Scottish UFO hovering

FROM the nation's fascination with Elon Musk's latest ventures to fevered speculation about military aircraft being spotted soaring above our rooftops, it suddenly seems like many of us are gazing towards the heavens.

Three declassified videos newly released by the Pentagon showing US Navy pilots encountering "unidentified aerial phenomena" – or what the rest of us might call UFOs – has helped stoke further intrigue about what mysterious objects may be traversing our skies.

There's been a flurry of unexplained sightings reported around the globe – in recent months Belgium has recorded its highest number since the country's famed "UFO wave" 30 years ago.

Scotland is no stranger to a stellar UFO story either. In May, an Airdrie supermarket worker took photographs that he claimed showed a strange blueish-green "flying saucer" and a diamond-shaped cluster of "neon beams" while walking home from work

Forestry worker Robert Taylor, below, found himself at the heart of one of Scotland's most famous UFO mysteries when he stumbled across a "a huge flying dome" in a woodland clearing near Dechmont Law in Livingston on November 9, 1979.

As he approached the hovering object, two spheres, each about three feet wide with protruding metal spikes "similar to sea mines", dropped down and raced towards him.

Members of the British UFO Research Association National Conference with Robert Taylor at the site he saw a UFO near Livingston, West Lothian, in 1979

Taylor claimed to have experienced an acrid smell and the sensation of being dragged. He lost consciousness.

When Taylor awoke, disorientated and with a throbbing headache, the objects were gone.

His trousers were ripped in peculiar fashion, and there were grazes on his legs and chin.

Robert Taylor witnessed "a huge flying dome" near Dechmont Law in West Lothian on November 9, 1979

Police who accompanied Taylor back to the site found "ladder-shaped marks" in the soil where the craft was said to have hovered, and further marks following the path of the mine-like objects.

While it would later be suggested that he had suffered an epileptic seizure, mini-stroke or hallucinated after ingesting deadly nightshade berries, Taylor, who died in 2007, never sought publicity or financial gain – and always stood by every word of his account.

The case remains unique in British history as the only example of a UFO sighting becoming the subject of a criminal investigation.