Documents:

FINLAND

STRANGE LIGHT PHENOMENON OBSERVED AT SAARIJARVI

Date: Monday 29 July 1985
Time: 12.00 pm
Place: Saarijàrvi in the vicinity of the town Mahlu, central part of Finland
Witnesses: Olavi Schroderus and Erkki Nieminen
Nature of sighting: Strange sparkling light spot with a light column

Here is the story told by the observer:

"It was Monday 29 July 1985. I, Olavi Schroderus, and Erkki Nieminen were in Erkki's summer cottage during that evening. The weather was calm, very cloudy and dark. We were sitting inside the cottage, watching TV and eating sausages. The time was around 10.30 pm when I went outside in order to move my car from the road. The road was going through the yard of the cottage, so if people should be able on drive to the other cottages nearby, I had to move it. I finally parked the car to a place some 40 m from Erkki's cottage. At that time, nothing unusual could be observed.

At Erkki's cottage the forest road branches off to the shore of Lake Kalajàrvi and goes on to the other cottages. I placed my car on the road that leads directly to the shore. Because the electric current to the movable TV-set was becoming inadequate, we had to take the accumulator from Erkki's car. To be able to put the lights on also in the cottage I had to move my car again to the grass in the yard of the cottage. I went to move my car at about 12.00 pm.

When I was walking towards the car, I noticed on the left hand side of the forest road, some 16 m away, a reddish, strangely sparkling light spot on the ground. It was about 0.5 m in diameter. I stopped at once and tried to look for the origin of the light. However, I couldn't see or hear anything. I thought perhaps that the light might be coming from the Lake Kalajàrvi. After having been looking around for some 15 seconds, I started to carefully approach the sparkling light on the ground. When I came to a distance of 2 m, I observed that the light was coming down in tapelike sections from an altitude of some 3 m. Thus, the light was not coming from the lake. Again, I made a halt, listening, but couldn't hear anything special. Then I carefully approached the light spot on the ground. Immediately, I began to search for warmth with my hands. I was greatly astonished when I couldn't feel any raise in temperature from the sparkling spot. After having confirmed this, at once I put both hands in the bandlike stream which was flowing from above. All of a sudden, the light clung to my hands while sparkling, and I became enormously scared. I tried to shake it off and rubbed my hands together, but it just spread around. I couldn't feel it at all, however, it didn't have any weight, it didn't burn, and I couldn't sense any smell. When I couldn't feel the light in any way, I dared to take more of it in my hands, taken from about 20 cm off the ground, where the light was more dense. Then I started to run towards the summer cottage with the light sparkling in my hands. When I was running I held the palms of my hands upright and observed that the light didn't react to the stream of air, caused by my running. When I reached the porch of the cottage, I shouted loudly: "Look Erkki, something strange is taking place on the road". I stormed inside and Erkki was quite perplexed and couldn't say anything. I explained that more of this sparkling thing in my hands was up there on the road, and that I could not feel it in any way in my hands. Still, Erkki was quiet.

When I was showing my sparkling fingers, I streched them a bit, causing an increasing distance between them. Hence, I observed that it still sparkled from fingertip to fingertip; a distance of some 5 mm. However, it was not very much compared with the light outside which was about 3 m. The tops of the bright areas were not pointing upwards, as normal flames of fire do, but were instead blazing between the fingers. On the fingertops the bright areas pointed out from my body. The bright light didn't