Nordic UFO Newsletter No. 2 1985
CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND IN SMALAND By Hakan Sterner
Date: Friday 3 February 1984
Time: Around 0150 hrs
Place: Between Vaxjo and Tingryd , Sweden
Percipient: Ante Jonsson
A dark night a little more than a year ago something very strange and dramatic happened on a road between Vaxjo and Tingsryd. A man was pulled out of his car and came close to being abducted by small strange creatures. This was shortly after he almost had collided with a UFO that had landed on the road. The man was Ante Jonsson, 41 years of age and living in Tingsryd. He claims that he experienced this spooky and incredible event.
Ante Jonsson had spent the evening with some friends in Ingelstad, a village 12 miles south of Vaxjo. At 0100 hrs he had left to drive south towards his home in Tingsryd about 14 miles away.
Above an artistic impression of the UFO encounter (c)2024 respective copyright owner
Ante stated that:
"The road was slippery and it started to snow. I went on a bit slower and I slowed down even more just before a meadow where I knew that moose used to cross the road. It was a couple of miles before the village Vackelsang. Just before that meadow I saw a pedestrian on the other side of the road. When I reached the meadow I saw something through my left side window that made me look twice. I turned the handle to open the window and to my big surprise I saw something huge and oblong hovering, without making a sound, just a few feet above the distant part of the meadow.
"It was almost 350 feet away and appeared to be 250-300 feet long and 30 feet high. The shape looked like a submarine with curved ends and something rising up from the middle. The external erection was longer and more curved at the top than the tower on a submarine. No light could be seen from the object - it was completely black. Although dark and snowing its outlines could easily be seen. I looked for the pedestrian I spotted earlier, but no one could be seen beside the road any longer.
"Then I came to think of my camera and that it would be fantastic if I could take a picture of such a strange object. I was sure that it wasn't any airplane or any other normal object. Since I am rather interested in photographing I usually bring my camera along when I drive longer distances, but this time I naturally hadn't brought it along. I therefore decided to drive home to fetch it and take a chance that the strange craft would remain at the site. It was really hovering without moving. As fast as I could - despite the slippery road - I returned home, rushed in and got hold of my camera. My wife who was sleeping woke up and wondered what was going on. I explained in a hurry what I had seen north of Vackelsang and I was going to drive back to take some pictures".
UFO blocking the road -Ante continues:
"When I returned to the site I became disappointed to see that the object was gone. The snowing had stopped. I looked around while I slowly drove along the road. There was no traffic and I can't remember meeting a single car either when I drove home or back again. I soon quit searching and thought of turning back at a side road further along. Just before I was to slow down to turn around I spotted something blocking the road just pass the crossing. I got all shook up and stepped on the break, which made the car skid and turn a full circle on the road. It (car) had stopped just a few feet from a large and high object that was completely black, just like the one from the meadow. The headlights shone on the matte surface of the object. The object was 50-60 feet wide and maybe 20-30 feet high. Beneath the object I could see three bulges that looked like protons (motors ?) on some boats. It was really frightening and I had only one thing in mind -to get the hell out of there . I turned the car around at the crossing, but a bit too fast. It began sliding towards a snowdrift at the side of the road. When I tried to back the car out of the drift it was stuck. When I looked behind me I could to my relief see that the object "was gone".
The shock
"I opened the car door to try to push the car free. I had just got my foot out when someone grabbed my left arm. A small creature 4-5 feet high and dressed in some kind of cowl that hid his face. The body shape looked "square" just like the head. I don't remember what the arms and hands looked like and I couldn't see any legs - maybe the cowl hid them. The creature pulled me out of the car with surprising strength. I got real scared and screamed and tried to pull free from the grip of the creature. Soon I also got free and started running towards some houses I knew of close by . But I had only ran a few feet when a couple of new creatures appeared in the dark a nd jumped towards me. They pulled my clothes and tried to get me further away from the road. With an increasing fear I realised why. When looking in that direction I saw another object, or maybe it was the same that stood on the road earlier, hovering 60-80 feet.
This craft made no sound either. I totally panicked and fought to get free. Then the · surroundings were lit-up by a car coming from the north. Suddenly the creatures released me and left and I saw a truck come rolling and slowing down before crossing . I tried to run back to the car but fell on the ground exhausted or maybe it was the shock . The last few feet I crawled in the snow - my legs wouldn't carry me. After I had reached the car I don't remember anything before I woke up in the hospital at Vaxjo".
