"I was close to the farmhouse where I worked when I noticed 10-12 very small men approaching. They were at a distance of around 50 meters when I discovered them and they came in my direction at a fast pace. They were so small, they reached only to my knees, and I remember this strange sight frightened me."
The men pass by Helge only a few meters away and in the bright moonlight he gets a good view of their appearance and dress. The small entities are wearing dark green clothes with caps. To Helge their dress appear to be made in one piece. All the men wear a beard but their heads are unusually large compared to their bodies. Facial expression is hard and cruel. From the group comes a strong smell which was felt a long time afterwards.
The men seem to be conscious of Helge´s presence but they take no notice of him passing by, walking in an almost military fashion on the frosen ground. The sound of their footsteps is clearly heard and the troop continue out on a nearby field. Looking out on the field Helge observes a "strange, blue violet light, hidden in some sort of fog". The light is so intense that he has never seen anything like it. Suddenly there is a whining sound in the air and the whole sight is gone.
Helge explains to Anders Liljegren that he has wondered a lot about this meeting and also told some friends of what happened. Some believe him, other doubt his story: "I met them myself, I heard the footsteps, saw their eyes and faces, felt the smell... I have never experienced anything like this since and when it happened I was fully conscious... These were no ordinary people I met, they must have been from another world."
Helge Eriksson interviewed in Eskilstuna-Kuriren December 27, 1977
After Anders Liljegren´s interview Helge was contacted by several journalists and ufologists. He was obviously affected by the then prevalent view that this must be space people. Extraterrestrial visitors was the usual interpretation for these typ of sightings far into the 1970s. This is very noticeable in a letter written by Helge Eriksson to UFO-Sweden some time later. Probably he had been convinced of this theory by the ufologists who contacted him. He writes in this letter: "In January 1931 I had a strange meeting with space people whom I both heard and observed... My first thought was that this must be people from another planet". This is obviously a rationalization. It is highly unlikely that a young farmhand in 1930s Sweden would associate such an experience with space people. Their is no mention of extraterrestrial visitors in Anders Liljegren´s interview nor in the first narrative written by Helge in the Swedish magazine Saxons veckotidning 1974.
In his second book Besökare från kosmos (Visitors From Cosmos), Swedish ufologist Mr. Boris Jungkvist comments on this case in typical ET fashion: "Everything indicates that he has witnessed a classic UFO landing. Maybe this was the first UFO landing case and observation of humanoids in modern times in Sweden." Boris Jungkvist was a fervent exponent of the ETI hypothesis, heavely influenced by the grand old man of Swedish ufology, APRO representative Mr. K. Gösta Rehn. He was the Keyhoe of Sweden, advocating the extraterrestrial theory in his four books in the 1960s and 70s. As a hardline atheist and materialist Rehn regarded the theories of John Keel and Jacques Vallee as "a terrible blind alley". He fought furiously against anything that could be regarded as occultism in ufology. The ETI theory was the only scientifically acceptable.
K. Gösta Rehn
Anyone reading the narrative of Helge Eriksson and somewhat aquainted with folklore must notice the similarities to the many stories of leprechauns. This was what Jacques Vallee discovered in the 1960s which resulted in his classic Passport to Magonia (1969). To exponents of the psychosocial theory Helge´s experience is an example of a culturally determined vision or hallucination. But Vallee was also a student of the hermetic and esoteric traditions and his interpretation went in another direction: "I believe that the UFO phenomenon represents evidence for other dimensions beyond spacetime; the UFOs may not come from ordinary space, but from a multiverse which is all around us, and of which we have stubbornly refused to consider the disturbing reality in spite of the evidence aviable to us for centuries. Such a theory is required in order to explain both the modern cases and the chronicles of Magonia - the abductions and the psychic component." (Dimensions. A Casebook of Alien Contact, p. 284).
On the internet I recently found an interesting variation of the multiverse theory proposed by Jay Alfred, an independent researcher and consultant to Arkansas Paranormal and Anomalous Studies Team (ARPAST). He is also research director of Dark Plasma Life Research Organization. Jay Alfred writes: "Dark Plasma Theory explains a wide variety of phenomena associated with genuine sightings of aliens, ghosts, deities, jinns and angels by both individuals and groups - using an internally consistent scientific framework. These sightings betray the presence of plasma-based life forms originating from a counterpart sister Earth gravitationally coupled to the visible Earth."
The dark plasma theory is basically the esoteric tradition teachings presented in a different terminology. It has much in common with theosophist Charles Leadbeater´s taxonomy of the inhabitants of the "multiverse": human, non-human and artificial, presented in his classic The Astral Plane (1895). Like Helge Eriksson we stand a good chance, according to Leadbeater, of encountering a wide variety of entities, not all pleasant. I come to think of the suggestive last paragraph of John Keel´s Strange Creatures From Time and Space: "Belief - or disbelief - will come to you from another direction. Next week, next month, or next year you may be driving along a deserted country road late at night and as you round a bend you will suddenly see..."
