Norwegian Paranormal Research
March 31, 2017 • Los Angeles
In the Hessdalen Valley in rural Norway, weird lights in the sky have been seen for generations, and 25 years ago the academic Erling Strand set up Project Hessdalen to study the phenomenon. Strand spoke at the 2017 International UFO Congress about his work. The stark difference in his work compared to many U.S.-based researchers is the distinct lack of drama. No men in black tried to shut down the work as he set up cameras and spectrometers in the Hessdalen Valley, and his work doesn’t seem to be marginalized. Every summer Project Hessdalen takes groups of schoolchildren to camp at the site and watch for the lights. The goal is to get them interested in research and in unexplained phenomena.
It’s such a calm and placid project, so different from the experiences of Albert Bender, who got bullied into shutting down his saucer group in the 1950s. Bender got freaked out by visits from men in black and dropped out of the field. His experiences are recounted in They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers. More recently radio host Art Bell has been intimidated by shadowy figures seemingly bent on scaring him off the topic. If only UFO research went as smoothly as Project Hessdalen seems to.