That was Ante's account. About 0150hrs a phone call was placed to the police in Vaxjo. A man ~n a car travelling north on Road 30 had seen something strange a few miles north of Vackelsang and turned and then driven back to a phone booth in the village. He wanted to report a car with the lights on in a snowdrift by the road. Over the road an object hovered. The man reported his name and said that he was going to wait for the police to arrive. But unfortunately he didn't and has not been heard from since then. (In the video account it is claimed that the police asked the man to wait by the phone booth but he had not -TH)
Two policemen arrived and found Ante sitting in his car in a state of shock. He was taken to Vaxjo Hospital and only after receiving tranquillizer meds could he gradually tell what had happened. After examination one could see that apart from the state of shock Ante was completely well. No signs of mental illness could be found either .
For a long time Ante refused to talk about his experience because he realized he risked becoming a public laughing-stock. He therefore asked the police to keep the event secret. Gradually his disappointment with the authorities grew because of their seeming lack of taking any action. Both the police and military authorities had been informed about the event but neither seemed to take it as being real. He felt that no real investigation was ever made. Therefore, Ante finally contacted Kvallsposten (an evening newspaper) and revealed the whole story . The result was a large sensational article 22nd November 1984.
Conflicting statements
Most details in the story from Ante were impossible to confirm. What can be confirmed is that in the area Ante had not encountered any civil or military air-traffic. No other military activities had taken place in the area. The weather report as received from Vaxjo Airport tells cloudy sky, about zero degrees Centigrade, wind from east; 7- 9 feet/sec and good visibility.
After a careful reconstruction of the course of event a time schedule had been made for the events. By comparing this with the statements from one of the police officers who found Ante, Ante's wife and some other persons indirectly involved, one comes up with a messy and conflicting picture of the event. There could be different explanations to this. Almost a year has passed since the event and that Ante didn't remember all the details any more. Another explanation could be that Ante's experience was published both in Kvallsposten and the local newspaper Kronobergaren with different description of the details.
Some Circumstances can (in some parts) confirm Ante's story:
1. Ante himself. He is a settled person with work, wife and children. He appears to be engaging and is calm and sensible. It could also be pointed out that he is a teetotaller. His free time he uses for photographing and model building of old cultural buildings. He has been noticed for his cultural work over the years.
2. The person who called the police reporting seeing an object hovering above the road beside Ante's car.
3. The policemen found Ante in a state of shock and this condition was confirmed from the hospital.
4. A lot of persons in the area of Tingsryd and north of the area have reported different kinds of UFO phenomena for many years. Only a couple of miles from the site where Ante saw a huge object, a strange UFO sighting was reported exactly a year earlier by four witnesses. An investigation of this and other events is being conducted.
Some parts of this case have weaknesses; especially the mysterious phone call from the secretive driver to the police. .
There is some uncertainty as regards this phone call, both what was said, who placed the call and why he didn't show up or was heard from after the event. He said his name was Bengt Johansson, which is almost the only clue one has in the search for him. Maybe he was afraid of getting involved as a witness to "a flying saucer story" ·and therefore never came forward. It is unfortunate that Bengt Johansson (if it is his real name) never was heard from again.The point is whether his reported sighting can confirm Ante's story or not?
The events north of Vackelsang were puzzling and really on the edge of reality. The investigation conducted by members of Malmo UFO-Jour has found it and hard to carry out. All details concerning this investigation of the case have not been presented in this short report. Nothing has been found that puts any doubt on Ante's story. It seems to be more in favour of Ante's story than against.
UFO FLAP OVER VASTERAS By Stig Aggestad Source : UFO- Aktuellt no. 1 1985, pp 4- 6.
There is an English language video about the case:
Clas Svahn alsoi wrote about the case on Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige
Ante Jonsson's meeting on the winter road
The events surrounding Ante Jonsson and his close contact are well known to every UFO-interested person. For many years he has been Sweden's most famous contact person, possibly with the exception of Gösta Carlsson in Ängelholm.
By Clas Svahn
The first time I contacted Ante was on September 11, 1986, then to do an interview for a series about enigmatic phenomena that I wrote in Norrbottens-Kuriren. After that, we have talked countless times and met on a number of occasions.
When our story begins, Ante Jonsson and I have returned to the place where it all started, an off-road from the busy highway 30 between Tingsryd and Växjö. Back then, on February 3, 1984, it was snowy and dark, now 23 years later it's the end of a lovely summer day.
