Most well-known Finnish UFO cases

ufo-finnishUfo piece of Kallavesi 1964

Kallavesi is a lake in the Eastern part of Finland, near the city of Kuopio. A local resident Mr. Raimo Blomqvist, 30, was visiting with his parents their summer cottage on an island in Kallavesi. It was a Saturday evening in August, about 19 o´clock, when he suddenly noticed a strange, colourful light ball coming from the sky, under the cloud cover.

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The light came nearer and turned out to be an oval glowing object. It was something he had never seen – that is why it was difficult for him to discribe the object. He said that it had “the shape of a fishcock”
(“kalakukko”, a local dish with fish and meet baked in bread). There was one difference: as the cross section of a fishcock is a quite regular, symmetric ellipse, one end of the strange object was oddly curved.

While the object was hovering above the shallow water of the island (some meters above water, 10 meters from Mr. Blomqvist) he saw something falling from the object. When it broke the water surface, he heard a sound that resembled hot metal touching cold water.

The UFO started to glow brightly and shot almost straight upwards and disappeared into the clouds. Mr. Blomqvist went to the shallow water and found a piece of stone. It was 3-4 cm long, and you could see 5 layers in it.

11 years later Mr. Blomqvist contacted UFO investigators, told his story and gave the piece of stone found in the water. At that time we had a board member in the FUFORA, engineer Olavi Kiviniemi, who worked in the laboratorium of a steel factory. He organized proper lab investigations of the strange piece, also at labs of universities.

They found out that the piece mostly was of iron, but there were also small amounts of other materials: copper, zink, magnesium, mangan, zirkonium, vanadium, titanium and crom. They also found out that the stone had been in a temperature of 650-800 degrees Celsius for a long time.

Later some investigators have proposed that the UFO piece found in Kallavesi is residue from a traditional iron factory. The piece resembles that kind of metal residue, but is not totally similar.

As many people who have had strong UFO experiences, it appeared that Raimo Blomqvist had parapsychological sensitivity. Later he also said that he had met space beings who looked like normal people.

Seven “air balloons” in Pori 1969

In Pori, a city in southwest Finland, there is an air field used by both civilian and military airplanes. 12.4.1969 there was a training camp of the Air Force of Finland. About 20 pilots were observing, how 7 yellow balls appeared in the sky. They were hovering about 2000 meters above the airfield. They were also seen by radar.





Rauno Meriö, the former head of the Finnish Air Force, has been very interested in UFOs (translated Bowen´s book “Humanoids”), but has never given comments on UFOs in public.


Humanoid of Imjärvi 1970

The UFO case in Imjärvi, the village near Heinola City (Eastern part of Finland) is maybe the best-known Finnish UFO case abroad. We have had so little international co-operation in UFO investigation (due to the language barrier) that only very few Finnish UFO cases are well-known in other countries.

That winterday in 1970 two men were skiing in the forest, Aarno Heinonen, 36, and Esko Viljo, 38. Both were quite good skiers and participated in local skiing competitions. They took a break in a small open area amidst trees. It was 16.45 o´clock.

Suddenly they saw a fire-coloured, longish object in the sky. The object disappeared and instead of it they saw something like light cloud. After that they heard strange sounds like hum of bees. Then they saw a lightgrey round disc, about 2 meters wide. It was hovering 3-4 meters above the ground. In the bottom there were 3 half balls, in the middle of them a round pipe. Greyish red smoke started to come out of the object. Then a small ball (diameter 15 cm) came out and in touching the ground it changed into a round disc (diameter 1 m). Colourful rays started to spread from this small disc. It changed back into a ball and returned into the bigger object.

The climax of the phenomenon came: both men saw a small creature beside the UFO. The creature was a small man, about 90 cm tall, thin body, curved nose. The uniform was lightgreen with white, long gloves and a cone-shaped cap. He had on the chest a black box with a white button in the middle of it. The box radiated light, which was regularly changing in intensity.

The whole experience lasted only about 15 seconds, then a cloud of smoke covered both the UFO and the humanoid.

The two men stood there, stunned and silent. Then they asked each other: “What was that light?” When comparing the experiences they realized that both of them had seen the same phenomenon. Very soon Aarno Heinonen realized that it was very difficult to move. His limbs were stiff and sore, and it took half an hour to ski home, a distance of only 500 meters.

After coming home the men went to see a doctor. Doctor Kajanoja investigated the men, but didn´t find any normal reasons for the bad feelings of the patients. They seemed to be effects of some kind of radiation. The doctor just gave some sleeping pills and sent them home. The next day, when they went back to the doctor, they were given painkillers.

The pains lasted for months, especially for Aarno Heinonen. He was on sick leave for half a year. Viljo Heino had been further from the UFO and had weaker pains. As in many strong UFO cases Aarno Heinonen became a contactee and he gained parapsychological talents. He has been quite a famous healer in the area.

One of the humanoids that Heinonen met later was “humanoid girl”, who told that Heinonen was his best friend on this planet. However, the girl didn´t want to leave any traces. That is why she took a camera from Heinonen, who had got it from one UFO investigator.

