Ole Braenne, chairman of UFO-Norway
The UFO movement in Denmark has taken a very different path. SUFOI (Skandinavian UFO Information) is now part of the Skeptics movement, referring to UFO observations as mere myth and misidentifications. This is an intellectually and scientifically untenable position implying denial of the large amount of empirical evidence of well documented close encounters all over the world. A sad development and demise for the formerly largest UFO organization in Scandinavia. The Skeptics attitude is counterproductive to real UFO research. No close encounter witness would feel confidence in contacting an organization that already has decided that he or she simply has been the deluded by a myth or the victim of a misidentification. This presupposed assertion is not research but skeptical lobbyism.
On September 7, 2012 I was invited by Exopolitics Denmark for a lecture on AFU history and my 40+ years of experience in UFO research. My lecture as well as the conference was heavely criticized and debunked by Lars Thomas of SUFOI who compared it to a Scientology seminar or prayer meeting in church. This criticism came as quite an unexpected and unpleasant surprise as I was unaware of that SUFOI had become an organization of Skeptics. In the ensuing debate I suggested that SUFOI and Exopolitics Denmark should initiate a dialogue with the object of future cooperation in research. Unfortunately my suggestion was not implemented.
The problem with Exopolitics ideology is the dominant presupposition or assertion that we definitely are being visited by extraterrestrials and that this is known and kept secret by several nations on our planet. The research attitude, on the other hand, regard this as a possibility and one theory of many, not necessarily as THE TRUTH. Among ufologists there are many different views on disclosure or what type of information is hidden and kept secret in intelligence or government archives. If we suppose that some clandestine groups in various nations really know that we are visited by aliens from somewhere and are well aware of what is going on behind the scenes, should they disclose this fact to the public? IF the alien visitors proved to be benevolent, offering help to our troubled planet, I would advocate total disclosure. But unfortunately the issue seem to be somewhat more complicated.
In my investigation and documentation of contactee cases I have found some disturbing and controversial claims that indicate there are both benevolent and possibly hostile visitors behind the UFO phenomenon. Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that some of the following scenarios or claims are based on fact. On October 29, 1965 the Swedish couple Sture and Turid Johansson had a frightful close encounter with five or six entities with red, shining eyes floating around their car at Väggarö, Sweden. In the morning before this encounter Turid received a mental message that they should go to Väggarö in the evening but "be careful, there is a power struggle going on for this planet". It was the same voice she had heard before but then in a phone conversation.
My illustration of the Väggarö encounter October 29, 1965
In 1967 Sture and Turid Johansson became involved with contactee Richard Höglund. This resulted in several paranormal experiences that affected Turid heavily and she decided to take a vacation going for a boat trip to Norway in the Spring of 1968. One day entering her locked cabin she found a man standing there. Her first reaction was that this must be a hallucination so she locked the cabin and went to another part of the ship. But when she came back this man was still in the cabin and they started a conversation. Now she recognized him from earlier encounters. His hair was long and he was dressed in a grey-green uniform. Turid asked him, why don´t you interfere when you see what is happening on our planet? He answered: "We are no gods and can´t interfere. It is like a bacterium infecting this earth." Turid asked for some form of evidence that this encounter was not a hallucination and then the man told her, among other things, that Martin Luther King would be killed and there were to be massive demonstrations in Paris. Both predictions proved to be true.
Turid Johansson in 1974
The contact experiences of Richard Höglund are unique and intriguing. He was what I have named a reluctant contactee, who didn´t really believe what the aliens told him and he didn´t dare stop working for them because he was afraid. He was very doubtful regarding their true motives and noted that their morals were not high. Richard once told his friend Gösta Johansson: "They can witness the most brutal torture and it matters nothing to them". One of his friends in the Bahamas, had been shot by the visitors when he disclosed to the CIA the location of the Bahama base they used. Richard died in 1977. I interviewed his widow, Gunvor Höglund, on July 8, 1991 and she still after so many years seemed genuinely afraid to reveal all the details of what they had been involved in. Gunvor also had met the aliens.
Richard Höglund in Nassau, Bahamas
Viewing the UFO movement and the contactee scene in a sort of meta-history perspective we notice that in the 1950s there were many benevolent alien contacts giving a message of hope, understanding and goodwill, very much in line with the philosophy presented in the Esoteric Tradition. A fact noticed by esotericist Desmond Leslie. But beginning in the 1960s new and disturbing signs appeared that there were "others" around. We got the Barney and Betty Hill abduction in 1961, a phenomenon which later took almost epidemic proportions in the 1980s. Today there are reported all kinds of weird and not very nice encounters with different types of entities.
American contactee Howard Menger was warned by his space people that he should be aware of false contacts:
"Who are these people? I thought I could listen to any of you.
They´re not US Howard. there are OTHERS operating. I´ll speak of them simply as The Conspiracy... My friend, this earth is the battlefield of Armageddon, and the battle is for men´s minds and souls... You don´t know Howard, that there is a very powerful group on this planet, which possesses tremendous knowledge of technology, psychology, and most unfortunate of all, advanced brain therapy...They use people not only from this planet... but also other people of your own planet - people you don´t know about. People who live unobserved and undiscovered as yet. It is a kind of underground in your popular terminology." (Howard Menger From Outer Space to You, 1959, pp. 142-144.
Picture taken by Howard Menger in 1956
Given that some of these claims and scenarios are true and that various intelligence agencies know this for a fact, would disclosure be a reasonable option? The result would probably be massive paranoia and chaos, especially among all orthodox religious groups. Disclosure at the present politically and culturally chaotic times may not be the best alternative.
