Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2020
Unearthly encounters in the woods:
What type of entities are we dealing with?
by: Albert S. Rosales
The forgotten encounter of Nathan Brown:
Location: Awanui, New Zealand
Date: February 22, 1969
Time: 01:00 a.m.
Nathan Brown, a 46-year old Maori, had been drinking and playing darts in the private bar of the Awanui Hotel with friends until about 1:00 a.m. He had then decided to walk the two miles to his home north of the small township because it was a warm, clear night. About one mile north of Awanui, on the flat plains, he noticed an incandescence behind some tall pampas bushes on the western side of the road. He crossed over and walked along the row of bushes looking through the gaps to find the source of the light.
After some yards he came to a gap about 8 ft. wide where he saw three people. The lien of pampas bushes was apparently in a shallow, overgrown ditch, 10 ft. away from a wire fence bounding a roadside paddock. Between the ditch and fence was long, thick grass. He said two men were sitting on the grass verging the road tar seal, with their feet in the ditch and their backs to the road. They were about 4 ft apart. A woman lay apparently across the ditch as if supported by a board that he could not see. Brown said his first reaction was that the three were having a roadside party. He greeted them but they remained silent. He asked other questions but got no answer and at one point asked, “Can’t you talk?”
He then thought that maybe the people had been involved in a motor accident, even though there was no car nearby. This impression was gained because of the strange state of the woman. She was lying with her feet towards the road and slightly above the level of her head as she lay across the ditch. Her feet came to about 2 ft in front of the man. She was dressed in a long white gown which extended from her neck and even covered her feet. Mr. Brown likened it to a nightdress but pointed out that her arms were inside the sleeveless gown and appeared to be straight down her sides as if she were lying at attention. She was facing upwards and appeared to be a woman of average height. She had her eyes closed and appeared to be unconscious. Her face was thin, and she had good features. Her skin was pale and looked like that of a dead woman. She appeared to be a young woman and had unnaturally white shoulder-length hair.
At this point, the witness stepped in between the two silent men to see what was wrong with the woman. He walked into an invisible repelling force which he likened to a bar across his stomach. He stepped back, and then tried to move forward again a couple of times but found the same restraining force. At this point, his attention turned to the men. Both were sitting in a relaxed position looking down at the woman. Their heads were slightly bowed, and their shoulders drooped. Their hands fell loosely into their laps. Mr. Brown said they appeared to be about 5 ft 6 in. in height, with dark brown skin and brown hair cut short like a crew cut. He did not get a good look at their clothing, but they appeared to have on brown jackets and brown trousers. He leaned down and tried to peer into the face of the man on his left. The man quickly turned his head in the opposite direction so that his face was not visible. Brown then turned to the man on his right who also quickly turned away. Brown then jumped quickly around to the other side of the man on his right, but the man just as quickly swung back in the opposite direction. Brown then tried to grab the man’s shoulder in order to pull him around, but his hand could not penetrate to within less than a foot of the man’s body because of an invisible repelling force. He describes it as a “fuzzy wall”.
At this point Mr. Brown felt that he was contenting with unnatural forces and strange beings and stepped back on to the road. Brown was obviously superstitious (as are most Maoris in this area, regardless of education) and then carried out a protective ritual that many northern Maoris evidently perform after encounters with “ghosts”. This involved the immediate chewing and spitting out a piece of rolled tobacco and urinating in a circle while swearing. With this incredible ritual concluded, Brown ran off. He said he sprinted to a bend in the road about 40 yards farther on and was “shaking like a leaf”. He looked back and the luminous haze was still there. During the incident he could not see the source of the haze, but it was very illuminating. It encompassed a circle about 40 ft in diameter behind the pampas and extended about 20 ft up into the air. After he calmed down, Mr. Brown returned immediately to the scene of the incident, but the light and the people had gone. In the morning, on his way to work as a groundsman at the Awanui Hotel he said he searched the area and found marks in the grass where the people had been the night before. He also found a nearly flattened strip of grass 3 ft or 4 ft wide and about 60 yards long, extending south on the road-ward side of the fence. Brown felt unusually tired for 3 weeks after the incident.
