In my last book, Earth The 'Lost' Contacts there is a chapter headed Reports We Should Not Discuss? Elliott O’Donnell And Curious Triangular ‘Entities’? and I was browsing through the European CE3K archives when I found a report from 1981 or 1982 that reminded me of that chapter.
Over the years I have managed to identify specific types of entity involved in UFO landings or on board experiences but which have been unnoticed by Ufologists who in general have no interest in such accounts.
Ufologists have consistently ignored probably the most important aspect of the UFO phenomena because jumping on money making band wagons driven by grifters is easier. How many Ufologists know any of the following?
The Encounter
Time is uncertain but given as late night/early morning in either 1981 or ’82, "JP", a man in his early 20’s, was driving At 02:10 hrs he drove away from home in his car through the village of Åsum, 4 kilometers east of Odense to work at a warehouse in Odense. The village surrounds a tiny beech forest framed by three roads, giving the forest a triangular shape with each side being 150 metres long(see image below). PN was driving along Snedkerstræde road, which went along this forest area when his car reached the small hill just before the T-junction at Åsum Bygade and the engine cut out but the car continued rolling down the hill. At the T-junction, PN stopped the car using the brake.
He then saw something strange 60 metres away along Åsum Bygade. It was a light hovering somewhere between the road and the forest floor and at a height of 1-2 metres. This light was round and about 3 metres in diameter and illuminating the surroundings with a yellow coloured light.
PN then saw a ramp which led down from the object to the forest floor and an opened door through which he could see that the object’s interior resembled ”an orange cloud”. He also noticed two groups of "beings" standing near the UFO. The first group consisted of seven small beings who kept going up and down the ramp and were seemingly collecting samples of vegetation and soil from the forest floor which they gave to "someone‟ inside the craft. The second group consisted of three bigger entities; two standing atop the ramp near the entrance to the craft and one standing at the ramp’s foot.
He got the impression that the taller beings were a kind of ”guardians” and noticed them standing completely still. The shorter beings were around 1 metre in height and light grey in colour and resembling two triangles stacked on each other with the top triangle being somewhat smaller. PN assumed that the small top triangle was each "being’s head". The ”guardians” were similar in appearance and PN did not see any arms, but he did see the "guardians‟ holding (he assumed) what appeared to be some kind of measuring instrument. The beings had small stubby legs but the legs did not appear to move but instead, they seemed to glide or hover above the ground like hovercraft.
After having watched the UFO and the beings for a minute or so, PN noticed that in the opposite direction was a taxi parked near the creek (Odense Å). The taxi’s driver was flashing his headlights, but PN didn’t know whether this was directed at him since the taxi driver must have seen his car approach or to the UFO and its crew. PN then started the car’s engine -it worked perfectly: at the same time, the beings noticed they were being watched and began moving towards his car at a high velocity. At this point the taxi driver made a 180 degree turn and drove towards Odense. PN, now frightened, quickly turned his car left and followed the same direction. After he had driven about 150 metres down Åsum Bygade, PN looked in the rear view mirror and saw that the "UFO occupants" were standing in the middle of the bridge that goes over the creek. Shortly afterwards, the road turned and the beings vanished out of his sight.
When arriving at work in Odense, PN noticed that he was unusually early as a result of driving so fast. After his shift was over, he drove back to Åsum and looked at the area where he saw the UFO and the aliens. He found no physical traces whatsoever.
Above from UFO Nyt number 1 1997
Like many other people PN did not report the encounter to anyone outside of his family until 1996 when Scandinavian UFO Information received a tip from PN’s mother, who together with her husband had an unusual experience of their own a year or two earlier, where a UFO stopped their car. Erling Hegelund and Toke Haunstrup, interviewed PN and found that he was convinced that both his encounter and that of his parents were genuine cases of contact with extraterrestrial beings. PN also claimed to have developed precognitive psychic abilities after his close encounter. However, these abilities may have been in his imagination or mere coincidence as they did not stop him from being involved in many serious traffic accidents over the years.
Hegelund and Haunstrup also paid a visit to the location itself to see how it fit with PN’s story but after all that time it did not help but they did try to find people in the area who might have seen something back then that could help the investigation. No luck as most nearby residents didn’t even live there in the early 1980’s.
SUFOI also tried to find the taxi driver who blinked his lights from near the creek, through a personal ad in the local newspaper, but to no avail. With no idea how old the driver was it may have been that he passed away or even left the area so would not have seen any ad.
According to Ufologists the Åsum case seemed solid and quite rare for Denmark: a truly alien looking spaceship and crew, that might be robotic rather than flesh-and-blood creatures, who end up chasing the witness after he drives away in his car. To say nothing of the witness being permanently changed by his experience by apparently getting psychic powers from the aliens. This hits all the marks for an all time UFO classic. But, aside from memory of an incident being marred by age and memory (it was a fairly basic encounter so I would say not much to get overly confused over) can it be termed a "solid case"? Could his encounter have been "influenced" by his parents encounter years before?
