In 1970, a poli­ce car suf­fe­red a power outa­ge as a myste­rious UFO lit it up. Read the incre­dib­le story of Maarup’s enco­un­ter and sub­sequent expe­ri­en­ces here

Case Type: CE2 

When: 13th of August 1970 (with sub­sequent inci­dents on the 14th of August 1973, and again in 1976)

Whe­re: Near Sil­lerup, North of Hader­s­lev (GPS: 55.30565, 9.55897)

Investigator(s): Ole Hen­nings­en, Kim Møl­ler Han­sen, and many others over the years

The Ini­ti­al Expe­ri­en­ce

The inci­dent took pla­ce on the 13th of August 1970 at 22:50 (10:50 PM) whi­le offi­cer Evald Han­sen Maarup was dri­ving home from work in his poli­ce cru­i­ser. Approxi­ma­te­ly 8–10 kilo­metres north of Hader­s­lev, hal­fway betwe­en the Sout­hern Jut­land towns of Kabd­rup and Fjel­strup, a beam of blu­ish-whi­te, neon-like light lit up the car from above. At the same time, the car’s engi­ne and lights went out. Maarup then pul­led over to the side of the road, about 200 metres ahe­ad of a T‑junction whe­re the Hader­s­lev-Fjel­strup hig­hway cros­sed the road towards Kabd­rup. When he stop­ped, the light beca­me gra­du­al­ly brigh­ter, like a blowtorch. It also beca­me very hot insi­de the car, “like dri­ving towards the sun on a midsum­mer day”, despi­te it being a cool night.

The approxi­ma­te loca­tion for the expe­ri­en­ce, with an out­look towards Hader­s­lev-Fjel­strup T‑Junction

When Maarup tri­ed to call the poli­ce sta­tion, he also found out that the car’s radio did­n’t work. Neit­her did any of the other electri­cal instal­la­tions in the car. The light blin­ded him at first, but at some point it retra­cted a bit. Maarup could now lean forward and see the light sour­ce. Here he saw the bot­tom of a sil­ve­ry-grey object, which he deter­mi­ned to be betwe­en 10 and 15 meters wide, with two ball-sha­ped pro­tru­sions on the bot­tom of the sau­cer, each betwe­en 1 and 1.5 meters in dia­me­ter. He esti­ma­ted the UFO to be hove­ring at an alti­tu­de of 20–25 meters.

The beam of light pro­jected by the UFO was 4–5 meters in dia­me­ter and was shar­ply defi­ned like it had been “cut off”. After viewing the UFO for about five seconds, the light retra­cted furt­her into a hole at the bot­tom of the object. After a few seconds, the object dis­ap­pea­red ver­ti­cal­ly into the sky. Imme­di­a­te­ly afterwards, the car lights came back on and Maarup could now start the engi­ne. He noti­ced that he had heard no sound at all during the sigh­ting. Befo­re dri­ving home, he step­ped out of the car to see if any tra­ces were left behind from the object. Whi­le doing this, he almost bur­nt him­self on the hood of his car. He obser­ved ano­t­her car dri­ve by and thought of asking the dri­ver whet­her they had seen anyt­hing stran­ge on the way, but ulti­ma­te­ly refrai­ned from doing so. When Maarup retur­ned home, his wife noti­ced he loo­k­ed pale with fright.

As the power came on again and the UFO was taking off, Maarup mana­ged to take three pho­to­grap­hs of the UFO with the poli­ce car’s came­ra. He had the­se pho­to­grap­hs deve­l­oped alre­a­dy the next day, but they just showed a spot of bright light in the dark sky (see below)

Maarup then repor­ted his expe­ri­en­ce to the nea­rest Danish Air For­ce base, who later col­lected the came­ra film for ana­ly­sis. When Maarup told the other poli­ce offi­cers at the sta­tion about his expe­ri­en­ce, only one expres­sed con­cern about his men­tal health. The rest belie­ved that he had real­ly seen somet­hing unusu­al. Soon after, the press got word of the inci­dent. Maarup ended up doing seve­ral inter­views with news­pa­pers and TV the fol­lowing days, whi­le the pho­to­grap­hs were under ana­ly­sis by the air for­ce. At some point the public inte­r­est in the case rea­ched a level whe­re Maarup con­stant­ly got pho­ne calls from peop­le wan­ting to inter­view him – even to his desk at the poli­ce sta­tion. Maarup had ini­ti­al­ly thought it was fine tal­king about his sigh­ting, but had by now come to regret it.

