'FLYING CIGAR' SWEPT OVER US

Housewife Katie Swanston can never forget the day she believes she saw a UFO.

Katie, her seven-year old son Andrew and Mother May Higgins, 71, reported seeing a cigar shaped UFO - a common form of sighting - as they sat in the garden at 9pm one evening last summer. Katie, 32, says: "I'm now prepared to accept there is intelligent life in space."

"There was no noise, no markings or windows and no visible energy source."
"The craft was just a couple of hundred feet up."

"We live on an airport flight path but this was unlike anyhting I've ever seen."

HIGH-RISE PAIR SEE SHIP HOVER

William and Mabel Bestall have seen a catherine-wheel shaped craft three times in a year from their seventh floor flat.

The couple have witnessed the craft fly over the valley and hover over Bonnybridge before turning off its fluorescent white lights and disappearing. Neither local airports nor the police reported any aircraft which could match the Bestalls descriptions.

William reported their sightings to the local newspaper and over the next few days he was flooded with calls from neighbours saying they had seen the same thing.

William, 73, says: "We're no cranks!"

9,000 RESIDENTS..2,000 SIGHTINGS

A quiet village has become the UFO capital of Britain.

In the past three years more than 2,000 sightings of unidentified flying objects have been reported over Bonnybridge, which lies halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Local UFO investigators believe at least 300 of these cannot be explained away by aircraft, weather balloons or other phenomenon.

Nick Pope, the former offcial UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence, says that a number of sightings could be extra-terrestrial.

And interest in Bonnybridge, which has a population of just 9,000, has become so great the village is now the centre for conferences of UFO specialists from around the world.

Former American nuclear physicist and UFO expert, Stanton T. Friedman says: "There are several hotspots for UFO sightings like Bonnybridge around the world."

"Maybe they form a part of a group of places being intensively studied. To an alien lifeform one place may be as good as any other to take samples."

Billy Buchanan, Bonnybridge's local councillor, says: "There is something strange going on in this place. There are level-headed people I have known all my life telling me they have been abducted by aliens."

Billy, 47, began campaigning for an official investigation after he too saw strange lights.

He says: "Hardly a day goes by without someone contacting me about a sighting. These are not cranks but people whose opinion I respect. A lot of people are frustrated that they can't get anyone to listen to them. I urge them to go to the police, that's the only way we are going to get any investigation."

Gary Wood and Colin Wright believe they were abducted by aliens while driving from Bonnybridge to Edinburgh in August 1992.

They claim they lost several hours when power drained from there car after they passed through a curtain of light.

EXPERIMENT

After that they believe they were taken into a spaceship to be experimented on by skeleton type beings.

Under separate hypnosis both recalled exactly the same details.

Malcolm Robinson, 38, from Strange Phenomena Investigations, who has been investigating cases in Bonnybridge since 1979, says: "There is more evidence in this one place that UFO's are visiting Britain than almost anywhere else. Some say it is just planes or weather balloons. But the sheer number of sightings makes it difficult to put down everyone's experiences to something like this. We are told by the Ministry of Defence that this activity in Bonnybridge does not constitute a threat to national security. But it would put a lot of people's minds at rest if they could at least investigate."

CHASED BY SPACECRAFT

One of the most chilling stories is told by the Sloggett family.

While walking near their home, Isa Sloggett and children Carol, 29, and Steven, 13, claim they saw a spacecraft that chased them.

Isa, 55, says: "We were all absolutely terrified - and convinced that we had seen a UFO. Steven thought he saw a flash of light and something fly over. Then we saw this circular craft about the size of a house with two blinding blue lights. It landed in moorland. I noticed two smaller craft above the first one. Then we heard the sound of what seemed to be a mechanical movement, as if some sort of door was opening. I think that's when we began to get really scared. We began to run back along the road. One of the craft in the sky followed us. Eventually it gave up, but we didn't stop running until we got home. Our neighbours were sceptical when we told them but now many of them have seen things too.