Bräcke, middle of Sweden, late September or early October 1980.

Unfortunately, many UFO or humanoid sightings are never reported. People are afraid of being called liars, weirdos, tinfoil hats or having their mental balance questioned. The stigma for this is even higher for police or military personnel, as they can risk losing their jobs. In this story that we will take a closer look at, two police officers observed something unexplainable. It also took place in a region that had several other strange UFO and humanoid sightings just a few years earlier.

It was a clear and dark Friday or Saturday evening in the fall and two police officers were driving in their patrol car on road 711 towards Bräcke in the southern part of the province of Jämtland. Neither of them wrote down the exact day, time, month or year, because they did not want to report what they saw. Everything was only told much later and the story began with Police Constable Bertil Elfström sitting at the wheel of the police car and in the passenger seat next to him was Police Inspector Åke Magnusson. The road through the countryside was very deserted this time at night and when they came out of a curve and then down a hill just before the intersection to Gimdalen, Magnusson saw a brightly lit object about 100 - 150 meters (110 - 164 yards) from the car a bit out in the field and he then told his colleague to stop the car to get a better look. But Elfström did not stop the car, whereupon Magnusson shouted “Stop the car, for f*ck’s sake!”, while taking the camera out of the glove compartment.

As the police car slowed down, Åke Magnusson could see a dark object with a brightly lit glass dome on top and he could make out that there were two people inside. The dome shone with a light-green glow and he could see that the men inside were busy looking at what he thought to be an instrument panel. One person was standing with his side towards Magnusson and the other one was standing with his back to him. He estimated the dimensions of the object to be 3 meters (10 feet) high on the dome and the width was approximately 7 – 8 meters (23 – 26 feet). The instrument panel was at hip height of the people. Magnusson perceived the men in the dome as ordinary people, but unfortunately he could not see any details of them or how they were dressed. When the car finally stopped, Magnusson rushed out to take a picture, but at the same moment the craft disappeared. All the lights just went out on it and then it was gone. When they then turned off the car to listen, they heard no sound from where he had seen the craft. Everything was quiet and still, just like a night in the countryside should be.

Two policemen saw something strange. But both of them percieved the situation totally different from eachother. Åke Magnusson saw a craft with two humanoids

The strange thing about the story was that Åke Magnusson's colleague saw the situation completely differently. According to Bertil Elfström, he saw a large and very bright star in the sky when they reached the intersection towards Gimdalen. He stopped the car to look at it and Magnusson was excited and rushed out. Elfström could not see any details on the brightly shining "star" other than that it was unusually large. He estimated that it was only 10 km (6 miles) away from them. Was it that Elfström did not have time to see the object with humanoids that Magnusson claimed to have seen before they stopped the car and instead looked at a bright star or planet?

How can two people sitting next to each other perceive the situation so differently? This is actually not an uncommon phenomenon in the UFO context. Many researchers such as Jaques Vallée, Hilary Evans and others believe that this is precisely what makes the UFO phenomenon so special. It is as if the phenomenon itself takes the form that the observer wants and changes reality according to the observer's subconscious or imagination. Some people are more susceptible to these projections than others. Therefore, two different people in the same place can experience a UFO situation completely differently. Could it be that we are dealing with a higher intelligence that simply manipulates our brains according to its will? Some researchers say Yes. So what did the police officers actually see that evening? And which one of them saw "right"? Was it a spaceship or just a large, bright celestial body? We do not know.

Sources: UFO Aktuellt #2 1991, Clas Svahn: ”UFO: spökraketer, ljusglober och utomjordingar”