The highway is heavily trafficked and at regular intervals large trucks rumble past. If we stand too close, it sways in the body. This is where Ante came driving after a visit to some acquaintances in Ingelstad, where he showed pictures and ate a late dinner. The clock had passed midnight and the date changed to February 3. He was on his way home in Tingsryd and it was dark and the snow was falling thickly, which made visibility poor. The temperature showed close to zero, the road was slippery and Ante was driving between 70 and 80 kilometers per hour but slowed to 60 when he approached an area with a notorious amount of game and where he himself once came close to colliding with a moose.
When he passed the entrance to Uråsa it was one o'clock. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of a small figure on the left side of the road and out in the meadow a little further away, something which, despite the darkness and snow, he later came to resemble a giant black craft. How he could see it is one of the details I have often pondered.
The black object seemed to hover about ten meters above the ground and Ante slowed down even more until his Saab 99 almost crawled forward. Although it must have been difficult to see exactly how large the object might be, he estimated it to be close to 80 meters long and between five and ten meters high. At the same time he thought of the person he had just passed and turned to see if it was still standing but could no longer see it. Since he was now almost standing still, he cranked down the side window to listen for sounds but could hear nothing. Apart from the engine noise from your own car.
- Then I hit the gas at the bottom to go home and get the camera. This is what I wanted to photograph, Ante tells us as we stand by the side of the road.
He was sure that it was a flying saucer , now it was a question of capturing it in a picture, something he had tried before but never succeeded. Now he cursed himself for not bringing his camera. At home, his wife woke up when Ante came in, and asked him to lock the garage. Ante himself replied that he had seen a flying saucer and was now going back to photograph it.
Closer to two-thirty, Ante Jonsson was back at the scene, but no trace of the object and the small figure could be seen. After stopping for a while without getting out of the car, he continued disappointed until the Uråsacrossing to turn around and drive back home.
It is here at the intersection, where we now stand, that everything happened. Together with Ante, we walk down towards the highway and the place where he had to stand on the brake in the slippery snow slush. Where he had intended to turn, the large black object he had previously seen out in the meadow hung directly over the right part of the roadway. The car skidded around a lap before coming to rest, facing the wrong way, in the ditch on the west side of the road. The lights came shining straight at the object and Ante could see how the craft rocked slightly and had what he perceived as the front end pointing towards him. When he tried to turn the car again, he received another slip and was close to colliding with the craft, which now took up the entire width of the roadway and parts of the roadway:
- When I tried to get away with the car, I got stuck in a snow embankment on the other side and when I tried to reverse, it didn't work, says Ante.
While he was trying to get out of the snow, the object seemed to have disappeared and Ante decided to get out of the car to see how badly he was stuck:
- When I opened the car door, a creature grabbed me and almost lifted me out of the car. I just screamed, he says. It was quite short and dark and I couldn't see any face, arms or legs.
Exactly what happened is not really easy to say. Ante explains to me how he was dragged out of the car, tried to escape but lost consciousness and did not wake up until he was back in the driver's seat with his hands convulsively clenched around the steering wheel. But there are more memories.
In the police interrogation that was then held at the police station in Växjö on February 6, Ante said that he could not remember exactly how he got out of the car. But he was scared: "He wants to remember that he screamed straight into the air," writes Detective Inspector Börje Ekelius in his report from the interrogation.
In the interrogation, which was conducted four days after the incident, Ante Jonsson describes how he somehow managed to break free from the creature and started running towards Uråsavägen to try to get help in a house that he knew was a little further in. But he had only made it a short distance before it stopped again. Suddenly a similar creature stabbed him.
To the probably quite surprised detective, Ante then told how he had thrashed wildly around to get free and actually succeeded in doing so. But when he tried to run from the creature, another one appeared ten to twenty meters away and behind the creature, the dark object again hovered in the air over the road.
Now Ante had three creatures around him, one on each side and one in front and together they guided him towards the craft. Suddenly he could no longer resist but obediently followed along.
What happened next is shrouded in obscurity. The next memory is that Ante saw a car coming from Växjöhållet and that he then started running towards it to get help. But his legs did not carry him and he fell on the snowy road and slowly began to crawl. Ahead of him he saw a lorry passing by. As he turned and looked up, the dark craft lifted off and took off.
Once Ante managed to get back to the car, one foot was wet and cold. He then realized that he had no shoes on. When he managed to get into the driver's seat, he felt his hands start to sting and his body start to shake.
The story that Ante tells could be one of many hard-to-verify claims from people who claim to have encountered beings from elsewhere. And in part it is. But in Ante Jonsson's case, there is evidence that something actually happened. At 01.50 a person calling himself Bengt Johansson called the police in Växjö. Whether this is his real name I do not know and despite research the person has never been traced.
