The UFOs of Pudasjärvi: the Särkelä taxi sighting

Pudasjärvi lies in North Ostrobothnia, Finland. The village of Särkivaara, now called Syötekylä, sits near the Iso-Syöte fell, about 145 km northeast of Oulu. From 13 November 1967 to 29 January 1971, people here reported strange lights in the sky. Most reports came in January 1971. The largest cluster was in Särkivaara itself.

The night of Sunday 7 to Monday 8 September 1969. Taxi driver Atte Särkelä was out near Särkivaara with six passengers. At about 01:25 the sky came alive. In Kaleva's words, the lights blazed, and balls of light flew about and hovered in the sky.

A large ball of light moved in the same direction as the car. It kept pace. Then about twenty smaller orbs appeared, popping up and down around it. Near Rengasvaara, the object hovered for a moment ahead of the car. It climbed slowly. Then it sank behind a forest ridge. Inside a larger cloud formation, the witnesses saw an even larger light. They estimated it at 170 metres in diameter. At one location, a sphere reportedly lit a room with blinding brightness.

By about 01:50 it was over. The lights were gone. The sky was again autumn-dark.

Press coverage drew Finnish and Swedish UFO researchers to the area. Särkelä became the wave's most dedicated witness. A Yle radio programme of the period said he had made the most sightings, five at that time. With engineer Ahti Karivieri he ran a photography project of about 400 frames: colour slides, black and white and infrared. The best and most research-valuable images, it was said, came on infrared film.

On 14 March 1971, Yle broadcast a UFO watch at Särkivaara by reporter Stig Framåt and sound engineer Jaakko Ukkonen. In February 1972, Niilo Sarajärvi hiked to Iso-Syöte. He saw a large and bright, disc-shaped ball circling the fell, disappearing and reappearing.

Darker stories followed, told second-hand years later by Särkelä and by researcher Tapani Koivula. They speak of men who fired a rifle at a glowing craft, and of beings who warned them about their health. In both versions, illness and death followed.

Scientists joined the public debate with sceptical comments. In January 1971, a light ball at Saapunki in Kuusamo drew a natural explanation from Birger Wiik of the Geological Survey. An ancient fault line and a rock-type boundary run through the area, and the region has more earthquakes than usual, most detectable only with a seismometer. Some point to earthquake lights, or to light from stressed, quartz-rich bedrock. Jaakko Närvä, a scholar of religion, suggested friction in rock formations, set against Cold War unease and space-race excitement. Other proposals include barium-cloud experiments from Kiruna, launches from the Soviet Plesetsk cosmodrome, and lenticular clouds. No physical traces were found, and radiation readings were normal.

Särkelä had his own view. About 90% of the lights, he believed, were electrical gas discharges from underground. Some may have been craft.

Local journalist Soini Lax collected the reports in Pudasjärven ufot (1972). Decades later his granddaughter, photographer Maria Lax, drew on that book for her monograph Some Kind of Heavenly Fire. Yle has called the village Finland's Roswell. In 2021, Särkelä was shown the Pentagon's Navy UAP videos. His verdict: "They're like the ones I photographed."