UFO's Over Copenhagen - A Case Of Hidden Contact?

This post is based on an article I wrote for a 2012 issue of UFO-Mail, the official organ for SUFOI (Scandinavian UFO Information), about a very unique Danish UFO case that I investigated a few years earlier. Besides just translating the article to English I have added some further details and comments to the main body of text, as well as to the conclusion. All names of those involved have been changed, for the sake of anonymity.


I came across the following story about 5 years ago, in the spring of 2010, while I was still at university. At the time I had been working on a larger research project for over a month, together with a fellow student who we can call Christian. On one occasion during a break, the talk turned to UFO’s and what they could be. Looking back, it was probably Christian who brought it up, since I very rarely start conversations about the topic myself. It's not that I’m embarrassed about my interest in UFO's, but simply because there are exhaustingly many layers you have to cut through every time you present your views, to people who mainly have their knowledge of the subject from documentaries etc. Still, I must take part of the responsibility, as he could hardly have failed to notice the many books about UFO’s I had lying around. 

Anyway, after having talked about it back and forth for a few minutes Christian suddenly remarks: “Hey! I just remembered that my wife once saw a UFO!”. I was of course surprised and a bit intrigued, but didn’t really expect anything major. For all I knew, and from the little Christian could remember of her story, she might just have seen a strange light in the sky one night. But, as I was soon to learn, it was something a lot more dramatic than that. Furthermore, this came along right when I was most engulfed in reading about such cases. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At this point, not knowing very much, I asked Christian if he could tell his wife, Marianne, that I had a serious interest in UFO’s, and ask her if she was willing to share her experience with me some day. A few days later he had made arrangements for me to speak with her.

Marianne’s Close Encounter

Marianne’s UFO encounter took place sometime during the mid-1990’s – possibly in 1996. That’s about the closest we have come to putting a date on it. At the time she was living in an apartment on Carit Etlars Vej, in the western part of Copenhagen (actually in the city-within-the-city known as Frederiksberg). Her apartment was special, in that it had one of the only two French balconies on the rear end of the building - Marianne’s being on the fourth floor and the other just below it, on the third floor. In fact those balconies are the only two openings in the building facing in that direction, period.

The building housing Marianne’s former apartment. Her balcony was the top one, on the white facade of the building to the left.

The immediate view straight from the balcony is a medium-sized, red-colored apartment complex which partially blocks the view of a heavily trafficked road, Vesterbrogade. I couldn’t get both buildings to fit properly into one shot, so I took two separate pictures. There is some distance to the complex from the balcony, and in between is a small, cooped-up, ball court which is visible on the photo above and the one just below.

The building housing Marianne’s former apartment. Her balcony was the top one, on the white facade of the building to the left.

The back of the red apartment complex. You can see the ball court that separates it and the building housing Marianne’s apartment, to the left in the picture.

Although we haven’t been able to determine the exact year of the encounter, there can be no doubt that it took place in the summertime - possibly in June or July – during the the late night/early morning hours. She remembers that it was getting bright outside and the birds were singing. Due to the really humid climate around that time, she had pulled her bed all the way up to the balcony only a few days before, in order to get as much fresh air as possible. 

Suddenly, for some reason she can’t recall – or maybe there was no particular reason - Marianne looked out the balcony window. There, immediately outside, hovering above the ball court, was an object of bright aluminum complexion, without any visible windows or doors or other distinguishable features. Anne says that the “body” of the object was about 5-6 meters long, and the “wings” maybe 1.5 meters each. The things that attached the “wings” to the body seemed to her like some kind of pipe system. She made a sketch of it which you can see just below.

Marianne describes the rest of the experience as if time itself started to fall apart, or as if two different timelines were moving along at the same time. The object was moving, but very slowly. She noticed that all sounds and smells now disappeared, almost as if her surroundings faded away from her, and she felt that her sense of space and time was the only “real” thing present - all tell-tale signs of what British veteran ufologist Jenny Randles has dubbed the Oz Factor. 

Eventually the object began moving to the right, around the corner of the building. According to Marianne it should have been visible from the kitchen window immediately afterwards, but when she ran out to look it wasn’t there. Marianne isn’t sure how long the encounter lasted altogether, due to the strange state she was in, but she knows that it couldn’t have been that long because the sun hadn’t yet come up when it ended. She remembers that she was a bit scared, but most of all she felt that the object had been curious about her and that it was somehow “just passing by”.

An important part of the story is that Marianne's boyfriend at the time, Marco, was there with her during the encounter. He had been out partying pretty hard all night, but had arrived a short time earlier to crash at her place. Talking with Marianne, and later also with Marco, it became clear to me that the UFO encounter happened shortly after they had had sex that night/morning. Anne says that she remembers being awake for a little while afterwards, in a state of complete relaxation – very different from anything she had ever experienced before or since. Marco had fallen asleep almost immediately and was already snoring. She remembers that she tried her best to wake him up, but he was as far gone as the object now was. Marianne never saw the UFO again. 

Further Experiences

When I asked her about other unusual experiences, prior to or after her encounter, Marianne recalled a few very interesting things. One was an extremely vivid ”alien dream” she had a few nights later, in which she interacted with some very tall, golden ”super women” that looked like normal people, except for their height and large heads. In the dream she was supposed to help these beings with something, maybe a pregnancy. She also found some peculiar markings on her body, but doesn’t remember whether this only happened after the incident, or if it had also happened prior to it. She describes these markings as if they were indentations made by a hair brush. Curiously enough, while we were talking about all this, Christian suddenly broke in and stated that he himself had had those kinds of markings, more than once. He thinks that he may even have had them before he met Marianne. He describes his markings as 5 small dots, in a dice-like pattern. Christian also remembered calling Marianne his “intergalactic star goddess” one of the first times he met her, after falling in love with her. This was before she ever told him about her UFO encounter and he has no deeper explanation for this choice of nickname. 

