The Livingston UFO Assault - 1979
also known as Dechmont Woods Encounter

This is one of the strangest Scottish close encounter cases.
Robert Taylor, a well respected forester, employed by the Livingstone Development Corporation had an intriguing encounter with UFO that landed in a small clearing in forest near Livingston, West Lothian in Scotland. It took place on Friday 9th November 1979.

He had left his house with his dog and driven to a plantation near the busy M8 motorway for an inspection. Around 10.30 am, he parked his pick up off a track at the bottom of Dechmont Law, in the vicinity of the motorway and as close as possible to the clearing that was to be inspected. Then he followed a track the rest of the way.

As Bob Taylor rounded a corner he came across a spherical object in a woodland clearing. Approximately 20 feet (6 meters) across and 12 feet high (3.65 meters), the object appeared to be made of a dark-grey metallic material. At times the UFO seemed to be transparent as if trying to disguise itself.
A narrow edge of some kind ran around the outside of the object and some dark patches, which looked like portholes, could be seen on the body of the object.

When Bob Taylor began to approach, the UFO dropped - from its bottom half - two spheres with protruding metal spikes which looked like old naval mines. These two small objects, of which each was approximately three feet wide, were made of the same dark metallic material as the larger object.

Approaching Taylor, the small spheres with legs-like spikes left pattern-like tracks on the ground while rolling towards him. Then grabbed his trousers (tearing them) and began to drag the man along the ground towards the UFO.

Before passing out, Taylor could recall a strange, unpleasant, acrid smell of some kind, and then he lost consciousness. According to the experts he must have been unconscious for about twenty minutes.
After regaining consciousness he heard a hiss-like sound and realized that the UFO was on its way to leave the place. Seconds later it was not longer there.
Lying on the ground he was met of his dog. The animal was barking wildly at him. Taylor himself was unable to walk or even talk properly.

It took time for him to reach his pick-up truck as he was forced to crawl some 90 yards ( 82 meters) to it. He desperately tried to leave the area of incident but only stuck in the mud and was forced to leave his car and walk over a mile back to his home.
He suffered a frontal headache for hours and the next two days he was very thirsty. At home he could still taste the smell and he had a pain in his chin and felt sick.

Authorities investigated the site of incident and looked for evidence. Marks were found on the ground in the clearing confirming those Bob Taylor described earlier.

Also the grooves caused by some object weighing several tones were detected. The photographs of them were taken and analyzed carefully. Taylor's clothes were sent for forensic examination which revealed tears in the trousers.

In this way Taylor's official statement was confirmed once again.

There were many questions regarding this strange case, but one of them was particularly puzzling.
Namely: How this vehicle or whatever it was had arrived to the clearing.

The forestry equipment used in the area was checked. None of it had tracks that matched those found in the area of
No evidence was found of any helicopter traffic in the region that particular day, or even the day before. A search of the area around the clearing was made in order to see if there were signs of any mobile crane that might have been used to lower something into the ground. The ground in the place of incident was soft but no signs of the tracks having come from somewhere or having gone anywhere could be discovered.
Simply nothing was found.

Could be the mysterious object be man-made? If so who could be this local manufacturer of the object. Results of this investigation were again negative as there appeared to be impossible to find any manufacturer in the vicinity.
How did the object get there?
It is possible to understand that the encounter itself could not have been seen because of the trees obscuring the view of the site of the incident.
However any object flying above the trees to the clearing would almost definitely have come to somebody's attention. Perhaps another possibility could exist..

Could this flying object possibly emerge in the clearing in some other way? If so then how??

The investigation gave no indication of how the object had landed and from where.
But the fact still remains that the tracks, found in the area of incident, were made by "something" that was heavy and solid. This "something" had come vertically downward... and then had rested upon the ground which caused the above mentioned tracks.
There were also made many attempts to debunk this UFO incident but no natural explanation for this case was ever found. All possible theories like ball lightning, an epileptic seizure induced hallucination to refracted pseudo images of the planet Venus were proposed but definitely ruled out by experts.

Something heavy, mysterious and extraordinary did land in the clearing in forest near Livingston, West Lothian in Scotland.
This "something" assaulted Robert Taylor and then ... simply vanished.
Robert Taylor's close encounter case is certainly one of the most known cases in Great Britain.
The case is not only intriguing but also ...unexplained.!
Many strange things occur in Scotland and there are many local UFO cases which remain unsolved and perhaps will never be...