Near Valkeakoski, South-west Finland, January 3 1979.

A young man who was doing military service in the Signal Corps had been on leave over Christmas and New Year and was now on his way back to the regiment in Parolannummi. He was in the car with his father (who died in 1985) and they were driving south between Valkeakoski and Hämeenlinna on Highway 3. The young man was behind the wheel, as he wanted to practice driving more and the journey would take about 35 minutes. It was dark outside and around 6 PM. Visibility was good and the sky was partly cloudy and the temperature was -5 degrees Celsius (23°F).

The young man and his father saw a strange object on the ice close to the bridge and people on the nearby shore.

As they approached the Sääksmäki suspension bridge, they saw on the right side on the ice below, about 50 meters (165 feet) from the shore, a green-blue cigar-shaped object that had "landed". It was glowing and the color it had resembled neon lights or so-called Tesla currents. The outlines of the object were quite clear, but there was a tendency for "electrical vibration" around it. It also looked as if it had square windows on the side of its body. The size was estimated at 10 meters (33 feet) long and almost two meters (6.5 feet) high.

Sääksmäki suspension bridge (photo: Tommi Käppi)

To their surprise, they could also see silhouettes of some people (?) on the shore looking at the object. They estimated that there were 8-10 people standing 10 meters (33 feet) away from the cylinder on the ice. The young man said to his father: "Look, there are people down there and something is on the ice!", but his father told him to keep going and advised him not to stop in case it was a foreign object that had landed down there. They were able to observe the event for about 40 seconds, and the entire time they were on the ramp up to the bridge before they reached the first pylon. They only discussed the event briefly in the car shortly afterwards, and his father, who worked with low-voltage electricity in his role as a telecommunications installer, thought it seemed as if the object was electrically charged. For the rest of the journey they did not talk about what they had seen.

The drawing from the case file.

The man first reported the incident to FUFORA in 2011 and he is also a member of the organization as an amateur researcher. The sighting received a lot of criticism as many skeptics said that it was not a UFO at all but something created by humans, such as a tarpaulin that was illuminated underneath, when it was perhaps a night fishing event or researchers who dived into the lake to take bottom samples. But the man firmly claimed that it was an unknown cigar-shaped object that shone with a strange blue-green electric light, and that no tarpaulin or tent that was supposed to be a protection for divers or fishermen would emit such a strange glow.

Source: FUFORA