The Gyl­den­holm Lan­ding

The Enco­un­ter

On the 27th of April, 1960, at 03:00 in the mor­ning, “NN”, a then 31-year old pain­ter, was dri­ving in his work van along the coun­try road from Sla­gel­se towards Næst­ved. The spe­ed of the car was 60 km/h and the weat­her was slight­ly misty, with a mild wind blowing. When he pas­sed by the esta­te known as Gyl­den­holm, 11 km south of Sla­gel­se, NN began to feel as if he was being wat­ched by someo­ne or somet­hing. After dri­ving out of the forest sur­ro­un­ding the esta­te’s main buil­ding, he saw somet­hing unusu­al at roug­hly 20 degre­es over the horizon: A ring of whi­te light that appro­a­ched the car with gre­at spe­ed, but hal­ted just short of rea­ching it. The car’s igni­tion system and lights abrupt­ly stop­ped fun­ctio­ning. NN instant­ly clut­ched out, bra­ked down, and pul­led to the right side of the road. When NN stop­ped the car, the UFO was 6 meters away from him.

NN descri­bes the UFO more or less like a clas­sic flying sau­cer, 9 meters in dia­me­ter and 6 meters in height. The sha­pe resem­b­led two bowls joi­ned by a band of glowing light with a small stripe on the upper side. On the top of the sau­cer was a cupo­la with a fluo­re­s­cent stripe across. The lower half had three round, glowing spots that NN assu­med were win­dows. The col­or of the flying sau­cer was a greyish-gre­en. The below drawing was made by a pro­fes­sio­nal illu­stra­tor, under the gui­dan­ce of NN.

The sau­cer was hove­ring about 3 meters above the gro­und, when three telesco­ping lan­ding legs star­ted to des­cend from the bot­tom of it. A thi­ck cylin­dri­cal tube slid out, stop­ping just befo­re it tou­ched the gro­und. A rectangu­lar ope­ning appea­red on the tube, and 4 human-like figu­res exi­ted it. They then star­ted moving towards the car with slow, gra­ce­ful move­ments, which NN descri­bed as similar to tho­se made by divers wal­king on the oce­an floor. NN noti­ced that the four huma­noids were wea­ring shiny gre­en suits with a sym­bol of three dark ver­ti­cal stripes, of which the mid­dle was the lon­gest.

Whi­le the sau­cer crew moved towards NN’s car, a thi­ck cab­le with a squa­re scre­en at the end gli­ded from the flying sau­cer’s under­si­de towards the car, stop­ping approxi­ma­te­ly 2 meters from its right front win­dow. The scre­en was held by the cab­le at a height of one meter and NN noti­ced a glowing round whi­te lens appear on it, like on a came­ra. Aro­und this time NN also rea­lized that the crew only mea­su­red about 90 cen­ti­me­ters (i.e. aro­und 3 feet) in height. Their faces loo­k­ed somewhat flat­ter than most peop­le’s, but still lar­ge­ly human. NN obser­ved the sau­cer crew moving their mout­hs just like they were having a con­ver­sa­tion with each other, but with no sound com­ing from them. They were car­rying devi­ces that loo­k­ed like lar­ge flas­hlights, which they used to shine into the cabin of his car from all sides. Eve­ryt­hing during the expe­ri­en­ce was com­ple­te­ly silent except for a slight buzzing that NN com­pa­red to the sound made by high ten­sion wires.

After a whi­le, the four huma­noids moved back towards the flying sau­cer and after making a litt­le jump, flo­a­ted into the ope­ning in the cylin­der, which then clo­sed and retra­cted. The sau­cer then pul­led up its lan­ding legs and the cab­le with the “came­ra”. With a flash of very bright light and with incre­dib­le spe­ed, it then ascen­ded and flew away. The car’s electri­cal systems then tur­ned on again, which NN noti­ced when he saw the igni­tion lamp begin to glow. He then exi­ted the car and imme­di­a­te­ly detected a weird, bur­nt smell. Upon inspecting the lan­ding site, he saw that the flying sau­cer’s tripod lan­ding gear had left fist-deep depres­sions in the gro­und. Tou­ching the marks left by the lan­ding gear, NN could feel that the sur­face of gro­und was very hot. NN noti­ced later on that his wristwatch was four minu­tes behind the other clo­cks in his hou­se, which led him to assu­me that the enco­un­ter lasted four minu­tes in total. NN visi­ted the lan­ding site seve­ral times after his enco­un­ter and would noti­ce that eve­ry time the­re was a spot whe­re the vege­ta­tion grew at a much slo­wer pace than elsewhe­re.

After­math and inve­sti­ga­tion

The inci­dent took pla­ce in the spring of 1960, but went unrepor­ted at the time by the wit­ness. It wasn’t until ear­ly 1965 that, by coin­ci­den­ce, it came to the atten­tion of Scan­di­navi­an UFO Infor­ma­tion (SUFOI). Seve­ral dif­fe­rent inve­sti­ga­tors loo­k­ed into the case, all of them dee­m­ing the wit­ness to be a sen­sib­le and trustwort­hy man, who at the very least hone­st­ly belie­ved that he had expe­ri­en­ced what he said he had. The rea­son he did­n’t report it until so many years later, and gene­ral­ly only told very few peop­le about it during that peri­od, was that he wan­ted to avoid any publi­ci­ty.

The lan­ding loca­tion was inve­sti­ga­ted by SUFOI. Inde­ed some mar­kings were found in the grass whe­re the wit­ness descri­bed it. It was nonet­he­less impos­sib­le to con­clu­de that they were the result of what NN said they were. The only certain­ty was that the vege­ta­tion did seem to be inhi­bi­ted here, and that the­re were many pos­sib­le cau­ses for this.

