In 1967, a Danish taxi driver received alien telepathic messages instructing him to build a bunker for a nuclear war that would break out on Christmas Eve. He later attracted a following in Czechia and Slovakia. Read the incredible story below!
The telepathic taxi driver and the coming war
The night after the 20th of February, 1967, at 15 minutes past 1 AM in the Copenhagen suburb of Brønshøj, a 46-year old Danish taxi driver named Knud Weiking suddenly received a telepathic message instructing him to extinguish his cigarette and listen carefully.
The voice identified itself as belonging to Orthon, the re-incarnation of Jesus Christ and the ruler of the entire universe. Orthon talked in detail to Weiking about how the real truth behind all religions was human contact with extraterrestrials, whom pre-modern humans mistook for gods, angels and demons. Orthon also told several facts about Weiking’s own life, which only Weiking himself could possibly have known at the time. At 5AM Orthon had finished his speech, and Knud Weiking immediately woke up his wife to tell about his unusual experience.
Knud Weiking communicated telepathically with Orthon every evening afterwards after the end of his shift, where he would ask the extraterrestrial entity various questions about the state of affairs on Earth. Weiking recorded these “channeling” sessions on tape and wrote down all of Orthon’s commentaries. As a result, Weiking quickly ended up with hours of recordings, as well as almost 400 pages of transcripts in various notebooks.
Orthon spoke, among other things, about life on other planets, the mechanics of faster-than-light travel as well as the future of life on Earth. The core of Orthon’s message to Knud Weiking, however, revolved around an imminent nuclear war that would start with nuclear bomb detonations in China before spreading to the rest of Asia and eventually the whole planet, with a fleet of spaceships being ready to evacuate as many Earth humans as possible.
Taxi driver and Orthon contactee Knud Weiking
The Universal Link to Denmark
Shortly after Weiking’s experiences began, he came into contact with Børge Jensen, who was then editor of UFO-Nyt (UFO News), the member magazine of SUFOI (Scandinavian UFO Information — the oldest active UFO investigation organization in Denmark). He was introduced to Jensen by courier Jørgen Ellesø, from whom he also learned about a man called Richard Grave, and his organization Universal Link.
Børge Jensen had already published several articles in UFO-Nyt about Richard Grave, a British real estate agent who had been receiving similar telepathic messages to those received by Weiking since April of 1961, with Grave having formed Universal Link to promote these. Richard Grave’s telepathic messages purported to be from an entity calling itself “The Master”, and likewise revolved around an imminent nuclear war with a fleet of extraterrestrial spaceships ready to rescue the surviving humans. Today we know that Knud Weiking actually was aware of this even before his own telepathic receptions from Orthon began.
Børge Jensen had from 1965–1966 attracted a group of UFO enthusiasts who had come to live with him in the Zealand town of Borup. In Borup, Jensen made his living as a schoolteacher and had received the nickname “Space Jensen” from the local residents, because of his interest in UFOs and extraterrestrial life. It became clear to the “Borup circle” that Weiking’s Orthon and Grave’s Master were the same being, on account of how similar their messages were, and Weiking quickly became the Danish medium of the group. They then started publishing a series of pamphlets describing Orthon’s messages, with titles like “The Voice from Heaven” and “The Spiritual School of Borup”. Weiking then formed an organisation to promote Orthon’s ideas, named Universal Link after the movement Grave had started in the UK.
Aformentioned courier Jørgen Ellesø, best known in Borup for claiming to be the re-incarnation of Julius Caesar, joined Universal Link as well and became the third public face of Universal Link after Weiking and Jensen. Ellesø became famous for his strange sense of humour and putting an emphasis on the re-interpretation of the Bible as revolving around contact with extraterrestrials whom ancient humans mistook for angels.
Børge Jensen looking at a portrait of Orthon (not to be confused with the Venusian spacefarer also named Orthon, who the Polish-American UFO contactee George Adamski claimed to have met in 1952)
In the spring and summer of 1967, Weiking delivered talks about his channelled messages to packed auditoriums. Weiking attracted the biggest followings in not just Borup, but in another Zealand town named Dianalund, where packed auditoriums listened to Weiking’s tape recordings of Orthon speaking through him and providing detailed instructions for exactly what to do when the nuclear battle for Armageddon began.
In the summer of 1967, Danish author Klaus Aarsleff attended several of Weiking’s meetings. Of all Orthon’s messages to Weiking, this one stood out the most vividly to Aarsleff:
”This is Orthon with an important greeting to everyone willing to listen and understand. It is my will that 300 kr. will be donated to our movement’s budget so that Knud and Børge can pay for a ferry ticket to Jutland, where others thirst after the important message…”
The Last Christmas?
In the autumn of 1967, Orthon announced through Weiking that the nuclear war would begin on Christmas Eve 1967, just as the Master had told Richard Grave 6 years earlier. In order to secure humanity’s existence, it would be necessary for Universal Link to build a lead-lined bunker where 70 pregnant women (along with doctors and midwives) could stay in security while the atomic Ragnarok erupted around them and the spaceships stayed ready to evacuate the last survivors of humanity. Orthon even specified the exact dimensions of the bunker.
