On 5 June 2024, I presented some of my work in progress to the Edinburgh Skeptics Society. I spoke for about an hour to a full house in the small cinema room at the Banshee Labyrinth, covering a historical period from the 1950s Cold War to the 1990s Bonnybridge Triangle. As well as dealing with well-known incidents such as Dechmont Woods encounter, I also got into some more obscure and novel material from my archival research with Scottish newspapers.
It was really helpful to have the opportunity for this talk, since public lectures are a good way not only of organising my thoughts, but also of getting fresh perspectives. It was particularly interesting to hear from an audience member who had lived in Bonnybridge during its heyday as a UFO hotspot in the 1990s: they’d seen nothing unusual themselves, and didn’t know anyone else who had. Thank you also to the audience member who compared me (in a nice way!) to a weather presenter: the clicker probably helped.
I’ll be giving more public talks in the coming months, including the Glasgow Skeptics in July and the Scottish Society for Psychical Research in November. I’m also hoping to find some funds for more targetted work in Bonnybridge, where I recently had the pleasure of looking through the local library’s collection of press clippings from the Triangle years.