When international UFO books and magazines have described UFO cases around the world, very often they have tried to tell something also from Finland. Lacking new cases they have repeated the Imjärvi case. Unfortunately the story has changed quite a lot from the original form. One UFO magazine described, how the sky of Imjärvi was full of UFOs which tried to attack the poor men, who escaped on snowshoes… A big documentary book about the paranormal (Parker: “Atlas of Supernatural”) presented a good drawing of the Imjärvi case, but informed that the humanoid was 9 meters tall (a mistake of just one point!). This doesn´t give a very truthful or scientific image of international UFO books…

Dish water of Kuusamo 1971

Very few UFO cases have been so largely discussed in public in Finland as the UFO case of Saapunki (in Kuusamo, Northern Finland, near the Russian border) in 1971.

In the years 1969-71 there was the UFO wave of Pudasjärvi-Kuusamo. Typical to the UFO flaps and waves is that they mostly happen in mountain areas. The most southern fells (mountains, on top of which no trees are growing) are in Pudasjärvi and Kuusamo

It was an early wintermorning on 3.1.1971, when Mauno and Martti Talala, a country couple, were drinking morningcoffee in their typical one-family-house in Saapunki. The lake Saapunki was hardly seen through their window. There was quite a fierce snowstorm and you could not see the lights in the windows further than 300 meters.

Suddenly they saw a very bright light which was approaching from the lake.

The light was about 10 meters in diameter. It was moving against the wind. Later the UFO researchers found out that the moving light had been seen by many people living on the lake. It created breaks of electricity in some houses.

When the couple looked out after some seconds, they were terrified: the whole yard was bathed in a bright light. First they thought a fire had started in a yard building. Then they saw that it was a big lightball, so strong that it was difficult to look at the object.

After some seconds the lightball rose up and disappeared. The couple went out and saw some signs in the place, above which the strange object had been hovering. There were some extra materials in the snow and additionally a very odd phenomenon: ice sticks upwards, small ice balls on top. Normally ice sticks can be seen on roofedges, where water has dropped and frozen.

Our local UFO club was just that morning going to Pudasjärvi to establish a new UFO organization. After hearing about the new UFO case we decided, that half of our group would leave for Kuusamo. Later engineer Ahti Karivieri, the leader of Pudasjärvi-Kuusamo investigations, collected exact details and materials of the Saapunki case: interviews (written and taped), photos, drawings, material samples).

The sample was sent to the Geological Research Institute (highest government institute). There was working Dr. Birger Wiik, who had become famous for the moonstone investigations. He was the only person in Finland chosen to research an American moonstone. When newspapers got to know about the Saapunki UFO case and the samples sent to Dr. Wiik, they interviewed him. Without knowing details and without researching the samples he estimated that the materials found in Saapunki were “dishwater”!

Immediately after the interview Dr.Wiik met his friend, who knew more about UFOs. After the meeting Dr. Wiik tried to withdraw his statement, but it was too late. People in Saapunki were quite hurt, because according to them, throwing dishwater to the middle of the home yard wasn´t good manners.

Later Dr. Wiik`s assistant told that the material sample bottle (sent by eng. Karivieri) had been on the windowsill for two weeks. Then Dr. Wiik had given order to throw it out, without investigation.

Fortunately some other samples were sent to other research labs, in Finland and in England. In the samples they found plantcell tissue plus calium, calsium, iron, cloridium and titanium. But there was no koli bacteria, that normal dishwater contains.

Knocking light in Oulu 1976

Seven teen-aged people had a self-made cottage amidst trees in Oulu (Northern part of Finland). They were spending an evening together (12.11.1976) in Rusko, a residential neighborhood. It was dark, only the snow was reflecting some light. At 20 o´clock they saw a strange light far in the sky. Then after being inside for a while, they saw two bright lightballs hovering one meter above the ground, about 20 meters from the cottage. Their sizes were about 1 – 1,5 meters in diameter.

Two boys went out and started to approach the balls. Eero Lammi, a 19- year old man, was walking first, Seppo Moilanen, 15, a couple of meters behind. When Eero was about 10 meters from the balls, Seppo saw, how a lightbeam came from one of the UFOs and went through Eero. He fell down and lost his consciousness.

The youngsters carried Eero to the cottage. After 5 minutes he regained his consciousness. He remembered a flash of light and feeling pain before losing consciousness. When they looked through the window, the UFOs had disappeared. The balls had been hovering for 5-10 minutes. Some red points were found on the skin on Eero´s chest, in the back there was a red area. Afterwards he felt no pain, so he didn´t go to a doctor.

UFO investigators made a proper research, but no normal explanations were found. Other people in the area had also seen strange lights at the same time in the sky. After 5 years Eero Lammi was interviewed in a local newspaper, and he still kept his original story.

On the same day, 21.11.1976, three Spanish soldiers met a strange, 3 meters tall being with phosphor clothes in Talavera la Real, an Air Force Base in Spain. José Trejo, one of the soldiers, was paralyzed temporarily and fell down. The other soldiers came and shot towards the being. They saw a bright flash, and the being disappeared. Afterwards José Trejo experienced some loss of sight and memory; later he had parapsychological experiences.

The Oulu case had some similarities with Travis Walton`s UFO case, which happened in the USA one year before. Walton and his lumberjack colleagues saw a bright UFO hovering above the ground in the forest. After a bright light hit Travis,the other men fled. Travis Walton disappeared for 5 days. Travis remembered that he had been inside a UFO and some strange beings had investigated him. In Oulu Seppo Lammi had no such memories.

Authors: Tapani Koivula and Anneli Sjöstedt, source:

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