Invasion of the Jelly-Men

Creatures in the Fog

the blob

Beware of The Blob! It creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides!

On December 20 1958, two young Swedes had a terrifying close encounter with a group of aliens as unlike the friendly 'Space Brothers' of the era as could be imagined.

At 3am that morning, Hans Gustafsson and Stig Ryberg were driving home to Halsingborg after spending the evening at a dance. The road was lined with dense forest on either side, and heavy fog forced them to drive much slower than usual.

As they neared the village of Dornsten, the men noticed a peculiar bright light shining through the trees. They stopped to investigate and discovered a glowing disc, 16 feet wide and 3 feet high, sitting in a clearing in the forest.

"It was resting on legs about two feet long," recalled Gustafsson. "It seemed to be made of a peculiar shimmering light that changed colour."

Four small dark-blue creatures "like protozoa" were "hopping and jumping around the saucer like globs of animated jelly". The 4-ft-tall entities were "lead-gray" in colour and had no visible limbs. Without warning, they rushed at the Swedes and tried to herd them towards the disc.

woodcut of fairies dancing

Earlier generations might have interpreted the entities as a group of Fairies dancing in a glowing ring.

Ryberg punched one of the gelatinous assailants but found that his arm merely sank into it up to the elbow.

"The drag these things exerted was terrific," he told investigators. "And they gave off such a terrible smell - like ether and burnt sausage."

Gustafsson grabbed hold of a fence post and hung on desperately as the entities tugged away at him. Meanwhile, Ryberg managed to struggle free and ran back to the car. He frantically honked the horn, hoping to attract help from the nearby village.

The sound seemed to terrify the strange creatures. They released Gustafsson and scrambled back into the disc. The craft rose into the air with a high-pitched whistle then shot away at tremendous speed.

The witnesses were later assessed by a military psychologist, who concluded: "Ryberg is a victim of auto-suggestion, and he in his turn has influenced Gustafsson". (This conclusion was influenced by the fact that Ryberg was agoraphobic and had a mother who practised spiritualism.)

After a brief career on the UFO convention circuit, the two witnesses fell out. Gustafsson died soon afterwards in a boating accident. After Ryberg's death in 1984, Gustafsson's brother came forward and stated that the entire story had been a hoax.

Return of the Jelly-Men

In 1975, a teenager on holiday in Dovey Vale, Wales encountered a pair of equally amorphous entities.

At sunset on July 22, 'Trevor' set out to climb Wyfla Hill; a prominent local landmark. He reached the summit to find a transparent dome-shaped object, 40 feet in diameter, pulsating with bright unfamiliar colours. Inside stood two small beings resembling lumps of jelly.

A hatch opened in the dome, and one of the entities flopped out and began to undulate towards the teenager. The terrified boy fled down the hill to fetch his father then ran back to the summit.

Both creatures were now back inside the dome, which was fading from view "like a chameleon blending into the background". By the time Trevor's father arrived on the scene, the object had completely vanished.

The teenager was so shocked by the encounter that he temporarily lost his voice and suffered from intermittent hysterical blindness. It took a bevy of doctors and psychologists months to restore his former good health.

Sources

Lynn Pickett: The Mammoth Book of UFOs, pp70-71.
Alan Baker: True Life Encounters: UFO Sightings, pp135-137.
James R. Lewis: UFOs and Popular Culture, p283.
Coral Lorenzen: Flying Saucers: The Invasion From Outer Space, pp60-64.