The Åmo­sen Inci­dent

The Enco­un­ter

One night in May, 1975 (the wit­ness did not remem­ber the exa­ct date) a man was fis­hing for eel at the bank of the Åmo­se cre­ek lea­ding up to the bog named Åmo­sen. The weat­her that night was very clear, with mild frost and a visib­le moon. Short­ly befo­re mid­night, the wit­ness noti­ced a yel­low, low-flying light appro­a­ching Hes­sel­b­jerg Forest. The light flew in an irre­gu­lar, zig-zag, jum­ping man­ner. The light pas­sed over the forest, then flew over the south side of the cre­ek until it stop­ped 2–300 meters from the wit­ness. By then, the wit­ness had a very good view of the object up clo­se: It loo­k­ed exa­ct­ly like a clas­sic flying sau­cer, with two per­fect­ly sym­me­tri­cal sau­cer-sha­ped hal­ves. The upper half was a medi­um sha­de of gray and the lower half per­fect­ly bla­ck. The wit­ness esti­ma­ted the dia­me­ter of the sau­cer to be 13–15 meters. He noti­ced that even when hove­ring, the craft was in a con­stant wobbling erky-jer­ky move­ment throug­hout the enti­re sigh­ting.

The wit­ness then saw a row of bright­ly lit win­dows appear on the flying sau­cer’s upper half, and a cone-sha­ped beam of light emit­ting from the bot­tom. The coni­cal light ended in a point aro­und 5–6 meters above the gro­und, its col­or con­stant­ly shif­ting betwe­en various sha­des of oran­ge and whi­te. At this point, the wit­ness noti­ced two dark sil­hou­et­tes of huma­noid figu­res, visib­le from the che­st up, stan­ding in the win­dows. Both figu­res were visibly moving. The wit­ness was so cap­ti­va­ted by the two huma­noids in the win­dows, that it was not until a bit later he saw a third one flo­at­ing in the mid­dle of the light cone. The third huma­noid figu­re was clear­ly ascen­ding back into the spa­ces­hip, but the wit­ness could not deter­mi­ne whet­her this hap­pe­ned by its own for­ce, or if the light cone acted as some type of ele­va­tor system.

When the third huma­noid had arri­ved back into the sau­cer, the cone of light slo­wly retra­cted. After this, the sau­cer star­ted moving and flying aro­und various parts of the swamp, befo­re final­ly set­ting the cour­se towards the west and even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pea­ring com­ple­te­ly out of view. When depar­ting, the sau­cer appea­red to glow brigh­ter in col­or than befo­re, as if a ring of glowing whi­te light appea­red aro­und the edge of the sau­cer. Accor­ding to the wit­ness, the enti­re sigh­ting took about 5 minu­tes, and during the who­le time eve­ryt­hing had been com­ple­te­ly silent.

SUFOI loo­k­ed into the case soon after it had been repor­ted, but we don’t have much detail about how the inve­sti­ga­tion occu­red. The wit­ness was clear­ly asked certain questions, howe­ver, based on expe­ri­en­ce from other enco­un­ters of this kind. For examp­le: He was asked if he had been para­lyzed during the enco­un­ter, to which he answe­red nega­ti­ve. The­re had been other phy­si­cal effects, though: The wit­ness recal­led that he deve­l­oped an une­x­plai­nab­le spot in one of his eyes, which at the same time beca­me bloo­dy red, fol­lowing the enco­un­ter. Howe­ver, this eye irri­ta­tion went away after 10 days and the wit­ness did not belie­ve it had any con­nection to the UFO sigh­ting.

Com­men­tary

Lumi­nes­cent “swamp gas” is a stan­dard skep­ti­cal expla­na­tion for UFO sigh­tings, to the point it has beco­me a run­ning joke. There­fo­re, it is somewhat amu­sing that one of the few CE3K cases in Den­mark, turns out to take pla­ce in a bog. The case is also somewhat remi­ni­s­cent of the wide­ly repor­ted Pasca­gou­la abduction case from 1973, that hap­pe­ned less than 2 years befo­re Åmo­sen. With that in mind, it is temp­ting to try and explain it away as eit­her a tall tale, or a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of well known natu­ral pheno­me­na, “infu­sed” with ima­ges from other UFO cases.

But, despi­te the above simila­ri­ties to well known Ame­ri­can UFO cases, and even though data in this case is limi­ted, the­re are also seve­ral thin­gs poin­ting towards, if not a full blown ali­en enco­un­ter, at least some kind of unusu­al, phy­si­cal event taking pla­ce. The eye mala­dy that the wit­ness descri­bed may in fact be sig­ni­fi­cant and very much rela­ted to the enco­un­ter, despi­te his own appa­rent reluctan­ce to make that con­nection. The­re are count­less other examp­les of such unusu­al bodi­ly effects occur­ring after clo­se enco­un­ters with UFOs. (See f.x. Josef Matiszewski, who after a CE3K in 1951 expe­ri­en­ced both diar­r­hea, insom­nia and a weird aci­dic taste in the mouth in addi­tion to his pock­et watch no lon­ger wor­king — or even the poli­ce offi­cer Evald Maarup, who accor­ding to his wife loo­k­ed “pale with fright” after a flying sau­cer stop­ped his patrol car one eve­ning in 1970). It may also be sig­ni­fi­cant that the wit­ness repor­ted no sound whatso­e­ver during the enti­re sigh­ting. This is somet­hing found repe­a­ted­ly in CE3 cases.

In any case, the­se details are somet­hing he could easily have pick­ed up on from pre­vious­ly repor­ted UFO cases (the­re were a lot known to the Danish public at this time), to give his story more cre­di­bi­li­ty. In that con­nection, it could be argu­ed, that if the wit­ness had wan­ted to cre­a­te a hoax, he would­n’t have wai­ted two years to report the sigh­ting. The coun­ter-argu­ment to this, of cour­se, is that we only have his word for such a long time span having taken pla­ce.

Sour­ces

• Sjæl­lands Tiden­de, 12th of March, 1977
• UFO-Aspekt #3 (1977)
• UFO-Nyt #3 (1977)