Later I also found out that Marianne has a thing about owls and has made more than one very detailed piece of artwork involving them. I asked into this and she couldn’t explain why, other than they just had some sort of meaning to her. Although I am hesitant to make a direct connection between this and Marianne’s encounter it bears mentioning, because owls have been appearing under odd circumstance to a lot of UFO experiencers (just ask Mike Clelland, who has been documenting his own and other peoples stories involving owls for years)   

The conversation had turned into something of a surprise for all three of us. Marianne and Christian had very rarely talked about these things before - and certainly never all of them, within a UFO context. For me it was incredible that I seemed to have stumbled upon one of those very cases of “hidden contact” that I had been reading so much about. At least, all of the details I was getting just seemed to fit so well with incidents of that type. At the same time I was cautious and did not try to paint a picture of alien abductions and hybrid programs, although it would have been very easy to jump in head first like that. In fact I tried my very best to not even mention the abduction mythos in that or any of our later talks, except when asked - and then only very hesitantly. Nevertheless the details just kept coming forward.

Next, I felt had to find out if there could be something about Marianne that made her particularly susceptible to unusual experiences. This was very much inspired by reading books by Jenny Randles and Kenneth Ring, which document that certain personality traits make some people more prone to UFO experiences. This also brought forward some extremely interesting details. Just for the record it should be stated at this point, that Marianne has never touched any hard drugs and only occasionally smoked a joint.

About Marianne

Marianne is now in her mid-to-late 30’s and is the mother of 3 children. Christian is the father of the 2 youngest, a son and a daughter, and Marco is the father of the oldest, a daughter named Natalie who is now in her teens. Marianne is a designer, and at the time I spoke with her she worked specifically with furniture design. She describes herself as having had strong creative urges ever since childhood. As a child she was extremely good at visualizing shapes in front of her and when she closed her eyes, she could instantly imagine complex figures retract and expand, almost like fractals, which she felt she had to shape and balance in order to keep them separated. She still gets these images once in a while, but she says that with time it went from being an ability to being more of a “feeling“ which she often gets just before falling asleep. She feels that if she could only train this ability properly she would be able to use it for so many things. She has thought about practicing transcendental meditation to help further this goal.

Marianne has also had several odd things happen to her throughout her life, but nothing that she ever thought of connecting with the UFO encounter. In kindergarten for example, she suffered from an unknown and perplexing condition, where she would periodically experience static in front of her eyes, as if tuning into a dead TV channel. The doctors ran a long series of tests on her, for epilepsy and other disorders, but never figured out what was wrong. After a while it disappeared by itself.

Next I asked Marianne, inspired directly by Jenny Randles' experiencer-checklist, if she often had vivid dreams of flying. She confirmed. In fact, for a long time during her late childhood and early adolescence she believed that she could actually fly, if only she concentrated hard enough on it. She told me that even today this can be a source of conflict to her because, in a way, she still thinks that it can be done, but at the same time she knows it isn’t supposed to be possible. She has to keep her thoughts in check once in a while, so she won’t get too carried away.

Another trait in encounter-prone personalities is the clear recollection of events stretching back to very early childhood, sometimes even late infancy. Marianne confirmed this part as well. For example, she vividly remembers her younger sister’s birth, even though she was barely 2 years old at the time. Natalie, the daughter of her and Marco, also has detailed memories from when she was only 1½-2 years old. 

The story, as it now stood, would have been interesting in and of itself. But as it turned out, it didn’t end there. There proved to be a very definite link between Marianne's encounter and her former boyfriend, which we shall now explore further.

Marco’s UFO Encounter

As you will recall, Marco never woke up in time to see the UFO outside Marianne's balcony. But when she drew a sketch of it one of the following days he completely freaked out, for a very good reason: he had had a sighting of what appeared to be the exact same object, many years earlier. I haven’t been able to find out precisely which date this happened either, but Marco thinks it was probably in the early summer of 1987 or 1988, although it could be as late as 1989 or 1990. What we do know is that on this day he was out rollerskating with a few friends on Eskildsgade, a street not that far away from Marianne’s old apartment (and incidentally, I found out later, also the street where Mike Tramp, who I interviewed not long ago for a completely different purpose, grew up). Marco and his friends had a thing back then where they would grab onto cars and roll with them up and down the street, and they had been at this for several hours when it was beginning to get dark. Marco remembers that around 21.00 he was standing in one end of Eskildsgade, next to the medium-sized public square called Vesterbro Torv, while his two friends were much further down the the street, closer to Istedgade. 

 

The street where Marco & friends where rollerskating. Marco was standing approximately where I took this picture, facing the same direction as the camera, when the object appeared. Around this time all three boys began noticing a loud, roaring sound coming from the air. Marco had trouble describing it to me, but according to him it was different than the sound of thunder. It was more like when a plane breaks the sound barrier, although even more powerful. Then suddenly, a 5-6 meter long grayish object, shaped sort of like a dumbbell or rolling pin, passes over his head, in the sky above the buildings. While the object flew over the street the sky was completely gray, but Marco distinctly remembers a pink, triangular patch of light in the distant sky, somewhere to the right (which could indicate an exotic weather phenomenon, but more about that later). As the object flew by, the streetlights and all other lights in the surrounding apartments went out one by one, and turned on again immediately after it had passed them. The object eventually disappeared into the horizon, but just before doing so it seemed to transform into a light.

 

A rough illustration (not correctly scaled) showing the object Marco saw, and the manner in which it flew forward. Marco estimated it to be about 40 meters above the buildings, but it kept itself in between them throughout its whole “route” of flight.

As can be seen on the above picture, the object was very similar to what Marianne observed years later, if not nearly identical to it. But the shape of the object is not the only element that recurs in Marianne’s encounter. As it turns out, Marco also tried everything he possibly could to get his friends to see the thing, but without success. They did not notice anything flying above them, although they do remember seeing a light disappearing in the distance. They also observed the electrical lights going off and back on again. In fact, one of them even heard a local radio show a few days later, where the host described an “unexplained blackout” that had taken place the night of the encounter. Even more interesting, like Marianne, Marco also felt as if time was distorted during the whole incident, and that the object somehow “sucked out” all the energy of its surroundings. He believes that, objectively, the whole experience only took about 20-30 seconds, but it felt a lot longer. Marco doesn’t think that there were any other people on the street who actually witnessed the object.

