The following episode contains disturbing scenes of war. Parental discretion is advised. It is late one January night in nineteen seventy eight on the outskirts of the village of Mitchett in the south of England. Two fifteen year old boys Ron Hills and Ian Hoole are running home through the cold, windy darkness when Ron senses something moving through the clouds
above them. Turning a corner at the sound of a low hum, he stops and looks up to see a large, oblong shape cruising through the sky, lighting up the clouds that it goes, with two white beams of light at the front and two red lights that pulsed on and off underneath. Ian, catching up to Ron moments later, stops suddenly by his side and looks up in awe as the shape continues on overhead toward a small farm holding to their left, illuminating the top of a nearby forest
as it passed. Then a strange feeling came over Ian, as if he might burst into tears at any moment. Ron felt it too. The boys looked to each other and without saying a word, shot off again towards home, keeping one eye on the strange object as they went. It's gone, said Ron, stopping for a moment to catch his breath. No it hasn't, look said Ian, pointing to a light in the distance, just visible between two houses. Then they heard that ominous hum again, getting louder and louder.
The thing was coming back toward them. Hurry, shouted Ian, as they shot off once more toward Ian's home on the Limward Drive estate. Turning into the road, they realized with horror that the thing was now right above them, glowing with a misty orange light, as if it were beginning to heat up. Ian screamed for his mother as the boys sprinted toward the front door. When she opened it moments later, she found them shaking and white and looking fearfully to the sky. It was chasing us, said Ian,
close to tears. What was she asked with some alarm, But when they turned to find it, the thing had gone. You're listening to, unexplained, and I'm Richard McClean smith. It was a year later when the Fisher family were driving home to the village of Blackwood in the south of Scotland. A light drizzle had begun to fall, pattering against the windscreen like gentle attic as John kept the wheel steady. In the back, kids Roger and Audrey valiantly fought off
sleep while John's wife dozed in the passenger seat. John looked up for a moment at the few stars he could see blinking through the gaps in the cloud, then turned his attention back to the road as they continued on toward Livingstone, a town eight miles west of Edinburgh. It had just gone eleven pm when Roger pointed out something peculiar in the distance, moving through the sky. Roger's mother roused from sleep. Yes, what is that? She said. John looked about, trying to see it too, but it
was just out of his view. What is it? He said. It was hard to make out what it was exactly, only that it appeared to be hovering about one hundred and twenty feet off the ground, with an intense white beam of lightoting out the front of it and four red lights surrounding it. John looked about again, then finally caught the faint sight of something far off to the left. It's just the light from a crane, he said. But
it's moving, said Audrey. The Fishers continued to watch it as it appeared to hover for a moment in the sky before disappearing completely from view. Ten months later, on November ninth, nineteen seventy nine, sixty one year old Robert Taylor woke early in the morning and slipped quietly out of bed, being careful not to wake his wife Mary.
The couple lived on Brumino Drive in Deans, on the northern outskirts of Livingstone, barely a kilometer from where the Fishers had been passing when they saw that peculiar object in the sky back in January. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Bob slipped on his overalls and headed out into the crisp dawn air, then hopped into his pickup
truck and drove off to work. Robert or Bob Taylor was born in nineteen eighteen close to pit Lockery in the Highlands of Scotland, the third youngest of fourteen children. Having been infused with the love of the great outdoors from an early age, he would often neglect to complete the four mile walk to school, preferring instead to spend the day ambling through local woods along the Sparkling River Tunnel.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, at the age of twenty one, he joined the Armored Fife and fourth Yeomanry Division as a tank driver. It was a job he described as being little different to driving a big lorry, as long as you remembered to keep your head. Five years later, on June eleventh, at the age of twenty six, Bob and his tank crew arrived in Normandy
as part of the eleventh Armored Division. Over the next ten months, the division pushed further into France and then up through Belgium and the Netherlands as they fought back the German armed forces, eventually making it as far as Leebeck in the north of Germany in March nineteen forty five.
