Over the past four years, there have been an exceptional number of UFO sightings in and around the town of Bonnybridge in Scotland. As the British press reports UFO sightings, this compendium of stories from 1992 until 1995 provides a fascinating record of the phenomenon.
Since 1992 the small Scottish town of Bonnybridge has been besieged by unexplained "visitors." After a short time the sightings spread to the surrounding area, including the town of Falkirk. According to the local Councilor Billy Buchanan [who has personallyl witnessed such events] some 2000 experiences have been reported.
This is a chronology of news article on these remarkable events.
TERRIFIED townsfolk are scouring the sky at night - for the tell-tale signs of space invaders. The move follows a rash of UFO sightings in the area. So far locals have reported at least 22 close encounters. And how a worried councilor in Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, has called for a full investigation. Billy Buchanan claims residents are living in terror of nightly visits from strange airborne craft. "I've been swamped by calls from frightened people who've seen UFOs in the past two weeks," he said. "Too many people have sighted the UFOs for it to be dismissed lightly."
Yesterday Councilor Buchanan and some of the townsfolk headed for the moors above Bonnybridge where most sightings have taken place. Isabella Sloggett, of Leapark Drive, said: "My daughter Carole and I saw a UFO land right in front of us." "A door opened and there was a howl-like sound. I screamed and ran off terrified." Carole, 31, said: "Suddenly there was a flash-light as if we were being photographed. "When we got back to our house this thing was hovering in the sky. Our neighbours all saw it." Local businessman George Wilson, 43, of Glasgow Road, said: "I was in the Co-op along with about a dozen others when we saw a UFO above the moors." "The last thing I want to do is create hysteria," he explained. "If there is another explanation for all these sightings then I will be glad to hear it."
Source: The Stirling Observer
Date: January 29 , 1993.
Reports of unidentified flying objects around Bonnybridge are to be investigated at a special meeting.
Mr Malcolm Robinson, a "UFO-logist" who has worked on sightings around Britain, says he'll set up a study if there is no logical explanation. Already 60 people have contacted him with reports, and these may be given credence by a videotape of the phenomena.
Bonnybridge farmer William Denholm was one who didn't believe stories which have been circulating since early November [1992], but now he's not sure. "All I know is that I was driving home when I saw lights over the house, and when I got back I got out the camcorder and managed to get something," said William (23).
Mr Robinson, a member of London-based Strange Phenomenon Investigations, says enquiries to police and airport authorities have so far drawn a blank. "It could be that the RAF are trying out a new kind of plane - we had a case where that happened in Argyll," he says. "At the moment we are skeptical. We will look for an explanation, and if we can't find one we will send a report to out head office in London."
Mr Thomson, who is giving a lecture on the subject on Sunday night, wants to hear details of sightings to see if a scientific pattern emerges. Similar reports in the Denny area in 1982 sparked a study but found no explanation.
Bonnybridge Councilor Billy Buchanan, who has organized the meeting said: "When these stories first started people felt they were being made a fool of, which was stopped them coming forward. We are hoping that the film will mean people take it a bit more seriously. There have been so many sightings now that there has to be something in this."
Source: The Sunday Post (Scottish)
Date: October 30, 1994.
A spate of UFO sightings in Central Scotland last week has baffled locals and experts alike.
Seven people claim to have seen unidentified flying objects over the Falkirk area.
On Friday morning three cleaners at the Union Chemical factory in Carronshore saw five UFO's as they walked to work.
One of the cleaners, Beatrice Campbell, from Carronshore, said, "We first noticed them at 5.40 a.m. There was one large object which had a light orange glow. The four smaller ones sparkled on and off like stars."
"To begin with, all were stationary. Then the large object began sending beams of light to the smaller ones. Then one of the small ones began moving off towards Falkirk. At that point my flesh started crawling."
The ladies went into the factory to start their shift and told lab manager Bill Downie what they had seen. He had them draw a diagram and make a written statement of the sighting.
When word of their experience spread, several more employees approached Mr Downie with similar stories.
Diane Keating, from Camelon, a packer at the factory, also made a written statement describing what she saw.
She said, "On Wednesday evening at around 7.00 pm I was looking out of a window at home when I saw an object in the sky."
"It looked reddish in colour, shaped like a ball, surrounded by a heat haze. It hovered for about 10 minutes, disappeared from view for two minutes then came back. At first I thought it was a plane. But it couldn't have been. I saw a plane fly under it."
