When Scotland was the world's UFO hot spot

BBC News

4 days ago

Thirty years ago, Scotland was the centre of the UFO world.The 1990s started with a photograph that has achieved almost folkloric status as one of the best images of an Unidentified Flying Object.Then came a flood of sightings of mystery objects in a part of central Scotland which came to be known as the Falkirk Triangle.These captured the world's imagination, attracting journalists from around the globe and leading to claims of conspiracies, cover-ups and cheap publicity stunts.The truth may still be out there. It is certainly complicated. And three decades on, what actually happened is still the subject of passionate debate.
Bonnybridge is a village of about 6,000 people near Falkirk. It lies close to the main Edinburgh to Glasgow rail line and Forth and Clyde canal.Like many of the surrounding towns and villages, the manufacturing industries which once prospered there are long gone. It is a quiet, tucked-away part of the country and was probably on few radars until 1992, when locals started reporting strange lights in the skies.Malcolm Robinson has lived in the area for most of his life. He has been interested in UFOs and the paranormal since childhood and founded the amateur research group Strange Phenomena Investigations (SPI) in 1979.In 1992, he became aware of something on his own doorstep."I heard about it on a local radio station," he says. "Billy Buchanan, the local councillor, was on there talking about these UFO sightings and I went: 'Wow, by God I really need to get in touch with him and see if I can lend any assistance'."Councillor Buchanan had begun collecting reports from constituents who said they had seen strange lights and objects in the sky. Things they did not recognise, things they could not explain. Towards the end of that year, he had recorded more than 200 incidents.
It is important to say that the term UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. It does not describe alien ships visiting the earth.The Bonnybridge UFO reports covered a wide spectrum of events, including a motorist describing lights in the form of a cross hovering above a road before morphing into a triangle.On another occasion a family witnessed a bright circle of light landing in a field.Media interest was immediate and intense. The local newspaper and national tabloids were hungry for headlines. TV reporters joked about alien visitors but still came looking for stories.News crews were dispatched to cover a UFO watch, held on a cold November night. They left without a close encounter.A public meeting was held in January 1993. Concerned locals were looking for answers. The term Falkirk Triangle was coined, covering the area between Stirling, Falkirk and West Lothian. Those who study UFOs know that media reporting leads to greater public awareness and more sightings. That certainly happened around Bonnybridge.
Sightings continued to make headlines for another three or four years. In 1997, they were the subject of the prime time TV programme Strange But True.In it, Billy Buchanan talks about writing to the recently elected Prime Minister Tony Blair, demanding an investigation. His request was declined.Videos, photographs and tales of unexplained encounters continued. But the story drew accusations of fakery, publicity-seeking and even tabloid newspaper claims that aliens had been in contact with locals.Malcolm Robinson was there throughout - investigating the reports, following up what people said they had seen and checking air traffic, police and military records. "I was astonished by how massive the story was," he says. "Everybody and their granny wanted to know about what was going on there. And quite rightly so."The problem we got is that some members of the media community were hyping things up. So if it was 100 sightings it suddenly became 1,000 sightings."Malcolm puts the total number of sightings in the region at about 350 between 1982, the year he began recording incidents, and today.Craig Lyndsay was a Ministry of Defence (MoD) press officer in Scotland during that period and remembers recording the reports."When I started work there in 1989 I fairly quickly discovered that nearly always in the evening there would be someone calling RAF Pitreavie about lights in the sky or something like that."Nearly always around Falkirk, Bonnybridge, to the point that we actually had what you call a pro forma form. If the controllers weren't busy, they would just fill in the form and send it off to London."But if they were busy, they would divert the call to me, and I would speak to the person and get the details and I would fax the thing off to London and we never heard anything more about them. It was a fairly common occurrence."It was just, to be blunt, folks coming out of the pub and seeing things."
But the Falkirk Triangle is not the only UFO mystery to come from that period.This weekend, at a public talk in Perthshire, enthusiasts will gather to discuss one of the subject's most enduring mysteries.What was captured by camera in the skies above Calvine on a summer's day in 1990?The photo we see today is grainy and indistinct. It is framed by the branches of a tree and a wood and wire fence. Between them, low in the sky, is a diamond-shaped object, a ridge along its middle.Behind and slightly lower and flying right to left is a small, modern military jet. It has been identified as a Harrier, a fighter then in service with the RAF.It appears to be approaching the object, which looks unlike anything generally seen crossing Scotland's skies.
