Minigolf and UFO reports

We were thirteen participants today at annual AFU minigolf contest, named the Åke Franzén Memorial Cup, in memory of our old friend and ufologist Åke Franzén (1936-1995). He used to visit us every summer in Norrköping and we always had a great time together. Åke was an enthusiast of everything involving UFOs and fortean topics.

Åke Franzén

Todays game started very well for me but in the end I was defeated by AFU archivist Sven-Olov Svensson. Here are todays results: Sven-Olov (44), Håkan (47), Roland (48), Tobias (49), Richard (49), Rolf (51), Benny (53), Mikael (55), Katarina (9), Bengtsson (65), Ingrid (69), Peter (75), Anders (76). After the contest we all enjoyed coffee and waffles.

Tobias and Sven-Olov preparing for the game

Tobias in action

Katarina in deep concentration

The AFU gang after the game

Recently UFO-Sweden received an interesting UFO report involving a horseshoe-shaped object observed in the autumn of 1957. Today close encounter cases are very rare and we have often speculated on the reason for the scarcity of such sorts reports in modern times. The observation in 1957 involved seven or eight witnesses. The were standing in the harbour of Varberg, a city on the Swedish westcoast. Time around 5 P.M. A bright object appears over the sea and comes slowly gliding towards the witnesses. It is shaped like a horseshoe with regular areas of green light and emits a crackling sound, like a badly tuned radio. Suddenly there is a burst of fire from the object and it disappears very fast up in the sky. No one could have survived that g-force, according to the witness, who contacted UFO-Sweden. 

Varberg 1957, drawing by witness

There have not been many horseshoe-shaped objects observered in Sweden. I checked our database and found only one or two that fit this description. There is no exact date but the observation took place one evening in 1985. A mother and her son are sitting in the kitchen of their house outside the city of Borås. Suddenly the room starts vibrating, the lamp above the kitchen table is swinging. The mother says that perhaps it is a small earthquake. Soon their is also heard humming sound and the witnesses leave the house to find a large horseshoe-shaped object slowly passing just above the treetops, not more than 25-30 meters above ground. The object is surrounded by a faint "fog" and has a "window" in the front emitting a white light. A soft red light is also noticed in several places on the object. I slowly glides out of sight.

Borås 1985, drawing by witness

Although one of the witnesses have filled in a report form there is no follow up on this case. In the AFU archives we have hundreds of very interesting close encounter cases like this one that are just waiting to be thoroughly investigated, analysed and documented. But very few of the UFO-Sweden field investigators take any notice of this vast source of data. Instead a lot of time is wasted on totally irrelevant lights in the sky, Chinese lanterns and obvious misidentifications in photographs. I hope more field investigators will go back to basics and start investigating the real UFO reports.