Metaphysical Articles: Interesting Articles, Links and Other Media: UFOs Mass Sighting Event in Finland 1966

UFOlogy: "Anatomy of a UFO Incident" article by Lawrence Gerald / Ideal's UFO Magazine #1 March 1978

Over the years when I've noticed declarations online expressing the hope that people in positions of government authority will someday disclose covered-up data about subjects associated with 'UFOlogy,' what is left unmentioned is the preponderance of information that may still be found in books and periodicals from past decades. An example presented in the entirety with this blog article is "Anatomy of a UFO Incident." The report is described in the table of contents of the magazine as: "One of the biggest 'swarms' of recent history occurred in Finland in 1966. Though the phenomenon was investigated little, it made a major impact on thousands of people who witnessed it. Three of those eyewitnesses tell their stories of the night they can't forget."

The three witnesses interviewed were two airplane pilots and an American woman who was visiting Helsinki during the reported 'wave' of 'flying saucer'-type UFO sightings that took place in and around the city during a 14-hour period commencing at dusk on October 13, 1966. A previous blog article includes reports of similar events in the United States documented to have occurred in 1947 and 1950. A mass sighting in Italy occurred on October 27, 1954 and was the subject of a retrospective article by the BBC in 2014. 'The Phoenix Lights' in 1997 is a well-known example. The UFO Magazine article mentions events in Washington, D.C. in 1952 and in Tokyo in 1964. This year there have been reports and videos about UFOs in Brazil in May. (video 1, video 2)

The "Anatomy of a UFO Incident" article was accompanied by a fear-oriented blurb below the headline stating: "The great UFO 'swarm' around the capital of Finland in 1966 has been rarely reported—and investigated even less—but for the people involved, it remains a terrifying experience that will never be forgotten." An orientation associating UFOS with fearful or menacing hypothetical attributes is apparent among the topics selected for this premiere edition of the new magazine in 1978: "Who are the Men In Black?," "The Pacific Northwest — Target for UFOs," "The Bermuda Triangle's Anguished Survivor" (an article unreasonably connecting "the possibility that aliens from outer space are kidnapping our aircraft" with the disappearance of a U.S. Air Force C-119; the 'survivor' described avoiding the flight due to a premonition described as him having heard "a voice from somewhere"), "The Ordinary American — Victim of UFOs" and "Air Battles with UFOs — The Early Days."

This article incidentally includes commentary indicating the author's reluctance in investigating claims of transcendental communication — providing an example of a bias in UFOlogy reporting that continues to this day as indicated in a recent blog article. An extraneous portion of the article is some sentences about the suicide of a disturbed 17-year-old on the same night as the 'Wave' event despite there being no known correlation with the UFO sightings. There is also a statement about "a sharp temperature drop" being "associated with UFO sightings in the Bermuda Triangle" that is obviously unsubstantiated.

The issue also includes "The Air Force is Lying about UFOs!" and an interview with Dr. J. Allen Hynek: "Meet the Technical Expert of the Hit Film, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'" As previously mentioned, the movie released in November 1977 has a storyline involving an intuitive factor among the protagonists that leads them to a climactic encounter. Similarly, the plot of the first "Star Wars" movie released in March the same year involved 'The Force' in relation to aspects of human mentality. Hynek is quoted about the question of an air force cover-up: "Well, there are two kinds of cover-ups: You can cover up knowledge and you can cover up ignorance. I think there was much more of the latter than of the former. The Air Force was puzzled by UFOs . . . it is a defense organization, not a scientific organization . . . out-of-body experiences, ESP, psychokinesis, telepathy. All these different things seem to be pushing their way into our consciousness . . . I feel that the UFOs are just one of the signals of a coming change in our scientific paradigm . . . UFOs may well be the start of a revolution in science and human understanding."

Thanks to the work of authors and UFOlogists such as those profiled in many articles at this blog, the fear and military concern about phenomena usually expressed as 'UFOs' and 'flying saucers' should today be known as greatly ameliorated. (UFOlogy Articles Index)

Anatomy of a UFO Incident

by Lawrence Gerald

When you talk UFOs with Bjorn Carlsen, it's best to use a soft voice and broach the subject lightly. Fifty-year-old Carlsen, a first officer with the Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) looks like the gentlest of men, a pleasant-featured fellow who might pet your dog or play with your kids. But beneath that kindly exterior, you get the impression that 230-lb., powerfully-built Carlsen has the potential of a keg of dynamite waiting to be touched off.