Marco describes the above experience as a turning point in his life. In retrospect he realizes that this was the one event that made him seek out a more spiritual lifestyle at a young age. He became a vegetarian instantly afterwards and has not eaten meat since. He also changed his personality from being a “smartass street kid” into a more sensitive and open minded person. When he saw Anne’s drawing and heard her recount her experience many years later, it felt kind of like redemption to him. Finally, someone had seen the same thing as him and he could know come to terms with the fact that it hadn’t just been a hallucination. One thing that he has wondered about many times since though, is why he never saw the object the second time around and why there was this strange temporal aspect to both his and Marianne's sightings. They discussed this many times afterwards and Marco distinctively remembers thinking that “time was against him” and that “something” prevented him from waking up in time to see the object. He also remembers Anne’s dreams about the aliens and speculated that there was a connection, even then.

Further Investigation

There were several things at this point that merited further investigation, but without any exact years to place the sightings, it was very difficult to approach them. In the case of Marianne I had hoped that at some point, a diary entry or similar would remind her of a more precise date. So far this hasn’t happened. Marco, likewise, who I have spoken to on several later occasions, can’t remember anything precisely about either of the two sightings, except the general time of year. Even after getting in touch with the friends he was skating with on the day of his encounter, we weren’t able to narrow it down much. Concerning his sighting, however, I have been able to work somewhat “backwards”. First I tried approaching local bars in the immediate area of the sighting, but in all of the places that existed back then (which weren’t many) the owners couldn’t pinpoint any power failures which had stood out particularly throughout the years. I did get the impression that it was something they had experienced quite often, though. I also began asking around in local shops, but quickly realized that it didn’t make much sense. Even if some of them did exist back then, they would surely have been closed at the time of the incident.

Next, I set out to look through local newspapers from the late 1980’s/early 1990’s, in order to find articles about power failures in Copenhagen – unexplained or otherwise. I figured that since it was apparently worth mentioning on the radio, there could have been a mention of it somewhere. However, searching both printed newspapers and Infomedia, a database covering a large section of Danish newspapers back to the 1980’s, has not yielded any useful clues.

Parallel to this, I tried locating a recording of the said radio program itself. I suppose I could have put up flyers all over the area of Vesterbro, in hope of finding someone who had an old cassette tape with the broadcast, but I wasn’t quite prepared for that. Instead I tried to find out what local radio station could have been the source of the announcement of the “unexplained blackout”. Marco helped me in the right direction on that one, and we discovered that it was probably one called Radio Ratatosk (now defunkt). After a short email exchange with the former administrator of the radio, a forwarded reply came back to me revealing that a former Radio Ratatosk host named Michael remembered a strange power failure in the late 80's, most likely after 1987 (but not whether he had talked about it on air). In any case, Michael told me that one day around that time, the power suddenly went out. For some reason he thought to himself “this is it. Chernobyl happening all over again”. Even stranger, when he picked up the phone to call a friend, the line was busy and full of voices. Then suddenly, the friend he was supposed to dial up was speaking from the other end. His friend had not tried to dial him either, and this was in the days before automatic callback was a standard feature on telephones. Michael then found out some time later, that the blackout was actually connected to the nuclear power plant, Barsebäck, which is located just across the water from Copenhagen, in southern Sweden. And if that isn’t enough, I also found out that Michael had an interest in UFO’s himself and was in contact with a lot of old characters from the heyday of Danish ufology. He could even tell me, that the last surviving member of a notable 70’s UFO cult lived just around the corner from me.

Eventually, although an interesting coincidence, I came to have my doubts about whether this was really the same blackout as the one during Marco’s encounter. They didn't sound like the same, since all the lights came on again almost immediately after the object had flown past them. But the sense that there was something about this area of Copenhagen that made it particularly susceptible to power failures, was further reinforced after my article was “printed” in UFO-mail. One of the reasons for putting the story out there in the first place, was to see if it would generate any useful clues to understanding the case better. I received a few replies in that regard, one of them an email from a reader who prefers to keep his name a secret. He wrote the following (translated from Danish):

In the 1980’s I became chief administrator for an organization with headquarters close to Vesterbro Torv (the square from which Eskildsgade is connected). From the late 1980’s until the middle of the 1990’s we experienced many short, unexplained interruptions of data transfer, typically during the night. We spent a small fortune trying to solve this problem, which was very damaging to us, but without any luck. The only explanation we were offered was that the interruptions were due to short power failures, despite the fact that we had the best UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) available on the market at the time. What the cause really was, we never found out. One day in the mid 1990’s, the problems suddenly stopped.

In light of Marco and his friends description of the power going shortly off and on during his encounter, the above account is highly interesting. It does indicate very strongly that there were some general problems with the electricity supply in the area around Vesterbro Torv during the 1980’s and 1990’s. I did try to follow this trail as well, but the main electricity provider at the time has long since been absorbed by the much larger company DONG, and contacting them was not very helpful at all. But I doubt that it would bring me any closer to a date for the Marco encounter anyways.  

Map showing some of the different places mentioned. The center of Copenhagen begins less than 1 kilometer to the right of  Vesterbro Torv.

Case Analysis

As readers can probably sense, this is a case that I have spent a lot of time on throughout the years. The reason is, as indicated earlier, that it presented itself to me at a time when I was really opening up to the complexity of the UFO phenomenon. In fact, I can think of no better example than this case to demonstrate just that complexity. I will (and can) not completely exclude that the object seen was some reconnaissance ship from another planet, keeping tabs on certain individuals while at the same time granting them exclusive experiences to further “their” own cryptic goals. I just think that when looking at the full picture - whether or not one accepts that both encounters are connected, which isn’t necessarily a given – the evidence points to several different answers. I also think it makes more sense to look at the individual elements on different levels.

On one level we have the undeniable physical aspects – the light in the distance, the power outage and the loud noise that both Marco and his friends saw and heard. I will go out on a limb and say that I think the odd pink, triangular patch in the distance, could also have been observed by others (in fact I plan on looking into this possibility in the near future). Along with the circumstantial evidence I received later on, this all indicates that something physical did in fact happen - it wasn’t all in the mind of one person. Furthermore it points to the area around Vesterbro Torv as being somehow electricity-sensitive.