Humcat 1969-12
Source: Don Jackson and others, Auckland University UFO Group
The “Ligonberry” encounter:
Location: Sodertorn, near Stockholm, Sweden Date: August 1974
Time: 4:30 a.m.
The witness, a local middle-aged woman, had woken up early to go into the forest to pick some blueberries. There were no lingonberries in the forest – it had been thoroughly searched by many. The witness had her summer cottage there about 2-miles from Stockholm.
The day was sunny but dewy. She entered an old tractor road into the woods. There were pines and tall brushwood but no blueberries. It was rocky and hilly. The hill sloped upwards at this point. She stepped over a fallen spruce across the track and over a large stump, continued a short distance and stopped shocked, as she heard voices in the woods. She was surprised that there was anyone in the woods this early. Confused she turned around and near the old stump she had just gone over sat two young girls, each carrying a basket. Strangely, they seemed to have been sitting there for a long time, as they seemed to be snacking on something and talking happily between themselves. She felt silly, had she been so deep in thought that she had somehow not seen the couple and not said hello? She thought she should go back and greet the couple.
She took a couple of steps back and said, “Hello – excuse me…I have walked past you without saying hello, I apologize, I did not see you before”. She expected a lame “oh really” that young girls usually say to the older ladies, but one of them said happily, “Oh – nobody goes neither past nor over us! We also just saw you…so there – hello by the way!” She was astounded with the response. Even though she knew everyone in the village she had never seen this girl before. They were both short, perhaps about 12-13 years of age. They looked incredibly slim and slender. They were completely mature and very grown in appearance. They had round tanned faces, very thick hair – almost like a wig, cut in a sort of fringe covering their ears. The hair bulged beautifully inward and was shiny. One of the girls was blonde, very blonde and the other, dark brunette. They were clothed in tight jeans, silk, light blue, cutoff at the calf. They wore a turtle-neck sweater in the same color with white markings at the neck, the sleeve cutoff in the middle of the underarm. They wore thick wide belts of a brown material (leather?) with a big square buckle at the front. They wore small white shoes, similar to a thick sock with a rubber pad (definitely inappropriate for the rough terrain). Next to them the witness could see two braided baskets, unfamiliar to her, with narrow bottoms and a wide opening. One of the girls was eating what appeared to be a round soft white meringue.
The witness asks them who they were, and the brunette said, “Are there any mushrooms in these woods?” She told them that some years there are a lot and then some years not so much., depending on the heat and rain, usually in the summer and late fall. They listened, seemingly interested. She showed them two that she had picked. They then took out of their baskets two mushrooms, very similar to what she had picked. Suddenly the brunette tilted her head, put her hand on her belt and said, “Imagine that there are people that are bored. I am never bored – even when I am alone. There are so many things to take interest in, a walk in the woods for example.” At this point the witness felt uncomfortable, since that was exactly what she had been thinking when she had entered the forest earlier. The blonde then said, “There are people that lay in bed until 10-11 am on Saturday-Sunday and then they wake up uncomfortable and wonder why they feel bad!” The witness was speechless, as she had also thought that same exact thing as she had entered the forest. Confused, she exclaimed, “Have I been talking to myself?” The brunette tilted her head and looked at her “slyly” saying, “Are we on the same wavelength?” And both laughed heartily.