And the subject of UFOs touches him off.

"I don't like the damn things," he says, with just a trace of Swedish accent. "They're spooky and they're scary and they could have killed us."

When you talk about UFOs with Fairfax, Virginia, housewife Nina Boyer, it's better to take a consoling approach — reminding her that she isn't alone, that thousands of ordinary citizens have been threatened by flying saucers, and that many have felt the fright she experienced. Fifty-three-year-old Mrs. Boyer is gentle, too, and has the inner strength to cope with being a UFO witness, but she doesn't get angry about it. She just wishes it had never happened.

"A lot of people who saw those things were more frightened than I was," she acknowledges. "I imagine some of them still worry."

We talked to both these people—and many others, over a period of several years—seeking to unravel one of the great UFO mysteries of our time, the "wave" of sightings that took place in and around Helsinki, the capital of Finland, during a 14-hour period from dusk on October 13, 1966, til 8:00 a.m. the following day.


The capital of Finland is Helsinki, the site of one of the great UFO "flaps" in recent history. Saucers were spotted by merchant vessels, pilots and thousands of civilians.

More than a decade has passed since this great Scandinavian UFO frenzy alarmed witnesses, excited scientists and made banner headlines in Helsinki. Yet this giant UFO "flap" to our knowledge has never been reported in the U.S. And to the people who were there, the memory is as vivid as if it happened yesterday.

Briefly, here is what did happen:

During that long night, people on vessels at sea and virtually the entire population of downtown Helsinki spotted low-flying, blue-white lights which cavorted through the skies alone, in small groups and in V-shaped formations of up to 12 or more. These brightly-colored, airborne apparitions showed up on radar, disappeared radio broadcasts, and "buzzed" at least three airliners, including Carlsen's. They evaded pursuit by Finnish jet fighters. They ruined film exposed by several photographers. They harried, harassed and annoyed as many as a million people for nearly 14 hours — and then they completely disappeared.

At least one person may have committed suicide as a result of this UFO "frenzy." And several persons whose stories can't be verified claim to have had psychic messages from, even actual contact with, aliens from space.

We decided to look at this UFO incident not from the viewpoint of the "far out" recipients of beamed messages, but from the more conservative accounts of serious, responsible persons.

Three, in particular. We interviewed airline pilot Carlsen in the plush "cake lounge" of the Marski Hotel in Helsinki only weeks after the incident. (This writer was living in Helsinki at the time but had been out of town that critical night.) We talked to Mrs. Nina Boyer in her Virginia apartment nine years later, in late 1975, and spoke to another pilot, Harold Peyton, in 1977. Because of his employment, Carlsen's name is disguised slightly here. All other names in this "anatomy of a UFO incident" are real.

The story begins at official sunset—6:17 p.m.—when Birgitta Lindroos, a clerk-typist for the Helsinki city government, emerges from a coffee shop near the waterfront. She notices several persons clustered along the sea wall, staring out at lengthening shadows on the water. A policeman points, gestures.

"Suddenly, I realized that six bright lights were skimming over the water. As we watched, they turned and climbed. They began moving back and forth through the sky and we watched, spellbound. . . ."

By7:00 p.m., hundreds of persons throughout the Finnish capital were watching swarms of saucer-like craft maneuvering over their city. The big "flap" was under way.


Nina Boyer is an American who was with a tour group in a downtown Helsinki nightclub on Oct. 13, 1966. The music was interrupted as people poured out of the building to see "flying saucers" pass overhead.

Nina Boyer's Story

"We were on a six-nation tour which my husband Jack had awarded himself as a retirement present. We'd arrived in Helsinki that morning and were attending dinner at a well-known nightclub, the Kaivahone, with the other members of our tour group. We'd begun an appetizer, the herring the Finns catch in the Baltic, and the band was assembling on stage. It was going to be one of the high points of our trip, a fine seafood dinner followed by music, dancing and conversation.

"Suddenly, we noticed that people at the other tables were standing up and clearing out of the place.

"People were shouting. Someone cried in English, 'flying saucer!'

"There was a sense of panic. I can't say why, although I've often wondered if we were all affected by some supernatural force we didn't understand. I know I felt a compulsion to hurry as we spilled out into the courtyard behind the nightclub.

"The air was chilly. Everyone was looking up. I peered up in time to see five brilliant flying disks, passing directly overhead.

