Have you ever noticed how fire seems to be alive? Well, the fire IS alive, as it — like us humans and other animals — needs oxygen to survive, even if it’s as low as 16%. Humans, on the other hand, aren’t far away. We need at least 19.5% oxygen to be able to survive. Below that, there’s not enough of it to make the body work. Confusion sets in, restlessness occurs, the heart starts to beat faster, and the skin turns bluish. But outside of that, doesn’t it seem like fire has a mind of its own? Almost a way of communicating through the strange, glowing pattern appearing in the charring wood, the flames licking the firewood, and the crackling sound when it’s devoured by an entity we have a love-hate relationship with. Personally, I feel it’s like looking into a dream, a constantly changing storyline where anything can happen. Like the clouds above us, fire is in the realm of pareidolia; we see what we want to see, like a natural, free-flowing Tarot spread created by the elements of nature.

 

In 2008, we spent two weeks in China, first in Shanghai, almost trembling and shaking from its mass of people, and then in the almost small-town-in-a-big-town giant of Beijing. It was a tremendous experience, not only because we had a chance to climb the Chinese Wall (where I stumbled violently a few steps up, crashing down on the hard stone floor, and when looking up, still in shock over the aggressive fall, saw a woman looking down at me, asking one important question: “Souvenirs?”) and meet friends, but also because I visited a few local temples. The one that stands out is the Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai. In the middle of the crowded yard, not far from the entrance, was a fire where visitors prayed and burned incense, and I decided to snap a quick photo of it.

Photo: Fred Andersson, 2008.

What appeared, if not a dragon-like flame, almost looked like it was raising its neck and head for an attack. Some say it looks more like a seahorse, but I mean, it’s in China, home of the dragons. What else can it be? Once upon a time, the Chinese saw dragons up in the skies. Nowadays, it’s metallic UFOs like everywhere else. However, this is a dragon to me, albeit rather small and cute. So let’s get to our friend and foe, the fire, in general. I have a theory: let’s say hypothetically that there are visitors from some kind of other place, extraterrestrial or ultraterrestrial or whatever you want to call them. They want to be seen, but they’re also shy. The best way to attract attention from humans is a bright light, a fire, a dot in the sky, or something that definitely breaks the visual pattern of the environment. We’ve communicated with fires on top of hills and mountains, and a light is the first thing we see when lost somewhere and want to find our way back. We just can’t get enough of it. We’re attracted to light, to fires — they both represent a possible safe spot or danger. A sign of intelligent life, whatever that may be. To be fair, we’re moths endlessly circling the bright lights we encounter and has been looking up into the sky to ponder what the heck everything is about as long as we’ve existed.

During the autumn of 1978, no less than two incidents involving bright lights, almost fire-like in their appearance, and on ground level, were reported to UFO-Sverige, from witnesses that couldn’t look away and just had to check it out.

It was on the night of August 4th when 16-year-old Lars Westerlund was on his way home from a barbecue, possibly at Stålsviken Badplats, with his friends. It was 11 PM, and he was walking along the lakeshore in the area of Römmen when he passed one of the many shelters and bunkers built between 1941–1943 in Mörsil to prepare for a possible German invasion. It was a quiet and still night, cloudy, but without any rain or wind. Lars was eager to get home and sleep since it was Friday, and the weekend was soon on the way with new adventures to offer. He decided to take a shortcut over a field surrounded by a fence. On the other side, the cows came running past him, as if they were scared of something. This did not stop Lars, and he jumped over and continued until he came closer to an old military bunker, around five meters away from it. By all means, this was not a surprising discovery considering how many there were in his neighborhood, however, this time a disturbing scene stopped him in his tracks.

Lars outside the bunker (from UFO-Information, issue 6, 1978)

Just outside the bunker, beside the hatches, a very intense light shone, three meters from top to bottom and one meter wide. In the middle of it stood what looked like a very tall man — a dark silhouette of something with humanoid features. It did not move, just standing there in the flickering yellow-white light, to the sound of violent fire-like crackling. “I watched the whole thing for 40–60 seconds, until my reaction to what I saw struck me. I got so scared and started to run as fast as I could. Finally, I reached the main road where I met a friend, Jan Edlund, who also had seen something shining down there, but that’s about it.” What makes this observation even more interesting is what Lars actually described the tall figure as — a German WW1 soldier with one of those points on top, called Pickelhaube. A ghost from the past, pareidolia, a prank, or maybe something else?

Kurt Persson’s drawing of the observation (from UFO-Information, issue 6, 1978)

Two field investigators from UFO-Sverige, Kurt Persson and Anders Berglund, thoroughly investigated the scene and ruled out a prank. Lars did not plan ahead which way he was walking home, it was all by chance, and the prank theory just was not convincing enough in regards to the circumstances. There were no signs of anything burned or flammable outside the bunker, and Lars himself was just perplexed and didn’t have any preconceived notions of what it might have been, just that he had experienced it and nothing else. He didn’t even believe in UFOs or aliens.

It didn’t take long until the next, quite similar, incident was about to happen. This time in Sundsvall, on September 16th, when 18-year-old Jeanette Eklöf was out exercising. She had been running along Lundbovägen, just a few minutes from her home at Vikingavägen 49D, and had just passed the end of Lundbovägen and continued into the forest. When returning from the forest, the clock was around 7:10 pm, and she aimed to continue back to the main road when she glanced to the side and saw a bright light, almost like a fire. At first, she couldn’t care less, but after running a few more meters, she stopped. “I felt it was a strange place to have a fire at,” she told the investigators from UFO Sundsvall, Loy Solli, and Christer Byström, and returned back to the place of the observation to try to take a closer look at the “fire”.

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