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Robert Taylor / Dechmont Woods Incident (Scotland; November 1979)

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You may be familiar with the Bob Taylor Case, which I think happened in 1979, in a forestry clearing near Livingstone ( in Central Scotland ). Poor Bob turned round the corner of a firebreak and saw a semi-transparent UFO hovering at the top of a hill, and then two ...er robots..which looked like second world war mines rolled down the hilll towards him. The next thing he new, was an overpowering stench....He woke up some time later, seemingly dragged face down, up the hill, with his trousers in shreds..He staggered home and told the whole yarn to his wife, who phoned his Forestry Bss and the Police...The police arrived on the scene, and indeed see curious markings on the hill BUT...BUT not spikey holes in the cold turf, but a series of parallel lines impressed upon the slope, with the furrow ploughed into the soil up the middle of these markings -which were presumabley made by Mr. Taylor being dragged...Photo's exist of these contradictiory markings..and the trousers are still in a Police filing cabinet .To this day the ploice treat the incident as an unexplained Assault !!

Don't you just love the Paranormal....I'm telling you - Physical Evidence is often the opposite of hard evidence...and the Bob Taylor Case is a case in point !!!!

Yours Whateverly,
Innes.
 
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I've read about his case before. It's an interesting one. I like the imagery...

Something about the fact that BUFORA has the trousers I find really funny!

Note standard issue 'mirage of Venus' explanation... Can a mirage of Venus really trigger an epileptic fit?
 
More on Bob Taylor's attack:

Tue 9 Nov 2004


I'm after the aliens that beat up Bob..

GARETH EDWARDS

IT was a terrifying close encounter which led to the only case in British history of an alien sighting being the subject of a criminal investigation.

Exactly 25 years later, the case is still open on forestry worker Bob Taylor’s brush with mysterious alien spheres on Dechmont Law.

Now, on the anniversary of the event, UFO enthusiasts are set to descend on the site, to show that the truth really is out there.

They have arranged to visit the site today to meditate in silence at the exact time of Mr Taylor’s encounter.

The event has been organised by paranormal investigator Ron Halliday, chairman of Scottish Earth Mysteries Research, who believes the encounter to be one of the most significant events in the history of ufology.

It is certainly one of the best- documented, and to this day defies rational explanation.

On November 9, 1979, at around 10.30am, Mr Taylor, then a forestry worker employed by the Livingston Development Corporation, parked his truck at the bottom of Dechmont Law.

He walked up the lower slope of the hill with his dog, and as he emerged into a clearing saw a large, circular, sphere-like object about 20 feet across.

Mr Taylor said it appeared to be made from a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper.

As he approached the object, two spheres, each about three feet wide with protruding metal spikes like old naval mines, dropped from the object.

The two spheres rolled towards him and despite his dog barking furiously, attached themselves to his trousers. There was an acrid smell that caused him to choke and he felt a sensation of being grabbed by the side of the legs and tugged forward.

The next thing Mr Taylor remembered was waking up with his head pounding, a sore throat, and a bitter taste in his mouth. He later calculated that he had been unconscious for at least 20 minutes.

"I was completely devastated afterwards," he recalled. "I couldn’t walk and the doctor came to look at me. We went back with the police and found all these marks where it had been."

The police found unusual indentations in the ground, ladder-shaped marks where the craft was said to have stood, and marks following the path of the mine-like objects.

They said they were "completely baffled" by the incident, which was treated as an assault.

Now 87, Mr Taylor moved away from the area after the event, but on the eve of the anniversary he revealed it was still in his thoughts.

"I stand by every word of my account of the incident," he said.

"I told it as it happened and it’s as clear as yesterday. It is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me.

"I know what I saw and it looked like a spaceship, a huge flying dome. I’m not surprised there has been so much interest in it over the years as it was such an incredible thing to happen."

Mr Halliday believes going back to the site on the anniversary could yield some clues to the nature of the encounter, and has not ruled out the possibility of once again making contact.

"We want to go back to the site to mark this anniversary and perhaps by being there we will be able to make contact again with whatever it was Bob Taylor saw," he said.

"It is possible that this was something from another dimension which for a short period of time appeared in our world. That fits with what Taylor saw, as he said the object appeared solid but at brief moments was shimmering and partially transparent.

"Even sceptics believe he is telling the truth about what he saw, and no explanation has been given to what it could have been."

Mr Taylor’s encounter took place on the edge of the area known as the Falkirk triangle, one of the most "visited" UFO hotspots in the world. Around 300 UFOs are seen in Scotland each year, the highest concentration of UFO sightings on the planet.

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1294002004
 
Thats happenned to me many times!!