A few months previously, as the German Army continued to be driven back from every direction, Heinrich Himmler, who was in charge of running the German government's program of extermination and concentration camps, made a characteristically brutal decision, in part due to his fear that his prisoners would fall into the hands of the opposing forces, but also in an attempt to hide what had been happening in his camps. He ordered many of the outlying camps to be evacuated.
As a result, tens of thousands of prisoners were led out on forced marches to internal camps, often walking for miles in harsh freezing conditions, with many dying en route. Bergen Belsen concentration camp in the north of Germany had been built to house a few thousand inmates at most. By the end of March nineteen forty five, this number had swelled to sixty thousand as more and more prisoners coming from as far away as Auschwitz, Neuen Gammer, and
Dora Mittelbau were forced inside it. With the Third Reich on the brink of collapse, an agreement was made between Heinrich Himmler and the advancing British and Canadian forces that the German army would vacate bergen Belsen. On April fifteenth, Robert Taylor and what remained of the eleventh Armored Division arrived at the camp to liberate it. What they found there was as close to a vision of hell as
you were ever likely to find on earth. Emaciated figures stared out of vacant eyes from behind the barbed wire fencing as the soldiers approached, some in striped pajama like clothing, others in nothing but rags and bare feet. The stench of excrement was heavy in the air. Inside thousands of corpses, little more than skin stretched across bone in various states of decay littered the ground. Many had been stripped of their clothes and thrown on top of each other in
piles as much as five or six high. Some had turned green. As described at the time by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied the soldiers into the camp, among the living and the dead, you could not see which was which. Living lay with their heads against the corpses, and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable
to look at the terrible sights around them. Inside the various huts that lined the camp where the tangled remains of numerous others who died from starvation, lying in puddles of urine and feces. Some of the bodies had been cannibalized, their flesh removed and internal organs knived out. Many women had given birth in the camp, two with sometimes as many as seven babies being born. A day, a woman screamed out to a passing soldier to find milk for
her newborn. As he drew near, she handed him something bundled up in a filthy blanket, then and away in a flood of tears. The soldier opened the blanket to find the baby, long since dead inside it. It was estimated that there were as many as thirteen thousand dead among the sixty thousand living prisoners. Many more thousands would die in the following weeks from typhus, dysentery, and tuberculosis
that was rife throughout the camp. It was an experience, like most people who were really there, that Robert Taylor seldom talked about, but one that had acquainted him all too closely with some of the coldest realities of the material world. After the war, Taylor found a job working the roads for Perth City Council before eventually relocating to Livingstone, where in nineteen seventy nine he was working as a
foreman forester for the Livingstone Development Corporation. By all accounts, he wasn't a man prone to exaggeration, and he cared little for much beyond his family and his work, save for the odd pint of beer and a cigarette. Certainly, encounters of the strange were the furthest thing from his mind when he set off for work that chilly November day, but soon it would be all people would want to
talk about. That morning, Taylor headed first to the Forestry Commission's depot at Rosebank Nursery to pick up a crew to complete a quick job in nearby Belle's Quarry. But about the same time, local resident Graham Kennedy was heading to work along the A eighty nine, just past the village of Deckmont, about a mile north of Bob Taylor's home in Deans, when he saw a bright orange colored
object moving quickly toward him in the sky. Kennedy swerved car to get out the way, nearly colliding with another vehicle in the process. Moments later, only a few hundred meters away, nurse Anne McGregor, who worked at the nearby Banguwa Hospital, was just stepping off the bus when she heard a hissing sound coming from somewhere to the south.