Some other details are a bit more dif­fi­cult to accept. SUFOI inve­sti­ga­tor X. P. Mad­sen visi­ted the loca­tion and tri­ed to recre­a­te the who­le sce­ne. He con­clu­ded that NN’s stop­ping distan­ce — the point from whe­re the car died and he bra­ked and pul­led over, to whe­re the car final­ly stop­ped — would have been somewhe­re in betwe­en 1.5 and 2.5 meters. This is a very short distan­ce if you are dri­ving at 60 km pr. hour. As NN did not expe­ri­en­ce an abrupt stop, a the­ory was rai­sed that it hap­pe­ned due to a “for­ce field” emit­ting from the sau­cer. Ano­t­her more straight­forward expla­na­tion might be that he was dri­ving a lot slo­wer than he actu­al­ly remem­be­red.

Com­men­tary

The Gyl­den­holm lan­ding has all the ingre­di­ents of a clas­sic UFO lan­ding case: A sau­cer-sha­ped craft stop­ping a car as well as the pas­sen­ger’s watch, extra­ter­re­stri­al beings wea­ring uni­forms with stran­ge sym­bols, dis­tur­bing-look­ing ali­en sur­veil­lan­ce equip­ment used to inspect the wit­ness and vege­ta­tion that stops growing at the spot whe­re the sau­cer lan­ded. The­re are many thin­gs that point to this case being, at least in a sub­jecti­ve sen­se, a real expe­ri­en­ce, and not a hoax.

First of all is the long dura­tion of time betwe­en the inci­dent and the report, which makes no sen­se from a per­specti­ve of decep­tion. If it was a story made to fool the public, he would sure­ly have come out with it much soo­ner, not wai­ting more than 5 years. Of cour­se, this does lar­ge­ly mean taking NN’s word that his UFO enco­un­ter real­ly hap­pe­ned in 1960, which we can’t be certain of. It is also important to be awa­re that some cha­ra­cte­ri­sti­cs about the invol­ved ufo­nauts has later been inter­pre­ted more in line with the cur­rent notions of how ali­ens are “sup­po­sed” to look. This is appa­rent in the above illu­stra­tion, that was made at a later time, when the ima­ge­ry of the typi­cal “grey” ali­en was first begin­ning to gain tra­ction.

Regar­ding the stop­ping of vehi­c­les and the short circu­i­ting of mecha­ni­cal and electri­cal appli­an­ces, it has long been recog­nized as an often recur­ring fea­tu­re of UFO enco­un­ters from all over the wor­ld. But this was not real­ly com­mon know­led­ge at the time. That is not to say that NN could­n’t have pick­ed up the notion through popu­lar cul­tu­re, of cour­se. After all, this exa­ct sce­na­rio had hap­pe­ned in f.x. Sci­en­ce Fiction movies as far back as The Day The Earth Stood Still, from 1952.

Regar­ding the move­ments of the huma­noids, it is inte­r­e­sting that they were descri­bed as moving like divers on the oce­an floor. One would assu­me that a wit­ness who saw what appears to be extra­ter­re­stri­al visi­tors, may­be would have ascri­bed the move­ments to gravi­ta­tio­nal effects. But remem­ber that this hap­pe­ned in 1960, and whi­le it was not repor­ted until 1966, it would still be a few years until peop­le would see the results of gravi­ty on humans in spa­ce, from the 1969 moon lan­ding foo­ta­ge. Whi­le this is not proof of the rea­li­ty of the event, it is nonet­he­less a detail that seems remar­kably ahe­ad of its time.

One very inte­r­e­sting ele­ment of the case is the com­ple­te silen­ce, sans the buzzing noise, during the who­le inci­dent.  UFO­lo­gi­sts later came to iden­ti­fy this as the “Oz Factor”, a fea­tu­re of many UFO expe­ri­en­ces that may be rela­ted to electro­mag­ne­tic radi­a­tion, which can lead to both phy­si­cal effects on electri­cal systems as well as psy­cho­lo­gi­cal chan­ges in wit­nes­ses. Howe­ver, this factor was not real­ly pro­per­ly defi­ned or very well known among resear­chers, let alo­ne lay peop­le, until years after the Gyl­den­holm inci­dent. The fact that NN com­pa­red it with the sound of high ten­sion wires, also seems like an important clue in this regard.

It is clear that the­re was defi­ni­te­ly some kind of alte­ra­tion in sen­sory per­cep­tion for NN from his descrip­tion of not only the Oz Factor, but also the fee­ling of being wat­ched just pri­or to see­ing the circ­le in the sky. NN also sta­ted that he wasn’t afraid or anxious at any point during the enco­un­ter In fact, he felt somewhat apathe­tic. This unusu­al emo­tio­nal rea­ction to such an extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­en­ce points in the direction of an alte­red sta­te of conscious­ness, but what exa­ct­ly led to this sta­te we can only specu­la­te about.

Wha­te­ver you might belie­ve about the objecti­ve rea­li­ty of the Gyl­den­holm case, it seems qui­te clear to us that NN’s story was not a fabri­ca­tion. It might even be the case that some exter­nal phy­si­cal pheno­menon may have hel­ped sha­pe it.

Sour­ces

• UFO-Nyt #1 (1967), #6 (1973) & #6 (1978)
• Wil­ly Weg­ner — UFO Lan­din­ger I Dan­mark
• Wil­ly Weg­ner — UFO’er Over Dan­mark