On another level there is what seems like a purely individual and subjective part of the experience which, if we boil it down, only occurred to two people (that we know of, at least): Marco and Marianne. This is also where we find the most exotic descriptions – the shape and color of the craft, its movement, the time-warping, the sense of being watched, as well as the aftereffects that manifested (In Marco’s case, a complete change of lifestyle). In a way it seems like these experiences were meant only for these two people, and only one at a time.

But even though most of it seems very individual, how do we explain that so many of the core details can be found in both encounters?  Focusing on the personality traits of UFO experiencers that I mentioned earlier, which Marianne fulfills almost to a tee, some degree of deviation becomes apparent. Marco doesn’t seem to me as nearly the same kind of person. In fact I could only really pinpoint a few elements of experience-proneness that he somewhat conformed to. So if the whole case wasn’t already complicated enough, we also have to explain how Marco could have this experience to begin with, years before meeting Marianne, if he is not even the experience-prone type. Here again I think we should take note of the unusual weather conditions at the time. There are lots of other cases on record involving strange - in fact, often pink-colored - clouds, which include the same temporal distortions as Marco (and Marianne) experienced. Jenny Randles explored many of these in her excellent book Time Storms.

We also need to explain why Marianne suddenly saw what she saw, so many years later. She did not notice anything unusual about the weather, but did mention that it was extremely humid. This humidity could perhaps be linked in some way to a weather phenomenon similar to the one involved in Marco's encounter. Besides this, there is the aspect of Marianne’s experience occurring immediately after having sex with Marco. I left this part out in my original article for UFO-mail, but in fact I think it is highly relevant, whether or not one thinks of the case in “mystical” terms. Of course you might say that there is a good case for explaining Marianne’s sighting as an advanced after-effect of unintended sex magick, but even if this is uncomfortable for the more materialistically-oriented people out there to hear, I will suggest that it is not too far out to simply look at it in terms of an altered state of consciousness.

In addition to the above, we of course can not ignore the fact that Marco could have influenced her with the story of his own experience. In fact it is very likely that he did on some level, although neither of the two remember it. There were also many popular UFO movies, books etc. (X-Files was huge here around that time), which Marianne could have sought out for information. It was not my impression that she had even the slightest interest in those things, though, and the same goes for Marco, for that matter.

Conclusion(s)?

If asked to speculate freely, I would connect the dots in the following way:

• Marco has a UFO experience at a young age that may or may not have been triggered, in part, by an exotic weather phenomenon

• This phenomenon somehow interferes with both the electricity in the area and somehow also with his mind, creating an altered state of consciousness that makes him hallucinate a metallic object flying over him. It changes him, in fact so much that he becomes an almost different person afterwards, similar to people undergoing a mystical experience.

• Years later, he manages to affect Marianne – an encounter-prone person who has a unique ability to easily and vividly imagine geometrical shapes , just by closing her eyes –with ideas of this oddly shaped UFO. He might even have told her in detail about it on several occasions, without remembering it.

• One night, one or more stimulations put Marianne into an altered state of consciousness. During this state she recalls the details Marco’s UFO so strongly that she actually believes she sees it in front of her.

• This state of consciousness- the Oz Factor or whatever we choose to call it - may be so similar in “feeling” from person to person, no matter what initially triggers it, that both Marianne and Marco were able to have an experience in the same basic way.

• Marianne, however, being the more encounter-prone type of person, has an even closer encounter with the “object” and experiences even more dramatic effects that Marco did.

There are of course still many aspects that are harder to explain, such as.

• Why the distinct shape of this object and why did there even “have” to be one in the first place, that moved synchronously with the power outage?

• Why does it appear to be “shielding” itself from more than one person at the time? One gets the feeling that these episodes happened exactly because no one else could see them, which was noted by both Marco and Marianne. Especially ‘Marianne said that she thought it was noteworthy, how the object could just about avoid detection from other people in the area, by appearing in front of her particular window.

• Why did Marianne experience so many of both the physical and mental aftereffects that we see in abduction cases from the same period – and indeed still do – such as strange markings, dreams centering on aliens reproductive aspects and a fascination with owls? And more puzzlingly, why should Christian have indications of these too, perhaps even before meeting Marianne?

Whatever the final answer may be, this was the case where I finally realized, that putting only one or two tags on UFO's doesn’t always work. There are a variety of external and personal factors involved that can trigger unusual experiences, made up of imagery that people are not even aware that they have. The case also made me realize that this is actually what makes the investigation of close encounter UFO cases such an interesting – as well as creative – endeavor. As to what the true source of that creativity really is – that, in my opinion, is still not fully explained.

The Maiden & The Barker

Had i come across the following page during my youth...

"Doom For A Dime" from the series Balbo The Boy Magician (Master Comics 41, 1943)

...I wouldnt have given it a second glance. But having since become aquainted with classic high strangeness, UFO-related cases, I instead thought: "hmm...what year is this actually from?" The answer is 1943, and in case you are still wondering what exactly to look for, compare it with the images below:

Yes, the infamous Flatwoods Monster and Mothman. Besides being some of the most instantly recognizable creatures of high strangeness lore, both are intimately connected with the state of West Virginia - one with the small town of Flatwoods, and the other with the slightly more populated Point Pleasant. While not mentioned by name in the story, or appearing in any context that could be considered extraordinary, I'm still wondering what the odds are for them being alluded to in this manner. And as I began reading closer, more connections appeared. 

