Sunday, September 28, 2014

A book that will become a classic

This weekend Clas Svahn, former chairman of UFO-Sweden, presented his latest book at the Göteborg Book Fair: UFO: Spökraketer, ljusglober och utomjordingar (UFO: Ghost Rockets, Globes and Extraterrestrials). It has already received favourable comments in several national media and is in my estimation one of the best and most thoroughly documented UFO books written in Sweden - destined to become a classic in the UFO and Fortean genre.


Clas Svahn presents around fifty Swedish UFO cases, the most intriguing and unexplained UFO encounters, from 1922 until 2011. Almost all of them personally investigated and documented by Clas himself, often with several follow up interviews. Here we find the Swedish Ghost Rockets, close encounters with several witnesses, observations by military pilots, humanoid and abduction narratives. The book is a strong case for the reality of the UFO phenomenon in all its varied manifestations. I recommend this book to all hardline skeptics but they will probably not read this tome as they have already decided reality from their materialist/reductionist maps. The empirical data documented by Clas Svahn makes a skeptical position untenable - logically, scientifically and intellectually. The UFO phenomenon should be addressed by the best minds in science and investigative journalism. But it takes a scientific and cultural heretic to enter this domain of forbidden science.

Besides being a distinguished journalist at the largest Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, Clas Svahn is a prolific writer with many titles of great interest coming from his pen. A real classic is his profound study of the famous Swedish close encouters witness and contactee Mr. Gösta Carlsson: Mötet i gläntan. Sveriges mest kända närkontakt med UFO (2000) (Encounter in the Glade. The Most Famous Swedish UFO Contact). The book is now very hard to come by, even from antiquarian booksellers. Clas spent many years investigating this most complicated UFO case and it is a masterpiece of investigative journalism.


Very popular has been his trilogy:  Det okända, Berättelser om det okända samt Möten med det okända (The Unknown, Stories of the Unknown, Meetings with the Unknown). A mixture of UFO, Fortean and paranormal experiences.


Sekter, hemliga sällskap och domedagsprofeter (2012) (Sects, Secret Societies and Domesday Prophets) is a 477 page documentation of weird and destructive cults from Sweden and all over the world. A book that rendered him some threats from one of these not very nice groups.


A book of rare beauty is Naturfenomen (2011) (Phenomena in Nature) giving the reader an awesome estetic experience with many photographs of unusual phenomena in nature.And in 2013 Clas published his study of strange coincidences: Osannolikt. Märkliga möten och fantastiska sammanträffanden (Improbable. Intriguing Encounters and Fantastic Coincidences).


Last week Clas Svahn, together with his son Niklas and Carl-Anton Mattsson visited England to once again fetch books, magazines, correspondence etc donated to AFU by British ufologists and Forteans. Soon a lorry from Schenker will arrive at AFU headquarters with 240 boxes of documents of all kinds. AFU has now expanded to eleven premises but with the enormous amount of material coming in from all over the world we still need more space. 23 people are now working at AFU in various functions and projects. Quo vadis AFU?

Carl-Anton Mattsson and Niklas Svahn with the 240 boxes on their way to AFU