’t seem to be metallic. He added, however, that after looking at the object for about 30 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 spikey, spherical objects are said to have “hurtled towards the startled witness.” According to the report, they seemed to 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 then 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,” an itch in his left thigh, and feeling sick. He tried to talk to Lara, who was nearby 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 100 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 1.5km 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.