UFO:s over Halmstad

Or more specifically, a bunch of sky lantern that caused much confusion.

In 2003, a friend got me and bunch of my other friends to buy several batches of sky lanterns or “UFO balloons” as they were sold as. They work like small hot air balloons that you assemble yourself and launch into the sky. The construction of a balloon was quite simple, made with one big light-weight plastic bag, two copper wires and a piece of paraffin. The assembly started with piercing the two wires through the paraffin perpendicular to form a cross. Then the ends of the wires were pierced through the plastic bag, near the opening, and bent and twisting to stay in place.

To launch them, one held the bag upside down and set the paraffin on fire. After a few seconds, the bag would fill up with hot air and be ready for release. Ideally this should be done after sunset and when there is no or very little wind.

They were cool to launch and neat to look at. It was not hard to understand why they were called “UFO balloons”. Seeing them slowly drifting off into the distance was like looking at something from a Sci-fi movie or UFO documentary.

I don’t remember how many times we released balloons or the exact dates. I just remember it was a bunch of times and that I did not participate in all of them.

The public’s reaction

When we first launched them, I had no idea if anyone would see them or what they would think. I thought that maybe one or two people would get fooled and that we would never hear of it. But I was wrong. Many people not only saw them, but contacted the police, emergency service and/or the local newspaper as well.

After one launch, the following was printed in the local newspaper.

The newspaper followed up the next day with another text.

 we released the “elongated big dipper”.”)

These reports somehow got to the seller of the balloons, who then contacted the newspaper to explain the light phenomenon. The seller explains what they were and that they are not meant to cause confusion. The are were meant to be a beautiful light display and a soundless alternative to fireworks.

(Skipping translation as the article does not contain anything not already said)

This did not completely stop the confusion though. Three weeks later, after another launch of balloons, the newspaper once again had to publish the same explanation of the phenomenon.

Then, after yet another launch (one which I know I missed out on), the local TV news did a report.

Below is my Paraphrased transcript of the clip. (Spoken Swedish can be weird if directly translated to English and I have taken some liberties in translation to make it less weird, but it is still a bit awkward.)

Going public

It was fun to see the reactions to our launches, but after we saw this TV report, we felt it was time to go public. Personally I felt that when we made people believe in aliens despite being shown evidence of the opposite, our shenanigan had gone far enough.

The local newspaper, Hallandsposten, was contacted and invited to join a launch. They came, interviewed us and took a bunch of pictures. We got a small blurb on the front page and an article on page 6 the following day.

This was basically the end our launches of UFO balloons. I know we did at least one launch after this, but it was years later and didn’t get any attention as far as I know. The launch was in memory of a dear friend that had passed away and I used my last balloons for that launch.

Reflection

I can’t help but to think of this experience whenever I hear of an UFO report. It has made me very skeptical of them (more than before). The whole thing has shown me that it takes very little to make people to think of UFO:s. I believe there is probably a lot of unexplained phenomenons out there, but I think it is very unlikely that they are caused by aliens or any other “higher beings”.