The blonde one added, “I am never bored – I bake my own bread for instance and is there anything lovelier than taking out a plate of warm buns from the oven.” She examined the last bite of her meringue bun before eating it. The witness was still speechless, since this had been her same exact thought the evening before when she had taken out a plate of freshly baked bread with cardamom out of the oven. The brunette then said, “A small garden – a small plot of land to tend – small shrubs with berries on them”. (That was also something the witness had talked about the day before). She doubted if such young girls could bake anything. She then asked them, “Come on now – what are you two doing? Do you go to school? Or do you have a job?” Even though they had been so open this was something they tried to hide, they sort of whispered that they study. The witness then asked them what they study. “I for one, art” said one of them “at Konstfack University College of Arts”. The witness knew somebody’s daughter that studied there and was hoping they knew her. But they were evasive and said they studied alone. They told the witness that they traveled a lot and that they had been to Italy, Greece, & France. The witness then asked if they had ever been to central France since the farms there and the houses still had earthen floors. The girls observed her for a bit in silence and then the brunette said, “Yeah – there are houses and farms that looked like they are hundreds of years old. Just like when you were there.”
The witness then said, “I’ve never in my life been to France – I was just wondering if there were such houses there with earthen floors in this Atomic age.” “Oh really”- the brunette said a bit annoyed, “It sounded like you had been there.” The witness insisted in knowing more about the two strangers and asked them what they look out for when they were out exploring, “houses, architectural paints?” The brunette answered that they looked at everything but couldn’t appreciate ‘our art’ the way the witness did. She added that the paintings seemed to “scream out loud, people’s hardships -wars, slaves, punishment, etc. She said she could not appreciate that the rich had built structures from monies that did not belong to them.
The witness listened and stared at the girls. They told her that children did not really learn anything in school today. She was amazed at the level the young girls spoke. They were silent for a while – then began talking about Germany – about Germany’s autobahn – about the roads that most thought were built for the people but were actually built for invasion, for heavy tanks and for war and destruction. The witness then asked them if it wasn’t very expensive to travel so much and wondered if they had scholarships and how they managed economically. They answered that they lived a simple life, day by day. Tried as she did the witness couldn’t grasp these girls. They were honest and sincere – but also “slippery like eels.” They were too young to have traveled the world. They were pure enigmas to the witness. All of a sudden, the brunette said, “Well now we feel like picking some lingonberries.” The witness was surprised since she hadn’t seen any lingonberries in these woods and told them that there weren’t any lingonberries in the area. The girls then changed their shoes – putting on a bluish shoe with thin smooth soles and high shafts and the brunette then said, deliberately and stubbornly, “I think that there are lingonberries, ha ha ha, let me show them to you”.
She stepped up on the stump and waved her hand – it was a very exaggerated gesture, almost theatrical. She then said, “Goodbye, we must meet again – we got a lot, a lot to talk about.” The witness then bade goodbye, telling them that she would never have imagined meeting people like them in the woods. They slowly then went up the path. The witness then stood up, took a couple of steps and saw something red shining behind the stump. She stretched down her hand and picked it up. It was lingonberries. She looked around and the whole hill was now red with lingonberries. She turned around and yelled, “Girls! Come back, there are lingonberries here. I just had not seen them – enough for everyone.”
It was now dead quiet in the forest except for a couple of chirping birds – the girls were gone. She rushed in their footsteps the way they had gone, and saw no one. She was totally alone. There wasn’t a sign of the girls in the forest. Around the stump she couldn’t find a single footprint belonging to them – not a single broken twig. She stopped, and sweat began pouring down her face, wondering who or what she had just finished talking to. She picked up her basket, now filled with lingonberries and went home to her husband. Her husband told her that she looked excited and out of breath and thought that she had been running. Scared she told him that she had met forest nymphs (skogsnuva) or trolls. Somehow, she had picked close to 20 liters of lingonberries in a forest where there weren’t any known to have existed, all near the stump where the strange girls had been sitting. It had been enough to share with her in-laws and friends. A local elderly man told her that she had met the “Vittra” (in Swedish folklore a sort of nature spirit) and told her that if she had made friends with them, she couldn’t have friends among the humans. But she didn’t feel that way. She felt that they had been nicer than most people.
Source: SCANCAT listing
There we have it. Encounters with apparent human-like entities with completely un-human like behavior. Any opinions? Please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
