The Fraserburgh UFO (2012)

UFOlogy is full of "what if?" scenarios and questions. Perhaps one of the most fascinating of these has to be: if I see/experience something at relatively close quarters, what will I do and how will I feel? It's a curious question, one that gives a more thoughtful, personal and human edge to the mystery. Will I just stand there transfixed? Will I run away and hide somewhere? Will I be thinking about securing some kind of proof of the event or will I just try to experience it as best I can? Perhaps I might even "do a Travis Walton" and throw all caution to the wind by getting up close and personal. (Admirable it may be but not necessarily the best course of action given all the uncertainty involved.) I might even attempt some on the fly communication? Ultimately, I just don't know. And I'm guessing the question mark remains until it actually happens. At that time, there'll be no mistaking the final answer.

This gentle tension sits right at the heart of the whole grassroots UFO relationship. It's that intriguing space between; where matters odd and cosmic synergize with an often bewildered yet quietly fascinated public face. These are the common UFO experiences, the bulk of the phenomenon, that pierce the film of our everyday lives with something. And this is in spite of whether the experience is at a distance or something considerably more in your face, such as the Cash Landrum event for example. One recent grassroots incident occurred not far from Aberdeen during 2012 and it provides an honest, intriguing and startlingly "normal" take on what happens when you are greeted by something that isn't supposed to be there.

On the night of the 13th of October 2012, near Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, 50 year old Morag Ritchie was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange sight in the night sky near her home. Getting out of bed for a better view, she was perplexed by a row of odd flashing lights hanging in the sky. Ritchie recounts:

We live in a very rural area so I never have my curtains closed and I like looking at the night sky. I just woke up all of a sudden and looked out of the window to see all these twinkling lights - they looked like they were moving. I was quite apprehensive about it. I’m standing there looking at it and I’m thinking "is it watching me?", so I went around the house telling everyone and they all came to have a look. My husband is a fisherman and he’s spent many hours looking up at the night sky, so he was quite sceptical when I told him, but even he admitted it was strange when he saw them.

Twenty-seven year old daughter Cara got up around 3:00 am to feed her baby. She recalls:

At first I thought it was just a plane, but my mum said it had been there for a few hours and there was no noise or anything. I was quite mesmerised by it all to be honest although my fiancé Scott, was pretty scared. He was smoking at the back door where you could see the lights from and he was genuinely frightened, he kept the door half open so he wasn't actually fully outside.

While Scott may well have been slightly unnerved by the scene, he still managed to shoot some video of the object or objects on his mobile:

Morag continued:

Eventually we all went back to bed. I woke up a further two times, the second time was about four hours later and it was still there, but when I next woke up it was daylight and they had gone. It was there for so long that even all the way out here, someone else must have seen it, but perhaps they've been too shy to come forward about it.

The usual list of expected candidates was rolled out to explain the incident away but any idea that the family were seeing a plane or a helicopter for several hours hanging in the night sky is tricky to square. Similarly, murmurings of the northern lights seem extremely unlikely to account for the object that was witnessed. The Fraserburgh event feels like a genuine unknown, human or otherwise.

Yet, the object itself is almost second best here. What intrigues the most is how the whole thing pans out in classic grassroots UFO fashion. A family in a fairly isolated spot have their night disturbed by something odd that persists for several hours in the night sky. That something feels so strange that it necessitates second glances from everyone and it unnerves one of the family members so much that he only half-glimpses out through a door. And yet... and yet... "eventually we all went back to bed." Welcome then, to the gentle tension of grassroots UFOlogy...