According to the police memorandum, Bengt Johansson was on his way by car from Tingsrydshållet north along highway 30/27. When he arrives at Uråsa airfield, he sees something that scares him so much that he turns around and drives back instead of continuing the journey. And it might be interesting to quote directly from the police notes from the incident. I've written out all the abbreviations for readability:
"On the same day as above at 01.50 a message was received by phone from a person who said his name was Bengt Johansson, Kristianstad. He stated that he was traveling by car on highway 30 north. At the height of Uråsa airfield, on the road he sees a car with its lights turned off, standing across. A black object hovers over the car, no sound or light was visible. Possibly there was a person in the car or outside. Johansson was very frightened, did not dare to drive further, but turned back to Väckelsång, from where he called the police from a phone booth."
When the police arrived at the designated meeting place, Bengt Johansson was not there, at least that is not apparent from the memorandum. Instead, the two policemen find Ante Jonsson's car parked in a snow embankment at the southern exit to Uråsa. The officers reported:
"Behind the steering wheel sat the above person [Ante Jonsson, my note], the door on the driver's side was open, the light was off, next to the car was a telephoto lens in a case. As it had recently snowed, it was possible to observe how the car drove around the intersection for several laps. Footprints in the snow showed that the driver walked towards Uråsa about 100 meters, stepped, kicked in the snow, turned back."
The footprints in the newly fallen snow thus showed that Ante Jonsson had wandered around outside. No trace of the creatures he would later tell about was ever found.
Whoever it was that called, the police were soon able to establish that the object that scared the man was gone. Ante Jonsson remained in the car, confused and scared.
The police report notes that "the muscles in his arms and hands were very tense, his fingers were curved like claws" and that he was shaking violently. The policemen decided to take Ante to the medical clinic at the Central Hospital in Växjö. At 02.30 the police left the scene with Ante in the car and twenty minutes later they arrived at the infirmary.
In the medical record, the doctor describes Ante as "completely shocked", hyperventilating and staring. Here, too, one noticed how Ante's fingers were spasmodic and curved like claws. The doctor gave Ante a shot of valium and then tried to make contact with him. But Ante Jonsson had not recovered from his mental shock and only responded briefly to the summons.
When the injection has worked, the doctor asks if he had experienced anything terrible and receives a short "yes" in response, as well as to the question if he felt scared. Then Ante falls asleep. When he wakes up again, he looks very anxious and stares around unable to speak.
When the doctor calls Ante's wife, she learns that Ante Jonsson has never shown any signs of mental illness and that he is completely healthy. Admittedly, the wife says that Ante is very interested in "phenomena in the sky" and was also involved in the debate about flying saucers a few years earlier, but when he tried to photograph these phenomena, others around him were also able to see them. They have not been in Ante's head.
But the wife also tells the doctor something else, something that has never been proven right. The journal states that when Ante was in the bedroom at night to tell his wife that he was going back, he would also have said that he was not the only one to have seen the craft and "that the other man had gone and called the police ". Ante Jonsson himself denies that anyone other than himself would have seen anything at that stage of the evening and has no idea who it would have been he was referring to.
The medical emergency's assessment of Ante Jonsson was that he suffered from "a pure psychological shock". He was then taken in an ambulance to the psychiatric ward at Sankt Sigfrid's Hospital in Växjö, where he had to stay for a few days. A time that Ante himself likens to one long scene from the movie "The Cuckoo's Nest".
- But the very next morning I felt well again, says Ante.
So far, a lot has been documented. It is beyond all doubt that Ante Jonsson witnessed something very frightening on the road this night. Simulating the convulsions and the state of shock, which both the police and doctors noted, is out of the question. In addition, his story that a black craft would have hovered over the road is corroborated by the call from the unknown Bengt Johansson to the police. The tracks in the snow also show that Ante really walked around outside the car, but nowhere were there any traces of the creatures he tells about.
As early as 3 p.m. the same day, a police patrol was sent out to the scene to try to find something that could explain what had actually happened. But despite the two policemen searching a large area around the scene, it was later stated in a report that nothing that could explain the "visual hallucination of the informant" could be found.
The interest on the part of the police would continue. Perhaps because the incident occurred in a sensitive military area, very close to a war airfield surrounded by forts and bunkers. On the same day that Ante Jonsson had to leave Sankt Sigfrid, the criminal police in Växjö contacted him for a search of the place. For over an hour, Ante was interrogated while a policeman measured the scene, sketched and took notes. Others checked to see if Ante had a gun license, which he did not.
But soon events would take a completely different direction.
