The Dechmont Woods Encounter

Scotland’s Only Criminal UFO Case

Robert Taylor, a respected forestry worker, claimed he was physically attacked by a UFO in West Lothian, Scotland in 1979 – and police treated it as a criminal assault case.

The morning of November 9th, 1979 started like any other for 61-year-old Robert Taylor. A forestry worker for the Livingston Development Corporation, Taylor had spent fifteen years patrolling the woods around Dechmont Law near the M8 motorway. He was the kind of man neighbors trusted – a war veteran, churchgoer, and teetotaler who’d never been known to tell tall tales.

Taylor parked his pickup truck alongside a quiet road and set off into the forest with his seven-year-old red setter, Lara, for what should have been a routine check of fences and gates. The newly planted trees stood in neat rows across the Scottish hillside, and Taylor knew every path through them.

The Encounter

Around 10:30 AM, Taylor rounded a corner in the forest and stopped dead in his tracks. There, hovering about twelve yards away in a clearing, was something that defied explanation – a large, dome-shaped object roughly twenty to thirty feet in diameter.

The craft appeared to be made of dark metallic material with a rough, sandpaper-like texture. Small propeller-like appendages ringed its outer edge, and it hovered silently above the forest floor. The air filled with an acrid smell that reminded Taylor of burning brakes.

As Taylor watched, transfixed, two smaller spherical objects emerged from beneath the main craft. These sphere-shaped things, covered in spikes and resembling World War II naval mines, rolled toward him across the ground. The metallic objects made popping sounds as their spikes hit the earth.

Taylor tried to move, tried to run, but his body wouldn’t respond. The spiked spheres reached him and attached themselves to his trousers, one on each leg. He felt a terrible pulling sensation as they began dragging him toward the larger craft.

A noxious, choking odor filled his nostrils – something far worse than the burning brake smell. Taylor felt his strength drain away as he gasped for air. The last thing he remembered was the sound of Lara barking somewhere in the distance and an unsettling hissing noise from the object above.

The Aftermath

Twenty minutes later, Taylor regained consciousness. He was alone on the forest floor, face-down in the dirt and leaves. The craft had vanished without a trace, but the damage to Taylor was evident. His legs ached terribly, and when he tried to call out to calm his still-barking dog, no sound came from his throat.

Struggling to his feet, Taylor made his way back to his truck. The vehicle wouldn’t start – the engine was completely dead, as if drained of all power. With no other choice, he began the long walk home to Livingston.

When Taylor finally reached his house on Broomyknowe Drive, his wife Mary was shocked by his appearance. His clothes were torn and muddy, his face was scratched and bruised, and he could barely speak. When she asked what had happened, Taylor managed to croak out that he’d been “attacked by a spaceship thing.”

Mary immediately called Taylor’s employer, Malcolm Drummond, and then the police. A doctor examined Taylor and found abrasions on his hips and thighs that matched the tear patterns in his trousers. Within hours, Taylor’s voice returned to normal, but the physical evidence of his ordeal remained.

The Police Investigation

What happened next was unprecedented in UFO history. Because Taylor had been physically injured and his clothes damaged, Lothian and Borders Police treated the incident as a criminal assault. This remains the only UFO encounter in the UK – and possibly the world – to be officially investigated as a crime.

Detective Constable Ian Wark was among the first officers to arrive at the scene. What he found there convinced him that something extraordinary had occurred. The clearing showed two distinct types of markings: ladder-shaped impressions where Taylor claimed the large craft had hovered, and circular holes approximately three and a half inches wide, pushed four inches deep into the soft ground.

“These marks just arrived,” Wark later recalled. “They didn’t come from anywhere and didn’t go anywhere. They just arrived as though a helicopter or something had landed from the sky.”

The police report noted that the ground markings indicated “an object of several tons had stood there but there was nothing to show that it had been driven or towed away.” PC William Douglas wrote that “there appeared to be no rational explanation for these marks.”

Forensic Evidence

Taylor’s torn trousers were sent for forensic analysis – years before modern DNA techniques were available, so the examination focused on how the damage had occurred. The forensic team concluded that the tears were consistent with something hooking the fabric from below and pulling upward, exactly as Taylor had described.

Police examined every piece of machinery used by the Livingston Development Corporation, looking for something that could have made the unusual ground markings. Nothing matched. They checked flight records for the area – no helicopters or small aircraft had been overhead that morning. They even searched for evidence of cranes that might have lowered equipment into the clearing, but the soft ground showed no such traces.