Firstly, just one observer does not dictate, however sincere they are, that a case is solid. If the taxi driver had been found then that would add credibility to the case. I think that, if the account is true, the taxi driver was signalling PN to alert him that he was there or even, if his own engine had cut out and returned to life, he was signalling "my electrics work -try your engine!"
PN's parents had their engine cut out during a UFO sighting and that seems to have been it as I can find no other details of their report and, sadly, the SUFOI investigators I knew are now no longer with us so I cannot check further.
There was an assumption made by the investigators regarding PN's return to the site to try to find traces of the object or "entities". There were none. Well, were they actually "digging" into the ground or scooping -we have no idea of tools or anything else about these sample reports from around the world. Also it is possible that in some cases the entities have a "clean up" procedure to hide traces of their activity.
"The final verdict from the SUFOI investigators was of a witness being honest to them, at least to the best of his knowledge and memory. In other words: PN really believed that he had experienced what he reported, and that it was something otherworldly. But the lack of physical evidence (even by admission of PN himself), made the investigators more inclined to believe that PN could have had an advanced hallucinatory experience, where pre-existing ideas about aliens and spaceships filled in the gaps in his mind when interpreting the experience into sense data. The question then becomes, what triggered this hallucination – and the engine failure of the car – to begin with?"
Late evening and being tired could lead to an altered state experience -which is more common than people would have you believe. The fact here is that PN had no corroboration and for that reason this report would gt a question mark on it but a low credibility rating unless....
Here is part of the chapter from my book
When I first read this in The Casebook of Ghosts was the chapter titled My Night In Old Whittlebury Forest (pp. 147-150).
O’Donnell notes that the location he was investigating a haunting at, along with others, was Black House which was built on ground once covered by the old Whittlebury forest (Whittlebury is a village and civil parish in the south of the English county of Northamptonshire and close to its border with Buckinghamshire) he notes that:
“As the night was well advanced we began our sitting.
“None of us being orthodox spiritualists we did not form a circle but individually found the first convenient seat. We sat in darkness and in silence. The outdoor conditions kept favourable; every now and the gusts of wind howled like a host of lost souls round and round the house.
“Suddenly I was conscious of a curious change in the atmosphere of the room. A new element seemed to have entered it and intermingled with it, one that was very eerie. I was trying to diagnose this change when I felt a strong psychic current sweep past me in the direction of the door leading into the garden, close to which one of our hostesses, Miss H, was sitting. He change in the atmosphere at once became clearer; there was with us some elemental presence, something of the semi-human, semi-animal species that is associated with trees and forests.
“At my request, one of our party had brought a dog with him, as dogs, in my opinion, are sure psychic barometers, invariably making some kind of demonstration when anything supernatural is at hand. My companion’s dog now started to bark aggressively, as if there was something near at hand that it very strongly resented.
“Through the window overlooking the front garden facing me I saw a leadenish blue light, or rather glow. It lasted a few seconds then gradually faded away. Other members of the party also saw luminary phenomena, but through a glass door that led to another part of the house. Some of these lights were in the form of a crescent and others a triangle.
“During the whole time that these phenomena were manifesting intense excitement prevailed, a general thrill shared not only by my friend’s dog but by several dogs belonging to the house, and located in various parts of it, for one and all began to bark savagely. When the lights eventually disappeared and the dogs became silent we relit the lamps.
“We then related our respective experiences. Some of us had heard ghostly footsteps moving about the premises, others had heard uncanny whistling; while there were those who had seen and heard nothing. I asked Miss H if she had been conscious of the psychic current that had swept past me, and she said she had. She had felt something very unusual and unpleasant suddenly approach her. She was quite sure that it was not the spirit of the smoker; she had seen him in the room directly afterwards but he was friendly. She thought that the phenomenon must be one of the numerous psychic entities that sometimes haunted the immediate vicinity of the house but which rarely enter it.
“One of the other sitters told me afterwards that she was holding one of Miss H’s hands at the time and could feel Miss H trembling violently.
“After a short interval we sat in the darkness again. This time I, too, heard the uncanny whistling; it was just as if someone was standing by the window whistling to an animal and it was followed by the sound of faraway horse’s hooves. The sounds drew rapidly nearer and seemed to pass through the room, dying gradually away in the distance. Directly afterwards I heard mutterings and whisperings. Then silence.
“After a time Miss H relit the lamp and asked if anyone had heard the sounds of a horse in the room. I and several others told her that we had. She then informed us that she and Miss D had often heard the sounds of a horse tearing through the room, always at the same hour, namely two o’clock in the morning, the very time I had heard the sounds.”
