The Calvine UFO
When you think of UFO hot spots, you might of the American southwest, Australia, or maybe even Africa. Maybe you think about the UK…but what about Scotland? The Scottish Highlands claims one of the best photographed sightings of a UFO ever. It happened on August 4th, 1990 in Calvine, Scotland when a vast, diamond-shaped UFO entered into view.
Before we get started, I know you want to see the picture. Because of the history of this photo (and my fear of a copyright strike) I don’t want to republish it without permission. Go check it out on Nick Pope’s website here. If you aren't familiar with Nick Pope, he led the Ministry of Defense's focus on UFOs.
Now, back to the story…
Kevin Russell and his friend were working near the sighting in a hotel in Pitlochry. Despite it being 8pm, they decided to go for a bike ride around Craigower Hill, about 13 miles northwest of Pitlochry. Despite the later hour, it was still light out. At around 9pm, the sun was beginning to set...and that's when they noticed something was in the sky.
The UFO was a dark grey and seemed to be made of metal, or at least had a metallic sheen. There were no windows, lights, portholes, or visible engines onboard.
The two witnesses who saw it say that it appeared and was in sight for about 10 minutes, hovering in place. But it wasn't the only thing in the sky. For a few minutes, a military jet was seen near the UFO and made a few low-level approaches before peeling off and flying away. It was later identified as a Harrier, a fighter then in service with the RAF.
Despite being in awe of what was going on, Kevin had the wherewithal to snap a few pictures. He took six pictures with color film. Then, the hovering stopped and it began to move upwards in the sky before vanishing abruptly in seconds. Needless to say, Kevin and his friend were in shock.
By the 1990s, UFOs were definitely in the cultural zeitgeist and the young men knew they had seen something of note. They decided to send the negatives along with their first-person account to the Daily Record, a Scottish newspaper. They declined to publish, claiming they didn't print "sensational material". But they did decide to hand off the negatives to the British Ministry of Defence for review. The MOD immediately classified all case materials, including photographs, for 30 years in line with the State Secrets Act.
This is a pretty shocking act. Why? Because UFO pictures have been shared in newspapers all over the world, including the UK, for decades at this point. What made this story need to be sealed?
Folks have attempted to find the negatives, photos, and even Kevin Russell himself as really only copies currently exist. A former colleague spoke up about Kevin and his friend and he said they were terrified by what they saw. And, that shortly after the sighting "people wearing black suits came in a black car; after that, they started showing up at work less and less often and eventually both seemed to disappear off the face of the earth."
The first public mention of the Calvine UFO, outside of Kevin's friends and family (and town, likely) didn't occur until 1996. Nick Pope shared a brief, unclassified account on the matter in his book Open Skies Closed Minds. Nick Pope had access to the file through his work, and displayed the Calvine UFO photo copy prominently in his office until he was forced to take it down.
When the MoD UFO files were finally declassified (something Nick Pope got involved with, despite leaving the UFO desk in 1994, the photos were missing. The MoD claimed that the negatives had been returned to the Scottish Daily Record, although no one from the paper ever confirmed this. MoD also ruled that the identities of all the witnesses should be withheld until 2076.
In August 2022, one of the original photos was claimed to have been found and published in the newspaper. Neither the MoD nor Nick Pope commented on this image, now known as the Craig Lindsay (a retired Royal Air Force press officer) image. Nick Pope has not confirmed (or denied) that it's one of the originals he once had access to.
Andrew Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Photography at Sheffield Hallam University has published an extensive investigation of the Craig Lindsay photograph and has concluded, "The Calvine Image provided by Craig Lindsay is a genuine photograph of the Calvine sighting and identical to both the photocopies faxed to the MoD and the original negatives provided by the Daily Record and subsequently printed as Vu-Foils (images on transparent film) and studied by the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) before being finally released to the public in the form of poor-quality photocopies from the Vu-Foil images in 2009."
Of course, some people say that it isn't alien at all. Instead, the boys saw a secret military test of a secret prototype of a stealth aircraft, hence the military jet accompaniment. Others claim it is just a trick or bend of the light and it isn’t anything unusual. Then, as always, there are people who say the photo is doctored and it's all a hoax.
Whatever theory you decide to believe, you have to admit this does seem to be one of the most dedicated attempts at suppressing a UFO story.
Thanks to suhailmerchant84 for this blogstonishing suggestion!
The header image is not directly related to the above story. It depicts Trees in fog on the northern side of Loch Tay, Scottish Highlands, Scotland. Taken by Michal Klajban. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
