The Armadale "Flying Toblerone" Encounter

Armadale is a town in West Lothian, in central Scotland. Blackridge is the next village to the west. In the early 1990s the region already had a reputation. The Bonnybridge sightings, the wave known as the Falkirk Triangle, were unfolding about 15 km to the north-west.

Saturday, 30 July 1994. About 23:30. Andy Swan was 27. He was a cable layer with ScottishPower. Near Armadale, he saw something hovering over a field.

It was shaped like a Toblerone. A long triangular prism, hanging in the dark. Then it moved off, heading towards Blackridge.

His car was immobilised. The lights stopped working. An AA recovery vehicle came out, but it could not start the car either. The car was towed away. The next day, a Sunday morning, it "miraculously started".

The police logged the call at 2.42am. That is about three hours after the stated time of the sighting. No source explains the gap. No beings, no injuries and no missing time were reported. The story ran in The Scotsman on Thursday 15 September 1994.

18 February 2010. The Ministry of Defence released its fifth batch of UFO files, more than 6,000 pages covering 1994 to 2000. One letter came from a West Lothian electrician who described a "Toblerone-shaped" UFO over a field, with "a quick on-the-spot sketch". CNN reported that the sketch showed a craft "35-40 feet long and about 20 feet wide", which "hovered silently about 10 feet above a field with no lights" and was "observed for at least 40 minutes". The Scotsman's version differed. It described a 40ft-long craft "hovering at a height of 50ft", with two very bright lights at the front.

The file dates from the same month. It describes the same shape and the same line of work, and the reply names Blackridge. It is very likely the same event, although no source reached so far names Andy Swan in the file itself.

The MoD answered on 1 November 1994: "I have consulted my colleagues in the RAF low-flying department and have ascertained that on the evening concerned there were three RAF Harrier aircraft operating in the Blackridge (West Lothian) area." The reply apparently noted that Harriers can hover or creep slowly forward close to the ground. That fits a hovering shape moving towards Blackridge.

The fit is not perfect. A hovering Harrier is extremely loud, and the object was reported as silent. Jets would not stop a car's engine either, and the car trouble may have been an unrelated electrical fault. CNN joked that "a craving for chocolate may have influenced" the sighting.

In 2010 the case became the headline "flying Toblerone" of the release, picked up by CNN, the Guardian, Channel 4 News and The Scotsman. CNN placed it in "Annandale", almost certainly a slip for Armadale. It sits among other central Scottish cases of the period, and should not be confused with Calvine, the 1990 case in which a Harrier also appears.