Already a month after the meeting on the winter road, Ante began to keep careful notes of unusual and recurring "dreams" and on the night of March 6, 1984, what would become the beginning of a long series of contacts occurred. Ante then woke up to someone touching him and finally sat up in bed, got up and got dressed. Once out on the street, he stood under a street lamp and lit a cigarette. After a while he saw a tall man dressed in a black coat who he couldn't help but follow. As soon as Ante approached the man, he seemed to disappear and then reappear a little further away.
After a while, the man arrived at a meadow 600-700 meters from Ante's residence, and there Ante caught sight of a large black craft that seemed to hang in the air. The craft was a copy of the one he had come close to colliding with on the road but considerably smaller.
- Then I feel myself being lifted into the air as if by an invisible platform. At the same time, I hear a voice inside me that tells me not to be afraid, says Ante Jonsson.
- After a maximum of 15 seconds, I'm lowered again and then I find myself in my own garden!
Ante could then see how four luminous orbs approached the craft from above to stop around it, after which the black craft quickly flew away.
Since then, Ante has written down many hundreds of A4 pages with experiences and a number of times he also claims to have been on board various vessels. He himself believes that he has been taken to at least three or four different places outside of our Earth. But where he has been, he does not like to speculate.
When we discuss these trips, Ante points out that he is not sure how real his experiences really are. Of course, it is real to him, but he has difficulty drawing a clear line between dream and non-dream.
- It could be a dream. I can't get away from it. But I also can't get away from the fact that it really happened. I don't really know which leg to stand on sometimes, Ante has told me on several occasions, but when I talk to him at the beginning of 2014, he feels more and more certain that it is something tangible.
- These are physical experiences, I can't say anything else.
What started as an accident would eventually develop into a long series of meetings that Ante Jonsson himself likens to a kind of plan. A plan that he does not understand the purpose of and which still in 2014 has no end.
- Is it really the case that they come from somewhere outside or do they come from somewhere on Earth? I do not know. They have said they come from the planet "Prio" but I have never been told how far away it is. But I don't think they get that far away.
For Ante Jonsson, much of what is happening and what he has been told is incomprehensible. He himself realizes that the distance to the planet "Prio" must be great and he says that it can hardly be possible that the creatures go back and forth as often as they seem to do. Nevertheless, he claims to have been allowed to go along and therefore doubts whether the trip really took place in physical reality.
When I interviewed him in June 1998, Ante Jonsson stated that the experiences were part of his everyday life.
- At first it was a bit nasty, but now I don't think about them so much anymore because they have become a part of my life.
During our many and long conversations, it has often been frustrating not to be able to see the evidence that Ante claims to have received from time to time in the form of various objects. On one occasion he was given a small metal box which, when he opened it, turned out to be completely empty. The box would have been handed over by one of the creatures during a visit to Ante's residence. He never got to know what he was going to use it for and I never got to see it.
There is much that Ante Jonsson himself says he finds difficult to understand about what is happening. For example, he almost never gets answers to the questions he asks. Many times he has brought a note not to forget something important that he wants to ask about but it is rare that any of the creatures care about it.
- Most of the time they don't answer but get into something completely different and it's terribly difficult to find out anything about themselves. Then there will be diffuse answers, he says.
Only once has Ante been given a mission by the creatures. It was in 2002 or possibly 2003 that he had to write down a rather long and complicated message to be delivered to a male decision maker. He doesn't want to say more than that. Otherwise, most of it has revolved around himself.
Over time, the contacts have decreased, and in the early 2000s, three or four months could pass between each time he felt the crawling in his body that was usually the sign that a meeting was imminent.
The last time was a late afternoon at the beginning of 2013 when Ante again felt the tingling in his legs and set off towards Lake Helgasjön where there is an old remote pier with a few benches.
- When I got there, there was a person sitting there, I thought it was anyone because he looked like us. So I sat down on a bench some distance from him. But when he turned around I saw who it was and when he stood up I went up to him. He greeted as he usually does by putting his right arm on my shoulder. For some strange reason!
The conversation, which lasted half an hour, came to be about how Ante should live his life and behave. A common theme at the meetings. Ante also said that he got a clot in his right calf that then traveled up his thigh. At the infirmary he had been given medicine which helped for a while, but the X-ray had shown a narrowing of the vessels which was not so easy to cure.
- When I mentioned this, the man walked away and disappeared for a while. Ten minutes later he came back with a kind of thermos that he asked me to drink from. It tasted like old dishwater, but I drank it. "Now you should feel good about it," he said.
Once the meetings take place, he never gets to know in advance what they will be about. Over time, the focus has shifted more and more towards Ante himself, what happens after death and about rather mundane issues.