Weiking and Universal Link raised 200,000 Danish Kroner to buy lumber, concrete and lead plates for the construction of a bunker near the Mid-Zealand town of Borup. (with the lead plates being meant to insulate the bunker from atomic radiation)
By the 22nd of December 1967, the bunker stood ready protected by 25 tons of lead plating, as its construction had been finished a couple days ahead of the looming nuclear apocalypse which Orthon had warned about. Even the New York Times printed a story about the Danish UFO group and their doomsday bunker!
Constructing the doomsday bunker in Borup. The followers managed to construct the bunker in only a few weeks
On the 23rd of December, Orthon suddenly sent a new message to Weiking. He commanded the group to leave the area and lock the door to the bunker, and told them that they with their construction project had shown their will to carry out Orthon’s orders, so he knew they were ready to follow him. The whole thing had just been a secret test of character!
Early in the morning on the 24th of December, a local musician named Aage Jensen called Weiking on the phone to talk about his plans for a perpetual motion machine. It dawned on Weiking that the perpetual motion machine was the same “nuclear energy exchange process” that Orthon had been talking about, and the propulsion system of the flying saucers. Weiking had only misunderstood this “energy exchange process” as a warning about nuclear war, instead of the invention of a perpetual motion machine.
As soon as Weiking realized that, Orthon commanded his followers to build such a perpetual motion machine and a flying saucer so they could fly up to him and meet his space alliance. Knud Weiking then called for a press conference where he and Aage Jensen showed their construction plans for the perpetual motion machine to the public and talked about their group’s new mission.
Unfortunately, back then the newspapers would not see publication until the 26th of December, so a thousand disappointed people had already shown up waiting outside the Borup fallout shelter on the 24th, staying there all the way until midnight.
When the newspapers came out on the 26th of December 1967, they were full of colourful stories about the group’s new project and sharp criticism of the Orthon group’s doomsday prophecies.
Most of Knud Weiking’s disciples left the Universal Link movement afterwards, except for his closest inner circle. Weiking continued to receive channeled messages from Orthon and made quite the fortune from dismantling the bunker and selling the materials, due to the high price of lead.
Big in czechoslovakia
In the 1990’s, a Czech UFO contactee named Ivo Benda started translating the writings of various Western contactees into the Czech language — Weiking’s among them. After Benda started a movement named the Universe People, which became quite popular in alternative circles in Czechia and Slovakia during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Weiking ended up having a following in those 2 countries — completely unbeknown to Weiking himself.
In 2006 a 41-year old woman named Lotte Nielsen, who lived in a hippie commune located around the former manor Overdrevsgaard near Borup, one day found a stranger sitting in a rocking chair when she came home. The stranger was a Slovak construction worker named Branjo, who had an interest in UFO contactee culture and moved to Denmark from Germany specifically because he wanted to meet Knud Weiking, whom Branjo understood was the most popular UFO prophet in Denmark! Branjo also knew that Weiking and Universal Link’s last known address was here in Borup, using the same PO Box as Lotte Nielsen’s hippie commune.
As soon as Branjo had moved into the commune, Lotte Nielsen had several UFO experiences of her own. One evening Nielsen put her 2‑year-old daughter to bed, seeing a row of glowing green and blue lights appear over the daughter’s blanket. When she told Branjo about the incident, he replied that he had asked the extraterrestrials to send positive energy with the purpose of helping the girl fall asleep.
Later in 2006, Nielsen saw 20 spheres of golden light emanating from a teddy bear she had just bought for her daughter. This occurrence repeated for several months, even after Branjo had left the commune. Then, the UFO-like spheres of lights stopped emanating from the teddy bear even when Nielsen shook it. In the meantime, she and Branjo had also attempted to find the current whereabouts of the UFO prophet Knud Weiking but to no avail.
Ivo Benda, founder of Universe People and the main person responsible for making Knud Weiking known outside of Denmark
The saga continues
The story of Branjo would not stop there. He would later on claim to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and in telepathic contact with another extraterrestrial: Commander Ashtar, whom an American aircraft mechanic named George van Tassel claimed to have met back in the 1950’s. (the aforementioned Ivo Benda having translated Van Tassel’s writings into Czech in the late 1990’s) According to Branjo, Commander Ashtar would soon make his existence public to the Earth people.
As for Branjo, he became known as a faith healer in Nørrebro, where he drew his own following from the district’s homeless population. Many of Branjo’s followers began living in Gitte Jul and Jakob Vedelsby’s own house.
Branjo now enlisted Gitte Jul’s talent as a psychic medium to establish telepathic contact with Ashtar and communicate with him on a daily basis, with Ashtar speaking through Gitte. Since Branjo could not convince Ashtar to appear in person in Nørrebro as Branjo had promised his fellow UFO enthusiasts back home in Slovakia, and many of his predictions (like the one about a spaceship appearing over Copenhagen) did not come true, the Slovak contactee ultimately returned to his home country.