And just in case you are wondering if the shadowy "creature" in the above story really is a moth, it is confirmed on the subsequent page:

Neither The Flatwoods Monster nor Mothman are easily pigeonholed. Nevertheless, the former is primarily related to a core incident that took place in September of 1952, while the latter has appeared in many seperate encounters over the years (some would argue, still to this day) and changed accordingly. I'm going to push the Mothman conundrum aside for now and instead focus on The Flatwoods Monster. To get a short but sufficient summary of the main incident, check this excellent video:

Now to get back to the Balbo comic: it never occured to me that The Flatwoods Monster could have been "inspired" by the torture instrument known as The Spanish Maiden/Iron Maiden. I had heard people compare it to the queen from Alice In Wonderland (not sure why though) and recently to Mandean Uthras, but never to a famous torture device. But now I see the comparison very clearly:

Spanish Maiden variants. The "Ace of spades" shaped head was a consistent detail mentioned by eyewitnesses to the original Flatwoods case.

Another encounter, which took place around the same time as the initial Flatwoods incident, very close to the original site, involved a tall, reptilian creature. This creature was said to be hovering by help of some mechanical extension, which covered it from the waist down. Frank Feschino Jr. investigated the case for his book Shoot Them Down and it also became the main focus of the 2010 Monsterquest episode, "Lizard Monster". Feschino speculates that the lizard creature could in fact be the same as the one in the original Flatwoods encounter, but this time without the top part of its "suit". This is a bit too nuts n' boltsy for my taste, but the description of the monster wearing a suit or being inside a type of flying container, resonates somewhat with the function of the Spanish Maiden (although perhaps a bit more comfortable). 

The "Lizard Monster" as it was portrayed on Monsterquest

Some time after the main Flatwoods incident, another, related case was discovered, involving a woman and her son. This actually took place a week before, and apparently involved a creature of more or less the same description as the "fully clad" maiden. But there appears to be yet another curious precursor on record, which Nick Redfern mentions in his book Monster Files. In a publication by the RAND Corporation titled The Exploitation of Superstititions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare, which assesses the use of various supernatural rumors during wartime, he found a reference to stage magician and intelligence asset Jasper Maskelyne's book, Magic: Top Secret. 

In the book Maskelyne claims to have helped the British army develop a mechanized "...gigantic scarecrow, about 12 feet high, and able to stagger forward under its own power and emit frightful flashes and bangs.", which had been used for spreading terror in small secluded areas of Italy during WW2. Nick speculates that The Flatwoods Monster could have been part of a later psy-op, inspired by Maskelyne's device. A place such as Flatwoods would have been ideal in that case, as it is a very secluded and scarcely populated town, even today. Nick furthermore mentions a more widespread tendency within military intelligence circles, of using Ace of Spades imagery. 

The cover of said RAND publication, which can be downloaded it its entirety here

The Jasper Maskelyne angle is even more interesting, when viewed in relation to the comic book story that inspired this post. As mentioned earlier, the "Doom For A Dime" story was published in 1943 as part of the contemporary series, Balbo The Boy Magician. The Balbo stories were very popular, and often centered around a seemingly supernatural event, which the young magician would eventually reveal as being pure illusion. Balbo was a true debunker of his time, it seems.

A big surprise came when I read the final page of "Doom For A Dime", and saw the reference to a "Barker". 

Anyone familiar with the Flatwoods and Mothman cases will know that both are very often mentioned in connection with notorious UFO trickster Gray Barker. In fact, the Flatwoods incident was Barker's point of entry into ufology - the first case he ever investigated. Furthermore, he was the first ufologist on the scene at Flatwoods, due to the fact that he was a native of Braxton County (which Flatwoods is part of). Barker also wrote the very first book about the Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, The Silver Bridge. 

I had no idea until I began writing this post, but apparently "Barker" is a term given to the people standing in front of circuses, sideshows and the likes, trying to attract spectators. Ironically, many people would consider this to be pretty much the role that Gray Barker played in ufology, during most of his career. 

Some bonus info that fits right into all of this: According to wikipedia, one of the most famous fictional barkers on screen was Tinman (played by Nipsey Russell) from the 1978 movie, The Wiz:

In "Doom For A Dime" there is also a tin man type creature, operated by the exhibition barker, who looks very similar:

Phew...it's probably not even the end of it, but it will have to do for now.

1673: The Original Frankenstein?

Recently I was thumbing through early issues of Denmark's first true newspaper, Extraordinaires Maanedlige Relationer, when I stumbled upon the following report from February, 1673 (my translation):

In Frankenstein (Silesia), an ungodly body by the name Henrik Krahlen, along with his wife Eva and daughter Anna, has done a hideous and shameful thing. For 8 years they have unearthed dead people and removed their hearts and lungs in order to make a powder. This powder was mixed with poison and cumin and sold to unknowing victims, of which 5 are now known to have died. Furthermore, Henrik Krahlen has spread this powdered mixture on the streets throughout town and put it in fresh drinking wells. People were supposed to have been poisoned by this too, but god intervened, and it therefore had little effect.

Krahlen also went into a church where he held a secret feast of boiled and (prepared?) human hearts, together with his followers, who also drank from human skulls. In another church he stole from the money box and committed other injustices. With the bodies of women, he has performed in such ways that it is best kept secret, especially among Christians. Finally last year, right after the Pentecost, he and his wife and daughter were caught and thrown in jail. On the 23d of January this year [1673] he receieved his rightful punishment, when he was put on a wagon and pinched with red-hot pliers in all four corners of town. Afterwards he was taken out of town, where he witnessed the decapitation and burial of his wife and daughter. Then all of his limbs were crushed with a wheel and he was burnt alive at the stake.

The account is fairly outrageous, and sounds more like the plot of a modern horror movie. You probably couldn't sell it as a script prior to the Eli Roth generation of filmmakers, and would have to settle for an independent production similar to Nekromantik. Even with all the crazy stories in the media today, it still stands out. I have no idea if it's even partially true, though, but I think we can assume that at least something happened there. And even if it is a complete fabrication, the story is interesting from a whole other perspective.

Excerpt of the Krahlen account (in Danish)

Of course, my attention was immediately drawn to the name Frankenstein. I actually assumed that this was the story that Mary Shelley based her famous novel on, but when I tried to look it up online I could find no such reference (in fact, I can't find any info about Krahlen, period). It has often been said, however, that Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein was inspired by the life of Johann Konrad Dippel, who was born at Castle Frankenstein in 1673. The Frankenstein of the Krahlen affair was a Prussian-German town back in 1673 (today it is part of Poland and is known as Zabkowice). By contrast, Dippel's castle lies in the Odenwald mountains of Hesse, Bavaria. But even if the locations differ, there are enough shared elements to suggest that the stories about Dippel could have been inspired by the Krahlen spectacle.