The next thing Mr Taylor remembered was waking up with his head pounding, a sore throat, and a bitter taste in his mouth. He later calculated that he had been unconscious for at least 20 minutes.
plus sometimes I have a strange woman beside me!! :eek!!!!:
 
Thank God your last memories of the "night before" isn't of a pair of balls attacking your trousers!!
 
"Even sceptics believe he is telling the truth about what he saw, and no explanation has been given to what it could have been."

So that settles it then. Everybody believes this one. ;)
 
Author John Alison seeks to debunk Robert Taylor's 1979 close encounter in Dechmont Woods, Livingston West Lothian.

Spotted in the Edinburgh Evening News

Author attempting to debunk Lothians UFO mystery​

1199521561.jpg

Published on Monday 13 August 2012 12:00

THE mystery of what happened to Robert Taylor on the morning of November 9, 1979, is one of the longest standing in the history of ufology.

Now a Livingston resident has claimed he has the definitive explanation of what really happened during the incident – known by UFO hunters as the Dechmont Woods Encounter.

The case has seen theories ranging from a fit-inducing mirage of Venus to magic mushrooms put forward to explain the story of strange craft and robotic beings which “attacked” and knocked unconscious the 61-year-old Livingston Development Corporation worker on Dechmont Law in West Lothian.

Local detectives even joined the investigation after Mr Taylor’s legs were found to be grazed and his trousers torn.

In a new book, however, John Alison, 54, a self-employed businessman, argues that Mr Taylor’s alien assault encounter was actually the result of a mini-stroke or “Transient Ischaemic Attack”.

The father of two said Mr Taylor’s loss of consciousness and vision of a “large, dome-shaped machine” with “spheres on stalks” rolling towards him could be explained by the temporary interruption of blood to his brain.

He said: “About two hundred yards away from where the encounter was claimed to have occurred, there’s a dome-shaped fresh water reservoir tower built in the late 1950s that still serves as a fresh water reservoir to this day.

“This construction matches the description of the UFO given by Robert Taylor. It ?features a large grey dome with a flange sitting on top of a cylindrical base coloured green to match the surroundings. I believe this is what Taylor saw but that it was misinterpreted because of the stroke.”

Mr Alison, who said he had been “intrigued” for years by the incident, also believes detectives incorrectly identified the site of the encounter.

He said: “The police would not have been aware of the water tower that was on the other side of the M8. I believe that when Taylor spoke to his boss, Malcolm Drummond, after he came to and made it home, he neglected to mention he crossed the motorway using a footbridge close to where he parked his vehicle.

“Not knowing that this footbridge had been crossed, Mr Drummond retraced Mr Taylors steps on the wrong side of the motorway and found himself in a different section of the woods to where the water tower was located.”

This latest theory is unlikely to see the case closed however, and Andrew Hennessey, 55, a ufologist for 22 years dismissed Mr Alison’s theory. He said: “Over the years I have heard all sorts of attempts to debunk this story. I’ve heard Taylor was on magic mushrooms and even that it was an evil Chinese ?lantern.

“I’ve never heard the stroke theory, but I do not believe a word of this. There were quite clear marks left in the clearing which the local CID found had been made by a vehicle entering the clearing from above the forest.”

And the link as well. There are some points made in the comments worth a look.
The embedded link is dead. The MIA online article (quoted in full above) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012081...ting-to-debunk-lothians-ufo-mystery-1-2464884


Mods: please do relocate if this is more aptly suited to the Ufology section.
 
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Andrew Hennessey, 55, a ufologist for 22 years dismissed Mr Alison’s theory. He said: “Over the years I have heard all sorts of attempts to debunk this story. I’ve heard Taylor was on magic mushrooms and even that it was an evil Chinese ?lantern.

“I’ve never heard the stroke theory, but I do not believe a word of this. There were quite clear marks left in the clearing which the local CID found had been made by a vehicle entering the clearing from above the forest.”

It's a shame the article didn't show a photo of the water tower - I've had a quick look online but drawn a blank. Although if it's still there, I guess in theory you could hunt it down on Google Earth.

From what I've read of the case, the police discovered some parallel tracks at the scene along with some indentations in the ground, but I've never come across the claim that they concluded these were definitely made by "a vehicle entering the clearing from above". It would be interesting to see the original police report - I've never seen it directly quoted from. The trouble with these old cases is that you have Ufologists quoting other Ufologists quoting other Ufologists and the original source material tends to get rather distorted along the way.

What is intriguing is that the site looks to be reasonably close to the M8 motorway, so you'd have expected that a craft flying around the woods might have been spotted by someone.

