Fairy aliens

 

Staffan Stigsjöö´s book “Tefatsfolket – vänner eller fiender?” contains a number of UFO experiences that predates Kenneth Arnold´s famous observation in 1947. Two of the more interesting are Finnish.

In 1942, a schoolgirl in Finland had what can only be described as an abduction experience. She encountered a female human-looking alien who led her inside a strange “machine”. A boy had already been involuntarily taken onboard the craft. He was hysterically screaming throughout the experience, while the girl felt completely safe. The female alien told her that it´s important to believe in Jesus, that his word is true, and that the human soul is eternal. So is the universe. The alien apparently had maps on her table. After the experience, the girl felt sick, couldn´t eat, went blind and was hospitalized, where the doctors couldn´t find anything wrong with her. She was at the hospital for a month and stayed home from school the entire semester. For a year afterwards, she felt intense fear every time she approached the location of the “machine”. The boy went mad and ended up in a mental asylum.

Another account deals with an event in 1939. It took place in Ingermanland (Ingria), an area in the Soviet Union which at the time had a large Finnish population. Two kids, aged three and four, were out walking in the forest and got lost. They then observed a white “hat-shaped” object that hovered above ground. A man dressed in a white outfit approached and told them that their parents would soon find them. When the parents approached, the mysterious man withdrew to the flying hat, which then disappeared. One of the witnesses later said that she had interpreted the man as a guardian angel, but as an adult realized that it must have been “a real person”.

Both these pre-1947 encounters were presumably reported to ufologists after 1947, so one cannot rule out that they have been colored by the post-Arnold UFO/alien hype. They are still fascinating, since they sound like hybrids of modern UFO lore and pre-UFO folklore. The Finnish report has traits of a fairy encounter, while the Ingrian report does sound like a meeting with an angel. Which just shows us that we´re dealing with an evolving cultural phenomenon. Fairy lore and folkish Christianity morphs into “alien abductions” and “UFO observations”.

Unless it´s fairy glamour.