At the same time on Wednesday, factory workers Steve Leishman and Kevin Carmichael, were walking to Steve's house in nearby Stenhousemuir. Mr Leishman, said, "We first saw an object which looked as if it was above the Denny-Stirling area. "It had a bright white colour. It moved away in the direction of Callander then came back and began to glow red orange."
"It was going really fast. We saw a passenger plane with it's landing lights on underneath it. The object was very much faster than the plane."
Another factory employee reported a sighting but wishes to remain anonymous.
Central Strathclyde Police, RAF Pitreavie and the Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre at Prestwick say they've not received any reports of the sightings.
Mark Macauley of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh commented, "From what you have described the sightings don't correspond to astronomical objects like meteors, planets or communication satellites."
Source: Berwickshire News
Date: November 24, 1994.
A Paxton man claims he watched a UFO for around five minutes as it hovered over a field near Allanton last Thursday evening.
Steven Rutherford (19), who works as a clerical officer at Berwick Station was returning home after a day's shooting in Duns, when he saw the UFO from the road between the Pistols crossroads and Sunwick farm.
"It was like a big disc and was just a field away," Steven told the Berwickshire News this week.
Describing exactly what he saw, he added: "It was about 5pm on Thursday when I was driving home from Duns. It was a big disc-like shape. At first I thought it was a plane going to land but it just stopped above the ground, it didn't land."
"I immediately stopped the car and switched off the engine and I sat and watched it. It wasn't making any noise at all and dropped down to just a few feet off the ground."
"I used the telescopic sights from my gun to get a closer look at it. It was a black colored disc, with two big lights which lit up the ground underneath it. It also had red and green flashing lights. It wasn't spinning or anything. Then all the lights went off and it seemed to disappear but it soon reappeared and went off in the direction of Berwick."
Steven said a friend's father in Chirnside had also seen the strange object and he is sure that the driver of another car, which passed him while he was stopped had also spotted it as he flashed the lights when he drove past.
Malcolm Robinson, Scottish co-ordinator for the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) was delighted to hear of Steven's sighting, especially the description of what he saw.
"From the description Steven has given it seems to be very similar to the UFOs spotted recently in the Bonnybridge and Falkirk areas - they too were black, disc-like and had flashing lights," he said.
"In recent years the main hot spots for UFOs have been near Falkirk and Bonnybridge and around Muchalls near Aberdeen but I can't remember any sightings in Berwickshire. This latest sighting would seem to conform with the types of reports we have been receiving from people in the Falkirk and Bonnybridge area."
Following last week's UFO sighting near Allanton several more people have come forward to tell of their extra terrestrial experiences with more UFOs spotted in Berwickshire.
Three teenagers, all pupils at Berwickshire High School, claim to have seen a UFO at Preston.
Laura Wilkinson (14), from Duns, and her friends Jennifer Webster (13) and Carrie Warnock (13), both from Preston, were at Preston Village Hall on Monday night when they saw a "black object with green and red flashing lights."
Laura added, "it was hovering above a field at Cambridge. It was there for about 15 minutes and then just disappeared. Another friend saw something similar on Saturday night."
There have also been other reports of strange sightings. Five Coldstream men saw what they thought to be a UFO back in January and a Whitsome couple say they too saw something with red and green flashing lights on a couple of occasions.
Source: The Falkirk Advertiser
Date: February 14, 1995.=20
MINISTRY of Defence officials have refused to meet with local councilor Billy Buchanan to discuss UFO sightings over Falkirk District. Councilor Buchanan had asked the Government to meet him and UFOlogist Malcolm Robinson over "60 UFO sightings" in the area.
But the MoD say there is no evidence of phenomena of defense significance and a meeting would not "serve any useful purpose."
Councilor Buchanan said he was "disappointed and disgusted" at the response, but not surprised.
The MoD suggested he send them any additional information, and officials would look carefully at all the reports.
But Councilor Buchanan said: "There's no point in just sending down a pile of documents. It's discussions we need and urgently." He has asked Falkirk West MP Dennis Canavan to raise the issue in the House of Commons.
Source: The Sun
Date: November 21, 1995.
Housewife Katie Swanston can never forget the day she believes she saw a UFO. Katie, her seven-year old son Andrew and Mother May Higgins, 71, reported seeing a cigar shaped UFO - a common form of sighting - as they sat in the garden at 9pm one evening last summer. Katie, 32, says: "I'm now prepared to accept there is intelligent life in space."