Looking up, she saw a bright yellow light that appeared to be descending into the Decmant Woods, a small area of woodland covering Deckmant Law, a low lying hill that rose up between Deckmont Village and Dean's. About two hours later, Bob returned home for breakfast after a quick stop off, who said by to Mary once more, then whistled for their red Irish setter Lara to accompany him out to the truck. The pair of them jumped in and drove
back out to work, heading for the decmant Woods. Most nights I share a bed with a pro Bowl quarterback, an Olympic swimmer, and a national soccer star. I should explain. When I heard how many elite athletes sleep on a molecule mattress and call it their best sleep ever, I ordered one for myself and soon found they were spot on. Molecule sleep scientists literally created the world's most perfect mattress. It's unlike any other mattress in a box. It's cool
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onmolecule dot com and save twenty percent with promo code unexplained. Again, save twenty percent with promo code unexplained at onmolecule dot com. That's O n molecule dot com. A few years previously, Bob had been called out to decmant Law to help search for a young girl who'd gone missing. The night had been especially wet and cold, making it all the more vital that they found her as quickly as possible.
After hours of searching through the bitter weather, the girl was eventually found under a tree, strangely warm and dry, having claimed to have followed a sheep into the forest before getting lost. As it happened that morning, Taylor, who was responsible for the general management of the forest, was also on the lookout for some sheep that had apparently strayed into the area. Bob parked his truck at the bottom of the hill, then continued on foot with Laura,
bouncing happily beside him. Up above a pale sun shone in the sky, as a few broken clouds began to gather. As they headed on up the hill, Bob reveled in the relative silence, with little to be heard save for the gentle crackle of frost breaking under foot and the rustling of the pines. As they neared the edge of the woods. Slipping through the tree line, Laura bounded on ahead as Bob kept an eye out for any sign of the sheep. He'd walked about half a mile when
he heard Laura barking frantically. Catching sight of her up ahead, Bob jogged after her down the slope toward a break in the trees. As Laura ran on ahead, he followed her into the clearing. Bob's wife, Mary, was busy doing the washing up when she looked out at the kitchen window to see a pale and exhausted looking Bob staggering toward the house. His face and clothes were caked with mud, and his trousers badly ripped. Mary ran to the door
and wrenched it open. What's happened? Did you have an accident? She asked in shock. I've been attacked, replied Bob stumbling into the kitchen by who said Mary following close behind. Bob staggered to the sink, ran some water into a glass and gulped it down, and took a moment to gather his thoughts by a spaceship, he said, I'm sure what to say. Mary told her husband to sit down,
then went upstairs to run him a bath. Having been summoned by Mary, Robert's boss, Malcolm Drummond, arrived at the house a few minutes later to find Bob still in the bath in a deeply disorientated state. Concerned by his nonsensical story about a spaceship attacking him in the forest, Drummond suggested they called their doctor immediately, thinking he might be suffering from some kind of head injury. By the time doctor Adams arrived fifteen minutes later, Bob was out
of the bath and settled on the sofa. After having his blood pressure checked and nothing obvious found to be wrong with him, Bob gave them his version of events, as Taylor went on to explain, after stepping into the clearing, he was startled to find a large dome shaped object about thirty feet high sitting in the middle of it. Around the object was a ring that he described as being like the flange of a pipe that had small
propeller like things sticking up from it. The object appeared to have no seams or joins on its surface, which was comprised of a rough gray colored material, with several dark spaces above the ring that he took to be windows that were all completely blacked out. As he continued to stare at it in disbelief, it seemed almost to disappear right in front of him, becoming translucent, so much so that at one point it was as though he
could see right through it to the trees beyond. The next thing he remembered, Laura began barking furiously as two metal spheres with spikes sticking out of them dropped out at the bottom of the object and headed straight toward him. Before he could even move, they'd rolled up his leg and attached themselves to him. All of a sudden, he felt them pulling him down to the ground when he was overcome by a hideous, noxious smell, the coret at the back of his throat, and then everything went black.