"I wish I could describe the ghostly appearance of these huge, silent apparitions in the sky. These were great, round objects, each of them maybe 100 feet in diameter, perfectly circular and without any distinguishing features of any kind. They gave off an intense white light with bluish tinges and they passed over us in total silence. . . ."

Nina and Jack Boyer, with several dozen other people, moved downhill to an open terrace to gain a better view of the startling objects in the sky. While this was happening, five more UFOs "buzzed" the Norwegian merchant vessel Christian Leader 125 miles away in an unusually rough Baltic Sea. At this time, Captain Bjorn Carlsen was arriving at Copenhagen's Kalstrup Airport 580 miles away, preparing to take command of SAS Flight Six to Helsinki. He was cautioned to expect high winds and unusual turbulence. A similar forecast was being gotten over the phone by 36-year-old Harold G. (Hal) Peyton, an expatriate American preparing for a night flight a hundred miles north of Helsinki, at the newly-opened Jyvaskyla airport. Peyton remembers thinking, "Hold on here! The weather was supposed to be calm!"

Two hours after the initial sightings, two Vampire F.B. 52 fighter-bombers bearing the blue and white insignia of the Finnish Air Force gave chase to a lone UFO heading east from Helsinki toward the Soviet coast, where the lights of Leningrad shone in the distance. This was the first of several encounters between jets and the strange intruders. One of the pilots guessed the speed of the UFOs at 1,300 m.p.h. He radioed, "Unable to make contact. . . . They're pulling away. . . ."

According to reports, Major General R. Artola, chief of staff of the Finnish air arm, was telephoned at home. He immediately headed for his home in the drab, stressed-concrete Defense Ministry Building.

For Nina Boyer and the awestruck members of her tourist group, the UFOs had become more distant now, but were putting on a spectacular light show that crisscrossed the skies of the city. Nina remembers that no one spoke of returning to dinner. "It was like we were all held there by some force, completely absorbed by what we saw. . . ."

The fast-flying UFOs—variously described by onwatchers as globes, disks and saucers—abruptly separated from each other, disappeared behind low clouds and appeared again, then rejoined into formations of six or more. No one who watched them reported hearing a sound. Their sudden turns, sharp dives and rapid changes of position—mixed with long periods when they glided gently—ruled out any thought that these were aircraft or any other known phenomenon.

"We watched them for over an hour. People were talking openly about space ships, wondering if aliens were about to land, the way it happened in that radio program 'The War of the Worlds.' Somebody wondered if the Finnish authorities would protect us foreign tourists if this was an invasion.

"Jack and I both felt our lives were changed by this experience. The sense of sharing it with so many others—thinking about how we were all humans, all together in the face of something that wasn't from our world—had a special meaning. We were all a little afraid and we suddenly realized how much we all meant to each other. Jack and I were to remain close friends with several of the other witnesses until Jack passed away eight years later in 1974. . . ."

Nina Boyer has thought about that night in Helsinki ever since. Were she and her friends watching the arrival of a probe-force of starships from another galaxy? "I've often thought it could be something like that," she says.

Around 10:00 p.m., just before the saucers left Helsinki skies for a brief period to return later, 17-year-old high school student Axel Lundgren leaped from the ninth story of his parent's apartment house and plunged to his death. Friends said Lundgren was "disturbed" — and the appearance of UFOs may have sent him over the brink.

A De Havilland Otter, similar to this, was flown by Harold Peyton when he attempted to dodge UFOs a few miles north of Helsinki.

Harold Peyton's Story

Hal Peyton hails from the rugged Appalachian coal-mining towns of West Virginia. He's tough and he doesn't convince easily. As a U.S. Air Force lieutenant, he flew 55 combat missions in Vietnam and won several awards. He and his wife Linda jumped at the offer of a civilian flying job with an ore prospecting company in Finland. He was drawing top pay for piloting a De Havilland Otter lightplane and towing a magnetic scintillometer to search for underground nickel deposits.

When we talked to Peyton, he still wasn't convinced that invaders from space were cavorting through the skies of Finland, but he did feel that something had happened which he didn't understand — and didn't like.

"Somebody at the airport warned me they were spotting UFOs down in Helsinki. I figured, the heck with it. I had scheduled a night hop in my Otter to check out some equipment and I was determined to go. I've heard UFO stories throughout my flying career—some from impeccable sources—but I've never cancelled a flight because of them. . . ."