- I have asked so many times why they have made contact with me and not some leaders who have the power to influence. The answer I have received is that it has not worked. They have tried but have not received any contact. I have not been told why it has not been successful, says Ante.
Ante himself says that those who have contacted him since 1984 until today have largely been the same people. But some have also come and gone, and in total he estimates the number of different creatures to be between 15 and 20. He has not discovered a commander. No one seems to be above the other.
- I've had contact with someone called Sindo and someone I call Alvar, it's mostly him I've talked to in the last few years. At some point there have been five at the same time. A couple has had a box on their shoulder that flashes like a disco light as they speak, like it's some kind of translation device.
Conversations are conducted in pure Swedish. Rikssvenska to be more precise. Ante Jonsson's Småland doesn't always work. And it is in these details that Ante's story gets a closeness and touch of reality that makes it hard to wave away. When I ask him if the creatures always understand him, he answers quickly and with a moment's thought that once he had used the word "tyar", which every TV viewer who remembers his "Raskens" would have immediately recognized, then the strange creatures would not have understood him. Then he had to explain that it was Småland for Orcs.
After initially resembling inhuman robots, the creatures have become more empathetic, says Ante. Lately, he's even seen some of them smile. Something that has never happened before.
- After more than twenty years, I see how they pull their mouths!
Some information feels difficult to digest, to say the least. According to Ante Jonsson, there are 200 creatures that live here in Sweden. All like us humans but slimmer.
- You can't say it's one of them you meet. There is not much that separates them from us, he says.
When Ante tells us during one of our conversations in the fall of 2006 that two of them will sit in the government, so I ask which government; the past or the present. As far as Ante understood, it must have been in the Social Democratic Party because he learned about it a few years ago. Several will also be senior company managers.
Do you believe that, I ask. "I hesitate," says Ante. "Many of them talk so much nonsense that it is hard to believe that they would come from outside". I can only nod in agreement. Which Swedish politicians or business leaders would you suspect in that case? It all seems unreasonable and improbable.
The physical evidence for what Ante Jonsson tells about is non-existent. Apart from a couple of rocks which to the naked eye cannot be distinguished from some completely earthly, I have never seen anything. He must have found one of them in his pocket after one of his trips but apart from being smooth and beautiful it is not very strange. When I hold it in my hand, I can tell that it could have come from almost any earthly shore.
But he has also received three "devices" of different kinds, but always without instruction manuals and it has ended with him putting them away in some closet before they have been taken back by the creatures.
- I actually don't know if I have had any use from them, he says.
In the early years, the core of the many contacts was a creature named "Jenny". Jenny became an important part of his life until she suddenly stopped showing up. When I ask Ante about how it happened, he tells a strange story that I have to promise not to write about.
It is clear in any case that Jenny's role was for a long time the most important in the entire story and that the connection between Jenny, who resembles an old school friend, and what goes on in Ante Jonsson's normal everyday life is the core of what is happening and that it leads back to Ante early years. The years with the "aliens" seem in many ways to have been a kind of long therapy session.
- It's like a kind of rebus that I have to solve, but I don't understand where it will lead anywhere, he says. One day I will know what to do with everything.
When I point out that thirty years have passed since the first contact and nothing has really come to light, Ante can only agree:
- I still don't understand it to this day, sometimes I go home and wonder if it's not just a mental ghost or if someone is playing tricks on me while I'm sleeping.
- But, he adds after a while, I've accepted it for what it is, either it's brain ghosts or reality.
And it is reality that Ante leans towards today and he continues to experience the contacts as physical. A reality that he does not want to share with others. It is no longer so important what is behind the events. "What happens, happens," he says.
Just three weeks before one of our meetings, he had met a craft down by Lake Helgasjön not far from where he lives. The meeting took place in the same way as they always did. First a crawling feeling in the legs the night before and then instructions where he should drive. Once there, he sees a miniature submarine-like object.
- Suddenly the craft appeared like when you turn on a light. Then a man came walking from the path where I had walked, even though the craft was out in the water, says Ante.
The man who has often appeared at the meetings is "fantastically thin" but looks like an ordinary person, according to Ante. He is dressed in light overalls with a belt and when he arrives, they start talking about things that concern Ante.
- It's very private stuff that I get to know in the form of clues and I write down what he talks about. It's a strange story with strange feelings.
The private runs like a red thread through everything that has happened, he says himself. But he has never talked about that part in public or written about it. But over time he has begun to understand that the two tracks are no longer distinguishable. The private is connected with the public, what he has come out with. "Maybe I have to bring them together," he says, referring to the between 400 and 600 pages of notes from his various meetings that sit neatly tucked away in binders at home in the apartment.