He came round twenty minutes later to find the object and Lara had gone. Finding his legs too numb to move and feeling deeply nauseous, he eventually succeeded in crawling back to the truck. He tried to use the radio, but his throat was too dry to speak. In a panic, he threw the car into gear and slammed on the accelerator pedal, only to drive straight into a ditch with nothing left for it. He got back out and stumbled home. Drummond and doctor Adams looked to each other in confusion
as Bob's story came to an end. Adams gave Bob another look over and found two red marks like burns on his thighs, where he claimed the strange objects had attached themselves to him. There was also a graze under his chin, which Adams assumed was where he'd fallen onto the ground. Suspecting he may have had a heart attack or an epileptic fit, Adams suggested he go right away
to hospital to get a proper examination. A short time later, Drummond and Adams headed out to the woods, where they found Bob's truck stuck in a ditch with the engine still running. Just like he'd explained, an unharmed Lara was also there, thankfully waiting by it. The pair then headed out to inspect the clearing where the incident was alleged to have occurred, but found nothing untoward Down at the hospital.
After waiting two hours to be seen, Bob grew bored and headed back home, where Drummond was waiting for him. After telling Bob that he and doctor Adams had failed to find anything strange, Taylor demanded they head back there
immediately so he could see for himself. With the pair back up at the clearing, Bob called Drummond over to look at something he'd found on the ground, A clear pair of markings like caterpillar tracks, about ten feet long and seven feet apart, and dotted all around them were about forty holes in the ground, exposing fresh earth, almost as though something spiky had been rolling about in the mud.
Drummond looked on in complete bewilderment, though they didn't look too dissimilar to the markings of some kind of heavy forest machinery. They began and ended inside the clearing, with Mary concerned that Bob had been attacked by someone. She suggested he called the police to begin a formal investigation. That afternoon, d I McDonald, along with six colleagues from the local constabulary, visited the scene and took photos of
the peculiar markie. As they inspected the long grass, they also found two lines of impressions in the space where Bob claimed to have been dragged across the ground. The following Thursday, Bob's clothes were given to forensic experts in Edinburgh for further examination. Both Bob's work trousers and the long John's he wore underneath them had been ripped on both sides, exactly mirroring the marks on Bob's legs. The forensic scientists concluded that the rips had been caused by
something pulling upwards with considerable force. The next day, as word of the strange encounter began to spread, two UFO enthusiasts from the British UFO Research Association came up to visit the site after running a guideer counter across the clearing. However, they found no evidence of radiation or any other anomalous readings. Over time, Bob would get picked up by numerous papers, and though he was happy to pose for a few photographs, he was not the type to revel in his sudden
moment of fame. The event remains the only apparent UFO incident in Britain to be officially investigated by the police. Though Robert Taylor was called on many times to recount his peculiar tale, he never once deviated from the original narrative and remained convinced by it right up until his death in two thousand and seven. In the months following his account, more apparent UFO sightings were unearthed that were also said to have occurred in the same area around
the same time as the Taylor incident. One event from the night before, involving the sighting by school children of a strange object descending into the forest at Deer Hill, just across the main road from where Taylor claimed he was attacked, was also reported to the police, and there was one final coda unearthed a few years later, according to Malcolm Robinson, who wrote about it in his book
The Decmant Woods UFOE Incident. A week or so after the incident, a ufologist named Alan Price was at a social event when a man approached him, having heard about his interest in U foes. The man was said to have been a former police officer who had also heard about Robert Taylor's strange encounter. It was all the more peculiar, he said, since only a few days before it, a former colleague had told him about another strange encounter that
also apparently occurred near the Decamant Woods. Just like Bob's story, this too had begun with a dog being walked by a young boy shooting off after an object was seen descending into the nearby countryside. The boy had then seen the object shoot off into the air, leaving no sign of the dog behind. The following morning, after the incident was reported to the police, an officer conducting a search of the area in question stumbled upon something buried in
the long grass. It was the ripped off hind leg of a dog. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com, forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are greatly appreciated.
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