Hal Peyton took off, leveled off at 5,000 feet and turned on a 180-degreee heading for Helsinki. Suddenly, a blue and white light appeared on his tail.

A friend of this writer's in Finland claims to have unearthed a newsletter from an occult group telling of another man who spotted those blue-white lights. A 35-year-old watchmaker who stood on the roof of Sottman's Department Store in Helsinki that night, the man claims that the UFOs beamed him a telepathic message from his deceased great-grandfather. The message was: Tell the leaders of the world to stop experimenting with nuclear weapons. Apart from the fact that the nuclear test-ban treaty had already taken effect three years earlier, this second-hand story strikes us as one that will have to be considered on its merits.

Hal Peyton's experience is something else.

"When this 'thing' started following me, I decided to lose altitude, turn west and try to get a better look at it. I did. And it stayed with me.

"It seemed to hang in the air about 500 feet behind me in the night sky. When I turned, it turned. It appeared to have the capability to abruptly change direction 180 degrees. It clung to me like glue and I began to have a 'trapped' feeling. . . ."

The original purpose of Hal's flight, an equipment check, was soon forgotten. The pilot suddenly wondered why he hadn't taken seriously the accounts of UFOs he'd heard from other pilots all these years. Twisting and turning above the dark Finnish mountains, the UFO drawing closer to him every moment, he faced an agonizing decision: If he tried to maintain course, the blue-white light might ram him. But if he continued taking evasive action, he might fly into a ridgeline.

Hal chose to try to escape. Throwing the single-engine Otter into a series of grinding, gut-wrenching turns, he realized he was getting lower and lower — dangerously close to the peaks that loomed around him. His senses were racing: Each new maneuver was more difficult, he was quickly becoming fatigued, and the persistent UFO kept getting closer and closer. . . .

During this hectic struggle for survival, Hal Peyton was in a better position to get a clear look at a UFO than most men have ever been. At times, the great shimmering disk was only feet from his airplane. Yet Hal feels he can't contribute much to the knowledge accumulated by UFO researchers. What he saw was murkily-defined, a blur in motion.

"The craft was much larger than my Otter, maybe 100 feet across. Its perfect, flawless round shape would seem to argue that it had to be artificial, constructed by some alien intelligence. It was the color of a gas flame in the upper temperature ranges, this glowing white hue laced with little streaks of blue. This would suggest that it was extremely hot for some reason, perhaps something to do with its energy source. . . .

"But I saw nothing to tell me what it was.

"There were no markings, no blemishes, no appendages. It was simply a perfectly smooth, round shape. Not a clue as to what was inside or who was driving. . . .

"And it was dogging me like crazy. . . ."

This was close to midnight. The UFOs had reappeared in the skies in Helsinki, being viewed now only be night people and onwatchers who were too fascinated to go to bed. At Kalstrup Airport, SAS Douglas DC-6B registry number LN-LMO—one of the last prop-driven craft operated by the Scandinavian carrier—lifted into the dark sky carrying 56 passengers and five crew. Pilot Bjorn Carlsen had not yet heard of the UFO swarm over his destination, which he would not reach for another three hours.

Hal Peyton was just about certain he was going to meet with disaster when his tormentor suddenly broke away and disengaged.

"The UFO suddenly seemed to back away from me and then soared upward into the night sky. I had a perfect plan-view of its circular bottom as it climbed away.

"I leveled off again and just stared. It was leaving me. The craft receded into the distance, suddenly moving at much greater speed and in seconds it was gone.

"I got back to Jyvaskyla safely, telephoned my wife, and then spent a few minutes being sick. I no longer laugh at other pilots who talk of seeing UFOs. I may not be convinced they're alien starships, but I do know that, whatever they are, they're a threat — and I feel lucky to be alive."

This is the very plane, Douglas DC-6B airliner, registry number LN-LMO, which was piloted by Bjorn Carlsen on a flight that was stalked by UFOs for almost two hours!

Bjorn Carlsen's Story

By one in the morning, only diehards among the Helsinki populace continued to watch the bright lights which now appeared for only moments at a time, disappeared, and then showed up again. There was another inconclusive encounter with Vampire F.B.52 jets of the Finnish Air Force. Years later, a woman in a suburb would claim that a saucer landed in her backyard and disgorged a stem-limbed creature with three eyes who told her that God was the only salvation. A high wind was blowing. Weather experts were puzzled by the freakish gusts, the sharp temperature drop of more than two degrees Centigrade, and the stormy, whitecapped seas.

