UFO-Aktuellt issue 1, 2004

A short summary in English, by Stefan Isaksson, of the contents in UFO-Sweden's quarterly magazine.

Page 2: Not-so Mysterious Smoke Rings

Short article (accompanied by two photographs) about a sighting on 23 July, 2003, over Oxelösund, Sweden, of a strange-looking smoke ring. The witness took two pictures of the red/brown ring before it disappeared. The witness estimated the sighting to have lasted for about ten minutes. Barbro Magnusson, a UFO Sweden field-investigator, examined the case and was able to determine that what has been caught on the photograph was in fact smoke from a nearby factory. The witness took another picture under the guidance of Magnusson, and the result resembled the original picture. Case closed.

Page 3: Editorial

Chairman Clas Svahn devotes this issue’s editorial to remembering his thirty years of interest in the UFO phenomenon. He started out in 1974, and it has, in his own words, indeed been an interesting journey. For quite some time now he has been the chairman of UFO Sweden, and he uses some space in his editorial to describe how the organization works. It’s a well-running organization with many people devoting much of their spare time (and savings) to make it all run smoothly. In a time when several UFO organizations either get canceled or have severe difficulties to stay alive, UFO Sweden manages to continue working the way its member want it to. Despite of the many difficulties that face a non-profit organization with its members doing all the work in their spare time, Svahn sees no reason to why UFO Sweden should not continue its development.

Pages 4-5: Glowing Sphere Close to Colliding with Air-plane

Stefan Roslund has summarized an article (complete with photographs) by Richard Haines from Journal of UFO Studies, which tells the story of an incident that took place on 16 July, 1988, in California. An anonymous person, who by Haines goes under the name John Williams, was traveling in a glider when Williams’ friend, who traveled in another airplane, managed to take a photograph of what appears to be some sort of aerial phenomena that almost hits William’s glider. Haines found the people involved to be credible individuals, and listed sex preliminary conclusions for the case; all six being mentioned in the article.

Page 6: Ad for UFO Expo

A large ad for the upcoming exhibition and annual meeting for UFO Sweden, this year in the beautiful city of Gothenburg. The traditional exhibition is open for the public, and four speakers will give interesting lectures for anyone interested. The speakers are Tomas Hode (astro-biologist from the National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm), and three speakers from UFO Sweden: Clas Svahn, Anders Persson, and Andreas Ohlsson.

Pages 7-9: Media Watch

C Göran Norlén gives a review of news clippings from Swedish media, this time from the middle of October 2003 up until the middle of February 2004. As the story always goes, there have been both very good and very bad things said in Swedish media about the UFO phenomenon. Norlén spends much time complaining about how narrow-minder certain journalists can be in their approach to the unexplainable, but he also makes sure to mention the few good clippings he has found.

Pages 10-11: The Case of the Missing Pilot

An article by Nick Pope (translated by Roslund) which is accompanied by three photographs. The story is that of a crashed airplane, a Lightning XS 894, that went down outside the eastern coast of England. The pilot, an American by the name of William Schaffner, did, according to UFO conspiracy theorists, witness a UFO before the crash occurred, and the event was classified due to a secret cover-up. However, Pope explains how the crash, though tragic as it was, was not as mysterious some say it was. Pope himself investigated the case in 1992, and found nothing out of the ordinary about it.

Page 11: How a Myth is Made

Article by Svahn, where he describes how British ufologist Tony Dodd and journalist Pat Otter are the ones mostly to blame for why the story about Schaffner grew into irrational proportions. Dodd wrote about the case in his 1999 book Alien Investigator, where he added several exciting, but unconfirmed, elements to the story. But, in the light of Pope’s publication of his own investigation of the case, Dodd’s ideas must be strongly questioned.

Pages 12-13: News from the Report Central

Strange things are indeed taking place in the skies. The Report Central run by UFO Sweden receive several hundred reports annually, and in this issue of UFO Aktuellt Andreas Ohlsson presents three of them, taking place in 1961, 2001, and 2004. The article is also accompanied by four different photographs sent to the Report Central of odd things seen in the skies.

Pages 14-15: International Ufology

Stefan Roslund has sixteen short news about the international UFO, and forteana, scene. Among other things, Roslund mentions the UFO sighting of famous Hollywood actor Dan Aykroyd in the 1980s, another alleged UFO crash in New Mexico in the 1940s, American talkshow host Larry King and his special about the Roswell incident, and the sad fact that the widow of Graham Birdsall refuses to let anyone continue work with British UFO Magazine.