The investigation turned up multiple witnesses who had seen strange lights in the sky around the time of Taylor’s encounter. Graham Kennedy, driving on the A89 during morning rush hour, reported a bright light that seemed to head directly toward his vehicle before changing direction at the last moment. A nurse walking to work at Bangour Hospital heard a strange hissing sound from above and saw a bright light heading toward the Dechmont Law area.

The Witness

Robert Taylor’s credibility became central to the case. Everyone who knew him described him as honest, reliable, and not given to flights of fancy. Malcolm Drummond, his employer, stated flatly that Taylor was “not a person to make up stories.” Detective Constable Wark interviewed Taylor three times and noted that his story never changed in any detail.

“He believed what he saw and there was no way he would make that up,” Wark said years later. “I found Bob was an ordinary person. He was a churchgoer, he was a non-drinker. Not one person that I spoke to would have thought that Bob would have ever made this up.”

Taylor himself gained nothing from the incident. He didn’t seek publicity or try to profit from his experience. In fact, he grew increasingly frustrated with the constant attention from UFO researchers and curiosity seekers. The man who had lived a quiet, unremarkable life suddenly found himself at the center of an international mystery.

Alternative Theories

Skeptics have proposed various explanations for what happened to Taylor that morning. Some suggested he suffered an epileptic seizure, possibly triggered by his previous bout with meningitis fourteen years earlier. Symptoms like the strange smell, headache, paralysis, and loss of consciousness could fit this medical explanation.

UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell investigated the site and theorized that PVC pipes from a nearby water authority project might have been temporarily stored in the clearing, creating the ground markings. He also suggested that Taylor might have experienced hallucinations brought on by an epileptic fit, possibly triggered by a mirage of the planet Venus.

Local businessman Phill Fenton speculated in 2013 that Taylor might have suffered a mini-stroke and been exposed to harmful chemicals, with a nearby water tower providing the basis for his “UFO” sighting.

But these theories struggle to explain the physical evidence. Detective Constable Wark acknowledged that an epileptic fit might explain Taylor’s condition, “but what about the marks on the ground?” The forensic analysis of Taylor’s trousers also supported his account of being grabbed and pulled by mechanical objects.

The Investigation Continues

Despite extensive investigation, the case remains officially unsolved. The police file stays open, though no new leads have emerged in over four decades. The physical evidence – the ground markings, the forensic analysis of Taylor’s clothing, his injuries – all support his extraordinary account.

In 1992, Livingston Development Corporation installed a commemorative plaque at the site, making it the world’s first official UFO memorial. In 2018, West Lothian Council opened a UFO trail that guides visitors to the exact spot where Taylor claimed his encounter occurred.

Other Encounters in the Area

Taylor’s experience wasn’t the only strange sighting in the Dechmont region during that period. The night before his encounter, a truck driver named Ferguson reported seeing a “strip of brilliant light shaped like a ruler” heading toward the Dechmont Law area around 8 PM.

At roughly the same time, two brothers in nearby Bellsquarry witnessed a spherical, dome-shaped object hovering about 150 feet above a road. They described white, red, and blue lights running around the craft’s exterior before it slowly faded from view.

Several hours earlier, Josephine Quigley and four friends had seen a “circle of lights” slowly rotating over the Livingston area. The morning of Taylor’s encounter brought additional sightings of bright lights and unusual objects moving through the sky above West Lothian.

A Lasting Mystery

Robert Taylor died in 2007, having never wavered from his account of what happened in Dechmont Woods. He maintained until the end that he had been attacked by something not of this world, something that defied conventional explanation.

The case continues to fascinate researchers and skeptics alike because of its unique combination of factors: a credible witness with nothing to gain, physical evidence that supported his claims, an official police investigation, and multiple corroborating sightings in the area.

Malcolm Robinson, the ufologist who interviewed Taylor extensively and now owns his torn trousers, calls it “one of the most incredible cases in the world” and “one of very few hardcore cases that defied any explanation.”

UFO researcher Nick Pope, former director of the UK Ministry of Defense UFO Project, describes the case as offering “no middle ground” – either Taylor experienced something genuinely extraordinary, or the combination of circumstances that created this elaborate mystery represents one of the most remarkable coincidences in UFO history.

The Dechmont Woods remain peaceful today, marked only by the commemorative plaque and the worn path of curious visitors. But for those who study unexplained phenomena, the events of that November morning in 1979 continue to challenge our understanding of what might be possible in the forests of Scotland.

SOURCES: Mysterious Britain, UFO Insight, BBC, Wikipedia, uchubi, Lab360, QuestTV

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.