IncidentThe Robert Taylor / Dechmont Law Incident (9 November 1979)

Robert Taylor, ~60, a teetotal churchgoer and ~15-year forestry worker, was walking his dog in a clearing on Dechmont Law when he reported a large domed dark/metallic sphere; two spiked spheres ‘like naval mines’ rolled out, grabbed his trousers, an acrid smell overwhelmed him, and he lost consciousness. He woke to find the object gone, his dog agitated, himself temporarily unable to speak, and his truck unable to start; he returned home dishevelled with his thick work trousers torn at the hip and grazes to chin and thighs. Because of the torn clothing and injuries, Lothian and Borders Police recorded the matter as common assault and investigated it - the basis for the case’s status as the only UK UFO event subject to a criminal investigation. Physical traces (ladder-like ground marks and depressions) were found, though BUFORA later noted they were ‘only in the grass’ and ‘did not alter the ground profile,’ inconsistent with a multi-ton craft. Skeptic Steuart Campbell (building on Dr Patricia Hannaford) argued for a temporal-lobe epileptic episode (the acrid-smell aura, aphasia, leg weakness, and prior meningitis fit a seizure) triggered by a Venus mirage, with mundane sources for the ground marks. ‘Scotland’s Socorro,’ a daylight landing-and-trace case with an unimpeachable witness but no corroboration of the craft itself; a commemorative cairn now marks the site.