My purpose here is not to look at ghosts and what “ghosts” might be. In this case I feel that everyone was aware of the haunting, which is why they were there, and that Miss H had seen the “smoker” ghost and I suspect that this was all created by some type of electro-magnetic field but, of course, not many people at the time were aware of the EMF or its effects on people -and animals. We have heard of dogs barking madly at the time of UFO observations ; even the sounds may have been auditory hallucinations caused by some form of EMF disruption and each interpreting it their own way. “Footsteps” in some cases for instance.
“Sensing something” is very likely noting a change in the EMF. On the three occasions I observed light phenomena I looked up at a specific point ion the sky just before they appeared. I spoke to many people who told me that they were doing something mundane when “I got a feeling, almost like butterflies in the stomach, and look over and there was nothing there -then I saw the object!” Some humans are very sensitive to minute changes in the EMF and this is often misinterpreted by Ufologists to mean that the person involved was somehow telepathically alerted to an object appearing.
Terms used in ghost investigating back in the pre-fantasy and TV sensationalist era had many “inhouse” terms -rather like Ufology has. It sounds odd if you are not familiar with the subject and literature.
The light phenomenon is what interests me here. Everything described we have heard of in “UFO active” areas and even houses.
I was talking to an acquaintance one day and he mentioned how while at his ex-partner’s home one evening he had heard her scream out. He rushed out to see her at the top of the stairs and just as two fading lights vanished. She had been suddenly confronted by 3-4 small coloured lights that appeared out of nowhere and floated along.
Another person I knew blurted out one day that he mother had gone downstairs one night only to see small balls of light emerge from the floor boards before vanishing.
Both of the above in clear weather so not related to a thunderstorm. Others have seen larger balls of light appear and either disappear or go through a wall and vanish. I believe that this phenomenon is EMF created -fluctuations or some unique event and they are by no means rare. Lights suddenly appearing out of the solid earth and floating around are known and recorded in history -no electrical storms anywhere near.
Regarding O’Donnell’s account and the light phenomena there is absolutely no doubt that today there are Ufologists who would declare this UFO activity and persistent activity a sign of long term abductions. In many cases when these “ghost lights” have passed near or passed by observers there was been paralysis which, again, fits in with the UFO subject. In one instance (I read this in one of - there are many – O’Donnell book well over 40 years ago and am still searching for which one it was!) O’Donnell noted how he and another investigator found themselves unable to move as a triangular light object passed along a corridor they were in.
In the BUFORA Journal, volume 7 no. 2, July/August, 1978, appeared an item that at the time really made me sit up and think of O’Donnell and the triangular light/lights. Headed Triangular Aliens? It was a personal experience by J. Garside and written by Norman Oliver which read:
“On 20 September 1973, Julian Garside, then 16 years of age, was coming home from work with a friend. They werte on his friend’s motor bike, and as they passed Stainland Woods between Huddersfield and Halifax, Julian noticed three bright triangular lights. He tapped his friend on the shoul;der and they stopped. They then both watched three triangular shapes ‘gliding’ uphill through the woods. Out of curiosity they decided to follow, though they were somewhat scared.: the three figures seemed to speed up and there was a smell like burning oil.
“The wood runs for about half a mile up hill and when they finally reached the top, nearly exhausted, the figures had disappeared; up above the, however, was a small round, orange light like a road crossing beacon. As they watched, this moved away and at the end of about a minute it had completely disappeared. In actual fact, there was no real ‘avenue’ through the trees, though the objects’ movements suggested this, since they glided straight forward : they left no tracks – only the oily smell being apparent.
“Both Julian and his friend thought at first they were ghosts, and indeed, the experience as a whole – assuming its various components were all part of the same occurrence – is most odd, involving as it does three geometrically shaped, precisely-moving ghostlike figures: a ‘mini-UFO’ and a smell of burning oil, this latter seemingly totally out of character with the rest of the report.”
The question here is why was it supposed that these were three entities? Three aliens? Or why was it assumed that they might be ghosts? Note how the item suddenly leaps to “figures”. Remembering the time that O’Donnell was an active ghost hunter if he and others had seen this then, yes, they would have conclude that the triangular shapes and round light were in some way supernatural -including the smell.
It is possible that what was seen was what I termed in 1979 as UNP (Uninvestigated - by Science -Natural Phenomena). This can create odours, ground traces and also change shape and here (Garside case) we could say that the phenomena (triangular lights) merged and became the small light which then rose and moved off. This is why I have always stressed that reports must be looked at and evaluated based on the knowledge we have. In 2024 I have no doubt the triangles would still be suggested to be entities.
Above: illustration to the Garside report in the BUFORA Journal (c)2024 respective copyright owner
What would be cool is if there were such cases with actual interaction (communication) between observers and triangular lights and a UFO. It would be cool but but in these two instances (O’Donnell and Garside) it would be fantasy.
