The Bro­by Ufo­nauts

The Enco­un­ter

At 04:45 AM on a July mor­ning in 1982, a 15-year old boy was bicycling towards a gar­de­ning com­pa­ny in the town of Bro­by, whe­re he was wor­king as a sub­sti­tu­te. When tur­ning a cor­ner on the road, he sud­den­ly saw a glowing light over a field 50–60 meters away. The boy stop­ped, got off the bicyc­le, and wal­ked towards the field to inspect the light clo­ser. Here he saw an object, 2 meters in height and 2 meters in dia­me­ter, sha­ped like two sau­cers joi­ned toget­her. The spa­ces­hip was a bright glowing whi­te in col­or, with no visib­le details on the sur­face except a hatch on one side.

He then noti­ced five huma­noid beings stan­ding near­by, all of them 10–15 meters away. They were no tal­ler than 1 meter in height, with poin­ty ears, big heads and bro­ad che­sts, but very short hips and legs. Four of the huma­noids were wal­king aro­und in the field “on top of the grass” and appea­red to be taking samp­les of the soil, which they were put­ting in bags. The fifth, who was obser­ving the others as if it was a com­man­ding offi­cer, then sud­den­ly noti­ced the wit­ness. Imme­di­a­te­ly, they rus­hed back into the flying sau­cer through the hatch and the sau­cer took off with what the wit­ness descri­bed as a whoos­hing or a growling sound. As it took flight, it began to glow so bright­ly that the obser­ver had to cover his eyes with his hands. The sau­cer dis­ap­pea­red over some high ten­sion wires in a flight direction towards the city of Oden­se.

After the sigh­ting was over, the obser­ver noti­ced a depres­sion in the grass whe­re the flying sau­cer had been. He then resu­med the bicyc­le ride to his wor­k­pla­ce, and upon arri­val told the boss about the expe­ri­en­ce. The boss explai­ned the sigh­ting away, sug­ge­sting that the boy pro­bably had not com­ple­te­ly awa­ke­ned yet. Fol­lowing that dis­mis­si­ve rea­ction from his boss, the wit­ness hesi­ta­ted in tel­ling any­o­ne else about his sigh­ting, until atten­ding a lec­tu­re by the Funen UFO Socie­ty (FUFOS) a few mont­hs later. Here he fil­led out a for­mu­la which FUFOS forwards to Scan­di­navi­an UFO Infor­ma­tion (SUFOI).

Inve­sti­ga­tion

Fol­lowing the report, SUFOI’s local UFO Stu­dy Group in Aaben­raa took over inve­sti­ga­tion of the case and sent four of its mem­bers to visit the wit­ness on the 1st of May, 1983. They were welco­med warm­ly by the boy and his parents, whom they sub­sequent­ly began to inter­view. Among other thin­gs, the inve­sti­ga­tors now lear­ned that the field in which the enco­un­ter had taken pla­ce, then con­si­sted of 30–40 cm high Lol­li­um grass. This meant that the huma­noids in effect would have been flo­at­ing or levi­tat­ing above it!

After the inter­view, the inve­sti­ga­tors went with the wit­ness to the lan­ding site, which in the mean­ti­me had been see­ded with grains, making it impos­sib­le to deter­mi­ne any pos­sib­le mar­kings from the UFO. Howe­ver, the wit­ness was sure of the exa­ct pla­ce whe­re the sau­cer had lan­ded, as he had taken note of a near­by water post. From this the inve­sti­ga­tors then took some mea­su­res and were able to deter­mi­ne the fol­lowing: The distan­ce from the road to the lan­ding site was 52 meters and at his clo­sest, the wit­ness was about 1–2 meters from the object. The object itself must have been 9 meters in circum­fe­ren­ce and 2,86 meters in dia­me­ter. The direction the flying sau­cer flew away towards, was even­tu­al­ly pin­po­in­ted to 180 degre­es south on a com­pass.

In trying to nar­row in on an exa­ct date of the sigh­ting, the wit­ness’ parents sug­ge­sted to the inve­sti­ga­tors that it had to have taken pla­ce betwe­en the 15th and the 25th of July 1982. A heatwa­ve had hit Funen in tho­se days, which made it neces­sary for the gar­de­ners (wor­king in gre­en­hou­ses all day) to go to work much ear­li­er than usu­al. This explai­ned the unusu­al­ly ear­ly hour of the mor­ning at which their son had left home. Ano­t­her important clue was that it had rai­ned that mor­ning. After con­ta­cting the Danish Mete­o­r­o­lo­gi­cal Insti­tu­te, the inve­sti­ga­tors lear­ned that the only day with mor­ning rain during the July ’82 heatwa­ve was on the 16th of July, so this is the most like­ly date. The inve­sti­ga­tors also con­ta­cted the local poli­ce, who said that they had not recei­ved any UFO reports in July 1982.

