In ufology, a close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it was started by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek, and was first suggested in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. He introduced the first three kinds of encounters; more sub-types of close encounters were later added by others, but these additional categories are not universally accepted by UFO researchers, mainly because they depart from the scientific rigor that Hynek aimed to bring to ufology.
What did the Scottish pensioner see in the sky that night ?
John Macdonald from Scotland managed to take an impressive picture of a strange, brightly lit object.
The 65-year-old had been driving home along rural roads in Perthshire at around 11pm on the night of February 28 of this year when he suddenly heard a peculiar noise coming from above his car.
When he looked up he caught sight of an enormous object with multiple rows of brights lights that seemed to be hovering just overhead. Astonished, he grabbed his camera and snapped a picture
The undeniably impressive photograph, which looks like something out of the Steven Spielberg classic Close Encounter of the Third Kind , has since generated a lot of debate online.
“It’s definitely a spacecraft of some sort,” Macdonald told The Courier. “I don’t know whether I frightened it or not with the flash of the camera, because in the beat of a heart it was gone.”
“I always thought there was something out there, but have never seen anything until now.”
“There is no doubt in my mind. I know what I saw.”