There are also notes on notices of upcoming events. Two weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Ante had seen in a vision how a city was flooded. But he was never told where it would occur. Another time he was told that Earth astronomers would soon discover a new planet which also happened a few weeks later. The creatures had pointed it out on a map where the earth was also visible. But the question is how interesting such a task is.
Today, astronomers have found well over a thousand planets and new ones are discovered every week. When I ask Ante where this new planet would be, he refers to the "western side of the Milky Way" and "a good distance from Earth". A reasonably imprecise description that hardly indicates that the sages have access to any higher form of technology. And what "west"? Our galaxy is hardly described using a compass direction.
- It wasn't that long ago that I dreamed of which numbers would win on the Double of the Day. But I was lying at home on the couch and had no way to get into town to play them. So I thought I'd watch TV to see how it went, and then there were those numbers. Another night I dreamed of the last races of a trotting race and that two fives would win the double of the day. So I went in and played them. Once I won 870 kroner!
But I guess you 've lost too? I ask.
- Yes I have. These are not foolproof tips. Three or four times it has not worked. But I don't bet more than a ten.
Ante Jonsson has learned to live with all the strange. The worst part was when the phone would never stop ringing.
- Many are nuts who think that I am some kind of god who can help them with everything possible, he says.
When we leave the Uråsacrossing and drive back towards Växjö, we only manage a few miles before Ante asks me to turn left down a minor road and past some residential buildings. Finally we arrive at a dam plant. We park the car below an embankment and lock the doors. A staircase leads up to a low mesh fence that stretches along the edge of the pond. A grinding noise meets us where we stand and look out over the still water.
- They always come from there, says Ante and points. Then they become suspended above the water.
Water seems to be a common denominator for Ante Jonsson's contacts. The first meetings took place on the shore of Torsjön not far from Väckelsång. When Ante moved to Strömstad, it was lake Färingen that came to function as a contact point. When he moved to Växjö, the meetings were focused over Lake Helgasjön, which is right next to his and his family's house. Then it was the dam not far from Ingelstad that became the center of most of the contacts.
We stand at the edge of the pond for a while and look out over the surface of the water. I explain how difficult it is for an outsider to understand any of what he describes. Despite all the years and all the conversations, most of what Ante has said makes no sense.
- That's it for me too, says Ante and laughs. It is difficult to understand. I don't always understand more than you do.
- Why am I so important to them? And what is it that they want me to do, because it is something. There is so much that is complicated but doesn't need to be. They could speak more plainly instead of in riddles.
Once, Ante claims to have visited an extraterrestrial base at the bottom of the ocean, but most often the trips in the creatures' egg-like craft have been to other planets, such as their own home planet Prio. However, Ante himself has never felt convinced that he has really been there because Prio looks like any place on earth but to me it is clear that he probably still thinks it is.
He has also been allowed to visit destroyed planets to warn him what can happen if our wars get out of hand but also tells him that Sweden will manage. The warnings of an imminent nuclear war are recognizable from the messages of the contact persons of the 1950s. When he asks if he can take a photograph of the creatures, he receives the answer that the time is not yet ripe but that it can go well "further on". But this has not happened either. Once he brought a stone with him which he still has. Another time an item he doesn't yet want me to write about.
- It is a device that should function as a kind of communication between them and me, he says. But I don't know how long I can keep it. It may not be much longer.
Today it is also gone, recovered by those who lent it.
When we get into the car, Ante pulls out a necklace with a complicated symbol that he once saw in connection with his contacts. From the beginning, the figure was simpler and had the shape of a triangle with something that could be an eye in the middle.
At the top of the stem were two semicircles, which today have taken the shape of something similar to two mirrored fish bodies. I'm not surprised when Ante says that the whole thing should also be a kind of key, but he doesn't know what it's going to be used for.
- It is a kind of future key. That is what I have been told, he says.
A key without a lock like so much else in Ante Jonsson's experiences.
We stay in the car and talk before we roll on. Ante tells me about yet another secret he has been given by the slim creatures and I ask if he ever gets the urge to have such information checked by an outsider. To go one step further. But he doesn't want that. For him, it's about not betraying a trust, he says. Maybe the contact would then be cut off and when too much time passes between the contacts, he almost starts to long for them.
- I have so much I want to talk to them about, he says.
The questions sometimes seem to be more important than the answers.