Modern-day Frankenstein/Ząbkowice, maybe a nice place for a (nec)romantic holiday.

Castle Frankenstein, Bavaria

Mary Shelley drew on a lot of different sources when she wrote Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, such as the story of, well, Prometheus, but also that of the Golem of Jewish folklore. In more recent times it has been proposed that her central influence was the tales of Johann Konrad Dippel, who she (supposedly) heard of in 1814, while traveling along the Rhine river. The more controversial stories about Dippel paint him as a something of a real-life Herbert West - a well-educated philosopher, theologian, and alchemist, whose studies into the secrets of life and death would become gradually more extreme, and eventually cause even his most ardent supporters (Emmanuel Swedenborg was one of them) to abandon him. Some have claimed that he went so far as to dig up bodies at cemetaries and perform horrible experiments on them, although scholars consider this an unfounded rumor.

Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734)

On the other hand, Dippel is very well known for his experiments with dead animals. His most memorable creation was a product known as Dippel's Tieröl, an oil made from animal bones and a mix of chemicals. It is now banned by treaty, but was still being produced during World War Two, where it was used, interestingly enough, to poison wells across Northern Africa. 

Even if Dippel and Krahlen did go to certain extremes, one has to take the mindset and customs of the time into consideration. In the late 17th/early 18th Century, It was illegal to perform medical experiments on human corpses, so most professionals had to stick with animals. The only other options, for those convinced that they needed human subjects to advance their research, were trading with grave robbers or literally picking up a shovel themselves. I am only mentioning this to put things into perspective, since we don't know what actually happened in either case. There needn't be a sinister motive behind it, but surely rumors about such activities could easily blow out of proportions and result in being hunted down by an angry mob of villagers with pitchforks. 

The torch-wielding mob from Frankenstein (1931)

So, was Dippel actually a reincarnated Henrik Krahlen, born the very same year in which the latter died so violently? Or were the rumors about Dippel simply based upon those of Krahlen? Did I actually stumble upon the true inspiration for the story of Frankenstein, completely by chance? These are interesting theories, and the location names, dates and other details would seem to support some kind of connection - whatever one chooses to believe. The real answers could be out there - but perhaps buried a little deeper than most people wish to look.

1600: Aarslev And Beyond

The 400+ year old Aarslev incident, often described as "Denmark's oldest UFO case", has been featured in many Danish books and publications over the years. At the same time, there has been a lack of information about the case available in English. My intention is to make up for that with this post, but beyond simply re-hashing and translating the existing Danish material, I will offer some new perspectives as well.

Even if one takes a sceptical approach to the Aarslev incident, there is enough evidence to suggest that something spectacular happened - something which touched many of the witnesses deeply and affected the broader community at the time. It truly is one of the most fascinating, and best documented, Danish Fortean cases.

A Strange Encounter In A Field Near Randers

Aarslev Enge is an area of field about 10 kilometers south-east of Randers - Denmark's 6th largest city, located on the eastern part of the country's mainland. Today, a stroll through the Aarslev area probably wouldn't spark anything beyond the most pedestrian thoughts, but one Wednesday more than 400 years ago something extraordinary happened here that shook the locals to the core. 

Before midday on the the 30th of April, 1600, a group of townsmen were gathered for the annual event of cleaning a local stream, Alling Å. While waiting for the local Alderman to assess the situation, the workers decided to take a rest by the stream. After reaching the conclusion that nothing further could be accomplished that day, due to an unforeseen buildup of water in the stream, the Alderman announced that the work was to be postponed and that everyone were free to leave. 

Then, as people were preparing to go, the Alderman suddenly spotted something “like a big wagon” rising from the fields in the distance, together with a group of strange figures moving inside and around it. When he first drew attention to it, the townsmen thought he was joking, but they soon realized that this was not the case. At first, many of the witnesses tried to explain the sight as a flock of cattle running berserk and whipping up dust, but eventually they all began to see what the Alderman was seeing.

The figures became more discernible too, as the "wagon" moved closer (though some later described it as if it "dissolved" along the way). To the witnesses they were clearly humanoid, but a lot taller, fatter and more broadshouldered than normal people. Most of them seemed to be dressed in black, except for two who wore "bloody red" garments, and one who wore a white, long piece of clothing with a black band across. The ones dressed in red were a bit slimmer than the rest, but still very much taller than the average person at the time. They all appeared to be engaged in some "playful battle", using something akin to spears or swords with which they lifted each other up into the air. Occasionally, the red figures were surrounded some kind of smoke.

Workers depicted lying down before the arrival of the “wagon”. Unfortunately, no known images of the entitites exist to my knowledge.

By now, a local farmer and some women had also joined the large group of onlookers, and one can only imagine the amount of disbelief and anxiety among those present. At some point the Alderman cried out that everyone should fall to their and knees pray to God for it to disappear again. 

Shortly after that, another character joined the "battle". This guy wore a large white “thing, like a hat" on top of his head, and attacked and eventually scared away the figure with the white clothes. The "wagon" and the rest of the apparitions now started to retract towards a wooded area in the background, with many of the townspeople chasing after them (to no avail). Eventually, it disappeared completely, seemingly into the woods. The whole thing had lasted around 30 minutes.

Aftermath - Investigation And Implications

The Aarslev incident, as related above, was originally investigated and documented by a local nobleman, Holger Rosenkrantz, who lived at the nearby manor Rosenholm. His long-term plan was probably to spread the story even further via pamphlets, as stories of signs and revelations were usually printed in that format at the time (no newspapers yet existed). But apparently it never happened - at least, none such has ever been discovered. Rosenkrantz' original report is believed to have been destroyed in a fire in 1826, but a copy from 1760 still exists in the Danish Royal Library. 