Inve­sti­ga­tion and Pos­sib­le Expla­na­tions

Pro­po­sed “natu­ral” expla­na­tions given for Maarup’s first sigh­ting inclu­de, in no par­ti­cu­lar order: sear­chlights from fly­by T‑33 jets on patrol, light reflected in a win­dow, sta­tic electri­ci­ty, ball ligh­t­ning and even a meteor. Danish Air For­ce pilots, who had been on a patrol exerci­se in the area on the 13th of August, 1970, were inter­viewed. They did not obser­ve anyt­hing unusu­al that could explain Maarup’s sigh­ting whi­le in the air, alt­hough one pilot remem­be­red see­ing a meteor some time during the night. In fact, sepa­ra­te reports do indi­ca­te that the­re was inde­ed a qui­te notab­le meteor — 3 to 6 times brigh­ter than usu­al — visib­le in the sky that night.

Seve­ral peop­le in the region came out and clai­med to have seen UFOs the same night as Maarup. Howe­ver, when SUFOI (Scan­di­navi­an UFO Infor­ma­tion) con­ta­cted peop­le living in the imme­di­a­te area of the sigh­ting itself, they did not mana­ge to find any­o­ne that had wit­nes­sed anyt­hing unusu­al. Inve­sti­ga­tion also reve­a­led that the­re were no lamp­posts or wires wit­hin a radi­us of 500 meters from the sigh­ting area. Hen­ce, no imme­di­a­te sour­ces that could have cau­sed any light reflections or electri­cal pheno­me­na. The lack of electri­cal sour­ces also makes it dif­fi­cult to explain the sud­den shut­down of Maarup’s car. The patrol car, a 1970 Ford Zodi­ac, was brand new at the time and had had no tech­ni­cal pro­blems befo­re or after the inci­dent.

In Novem­ber of 1970, the Danish Air For­ce clo­sed the case and con­clu­ded (incon­clu­si­ve­ly) that they did not have a neat fit­ting expla­na­tion for what had hap­pe­ned to Maarup. Howe­ver, they felt con­vin­ced that it did­n’t invol­ve a UFO. Rat­her, they sug­ge­sted that Maarup’s expe­ri­en­ce was due to a string of inde­pen­dent events — see­ing the bright lan­ding ligh­t/an­ti-col­li­sion light from a jet aircraft, whi­le at the same time the accu­mu­la­tor ter­mi­nal cab­le of the car fell out and a meteor appea­red in the sky — all of which had resul­ted in an inter­pre­ta­tion of somet­hing fan­ta­stic. This expla­na­tion did not satis­fy very many peop­le and inste­ad fuel­led specu­la­tion of a cover-up.

Maarup him­self remem­be­red see­ing jets 10 minu­tes after his 1970 expe­ri­en­ce and dis­mis­sed it as an expla­na­tion for what had hap­pe­ned, sin­ce none of their lan­ding lights loo­k­ed anyt­hing like the light he had pho­to­grap­hed. He won­de­red at some point if the UFO could just have been a heli­cop­ter, but also dis­mis­sed that idea becau­se the UFO was com­ple­te­ly silent. We should also not for­get the way Maarup descri­bed the light from the object as a “shar­ply defi­ned” cone of con­cen­tra­ted light. If it appea­red in this man­ner, it would con­sti­tu­te an ano­ma­ly in itself. Only in recent years have sci­en­ti­sts discove­red how to make pho­tons “sti­ck” toget­her to osten­sibly give light a sha­pe.

Many years later a for­mer radar ope­ra­ti­ve for the Air For­ce, Nis Krog, went public and sta­ted that he had regi­ste­red an uni­den­ti­fied solid object on the night of Maarups UFO enco­un­ter. The object was sim­ply inter­pre­ted as an “unk­nown” and not­hing was ever done to try and explain its appea­ran­ce. Nonet­he­less, Nis Krog’s radar UFO does balan­ce the sca­le in favor of Evald Maarups testi­mo­ny, even though Krog’s col­le­agu­es have questio­ned his inter­pre­ta­tion of events.

Evald Maarup in uni­form

Furt­her Expe­ri­en­ces

Exa­ct­ly 3 years and 1 day later, on the 14th of August 1973 at 22:50, Maarup had ano­t­her UFO expe­ri­en­ce. This time, the enco­un­ter took pla­ce near Skoubøl­ling, 6 kilo­metres north of Hader­s­lev. Maarup was dri­ving east on a road lea­ding to the muni­ci­pal hig­hway Hader­s­lev-Hejls­min­de-Kol­ding, when he sud­den­ly saw a light shin­ing over the field. Look­ing down at the field, Maarup saw seve­ral hor­ses and catt­le pani­ck­ing, run­ning aro­und insi­de a cone of light pro­jected by a flying sau­cer-type UFO.

