The Evald Maarup Case

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 1970 incident involving police officer Evald Maarup is considered one of the most credible, unexplained UFO cases from Denmark. It gained a lot of publicity both at home and abroad, with journalists as far away as Ghana wanting to cover the story.

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.

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.

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 1976, 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.

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.