Bonnybridge is quite an unremarkable village in Scotland, a settlement with a population of just 6,000, its closest large town that of Falkirk.
Its high street could be found anywhere in Britain, complete with an Indian restaurant, a Chinese takeaway, a Dominos, a Tesco Express and a Co-op.
There truly isn’t anything overtly special about Bonnybridge apart from the fact that it averages around 300 UFO sightings every year.
This is more than anywhere else on the planet and has led to the area being referred to as ‘The Falkirk Triangle’, a nod to the ever-mysterious Bermuda Triangle thousands of miles away in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The widespread sightings began in the 1990s, and ever since, Bonnybridge has been plagued by a fear of the unknown.
In 1992, James Walker, a local businessman, stopped his car on a country road after spotting an object that resembled a shining star blocking his way but soon sped off.
A media frenzy ensued, and Bonnybridge was flooded with TV crews from around the country filming news pieces and documentaries.
Another sighting came just a few months later when the Sloggett family were out for an evening walk from Hallglen to Bonnybridge.
Steven Sloggett, the father, pointed out a “blue basketball-sized light” in the sky that was making a strange noise, and which quickly “swooped down and landed in a nearby field”, after which the door to the craft is said to have opened.
Malcolm Robinson, a paranormal researcher co-authoring a book about Bonnybridge, told The Mirror about the spine-tingling encounter: “As the family ran at a furious pace down the road, a blinding intense light shone out at them through a grouped range of trees.”
Countless residents and visiting UFO enthusiasts have shared their eerie experiences ever since, ranging from hovering lights to oval-shaped flying objects and large “glowing balls”, earning Bonnybridge the moniker of the ‘Scottish Roswell’.
Though the sightings have grown since the 1990s, people have been seeing all sorts of strange objects in the sky since at least the 1970s.
Bob Taylor, a forestry worker, reported seeing a large circular craft in front of him in an area of woodland known as Dechmont Law on November 9, 1979, an encounter that led to his passing out and waking up just in time to see the craft speed off.
Such is the intensity of feeling that local councillor Billy Buchanan in October called on the UK Government to officially open an inquiry into Bonnybridges’ close encounters of the third kind.
“The Pentagon in America has finally and openly declared to the American public that yes, UFOs are ‘real’,” he told The National. “It is now time for the British Government to do the same.”
Mr Robinson added: “I have been a UFO and paranormal researcher for more than 40 years, and in this time, I have collected a vast amount of data which has shown me that the subject of UFOs is most certainly real,” Robinson told The Sunday National.
“I accept that the vast majority of UFO reports can easily be identified as having natural explanations, but not them all!
“Billy and I are demanding that the British Government open up its own files from both the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the armed forces. The UFO situation is not just an American phenomenon, it is a global one.”
Mr Buchanan claims to have witnessed several UFO sightings, including a “gigantic flying” object over the Grangemouth oil refinery.
The source of the sightings are topic of fierce debate, with some of the opinion that Bonnybridge sits on some sort of gateway to another dimension — but for now, the real reason remains a mystery.