In 2007 a Czech man would appear in Borup to search for the Orthon people once again, only to come in contact with Weiking’s grandchild who told him that Weiking died the year before. The Czech proclaimed that he wanted to take over the Universal Link movement and moved home to Czechia again. However, afterwards it’s been impossible to find out if anything ever came of this.
One of the newer ads of Ivo Benda’s still exisitng Universe People cult, also known as The Heavenly Angels and Cosmic People of Light Powers
Finally — a prediction that came true
In 2014, three Czechs visited Borup to wait for the second coming of Christ which they had been told would take place there through – you guessed it – telepathic communication with Orthon.
One of the Czechs, a software programmer named Miroslav Svoboda, told the Danish newspaper Politiken that he was genuinely surprised how few Danes knew about Orthon, George Adamski or Knud Weiking. Svoboda also showed the newspaper editors a notebook from the 1960’s, describing a channeled message from Orthon that appeared to correctly predict Denmark’s victory in the 1992 European football championship!
Knud Weiking and his movement would later make an appearance in two Danish novels published in 2006: Blue Brother by Ib Michael, which revolves around the contactee subculture of the 1960’s; The Law of Humans, which Jakob Vedelsby wrote as a fictionalised account of his encounters with Branjo.
Famous author Ib Michael’s book Blå Bror (“Blue Brother”), which touches on the subject and time period around Knud Weiking and the Danish Universal Link geoup
Commentary
Danish mainstream media took a strong interest in UFO sightings and contact stories back in the 1960’s. One case which the Danish media showed a particular interest in was the 1967 Sjællands Odde case, one of the few classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind here in Denmark, which hit the newspapers all over the country at the same time as Knud Weiking went public about his telepathic contact with Orthon.
The stories about the benevolent extraterrestrials coming to rescue humans from the nuclear battle of Armageddon must certainly have struck a chord with the general public when the Cuban Missile Crisis was fresh in living memory and the Cold War reached another boiling point as the Vietnam War escalated. Another point where Weiking tapped into the late 1960’s Zeitgeist was his claim about Orthon being the reincarnated Jesus Christ and the Bible being a garbled account of contact with extraterrestrials.
In this connection it should be mentioned, that despite having the same name, general appearance, and to a large degree also the same message, Knud Weiking’s Orthon was not the same entity as the Venusian spacefarer with whom the late Polish-American UFO contactee George Adamski (1891–1965) had claimed to have been in contact with. At the very least, Knud Weiking’s Orthon never mentioned anything about being the same entity as Adamski’s Orthon, and it’s a common misconception in UFO circles that Weiking was in contact with the same Orthon as Adamski was.
Ancient astronauts being mistaken for gods had already been a popular theme in science-fiction for decades by then, see H. P. Lovecraft’s novel At the Mountains of Madness from 1936 for a good example, but the 1960’s were when the idea broke into mainstream culture. Examples include: The Star Trek episode ”Who Mourns for Adonai?” that aired on September 22 of 1967, where the crew of the USS Enterprise met the Greek gods who turned out to be sufficiently advanced aliens; Arthur C. Clarke’s 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation hereof; Erich von Däniken’s allegedly non-fiction book Chariots of the Gods that came out the same year.
Even the Belgian comic book hero Tintin met aliens whom pre-industrial humans had mistaken for gods, complete with an Adamski-esque telepathic contactee, in the storyline ”Flight 714” which had been serialised in magazines from 1966–1967 before being published in a collected album in 1968.
The basic gist of Adamski-style contactee culture, with friendly human-looking extraterrestrials from advanced utopian civilisations coming down to Earth in order to warn us Earth humans against our destructive ways, also had a clear forerunner in science-fiction namely the popular 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Select Sources
-
Benny Grandahl: Orthon-bevægelsen https://ufomagasinet.dk/orthon-bevaegelsen/
-
Katerina Havlicka: Ivo Benda preached love to aliens, today he feeds birds in Slovakia https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/zahranicni/sekty-kulty-mesiasi-ivo-benda-astar-seran-vesmirni-lide.A161203_140049_zahranicni_kha
- Klaus Aarsleff: Hemmelige selskaber – 40 dræberkulter og sære selskaber, pp. 167–171
-
Martin Miko: The most bizarre sect in Czechia https://g.cz/nejbizarnejsi-sekta-v-cesku-vzpominate-na-vesmirne-lidi-a-astara-serana/
-
Odjitka Schlichtsova: Ivo Benda is still in contact https://info.dingir.cz/2019/10/ivo-benda-je-stale-v-kontaktu/
-
Politiken, 22nd of December 2016, pp. 1–2+4 & radio podcasts series made about the Orthon movement
Many thanks to Benny Grandahl a.k.a. “Mr. Orthon” for fact checking and consulting. Also thanks to Martin Chlebovsky for correspondence about UFO culture in Czechia and Slovakia.