In 1909 the report was more widely published, together with an introduction and postscript by cand. mag. Søren Hansen, in Randers Historical Society's yearbook. Here the incident was explained away as a misidentified waterspout which, together with a superstitious and authoritarian mindset, produced an advanced collective hallucination. While I won't dismiss that possibility completely, I think it sounds a little too convenient. In any case, this isn't the angle that I am interested in here.

The connection with flying saucers actually wasn't made until a few decades ago, when Danish folklorists started looking at the case in light of more recent developments within the UFO field. Since then, Fortean researchers such as Lars Thomas have written about the case, and it has even begun to feature prominently in popular history books. All the good work highlighting and analyzing the incident from a modern perspective aside, we can almost solely thank Holger Rosenkrantz for the survival of this rich account. Had it not been for his enthusiastic investigation and documentation of the story, it probably wouldn't be around today, except as hearsay or watered down folkore. 

Holger Rosenkrantz “The Learned One” (1574-1642)

Rumors of the incident spread quickly, and it was mentioned during sermons in several churches throughout the greater Randers area the following days. This is how Holger Rosenkrantz encountered the story and became interested in knowing more. On the 12th of May, Rosenkrantz visited Aarslev Church in order to get testimony from the local priest and seven witnesses to the events. Afterwards, he talked to them all individually and made them swear on the bible. He then met with a few additional witnesses, including some of the women that had joined the group towards the end. Later that day, four people joined Rosenkrantz on his trip back to Rosenholm, where they told their story at a larger congregation.

During Rosenkrantz' investigations, he learned that Aarslev priest Hans Pedersen Brun had heard a very loud, thundering noise that same day, accompanied by a terrifying voice which called out to him in a moaning fashing "Væ! Væ! Væ!". This happened while he was walking through the nearby woods, where he also met some local boys who had heard the noise, but not the voice. Rosenkrantz later deduced that priest Brun's experience with the latter took place exactly at the time when the "wagon" was disappearing, and that it happened in the exact same stretch of woods.

Aarslev Church in recent times.

The Broader Perspective

Rosenkrantz' passsion for the case shines through in his writings, and it did not appear out of nowhere. In the years leading up to the event, he had undergone some sort of religious identity crisis, which had caused him to become - using modern terminology - a born-again Christian. Looking at Rosenkrantz' report it indeed becomes clear that he believed this event to be a sign of warning from God to non-believers.

Spiritual (re)awakening was of course not an uncommon phenomenon during those days, in part due to the Reformation and the catholic church's harsh reaction to it. In this case we can also add the factor of the century shift, which is always a period of heightened awareness. These sentiments were further fueled by the many wars, natural catastropes, rampant hedonism and the plague spreading through Europe at the time. 

It may also be significant that the 30th of April is the day of Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night in English, Valborgsaften in Danish), named after the German saint Walpurga. It would be natural to speculate that this played some part in enforcing Rosenkrantz's beliefs, but actually he doesn't mention it anywhere. Walpurgisnacht is of course also notorious for being the date of the Great Witches' Sabbath, and the early 1600's was a period of intense witch hunts, even in Denmark. 

It appears, however, that even though Walpurgisnacht was celebrated in Denmark at the time of the Aarslev incident, the day did not become associated with witches and their flight to Brocken until the mid-1600's. Furthermore, this association is not mentioned anywhere in the Danish records until 1708. In fact, we may have to look at it the other way around: perhaps events such as the Aarslev case helped fuel the superstition about the diabolical nature of this date over the years.

Walpurgisnacht is not celebrated in Denmark anymore. Instead we celebrate Skt. Hans Aften (Saint Johns Eve), on the 23d of June, where we still burn witches in effigy (see picture). Overall, it is this date that is connected with witches in Denmark these days.

Originally I started digging deeper into the Aarslev case some years ago, after having read the (then) recently published Wonders In The Sky by Chris Aubeck and Jacques Vallée. I couldn't find any mention of the Aarslev incident in the book, and I discovered to my surprise that it wasn't that well known outside of Denmark. At the same time, I was struck by how many other of the cases in it featured the same kind of details. Take for example no. 138, from the year 1395:

"In the land of Languedoc [France], a big star and five small ones were seen in the sky. These, as it seemed, attacked and sought to fight the big one, which they followed for half an hour. Also a voice was heard in the sky, shouting. Then a man was seen, who seemed to be made of copper, holding a spear in his hand, and throwing fire. He grabbed the big star and hit it; after which, nothing more was seen."

Moving further into the future, the following excerpt (from case no. 170 in WITS) is from 1523, originally found in the Chinese book Stories In A Summerhouse Of Flowers:

"One day when it was raining without stopping the teacher observed two ships sailing over the woolly clouds above the ruins, in front of his house. On these two ships that measured more than ten fathoms [over sixty feet], two tall men were busying themselves, each one twelve feet tall and wearing a red hat and multicoloured clothes. They held a pole in their hands...".

There is also an incident (case no. 227) that took place 20 years after Aarslev, in Geneva, Switzerland, where:

"Two suns were seen, one red and the other one yellow, hitting against each other... Shortly afterwards there appeared a longish cloud, the size of an arm, coming from the direction of the sun, which stopped near the sun, and from that cloud came a large number of people dressed in black, armed like men of war. Then arrived other clouds, yellow as saffron, from which emerged some 'reverberations '(?) resembling tall, wide hats, and the earth was seen all yellow and bloody. The sun became double and it all ended with a raift of blood.”

Furthermore, all of these cases have parallels to the legend of The Wild Hunt (associated with Odin/Woten in Northern Europe and King Valdemar IV in Denmark, specifically), as well as the Danish tales of “Knarkevognen” (vogn means wagon or vehicle). Both are usually accompanied by loud noises and figures in the sky. 

Peter Nicolai Arbo's Asgårdsreiein (1872), one of the most famous Norse representations of The Wild Hunt

Regarding the entities seen around the Aarslev "wagon", it should also be mentioned that there is something of a Danish folkloric tradition regarding “long spirits", sometimes wearing tall hats and colored garments. Often these are connected with loud voices too (an example of this is found during the Køge Huskors affair, which i covered in the June 2014 issue of Phenomena Magazine). There are many other examples of tall entities throughout Evald Tang Kristensens folklore compilations, more specifically in "Danske Sagn..." volume five, section 8. It is quite possible that the Aarslev incident was an inspiration for such tales, which then mutated and spread to all over the country.