The UFO then star­ted moving towards the road. It did­n’t take long befo­re his car was once again caught in a beam that stop­ped the car’s engi­ne and electri­cal system. The UFO was tip­ping at a 45 degree ang­le whi­le pro­jecting the beam at him. Whi­le making the­se mane­u­vers, Maarup could see the UFO had three half-circu­lar “bumps” on the bot­tom, similar to tho­se on the object from 1970. Short­ly afterwards, it pul­led up the beam of light, which had the same well-defi­ned cone-sha­pe as the one in his first sigh­ting. Once again, he took seve­ral pho­to­grap­hs, but they did­n’t show much more than the 1970 pho­tos. Once again he heard no sound during the expe­ri­en­ce — except for a “whoosh”, similar to the sound of a strong wind pas­sing betwe­en tre­es, when the UFO flew away.

In 1975, Maarup saw yet ano­t­her UFO in the same area – this time with ano­t­her poli­ce offi­cer as a fel­low wit­ness. They were dri­ving along the A10 hig­hway from Kol­ding to Hader­s­lev, when they saw somet­hing stran­ge to the sout­hwest: a light han­ging over a forest, look­ing like the full moon cut in half. Howe­ver, the actu­al moon was visib­le elsewhe­re in the sky at the same time. The UFO tip­ped up and down and when they drove towards the forest in order to get a clo­ser look, it sud­den­ly dis­ap­pea­red. The next day, both offi­cers read a local news­pa­per story about a woman living in a near­by vil­la­ge, who had seen a huge glowing UFO the same eve­ning.

A more recent inter­pre­ta­tion of the Maarup inci­dent by Simon Hes­sela­ger Johan­sen

Com­men­tary

A lot can and has been said over the years about the Maarup case, which can well be descri­bed as a flags­hip among Danish UFO cases. Howe­ver, com­pa­red to Maarup’s ini­ti­al expe­ri­en­ce, his later UFO sigh­tings have recei­ved very litt­le atten­tion. This is no doubt due to some con­cern about mud­dying the waters too much, and it does inde­ed cre­a­te some pro­blems in terms of making the mat­ter a serious object of stu­dy. But it is actu­al­ly not at all unusu­al for UFO wit­nes­ses to have sub­sequent, fol­low-up expe­ri­en­ces (in UFO ter­mi­no­lo­gy, the­se wit­nes­ses are cal­led “repe­a­ters”). And even though it is temp­ting to group all three of Maarup’s obser­va­tions toget­her to try and find a lar­ger mea­ning, it is pro­bably bet­ter to inve­sti­ga­te them sepa­ra­te­ly and avoid too many assump­tions. Howe­ver, the­re is no doubt that the similar ele­ments and tem­poral coin­ci­den­ces, in Maarup’s first two obser­va­tions in par­ti­cu­lar, push the boun­da­ri­es of what can right­ly be cal­led coin­ci­den­ces.

Ini­ti­al­ly, Maarup sta­ted that he thought the object he saw in 1970 was an intel­li­gent­ly con­trol­led tech­ni­cal appa­ra­tus of some kind. Howe­ver, he was later con­vin­ced that it was of extra­ter­re­stri­al ori­gin. One can hard­ly bla­me Maarup for com­ing to this con­clu­sion, and it is certain­ly remar­kab­le that the object/objects he saw were almost iden­ti­cal to the sau­cer-sha­ped UFOs that Geor­ge Adam­ski made so popu­lar years ear­li­er (at the time of Maarup’s enco­un­ter they had long ago gone “out of fas­hion”, though). Furt­her striking is that Maarup’s ori­gi­nal expe­ri­en­ce lar­ge­ly repe­a­ted itself with ano­t­her of Den­mark’s very famous UFO cases, name­ly the Claus Lund­holm inci­dent, which took pla­ce approx. 50 km north of the ori­gi­nal obser­va­tion site, in 1995.

To this day the­re are still ufo­lo­gi­sts inve­sti­gat­ing the details of Maarup’s expe­ri­en­ces, so we have no doubt not heard the final word of it just yet.

Select Sour­ces

  • FUFOS News­let­ter #1 (1975)
  • Kim Møl­ler Han­sen — Pro­jekt UFO
  • Psy­kisk Forum, Sep­tem­ber 1970
  • SUFOI News­let­ter #1 (1975)
  • UFO-Aspekt #1 (1977)
  • UFO-Nyt #2 (1976)
  • Wil­ly Weg­ner — UFO­er over Dan­mark
  • Video: Mødet i Mør­ket