by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
The first two years of the 1970s seems to have been a slow period for UFO reports in the U.S. if the 1970 and 1971 UFO Chronology hosted on the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena website is any indication, with the 1970 chronology consisting of 5 pages, and the 1971 consisting of 8 pages. As a comparison, the 1966 chronology page count is 35 and the 1967 count is a massive 85. This might have been expected after the release of the Condon Report and the termination of Blue Book. There is a comment to this effect in the 1971 chronology: “An apparent lull in sighting reports may be the result of the closing of Project Blue Book and the media coverage of this for several years, and may not reflect the actual situation.” By 1973, things would pick up in the U.S. in a big way (35 pages in that chronology) with high-strangeness cases dominating the headlines. However, there seems to have been a head start on this in other parts of the world and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization had people in place to investigate and report.
In the July-August 1970 APRO Bulletin there is an article (page 6 of the pdf) headlined “Finns Observe UFO Occupant” with an account that is said to have been forwarded by “APRO’s Swedish Representative” K. Gösta Rehn. According to the article, Rehn got the story from a Finnish magazine (it would be nice to know which one) and “contacted the author and satisfied himself as to the credibility of the two men.”
According to the account, on January 7, 1970, at around 3:45 p.m., two men, Aarno Heinonen, 36, and Esko Viljo, 38, were cross-country skiing. They stopped to rest and saw a bright light coming in from the north that was enveloped in a fog. Described as a “cloud” it changed direction, came towards the men, and they started to hear a humming sound. It came down lower and lower as it got closer, and the noise got louder.
At this point, the “cloud” is described as red-grey and pulsating with smoke coming from the top like smoke from a chimney. When it was around 15 meters off the ground, the men are said to have been able to see a shiny, grey metal craft that was three meters in diameter with three round balls on the bottom along with a “pipe-like affair” that was 2 cm long and 5 cm in diameter.
The men are said to have been able to see a dome on top of the craft as it stopped about 3-4 meters off the ground and the cloud thinned. Heinonen reportedly said that he felt like something grabbed him around his waist and pulled him back. At that point, he is said to have noticed a creature standing in a circle of light that emitted from the tube.
The creature is described as being about 90 cm tall, thin and slender, with a “waxy, pale face.” No eyes were seen, and it seemed to have a hook-like nose. Its clothing is described as a light green overall, with darker green boots and white gloves that had gauntlets that went up to the elbows. “Clutched” in its “claw-like fingers” is said to have been a black box with a pulsating yellow light shining out of a round hole.
Viljo’s take on the creature is different. According to Rehn, Viljo said he “didn’t get an impression of clothing on the little figure but noted that he glowed ‘like he was made of phosphor.’” Viljo is also said to have described the creature’s head as being crowned with a metallic-looking helmet.
According to Rehn, the men said that after 15-20 seconds, the creature turned towards Heinonen, and the light coming from the box that was directed towards him was “brilliant and almost blinding.” The red-grey mist is described as “pouring down from the craft,” and big sparks are said to have been “jumping from the luminous circle on the ground.”
The sparks are described as one-centimeter-long red, green, and violet “luminous staffs.” According to Rehn, “They seemed to flow outward from the circle, quite slowly, and some of them struck Heinonen, and he was surprised that he did not feel them.”
The creature is said to have been covered by the fog and the “light cone on the ground appeared to be ‘sucked up’ into the opening at the bottom of the object.” Rehn says the fog then dissipated, and the men saw that the craft was gone.
According to Rehn, for two to three minutes, the men stood there, and then Heinonen, who had been closest to the circle and the object, started to experience a numbness on his right side. He went to move forward, and his right leg gave out, and “Viljo had to half-carry and drag his friend to his home which was located about 2 kilometers from the area where the object was seen.”
Both men reportedly suffered physical ailments upon arriving at Heinonen’s home. Viljo’s face is described as being “swollen and red,” and Heinonen is said to have complained of aching joints, a backache, to have vomited, and to have said during an interview for a Finnish magazine that his urine was black for two months.
Rehn says that the men were examined by a doctor who “attested to the complaints of Heinonen, but said that both men were so excited in telling their story that they were nearly incoherent and felt that they had encountered some kind of electrical phenomenon.”
The assessment of who we assume is then editor, Coral Lorenzen, is that the case is “quite possibly” one of those that will need to be looked at more deeply to be understood. It is noted that there are elements that have turned up in other cases, and the reader is told that any “further important information” will be published in a future issue.
Scandanavia has a long history of UFO reports that predates the flying saucer mystery that started in 1947 in the United States. Starting in 1946, there were mysterious rockets reported over Sweden and Finland that have become known as “ghost rockets” and before that, from 1933-1934, there were mystery airplanes reported over Sweden that have become known as “ghost fliers.”
Rehn’s archives are housed at the Archives for the Unexplained in Sweden, and co-founder and board vice chairman, Håkan Blomqvist wrote a biography of Rehn titled “K. Gösta Rehn – a pioneer” that he posted on his blogspot.com site Håkan Blomqvist’s blog.
According to Blomqvist, Rehn was born in 1891, and while he had dreams of becoming a concert pianist, due to family finances, he “was persuaded to study law instead.” He is said to have become interested in “the UFO enigma” in 1954 after reading Donald Keyhoe’s 1953 book Flying Saucers From Outer Space, which he translated into Swedish and had published in 1955. Blomqvist describes him as “a hardline atheist, materialist and socialist” and says that in spite of this, he became active in UFOlogy in 1958 as a field investigator and Swedish Representative for APRO. He wrote four books on the subject, and according to Blomqvist, felt that the ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) theory was the only one that was scientifically acceptable.