There's a interesting, if rather long, article here:

http://anomalousculture.blogspot.co.uk/ ... -herb.html

..suggesting Taylor was experiencing a hallucination brought about by contact with Deadly Nightshade, inspired by a recently shown episode of Dr Who (scripted by Douglas Adams, no less). It's illustrated by a rather ingenious set of drawings showing how a dog might be mistaken for a spiked sphere.

Anyhow, that book sounds well worth a read. Only a couple of quid on Amazon if you've got one of those new-fangled Kindle thingys. Which sadly I haven't.
 
graylien said:
It's a shame the article didn't show a photo of the water tower
I believe the small pic of the dome-shaped object is the water-tower, and it matches the sketch seen in the sample pages on Amazon.
 
ChrisBoardman said:
I've looked on google earth, can't find a water tower

This is the water "tower" here:

http://binged.it/NAFhfk

The pedestrian bridge across the M8 is quite a distance along to the west, although I'm not sure if that's the same one that would have been there in 1979.
 
That's not really a tower, just a bulge in the ground, and not much of a bulge.

Also, I thought it happened exactly accross the m8 from that water thingy. That's where the maps say dechwood law is.
 
Oh yeah, I see it now. I must have got distracted by that guy's rather loud check shirt when I first saw the photo. I was expecting a structure much taller than that.

I can see how it might inspire UFO fantasies in someone who was hallucinating at the time. Although I'm not sure it exactly "matches the description of the UFO given by Robert Taylor". Taylor described a spherical object ringed by portholes (and tiny propellers) rather than a dome-shaped object with a flat bottom. Although he did describe it as fading in and out of view, which I guess might be consistent with someone hallucinating and trying to focus on a distant object.

The little propellers are an odd feature, BTW, but there have been occasional reports of alleged alien craft featuring this apparently archaic means of propulsion. TheCarlo Rossi case comes to mind.
 
I remember seeing the bob taylor story on the first series of strange but true in 1994.

It's too weird to have a natural explanation, other than some kind of medical fit and halucination. But then there are the injuries and he marks in the ground.
 
I seem to remember it being suggested that the injuries were caused by his dog trying to wake him up after he collapsed.
 
Does the dechmont woods incident, whatever the explanation turns out to be, destroy the alien cover up theory? Man has strange "alien" experience, informs the police who investigate, no men in black and no attempt at a cover up.
 
Spherobots..
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/1/1/3/pdf

https://www.google.com/search?ei=5U...hUKEwjilfOipt7lAhWUtp4KHenZBFMQ4dUDCAs&uact=5

spheribots.png

Figure 10. Picture of Spherobot and its system of shifting masses [19]. Some teams have devised another method altogether for barycenter offset designs. By placing the bulk of materials in the center of robot, the energy required to spin the sphere is reduced. Shafts connect the center mass to the outer shell and weights are designed to traverse these shafts as shown in Figure 10. By moving the weights up and down the shaft, the center of mass is changed and the ball begins to roll [19]. A few main differences separate this shifting mass design from the pendulum design. First, this design is holonomic. Regardless of its orientation, it can move in any direction. However, the controls are more complicated because the main processor must keep real time orientation data as well as distance data of all masses. Another downside to this design is that the internal weights traverse their respective shafts slowly, resulting in a slow moving robot. It also may have a hard time rolling downhill freely depending on state of the masses.
 

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Wait - I thought the famed breeks had been lost? Did they resurface?
I wasn’t aware they were ever missing? The police held onto them for a good few years and then they passed into the care of Malcolm Robinson. What are missing are the long johns that were being worn at the time and were also sent off for analysis. These also were ripped.
 
I wasn’t aware they were ever missing? The police held onto them for a good few years and then they passed into the care of Malcolm Robinson. What are missing are the long johns that were being worn at the time and were also sent off for analysis. These also were ripped.

That must have been the source of my confusion, but I swear I remember an article that said the trousers had been mislaid by the police. They must have meant the long johns.
 
That must have been the source of my confusion, but I swear I remember an article that said the trousers had been mislaid by the police. They must have meant the long johns.
Yes, I think it was all the other clothing Bob was wearing at the time the police mislaid.
 
Forget communication... the problem is we're not seeing any observable signs of any highly advanced civilization, some proposed megastructures, for example, should be observable, whether or not they are still inhabited or inhabitable. Self-replicating probes would have had time to have explored the whole galaxy by now, given the age of the galaxy, but we are seeing nothing...
True, but some UFO experiences have sounded very much like self-replicating probes. For example, perhaps the Dechmont Woods UFO experienced by Robert Taylor was a malfunctioning probe:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-50262655

Probes may have visited but be programmed not to 'make contact' but rather to observe, learn and replicate
 
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