UFO hunters touch down

Published on Sunday 28 July 2002 01:00

ALIEN enthusiasts last night descended on a small town in Scotland dubbed ‘the UFO capital of the world’.

Members of Strange Phenomena Investigations were holding a ‘skywatch’ in Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, where residents have reported dozens of UFO sightings over the past decade.

The event was taking place just weeks after a survey revealed that Scotland has the highest concentration of UFO sightings of any country in the world.

SPI representatives travelled to the town yesterday from across the UK and were due to hold a public meeting in Bonnybridge’s Royal Hotel.

They were then set to spend the night in the hills above Bonnybridge in the hope of catching a glimpse of an alien craft.

Local councillor Billy Buchanan, who has mounted a campaign for a special visitors’ centre to be built to enable the village to cash in on the UFO phenomenon, said he was delighted the skywatch was taking place. "It shows that Bonnybridge is the Mecca now for people interested in UFOs," he said.

Research commissioned by VisitScotland, the national tourist body, last month showed the nation was top of a league of the world’s UFO hotspots. The results showed that there were 300 reported sightings in Scotland a year - four times as many per square kilometre as France and Italy.