Pages 16-17: New “Mysteries” on Mars

NASA has released several pictures of the red planet to the public lately, and Anders Persson discusses some of them in his article. Richard Hoagland, well-known anomaly hunter, has written extensively on his webpage about strange looking objects on some of NASA’s photographs. However, Persson with aid from astro-biologist Hode offers perfectly natural explanations to the strange photographs. Mars still has many things to uncover to the scientists of Earth, but so far nothing extraterrestrial has been revealed.

Pages 18-20: Book Reviews

Six books reviewed by this time, all of them by Stefan Isaksson and one by Svahn. The one reviewed by Svahn is in Swedish, an astronomical calendar over the year 2004, an important tool for any skygazer. Isaksson devotes an entire page to James R. Lewis’ latest contribution, The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions, a book that Isaksson says is “a breeze of reason and interesting academic analyses of new religious movements that use the UFO phenomenon in different ways in their ideologies and promises of a better world”. Two of the other four books by Isaksson are fiction books, one by Hemingway’s niece Hilary and Dreamcatcher by Stephen King.

Pages 21-23: The Odd Boy of Nürnberg

UFO Sweden’s expert on fortean phenomena, Richard Svensson, writes (and as always, draws beautiful pictures) about bizarre things, not necessarily UFO related. This time it’s the strange case of the mysterious boy from Nürnberg that is examined. The mysterious boy, who was called Kaspar Hauser (though it’s uncertain that was his real name), appeared in Nürnberg in 1828. His entire life and background was, and remained, a mystery, and many strange things happened. His life was even portrayed in several movies.

Page 24: The Strange Cigar Still a Mystery

Article by Svahn, accompanied by a drawing made by the witnesses. A slow-moving cigar-looking object was seen in January 2004 in the morning sky over Holmträsk, Sweden, by a man and his wife. It was moving too slow to be a cruise missile, and the military’s prime theory is that it was some sort of ultra-light airplane, and the sighting was taken very seriously since it was suspected that something had crossed over Swedish airspace. However, it’s still unknown exactly what the object was, and it’s thus a genuine UFO. So far, anyway.

Pages 25-27: UFOs Serious News in the 60s

At the end of January 2004, the Archive for UFO Research received a donation from ufologist Bill Jones in Ohio: more than 2000 news clippings that once belonged to the Mufon Ohio-member Richard Lee who had been given the clippings by the now deceased ufologist Earl J. Neff. Svahn presents some of the more interesting ones in his article (by the time of writing he had read one fourth of the massive material though), and concludes that in the 1960s numerous articles about UFOs and flying saucers were written in American magazines. And, the subject matter was treated seriously. Not too many foreign sightings were mentioned though, and once all the clippings are sorted and placed in binders a very interesting piece of American ufolore will be available at the Archive for UFO Research.

Pages 28-31: He was Taken by Spielberg

Steven Spielberg’s TV-series Taken has been shown on Swedish cable during the spring, and Svahn did a telephone interview with Leslie Bohem, the man who more or less was responsible for the project. Initially a skeptic, Bohem devoted much to reading different UFO literature, and he spent about four and a half years planning it, writing during the days and reading during the evenings, in an attempt to really come to an understanding of what people believe about the phenomena. The end result was a script that was science fiction, but with skeptical approaches tied into it. His next project, also for the Sci-Fi channel, will be about near-death experiences.

Page 31: Clarke and Kubrick had a UFO Sighting

Ohlsson writes a short article about a UFO sighting by director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke. It took place at nine in the evening on 17 May, 1964, when they were working on the classic 2001 – A Space Odyssey. The sighting affected them both strongly, but it was later realized that what they had seen had simply been an experimental communications satellite known as Echo 1. The story tells us, Ohlsson concludes, that not even great scientists are always the best observers of the mysterious sky.

Back Page: How NASA was Mislead

A spectacular photograph (shown in color on the page) taken by 15-year old Jonathan Burnett in south Wales on 24 September, 2003, was published on NASA’s website as “Astronomy picture of the day”, described to be “one of the most spectacular meteorites ever documented”. And indeed, the picture is truly awe-inspiring. However, the truth is somewhat different. It’s most likely to be a vapor trail from a Concorde.