DECHMONT LAW

Opening

On the morning of 9 November 1979 Bob Taylor, a forestry worker for the Livingston Development Corporation, parked his pickup near Dechmont Law, took his red setter Lara up a forest path, and walked into a clearing. A dark dome sat off the ground. Smaller spheres like sea mines came at him, he said, caught his trousers and jacket with spikes, and pulled. He smelled burning brakes. He went down. He woke, walked home muddy and torn, and Mary Taylor called a doctor and the police.

Officers went back to the wood with him. Ladder-shaped marks in the grass where the dome had been. Other marks where he said the small spheres had sat. Grazes on chin and thighs. The report was logged as an assault. It is still the British case that a police force treated as a crime against a man, not as a light in the sky.

The spine of the file is a forester and an assault number. Dechmont Law is torn cloth and marks in a clearing. It is not a kept dome in a Scottish hangar.

Timeline

Taylor was in his sixties, known as steady, out on ordinary corporation work with the dog. 9 November 1979, about 10:00. He rounds a bend in Deans Forest and the clearing is occupied. Dome roughly twenty feet across, dark, sandpaper texture, a rim that looked to him like small propellers. Hovering, not sitting hard.

Two smaller spheres detach or roll, spiked, mine-like. Odour of burning brakes. They take the cloth and pull him toward the larger object. He loses the morning. When he comes back to himself the dome is gone. He cannot start the truck. He walks. Mary sees the state of him and rings Livingston.

Police and a doctor the same morning. Site photographs. Ladder marks, three parallel lines, pointing at the place he put the dome. Torn trousers consistent with a sharp pull, not a casual snag. Sergeant Clark and Constable Douglas walk it. The file number is an assault.

Press follows. A plaque later. Taylor told the same clearing until he died in 2007. He did not dress it up into a cabin tour.

Key figures

Bob Taylor is the assaulted man. A forestry worker, not a speaker. His first hour, the dog, the walk home, are the exhibit.

Mary Taylor is the first adult who saw the cloth and the mud and decided this was a police matter, not a funny turn.

Livingston officers own the crime number. They photographed a clearing instead of laughing a pensioner out of the station.

Malcolm Drummond at the corporation is the workplace hinge. The job knew Taylor as a man who showed up.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 9 November 1979 gives you four hard objects and no dome in a shed.

One: Taylor's same-morning account of a hovering dome, spiked spheres, a burning-brake smell, and a pull that put him on the ground.

Two: torn trousers and jacket, grazes treated the same day.

Three: ladder-shaped impressions in the clearing, photographed with police present.

Four: the Livingston assault file. Livingston police assault report on Robert Taylor, Dechmont Law, 9 November 1979, is the official tray.

There is no photograph of the dome. There is no spike recovered from the cloth. There is no second walker who filmed the clearing at 10:00.

They were black and spiky, like two naval mines.

Competing explanations

A craft that put out devices and took a man off his feet. This is Taylor's morning. It has cloth, skin, and marks. It has no machine on a truck.

A seizure or faint against a tree, story built on the way home. Possible for a man his age. The ladder marks and the specific tears are the part this reading has to carry.

Hoax. Poor fit for a corporation worker who gained nothing but a file number and a clearing he still had to work.

Hybrid caution. Something in that wood left marks and a torn man. Police treated it as an assault because that is what it looked like when he walked in.

Later life of the case

Scottish UFO plaques and anniversary walks. I keep those on the later-life shelf. The assault number and the ladder marks stay first.

Finding

Bob Taylor walked into a clearing on Dechmont Law on 9 November 1979, said a dome and two spiked spheres took hold of him, and came home torn and muddy. Police photographed ladder marks and logged an assault. Believe the forester. A man walking a dog to work does not invent a crime number.

What still will not resolve: a photograph of the dome in that clearing, or a spike that matches the tears in the cloth. Either one would pin the assault to a machine. The proving object is still the thing that pulled him, held by someone who was not on that path with Lara.