Andy McGirven remembers his first UFO, a bizarre spinning ‘ferris wheel’ type object that hovered 100ft over a residential street in Glasgow’s Knightswood.
“It was this big thing on its side, spinning fast like a washing machine will spin,” he says. “When you’ve seen something like that, not just a daft wee light in the sky, it sticks with you.”
His second sighting, near Newcastle Airport in 2019, of a strange shape with two lights that hovered just above the treeline, unnerved him further and prompted the launch of That UFO Podcast, which delves into unexplained sightings with key figures including ex-US military, scientists and academics.
He says Scotland racks up a high number of sightings, but most go unreported.
“People will say that they’ve seen something but that they never spoke about it at the time or reported it, just as I didn’t report mine.
“So, there are probably far more sightings than any official figures might say.
“A lot of people suffer trauma – it’s not just what they’ve seen, there can be physical experiences and dramatic events.”
“I think there is an element of things coming here from somewhere else, not human as such, but robots or probes sent to other planets.”
Read more: UFO evidence: The Scots unravelling the mysteries of space
One of Scotland’s most mysterious sightings is set to feature in a new documentary by US-based filmmaker James Fox, whose previous work, The Phenomenon, explored UFO sightings since the Second World War.
He is now in Scotland, seeking two men who captured a remarkable image in 1990 as they hiked near Pitlochry, which shows a triangular shaped object apparently being pursued by a jet plane.
Known as ‘the Calvine photograph’, it went missing soon after it emerged and has only recently been found.
The filmmaker wants the men or anyone who knows them to get in touch.
He says there is much still to be explained. “I say to people, forget aliens and flying saucers and things coming from Mars and take a step back.
“There are some things that Russia, America and Chinese military are encountering and it’s not coming from each other; they are seeing stuff and they can’t work out what it is.
“It would be the most incredible discovery to find out something that is not human, is flying around.
“And even if 90% of cases are rubbish, it just takes one discovery. We should be taking it seriously.”
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