The Rings of Kånsta
One oddity from the annals of Swedish weirdness reminds me of something wherein the fairies could be the guilty parties behind the incident. It might be a long shot, but once again, maybe it’s our own personal perception that leads us to see what we’re seeing. In this case, we have two witnesses, and the year was 1974 — yes, during the golden decade of strange encounters. Torbjörn Andersson, aged 9, and Christer Gustavsson, aged 10, ventured out to search for their respective siblings — Christer’s sister and Torbjörn’s brother — near their homes in Kånsta, located in Sköllersta. It was a cloudy day in March when they embarked on their quest. Torbjörn was armed, but as this is in Sweden, it was not a real gun; instead, he held a metallic cap gun, prepared for everything… even the unexpected.
Around 200 meters from the nearest farm, in a small patch of trees belonging to the Kånsta forest, east of Sköllersta, around eight times eight in diameter, they suddenly saw something shining bright near the ground, in between the trees. At first, the dog didn’t react to it, but when they got closer, he started to be enthusiastic, wagging his tail, but refused to go any closer than the two meters they were at. In front of them, approximately 30–40 centimeters above ground, they saw a brightly yellow ring of light, with a clearly defined shape. It was the size of a bicycle wheel, and inside of it was another ring, similar in color and shape, but smaller, around 20–25 centimeters in diameter, both 4–5 centimeters thick.
The boys could feel electrical charges in their lower parts of the body and legs. Both Torbjörn and Christer claim to not have been afraid, but the incident was eerie, and they wanted to leave. What’s even more strange with the two rings was a dot of light, about the size of a ping pong ball, going back and forth between the two rings, slightly above them. “Alright, I’m gonna shoot it!,” the brave Torbjörn told Christer and prepared for attack.
After firing a couple of shots towards the intended goal, the rings and the dot disappeared without a sound, like a lamp switching off. While leaving the scene of the incident, there was a bush, and when the boys touched it, it also gave them electrical charges. When they came home to Torbjörn’s parents, they were confused and excited, telling the adults about their experience. Actually, they had been so confused and lost after the event, that they didn’t recognize the surroundings, and the dog had to lead them home!
At first, the parents thought it was just their imagination running wild, or that it was something they made up, but soon they understood it had taken a toll on the kids. Signe, Torbjörn’s mother, wrote herself in the original investigation notes how she perceived his state of being: “At first, we thought it was their imagination, that they made it up, but soon I noticed with Torbjörn that it was something special. He was pale and serious, and almost cried in the evening and wondered what had happened.” She added that she and her husband had visited the spot with a dowsing rod, and according to him, it had reacted to the spot. When investigator Yngve Cornstig visited the place, his dowsing rod (remember, this is the seventies) didn’t react at all, but he found a natural water source just ten meters away from it. When journalist and ufologist Clas Svahn, many years later, in his book UFO-Mysteriet (in the chapter on ball lightning) got in contact with Christer, the witness couldn’t remember much, except there had been a strong light close to the ground and repeated electrical charges in his and his friend’s bodies.
Imagine if this, and it’s just speculation of course, were two boys witnessing the beginning of a fairy ring creation, with the little dot, sphere, orb, whatever you want to call it, being the fairies, the little people, just charging up to open a portal to fairyland? While the rings never landed, so to speak, and there were no traces on the site after the incident, neither burn marks nor mushrooms, I’m still attracted to the idea that this belongs more in traditional fairy stories than modern ufology. The circular shape has been a staple in UFO history for many years, connected or not to the fairy rings of folklore, and is a timeless symbol for the unknown, with its magical properties as legendary pathways to other realms, Mandala symbols according to C.G. Jung, mathematical perfection, and of course, the flying disc.
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Fred Andersson is a Swedish story producer, researcher and writer with over twenty years of experience in commercial television and the author of Northern Lights: High Strangeness in Sweden, out now from Beyond the Fray Publishing. He lives in Märsta, outside Stockholm, with his photographer husband Grzegorz and two overly active cats. Join him on Twitter and Instagram.
Sources:
The original report from UFO-Sverige, dated March 9, 1975.
“Vad såg Christer? UFO, tror på rymdfarkost?” (Örebro-Kuriren, March 7, 1975)
“Pojkar skrämde iväg telemeterskiva med hjälp av ollonpistol” (Yngve Cornstig, UFO-Information, issue 3, 1975)
UFO-Mysteriet — chapter Klotblixtar (Clas Svahn, Parthenon, 1998)
