Around 1950, a boy from Copenhagen had a close encounter with a mysterious object, that seemingly paved the way for a spiritual awakening. Read more here!
Case Type: CE1 (Close Encounter of The First Kind)
When: 1949 or 1950 (Not reported until 1968, published in 1969)
Where: Sankelmarksgade (“Sankelmark Street”), Copenhagen
Investigator: Thomas Brisson Jørgensen
A Strange Nightly Guest
One evening in 1949 or 1950, GK (anonymized short form of the witnesses real name), who was a small boy at the time, was standing near the window in the bedroom he shared with his younger sister, in their family apartment on Sankelmarksgade 11, Copenhagen. Suddenly he noticed a white light on the other side of the street, a bit to the left of his field of view.
The light turned out to be coming from an unusual object, roughly 1 meter in diameter, elliptical and with sharp surface contours. It did not appear to be completely solid, however, as light seemed to be coming from within the object, illuminating its surface. The light changed from yellow to red, pulsating and glowing at various intensities within this spectrum.
GK observed the object float slowly to the right, until it passed their window, still on the opposite side of the street. GK then ran to inform his parents, who at the time had visitors and apparently couldn’t be bothered listening to what he had to say. He then went back to his room, where he saw that the object had only moved a few meters further to the right.
The UFO started to move faster around the time it got to Sankelmarksgade No. 5 and made a turn further down the street, before swinging back again to the left. GK saw it again when it was about 5 meters from their apartment, at the door of Sankelmarksgade 9. The object then swung back again and flew through an open door into an apartment courtyard on the other side of the street, where it completely lit up the area. It stayed here for a long time, so long in fact that he didn’t think it would come back out again.
However, the object did eventually emerge, and this time it crossed the street and ascended to a stop right outside his bedroom window. The light was now slightly red on the left, and yellow on the right side of the object, while its center stayed orange in color. GK could not explain why, but he got the feeling that it was watching him and that it was curious about him, despite the object not having any defining features such as holes or windows. GK was not afraid of the UFO, he only felt a bit strange.
After having stood face to face with the object for a while, GK got the feeling that perhaps the “watcher” wanted to come inside, so he crawled onto the windowsill to open the window. However something convinced him not to, and since he was also afraid that he might fall out of the window, he abandoned the idea. He then resumed looking at the object until he at some point — for some reason he didn’t elaborate on — couldn’t anymore. He then went to bed next to his sister and shortly thereafter fell asleep. Just before that he heard a “bump” on the window.
Aftermath
During an interview Hiddenmark did with GK in 2025, the now almost 80 years old, but extremely sharp and healthy pensioner, revealed that he experienced another strange encounter about 5–7 years later.
He was sitting in the stairway of the same apartment building one bright sunny day, when he saw a solid, white beam of light shine down onto the street outside, apparently originating from some place above. It happened very quickly, but he remembers thinking that “they” wanted to take him, although he is not sure what he actually thought that “they” were back then. He also explained that he does not have any actual strong opinions or further thoughts about either incident, but sees them as just examples of a long line of strange experiences, of which he has had many throughout his life.
GK for example told that he had had a quite elaborate premonitory vision about 9/11, just prior to the attack, where he in some abstract form saw many, of what he interpreted as, victims. He also has had an extremely keen intuition throughout his life, and finally became a practicing healer about 20 years ago, after many synchronistic hints and encouragement from people around him.
Photo of Sankelmarksgade, taken a few years back. No. 11 is the yellow building that can be seen up ahead, to the right
Commentary
At the time of the reporting in 1968, SUFOI (Scandinavian UFO Investigation, publishers of the journal “UFO-Nyt”) classified the sighting as a so-called “telemeter disc”. The term originates from the Polish-American UFO contactee George Adamski (1891–1965), who believed that extraterrestrials operated these small disc-shaped remote controlled surveillance probes, from great cigar-shaped motherships in orbit around the Earth.
To 21st century readers, both GK’s own description of the UFO and Adamski’s concept of telemeter discs sound very similar to the drones that are used by both police, military and private owners today. One wonders how many sightings of small UFOs that still appeared to be under intelligent control might have their root in very early testing of drone technology, which were probably top secret projects by military and intelligence agencies at the time. But that then raises the question: Why test it in the most populated city in Denmark, in a street where hundreds of people lived?
While it is in no way impossible that many of the details are due to the active fantasy of a young child, only 3–4 years old at the time, the feeling described about the object watching with some kind of sentience, is reminiscent of many UFO cases. Specifically it has many parallels to an incident that took place years later, not terribly far from Sankelmarksgade. In this case as well as in the experiences of GK, we see an element of “spiritual growth” that appears to have been sparked by the encounter with a UFO.
One somewhat puzzling detail is GK suddenly “not being able” to look at the object any longer, and simply going to bed. This seems irrational and perhaps a little frustrating, but it is in fact a very common reaction from UFO witnesses in general. At the same time, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot more for GK to accomplish by staying up, and we cannot ascribe the same reactions to small children as we can with adults.
With that said, the final word should be that we have to be cautious with UFO experiences that are reported many years later. Memories of details may have become distorted or outright changed over the years. This would be all the more true, when we are talking about the memories of children.
In this article we have taken GK’s original report and changed it to fit the details that came out during our interview, as he suggested that the 1969 article includes errors. But we still cannot be sure how much distortion has entered the picture, even from the time of the reporting of the experience until today.
Sources
- UFO-Nyt #1 (1969)
- Interview with GK from oktober 2025.