When Ante talks about things he doesn't want to talk about yet, it sounds fantastic, but the details are down-to-earth and concrete. He is generous with names and information and even if he doesn't want me to write about it, he answers all my questions.
When I ask Ante what all these meetings over 30 years have given him, how his life has changed thanks to them, he answers:
- I have probably become a happier and more open person. I find it easier to talk to people.
Isn't it a little strange that 30 years of contacts have produced such a modest result? Such a big operation with contacts, meetings and trips in unknown craft and the result is that you have become a happier person?
- Haha, yes, unnecessarily large, you could say that. You think you could have become happier and more energetic anyway.
Ante Jonsson's straightforwardness and positive appearance make him a person you like to talk to for a while. Strange meetings or not. At the same time, he keeps a lot to himself. Private information that may be the key to the puzzle. Just like most other contact persons.
I never expect to get an answer to what is really happening to Ante Jonsson. But I often wonder what kind of object Bengt Johansson saw hanging over Ante's car.
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Notes
The one thing that sticks out is the person who allegedly phoned the police having seen the UFO and Ante's car. It is possible that this was Ante himself -these days calls are all automatically recorded but back in the 1980s it would be answer the phone, get the details and reportee's name and that was it.
Ante notes the how his feet were cold and he found that he was not wearing shoes. Then there are the inconsistencies where he has no idea what happened and to this we can add the shock and muscle spasms. He even denies that when he got home he told his wife there was another witness.
No, there was no history of mental health issues and that is important because I do not believe was the case either but I have doubts that the encounter took place. I have gone into a lot of detail regarding altered states and what I termed "Ruth Syndrome" (in my book UFO Contact?). I have also had experience with people who have had psychosomatic effects following an experience and not just involving a UFO. These physical effects are quite real but caused by the mind rather than an external event.
"Hypnagogic hallucinations, also sometimes referred to as waking dreams, are a type of hallucination that occurs as a person is drifting off to sleep. In general, hallucinations involve seeing, hearing, feeling, or smelling something that is not actually present. Hypnagogic hallucinations primarily involve seeing things that are not there.
"Although experiencing a hallucination might prompt confusion or fear MedlinePlus is an online health information resource for patients and their families and friends. hypnagogic hallucinations are relatively common. Hypnagogic hallucinations are a common symptom of narcolepsy More than 2 million healthcare providers around the world choose to help make appropriate care decisions and drive better health outcomes delivers evidence-based clinical decision support that is clear, actionable, and rich with real-world insights. but can also occur in people who do not have narcolepsy.
"In fact, one study found that 37% of people report experiencing hallucinations as they fall asleep."
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/hypnagogic-hallucinations
I have seen one person who was totally awake at night and standing at the top of stairs and even responded to the question of "who are you talking to?" and pointed down "I'm talking to the star fish!" He was told softly to go back to bed but was insistent that he was not finished talking to the star fish. Eventually he was led back to bed, eyes slightly glazed/ Next morning he thought everyone was mental for insisting he had been out of bed talking to a non-existent star fish!
There were other instances but not all at night. On one occasion the person involved was living with his family outside the UK and had gone out to play. At some point he walked into the house and asked where his gran was? Confused by the question his mother asked what he was talking about and he explained that his gran was in the backseat of a large yellow taxi driven by her neighbour (who was actually a taxi driver but no one in the UK had yellow cabs). He was insistent that he had seen the taxi and even waved at his gran. He then sat down and eventually fell asleep. On waking he was told what he had said and was furious and denied ever saying any such thing -besides his gran and neighbour were several hundred miles away in England.
Even decades later he does not believe any of this happened yet there were 4-6 witnesses to each incident.
Now imagine that Ante had fallen into such a state and he sees a “pedestrian” before seeing a big black UFO. His inability to escape from the entities or even be able to describe them would fit as would his driving home, telling his wife that there was another witness but later denying this as his confusion over the incident kicked in. I believe the person who made the phone call (which I cannot prove and it is conjecture) to the police and gave a name that led to no leads. It is likely that he lost his shoes during his wandering state and those were the ground traces police found.
We saw how Heinonen after the Imjarvi encounter reported further contacts of a very strange nature and I believe (conjecture again) that the psychological and physiological effects he suffered from the encounter led to him entering an altered state where what he reported was real to him but sound crazy to others. There are other cases like this and some may be due to post traumatic stress syndrome.
This is why I note but give low ratings to single witness/percipient reports unless there are others that can corroborate some aspect of the encounter.
It is not insanity but one of the things that the human brain does but that we do not fully understand and if you read UFO Contact? I go into far more detail and cite cases.