Aarslev, Haarslev And Beyond

This final section is to be considered optional for the understanding of the Aarslev case. But for those interested in synchronicities and other "paranormal" events, I have found some interesting correlations and additional material that relates to the incident. 

In a compilation of Danish folklore tales, Sagnenes Danmark by Gorm Benzon, I found an account that is evidently more than just a local legend. It was originally documented in the journals of Bishop Jacob Madsen, during his visits to different parishes around Denmark during the years 1587-1606. In 1601, a priest in the town of Haarslev on Fyn (Funen) handed Bishop Madsen an account of an angelic visitation from the previous year:

Between the 16th and 17th of April, 1600, a woman had heard a voice similar to that of a crying child repeat a strange sentence 3 times in old Danish: "O Wæ Och Voch, O Wæ Och Voch, O Wæ Och Woch Offuer All Wærdenn!". Then on the 30th of April, she was adressed by a loud voice claiming to be an angel of god, while praying. The angel told her to be strong in her faith, and to not be afraid. God would be on her side, and it was her duty to spread His true word to everyone around her. If people would still not change their ways following that, He would come down on them and their "kræ" (usually this refers to animals) in a very bloody way.

Shortly afterwards, the woman had gone to the local priest and told him about the experience and the message she had received. The priest then had a long series of discussions with other religious authorities in the region, before finally taking a stance on the matter. They suspected that it could be a trick played on them by the catholic church, in an attempt to challenge the town's blossoming protestant agenda. Specifically it is mentioned that clergymen in the area were in the process of removing old catholic relics from the churches when all this happened, which made them all the more suspicious of it being a hoax. They finally ignored the story. 

In 1601, a few months after Bishop Madsen heard about the story, Denmark was struck by a plague which lasted 3 years. One of it's symptoms was that it attacked the lungs, making people cough up large amounts of blood - thus fitting neatly into the prophecy of the "angel". It is unclear what exactly the Bishop made of all this, but Benzon mentions that to this day, it is possible to find more remnants of catholicism in the churches on Fyn than in the rest of Denmark.

A page from Bishop Jacob Madsen's journal.

There are some details in the account above, that I find particularly interesting, and which the attentive reader might already have picked up on. The fact that the visitation experience took place on Walpurgis Night, the same year as the Aarslev sighting, is remarkable. Secondly, there is the matter of the crying voice that was heard in both accounts. Looking closer at them, it becomes clear that they are very similar phonetically. This is also the case of the names Haarslev and Aarslev, although I do have to mention that while looking through Bishop Madsen's visitation journals, I discovered that there is actually also a town called Aarslev on Fyn, which makes me think that it was probably a somewhat popular geographical name. Still, it is an interesting coincidence.

Rosenholm Castle, from an old postcard (Date and year unknown)

As a final element, I have included a few Rosenkrantz-related legends that I also found in Gorm Benzon's book series. 

A few years before his death in 1642, Holger Rosenkrantz was teaching a group of students at Rosenholm, which by now was a well known centre of religious studies. Discovering that he had forgotten an important book at the library, he sent one of his students to fetch it. When the student reached the library, he was very surprised to see Holger sitting in a chair and reading the very book that he had been sent to retrieve. Although he found this odd, he decided that for some reason old Holger was playing a trick on him; He had apparently taken a shortcut to the library and was now testing him. 

The student went back to class, but when he arrived empty-handed he was asked why. The student then told what he had seen, and Rosenkrantz and the rest of the class walked together to the library, where indeed they found the doppelgänger sitting and reading. When finally Rosenkrantz asked "are you or am I the real Rosenkrantz"? Rosenkrantz saw this as a sign that his death was near, which in fact it was. He died a few years later.

According to Benzon, a supposed psychic lady was sleeping at Rosenholm many years after Holger Rosenkrantz' death, when she had a vision of him and his wife Sophie Brahe (niece of Tycho Brahe). She described the details of the clothes they were buried in down the smallest details, something which would have been difficult for her to know. Curiously enough, the coffins of Holger and his wife were actually resting in a room adjacent to the one she was sleeping in at the time, due to renovations in the crypt. 

Maybe old Holger hadn't yet given up on his mission, one that began so many years earlier in a little village known as Aarslev.

Sources:

• Askholm, Ib: Livets varsler: Om Fødsel, Tilværelse Og Skæbne. Askholm (1999)
• Benzon, Gorm: Sagnenes Danmark (1985)
• Holbek, Bengt & Piø, Iørn: Fabeldyr og Sagnfolk. Politikens Forlag, 2. Ed. (1979)
• Kristensen. Evald Tang: Danske Sagn Som De Har Lydt I Folkemunde (Vol. 2 & 5)
• Kæseler, Arnold: Heksetro og Hekse på Mors. Fortiden (1998)
• Madsen, Jacob: Biskop Jacob Madsens visitatsbog 1588-1604. Udgiverselskabet for Historisk Samfund for Fyns Stift (1995)
• Michaelsen, Jørgen: Synet i Årslev Enge in Lokalhistorisk Forening for Sønderhald Kommune (2000)
• Rosenkrantz, Holger: Et mærkeligt Syn i Aarslev Enge den 30te April 1600 in Historisk Årbog Fra Randers Amt (1909)
• Rosenkrantz, Palle (ed.): Rosenholm og Rosenkrantzerne: En Monografi. Koppel (1924)
• Rosenkrantz, Palle: Rosenholm I Skiftende Tider. Jyllands-Posten, August 17th (1941)
• Thomas, Lars: Det Mystiske Danmark. Aschehoug (2005)
• Vallée, Jacques & Aubeck, Chris: Wonders In The Sky. Tarcher (2010)

- Extra special thanks to Chris Aubeck and Yannis Deliyannis, and other members of the Magonia Exchange group for their valuable input, and for expanding my knowledge of these kinds of cases over the last couple of years.