Overall, the wit­ness came across as a matu­re and very trustwort­hy per­son, who could prompt­ly reco­unt his obser­va­tion seve­ral times wit­hout sig­ni­fi­cant chan­ges in detail. Both parents also belie­ved their son’s expla­na­tion, as he was not the kind of per­son who was known for day­drea­m­ing and fan­ta­sizing.

Howe­ver, the inve­sti­ga­tors did noti­ce some slight incon­si­sten­cies and irre­gu­la­ri­ties com­pa­red to the wit­ness’ ori­gi­nal report. For examp­le, he was uncertain about com­pass directions, which he indi­ca­ted wrong­ly seve­ral times. Upon visi­ting the lan­ding site, he had no such pro­blems, though. The wit­ness had also ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten that whi­le the patch of grass on which the spa­ces­hip had lan­ded was bur­nt, but later he said that he had only meant to say that it was depres­sed, and may­be slight­ly dar­ker than the rest of the field. They also found it slight­ly odd he could not remem­ber the date — not even whet­her it hap­pe­ned in July or June. The most notab­le detail was that the wit­ness was reluctant to give the name and num­ber of his employ­er at the time, argu­ing that he found it unli­ke­ly they would get any infor­ma­tion out of him. The inve­sti­ga­tors were not unsym­pathe­tic to him not wan­ting to invol­ve others, but still the moti­ve was  not com­ple­te­ly com­ple­te­ly clear.

Nevert­he­less, the final ver­di­ct from SUFOI was that any specu­la­tion of a hoax was out of the question, and the sigh­ting was filed as genu­i­ne­ly une­x­plai­ned, a sta­tus which it has kept to this day and which is unli­ke­ly to chan­ge.

Com­men­tary

Upon clo­ser inve­sti­ga­tion, most of the details of the wit­ness ended up being true, showing that if a hoax, it was a very detai­led one, wit­hout any real dis­cer­nib­le pur­po­se. The slight incon­si­sten­cies in the wit­ness’ ear­li­er and later acco­unts, his ina­bi­li­ty to deter­mi­ne a date, and his reluctan­ce to refer to his for­mer employ­er are certain­ly thin­gs to con­si­der when weig­hing the case for and against, but on the who­le they do not real­ly appear that dam­ning.

It also seems presci­ent to take note of the more obscu­re details that con­nect the Bro­by enco­un­ter with similar ones on record. Whi­le we do not have any indi­ca­tion that the wit­ness expe­ri­en­ced the same kind of “sen­sory bubb­le”, Oz factor effect as f.x. in the Gyl­den­holm Lan­ding case, we get an indi­ca­tion that somet­hing similar could have been going on. One thing to noti­ce is that it was rai­ning that mor­ning, hin­ting at a poten­ti­al thund­er­storm and the­re­by a pos­sib­le lar­ge electri­cal event. Sin­ce we know that such factors can play a role in the chan­ge of human per­cep­tion, it is not an unim­portant detail. Ano­t­her point is the stran­ge sound of the UFO taking off, which could be an indi­ca­tion that some kind of exter­nal pheno­menon affecting the sen­ses had been pre­sent. But this is pure specu­la­tion, and it would have been just as easy to sim­ply gle­an such details from the avai­lab­le UFO lite­ra­tu­re at the time and incor­pora­te them into a more suc­ces­sful hoax nar­ra­ti­ve.

All we can real­ly say is that the Bro­by case fits real­ly well into the pat­tern of “lan­ding and soil sam­pling” type cases we know from all over the wor­ld. The­se nai­vi­stic, almost the­a­tri­cal enco­un­ters had by 1982 long sin­ce rea­ched their peak and had star­ted to fade into the back­gro­und of the growing amo­unt of ali­en abduction reports. Inde­ed, this is the last of the “clas­sic” CE3 lan­ding cases that we have from Den­mark. The only one that comes clo­se was the Åsum enco­un­ter, which alle­ged­ly hap­pe­ned on Funen aro­und the same time, but wasn’t repor­ted until the mid 1990s.

Sour­ces

• SUFOI Press relea­se (1984)
• UFO-Nyt #1 (1984)