The strange weather—a phenomenon also associated with UFO sightings in the Bermuda Triangle—totally perplexed Captain Bjorn Carlsen.

His four-engine DC-6B, LN-LMO, bored toward the Finnish coast. Carlsen and his crew were informed by approach control radar that UFOs were being tracked near them.

"The UFOs appeared very suddenly. At first we didn't have a clear view of them. Then they began to circle us in the clear night sky, seeking to harass us. They began playing a game of aerial 'chicken' — darting in front of us and narrowly averting collision."

At the controls of the airliner, tensed-up by the actions of the persistent, saucer-like objects, Bjorn Carlsen was angry and frustrated. He couldn't take violent evasive action — not without scaring or harming his passengers.

"They were scared anyway. An older man began a frantic argument with the stewardess, insisting that we should land immediately. She tried to explain that we were still over water, the Baltic. He was impervious to reason.

"The UFOs seemed to be taunting us. They were large, spherical craft giving off a yellow-white glow. My co-pilot insisted he could see portholes along the rim of their saucer-like bodies."

Another SAS employee aboard Carlsen's DC-6B, the flight engineer, remembers the UFOs becoming more aggressive as the airplane approached the Finland coast. "They were stalking us. They were trying to collide with us. . . ."

The DC-6B began shaking on turbulence, which quickly became the most violent turbulence Carlsen had ever encountered in his flying career. Struggling to keep his aircraft as steady as possible, he felt his temper rapidly coming to the surface.

Finnish air controllers lost contact with Carlsen for more than 20 minutes — another phenomenon for which there is no explanation. He didn't even notice at the time. He was too busy focusing on the brilliant lights that kept shooting past all around him.

Carlsen's experience was to be a prolonged one. But for people on the ground, it would be even more prolonged. Sightings of the bizarre intruders would continue, sporadically, throughout the night. The last recorded contact seems to have taken place long after sunrise, when a half-dozen saucers hovered briefly over the central downtown area of Helsinki. The headline on a Finnish-language morning daily proclaimed, "Invasion From the Skies."

Around 2:10 a.m., now crossing the coast, Bjorn Carlsen was caught up in that invasion.

While struggling with his controls and glancing quickly from one UFO to another, Carlsen made a brief announcement intended to calm the passengers. He doesn't remember what he said. "There was nothing to say. The damned things were all around us and we didn't know what they were doing. . . ."

The encounters between Carlsen's DC-6B and the flying saucers lasted one hour and 50 minutes. They had a profound effect on every person aboard—"some were afraid, some mystified"—and several passengers would later write Carlsen to praise him for his professional conduct. The incident may have been one of the most protracted air-to-air encounters of all time yet in the end it taught almost nothing about the origin and nature of UFOs.

"This is part of what steams me up," Bjorn Carlsen told us, describing his weariness and frustration as the UFOs finally began to peel off and fly away just when he was lowering his gear and preparing to land at Helsinki. Carlsen was exhausted far beyond what might normally be expected. He was mad. He had a disturbing sense of futility.

He landed normally, despite high winds, and an airline flight which should have been "routine" came to an end. A few weeks later, Carlsen told us he thinks the UFOs could have caused his plane to crash, had he simply not maintained course — the opposite action to that taken by Hal Peyton. When we contacted Carlsen again years later, while preparing this article, he said that the passage of time had not calmed his rage.

What happened that night to the citizens of Helsinki? To Nina Boyer? Hal Peyton? Bjorn Carlsen?

Why the strange weather? The reports of psychic encounters? The loss of radio contact with Carlsen's plane? Why did the UFOs attack civilian planes but flee from jet fighters?

There are no answers.

Did Finnish authorities investigate? No official findings have ever been released.

The other big UFO "flaps" of recent history—the massive wave of sightings over Washington, D.C. in 1952 and the similar UFO storm over Tokyo in 1964—have challenged researchers, filled the literature of saucer buffs and provided not one single clue as to what UFOs are or where they come from.

If Helsinki, Finland was being invaded by alien star ships that night, their message didn't come across. As UFO sightings increase around the world, maybe some answers will be forthcoming. But despite arduous study of the great Helsinki "flap," at this point the only conclusion we can offer is that it left some people mad, some mystified, and almost no one eager to have any further contact with the troublesome intruders.        ☐