A close encounter of the fourth kind alien abduction took place in Fife, according to claims made in hundreds of Ministry of Defence files detailing UFO sightings across the UK that have been released.
The documents, released by the National Archives, reveal that UFOs were taken seriously enough to be discussed by the Joint Intelligence Committee in 1957.
However, by the end of the Cold War, the MoD no longer took sightings of flying saucers seriously and in 1997 it was regarded as solely a public relations issue.
Among hundreds of sightings, UFO crashes and other close encounters, the files also contain details of other phenomena that landed on the MoD’s UFO desk before it was closed last year.
Although areas such as Falkirk remain Scottish hotspots for sightings of the unexplained, the files also include a detailed account of a claimed abduction near Falkland.
In September 1996 two women were driving home at around 8pm when they noticed bright lights in the sky above them and saw a large triangular craft, around 80 yards across, with a large dome on top of it.
The craft shot into the sky at the sound of another, conventional aircraft approaching but the women returned to the same spot later that evening.
This time they saw a blue glow in the field, and saw dozens of small figures in the fields.’Aliens’ carrying boxesScared by what they were seeing, the women returned home and returned later with a male companion.
This time they could see the “aliens” were carrying small boxes, and described several transparent capsules containing some very thin “small beings.”
Then a craft like a “cocoon” shot towards them, stopping only four feet in front of them.
They ran back to their car and drove home, but later claimed to experience flashbacks that revealed they had been taken on board the craft.
One of the women claimed, “I could not move. They were doing things to me.
“They did not hurt me so I felt happy.”
Later they claimed they could still see small aliens in their home and that they remained under psychic attack.’Predicted’ UFO sightingsAnother man claims he predicted the wave of UFOs in Fife that autumn and that he notified the police and then-MP Henry McLeish about the anticipated increase in extra-terrestrial activity.
Dr David Clarke, author of The UFO Files and senior lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, said, “These papers demonstrate how far official policy towards UFOs changed after the Cold War.
“In 1957, some officials were so concerned by a spate of incidents involving UFOs the subject was placed on the agenda of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
“But by the 50th anniversary of the ‘flying saucer’ mystery in 1997 the MoD was no longer interested in UFOs as a defence problem but as a purely public relations issue.
“This inevitably led to the closure of the MoD’s public UFO hotline at the end of 2009.”
There is also a report of a “psychic premonition” of a terrorist attack on an RAF base in 1990 while there are details of mountain rescue team that was called to investigate a “crashed UFO” in the Berwyn Mountains in Wales in 1974.
The files include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which he allegedly discussed a UFO encounter with RAF bombers.
They also show 1996 was the peak year for UFO sightings. More than 600 incidents were logged.The X-Files to blame?Dr Clarke said, “These files reveal that, before the collapse of the USSR in 1991, RAF aircraft were scrambled on average 200 times a year to investigate unidentified objects on radar the majority of these turned out to be Soviet reconnaissance aircraft.
“However, between 1991 and 1996, no scrambles were recorded.”
He added, “In contrast, during the same five-year period, the MoD received almost 1200 reports of sightings from members of the public, most of which were filed away.
“In 1996 alone, there were more than 600 reports, 343 letters from the public and 22 inquiries from MPs, perhaps related to the popularity of TV shows such as The X-Files at the time.”
There are 18 files in total, released as part of a three-year project between the National Archives and the MoD.
The files are made up of more than 5000 pages of UFO reports, letters and drawings drawn from correspondence with the public and questions raised in parliament.
All of the files are available to download for a month from the National Archives’ website.