By Charles Lear
In listings of top UFO hot spots around the world, the small town of Bonnybridge, Scotland is frequently included. Bonnybridge lies within an area known as “The Falkirk Triangle” which is described variously from being a large area defined by lines drawn between Edinbugh in the east, Glasgow in the west and Stirling in the north to a smaller triangle formed by three roads: the M8, the M9 and the M80. The area has a history of many sightings and episodes that were exceedingly strange and the citizenry of the town of Bonnybridge has petitioned a succession of British Prime Ministers for an explanation.
Notoriety first came to the area in 1979 with the November 9, encounter in Dechmont Woods in Livingston, West Lothian by Robert Taylor. Taylor was a forester and was on his rounds at 10:30 AM in the company truck with Lara, his Irish Setter. According to him, he went into a section just south of the M8, got out of his truck and walked down a path with the dog for about 700 yards. In a clearing, he came upon an object hovering around 50 feet in the air that was dome-shaped with a flange around its base that had cross-shaped objects projecting from it. As he watched it, with his dog barking excitedly, different sections would fade out, revealing the trees behind them, and then fade back in. Then, two objects that looked like WWII sea mines with about six spikes sticking out of them fell from the bottom of the craft and hit the ground with a thud. They then rolled towards Taylor and each object used a projectile to grab him at the hips and pulled him. Taylor described an acrid smell and then losing consciousness. When he came to, the objects were gone but there were indentations in the ground and marks similar to caterpillar tracks. He had a grazed forehead and chin and his heavy-duty work pants were ripped at each hip. He went to his truck to radio back to the office but found he couldn’t speak. Taylor then started the truck and ended up backing into a ditch, which forced him to walk the quarter mile to his house in the town of Deans. His wife was alarmed by his muddy and disheveled appearance and he told her he was “attacked by a spaceship” which she, naturally, didn’t believe. Mrs. Taylor phoned a doctor who examined Mr. Taylor and found nothing wrong with him as far as any kind of brain or sensory issues. The doctor suggested he go to a hospital for further tests and Taylor did so but left after becoming impatient while waiting to be seen. Mrs. Taylor had also called Robert’s boss, Malcolm Drummond, who came to the house and listened to Taylor’s story. Drummond knew Taylor to be an honest man and making up such a strange tale would have been quite out of character for him. The case was reported to the police who investigated it as an assault case. The “crime-scene” was cordoned off and evidence was recorded. Significantly, the tracks that looked like caterpillar tracks showed no signs of an entrance or an exit. There were also drag marks that supported the story of Taylor being grabbed and pulled. Taylor’s pants were subjected to forensic analysis in Edinburgh and the examiner determined that they were torn by something mechanical. The dog, meanwhile, would never leave the house, even to relieve itself, for months afterwards. In 2018, the West Lothian Council created a UFO trail in the woods to commemorate the event.
The history of UFO sightings and alien encounters as portrayed in the popular media is, mostly, separated into distinct periods: modern, from the late 1890’s airship flap followed by World War II “foo fighters” into post-1947 after the Kenneth Arnold report, and ancient interaction pieced together using “evidence” from the time of cave dwelling humans up to the time of the builders of cities and megalithic structures. UFOs depicted in Byzantine paintings (misinterpreted conventional symbols) the 1561 report from 
When people in the UFO community refer to To The Stars Academy founder, Tom DeLonge, more often than not, the words, “rock star” precede his name. This seems to serve the purpose of distinguishing him from “normal” UFOlogists but the truth is that he is but one of many rock musicians who have had or have a serious interest in the subject. What’s unusual about DeLonge is that he has managed to gather the highly credentialed people he has staffing TTSA and that his group has stormed to the forefront of the field overshadowing other long existing research organizations. For a “rock star” to manage this he has to overcome the big issue all UFOlogists are concerned with and that is credibility. If a witness was drunk or on drugs during a sighting, a case will most likely be dismissed by an investigator. As many rockers throughout history have been notorious for their often, extreme indulgence, well, you get the idea of what DeLonge is up against. 
Remember that UFO sighting by all those school children some years back? That was in Australia, right? No, it was Florida… or was it Wales? Perhaps it was in Africa? The answer is that there were incidents of significance in all four locations. All were similar enough to cause confusion but the reactions by school and public officials involved were strikingly different.
Let’s imagine that you’re a young person with a passionate interest in UFOs. You’ve devoted a lot of time to study and research and have developed some expertise and maybe even a specialty. Now it’s time to get out of your parents’ house and into your own apartment. You need to find a job and you’re determined to follow your bliss so, where do you look?
“Truth.” That’s a word that has been deeply associated with ufology thanks to “The X-Files” and apparently the “truth” is what U.F.O. researchers are looking for. But what truth is it? Is it the whole truth as in a unifying explanation for all strange phenomena or just proof of alien visitation? Do we want it from the “Government” or do we want to find it on our own through research and maybe, actually experiencing something ourselves?
I’m a fan of 1970’s UFO documentaries. They have cool, period, analog synthesizers in the scores, descriptions of classic cases and the best of them maintain a decent sense of journalistic integrity. My favorite is, “UFOs: It Has Begun” which is a 1979 re-release of a 1974 documentary, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future” based on a book of the same title by Robert Emenegger.
On December 16, 2017, The New York Times published an article and sidebar that startled a lot of people. The article was about a Pentagon program to investigate UFOs, which was proudly championed by former United States Senator and Minority Leader from Nevada, Harry Reid. The sidebar was about an 2004 encounter with a UFO by two Navy pilots and included an embedded 76 second video purported to have been taken during the encounter. The fact that the Times had published a UFO story was almost stranger than the stories themselves because it was well known, at least among ufologists, that The New York Times NEVER reported on UFOs. The encounter is now referred to as “The Nimitz Encounter.” This should have been The Case that put to rest the question of whether some UFOs are intelligently controlled craft of non-human origin and the claim that the “Government” has hidden evidence in its possession. It should have but it didn’t.
If you have an interest in UFOs you’ve probably come across the 2010 Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport case, which involved a UFO hovering over the airport sighted by a descending flight crew. The airport was shut down for an hour and the case made international news. China has a relatively open official policy regarding UFOs but according to researcher, 
By coincidence, two UFOlogists who studied mass sightings by school children ended up dying an untimely death. One was John E. Mack, an