This is what we know about the photo.It was taken by two young chefs from a Pitlochry Hotel while walking near Calvine at about 21:00 on 4 August 1990.According to the account they later gave the MoD's Craig Lindsay, the craft made no sound, left no smoke trails, and appeared to be hovering. They watched as the Harrier flew around it. The men took six photos of the object before it flew away vertically, disappearing at great speed.They sent the photos to the Daily Record newspaper, which got in touch with Craig at his office at RAF Pitreavie Castle. After the paper sent him copies of the photos, he contacted his bosses in London, duly spoke to the men who witnessed the incident, filed the details and moved on.Interestingly, the newspaper never ran a story, never published the photos.Later that year, while on a routine visit to the MoD in Whitehall, Craig saw a copy of the best photo on display in a room."I opened a door and facing me on the wall was a big poster-sized print. I made some remark about 'oh crikey you guys are taking this thing seriously now' and we got talking and they produced prints of the other six," he says."After that I waited to see what was going to happen. London said they'd sent it off to the specialists and gradually I forgot about the thing. It just went out of my mind."Craig came across a reference to the Calvine sighting six years later in Nick Pope's book Open Skies, Closed Minds. Pope was a civil servant who worked on the MoD's "UFO desk" for three years in the 1990s, analysing reported sightings and assessing whether they posed a threat to national security.He wrote: "The Calvine report remains one of the most intriguing cases in the Ministry of Defence's files. The conclusions, however, are depressingly familiar: object unexplained, case closed, no further action."
Someone else who read that book was Dr David Clarke. A journalist and academic, he has studied UFO reports for more than three decades and has been instrumental in analysing official records held in the National Archives in Kew.In 2009, he found a reproduction of the photo in one of the files there. He was keen to know more but it took another 12 years of searching before the trail led him to Craig Lindsay, by then long-retired from the MoD and living quietly in Fife.As David recounts in a 2022 article revealing the existence of the photo and his search for answers, Craig told him: "I have been for waiting for someone to contact me about this for more than 30 years."Craig said he had not seen the picture in all that time but after searching through boxes of old papers and books stored in his garage, discovered a full-quality copy of the best image showing the craft and Harrier together.A photographer colleague of David's at Sheffield Hallam University has analysed the picture and vouches for its authenticity. The image shows a real object captured on film. Whatever it is, it was there in the sky.As David sees it, there are a huge number of unanswered questions about the Calvine photo. The identities of the men who took it remain a secret, nobody knows why the Daily Record never ran the story, no trace has been found of the Harrier or its pilot.He is determined to find answers."I've got my MP involved now, asking questions of John Healey, the Minister of Defence. Saying, you know, you can't just say all we know about this is what's been released to the National Archives," he says."That's nonsense. There must be something about it somewhere that's not been released."
All around the world, people continue to see strange things in the sky.The US Congress has held hearings examining multiple reports from military pilots about unexplained encounters.The big unanswered question about Calvine, the Falkirk Triangle, indeed any reported UFO sighting, is what did they see?There is no consensus on this. David does not believe in alien visitors. In fact, few people seriously studying the topic think that. Nor does he buy into some of the other theories put forward for the Calvine photo: that it is a mountain peeking through mist or something reflected on water.One of the most common explanations given for UFOs for decades now is that they are secret, experimental spy planes. The 1990s in particular were filled with reports of the US "Aurora" programme, said to be the next generation of very fast stealth aircraft.Machrihanish air base in Kintyre, with its relatively remote setting and two-mile long runway, was frequently identified as the source of fast objects crossing Scotland's skies, making impossible manoeuvres.But the US government has never admitted to building such a plane and no evidence links the base to any secret programmes.
The MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009 because it "served no defence purpose".A spokesperson told BBC Scotland News: "The MoD has no opinion on the existence of extra-terrestrial life and no longer investigates reports of sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or Unidentified Flying Objects. "This is because, in over 50 years, no such reporting to the department indicated the existence of any military threat to the UK, and it was deemed more valuable to prioritise MoD staff resources towards other defence-related activities."Malcolm Robinson estimates there are still about 45 to 60 UFO reports in the Falkirk Triangle every year. He and Billy Buchanan continue to lobby politicians at Westminster and Holyrood for a public inquiry."There still is phenomena attached to Bonnybridge or why would we go down to see subsequent prime ministers?" Malcolm asks. "There is something definitely ongoing." David Clarke is determined to find out what was in the skies over Calvine 35 years ago."It's straightforward. It's either a hoax or a prank that just got out of hand, or it's some kind of military exercise. There's no other explanation. I don't believe in aliens," he says."And I just want to get to the bottom of it because, as an investigative reporter, I hate mysteries."Dr David Clarke will be speaking at Blair Atholl Village Hall at 16:00 on Saturday 2 August.