"There was no noise, no markings or windows and no visible energy source."
"The craft was just a couple of hundred feet up."
"We live on an airport flight path but this was unlike anything I've ever= seen."
William and Mabel Bestall have seen a catherine-wheel shaped craft three times in a year from their seventh floor flat.
The couple have witnessed the craft fly over the valley and hover over Bonnybridge before turning off its fluorescent white lights and disappearing. Neither local airports nor the police reported any aircraft which could match the Bestall's descriptions.
William reported their sightings to the local newspaper and over the next few days he was flooded with calls from neighbors saying they had seen the same thing.
William, 73, says: "We're no cranks."
A quiet village has become the UFO capital of Britain.
In the past three years more than 2,000 sightings of unidentified flying objects have been reported over Bonnybridge, which lies halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Local UFO investigators believe at least 300 of these cannot be explained away by aircraft, weather balloons or other phenomenon.
Nick Pope, the former official UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence, says that a number of sightings could be extra-terrestrial.
And interest in Bonnybridge, which has a population of just 9,000, has become so great the village is now the centre for conferences of UFO specialists from around the world.
Former American nuclear physicist and UFO expert, Stanton T. Friedman says: "There are several hotspots for UFO sightings like Bonnybridge around the world."
"Maybe they form a part of a group of places being intensively studied. To an alien lifeform one place may be as good as any other to take samples."
Billy Buchanan, Bonnybridge's local councillor, says: "There is something strange going on in this place. There are level-headed people I have know all my life telling me they have been abducted by aliens."
Billy, 47, began campaigning for an official investigation after he too saw strange lights.
He says: "Hardly a day goes by without someone contacting me about a sighting. These are not cranks but people whose opinion I respect. A lot of people are frustrated that they can't get anyone to listen to them. I urge them to go to the police, that's the only way we are going to get any investigation."
Gary Wood and Colin Wright believe they were abducted by aliens while driving from Bonnybridge to Edinburgh in August 1992.
They claim they lost several hours when power drained from there car after they passed through a curtain of light.
After that they believe they were taken into a spaceship to be experimented on by skeleton type beings.
Under separate hypnosis both recalled exactly the same details.
Malcolm Robinson, 38, from Strange Phenomena Investigations, who has been investigating cases in Bonnybridge since 1979, says: "There is more evidence in this one place that UFO's are visiting Britain than almost anywhere else. Some say it is just planes or weather balloons. But the sheer number of sightings makes it difficult to put down everyone's experiences to something like this. We are told by the Ministry of Defence that this activity in Bonnybridge does not constitute a threat to national security. But it would put a lot of people's minds at rest if they could at least investigate."
One of the most chilling stories is told by the Sloggett family.
While walking near their home, Isa Sloggett and children Carol, 29, and Steven, 13, claim they saw a spacecraft that chased them.
Isa, 55, says: "We were all absolutely terrified - and convinced that we had seen a UFO. Steven thought he saw a flash of light and something fly over. Then we saw this circular craft about the size of a house with two blinding blue lights. It landed in moorland. I noticed two smaller craft above the first one. Then we heard the sound of what seemed to be a mechanical movement, as if some sort of door was opening. I think that's when we began to get really scared. We began to run back along the road. One of the craft in the sky followed us. Eventually it gave up, but we didn't stop running until we got home. Our neighbours were sceptical when we told them but now many of them have seen things too.
Source: The Dundee Courier
Date: December 12, 1995.
Recent instances of strange appearances in the night sky above the east coast of Scotland have been backed up by Torryburn man who reckons he is the latest to have seen a UFO.
Jock Brown (72) claims he saw a cluster of blue lights as he looked out of his window after he had been kept awake one evening.
The latest sighting comes in a year when UFO fever has gripped many on the east coast.
The small village of Bonnybridge has become the unlikely Mecca for many alien enthusiasts.
Mr Brown said " I hadn't really paid much attention to any of the news about UFO before it happened. One night I was lying awake when I noticed a blue light outside my bedroom window.
"When I had a closer look I noticed it was a cluster so I know it couldn't have been just a normal aircraft. I think it must have been a UFO. Since I retired I sometimes have trouble sleeping I'll certainly be looking out for things in the future."
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