Swedish library gathers reports of paranormal phenomena – 03/22/2024 – Science

A library in a basement in the Swedish city of Norrköping brings together articles, books and reports of paranormal phenomena, including those from people who claim to have traveled to Venus and the Moon, a collection that attracts historians and curious people from all over the world.

Clas Svahn, 65, and Anders Liljegren, 73, are not religious or superstitious and define themselves as investigators of the unknown when presenting their research on phenomena that they classify as inexplicable.

Books make up the majority of the material, which includes originals recorded on magnetic tapes and photographs of ghosts, all exhibited in the Arquivos do Inexplicable collection in a 700 square meter space.

“It’s a storehouse of knowledge,” says Svahn, asserting that his makeshift library is the largest of its kind in the world.

“We try to obtain as much information as possible about unsolved scientific mysteries to make them available to the world,” he says.

He claims to receive around 300 visitors a year.

The files are being digitized, and most of the pieces are available on a server, with passwords, which their guardians are happy to share.

Greg Eghigian, professor of History and Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, crossed the Atlantic to visit the site during his research for a book on the history of the UFO phenomenon.

“I’ve been to many archives in Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom. However, my stay here was without a doubt the most fascinating and productive,” he tells AFP.

“In my opinion, it is not possible to study the topic in depth without consulting this space”, he highlights.

Impact of paranormal phenomena on society

For a long time stigmatized, the UFO (unidentified flying object) advances scientific research. In September, NASA released a report with recommendations on how to study them rigorously in the future.

In the place dedicated to these inexplicable aerospace phenomena, Svahn observes the yellow pages of a book with a red cover.

The work is a clandestine edition made by USSR UFO experts, a typed text of which only seven or eight original copies exist.

“They didn’t know what they were seeing, but they were actually rocket launches” from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, guarantees the researcher, who understood the book’s content with the help of Russian speakers.

The library’s archives are full of surprising stories, such as that of Victor Hugo during his political exile on the island of Jersey off the French coast, highlighted in an exhibition at the Norrköping Museum of Art.

In his notes before writing “The Book of Tables”, published posthumously in 1923, the writer described the contacts he had with his late daughter.

The writings gave rise to a new religion followed by millions of people in Vietnam, says exhibition curator Magnus Bärtås.

A fresco by Victor Hugo today adorns the wall of a temple about six miles north of Ho Chi Minh City.

In accumulating all this data about the abnormal, the media library “also includes folklore and beliefs,” says Svahn, insisting that the archives are not limited to UFOs.

“The material highlights the impact these phenomena have on society around the world and on people’s lives.”

Beliefs evolve from generation to generation and what was once superstitious and rejected is no longer so.

Artist Ida Idaida spent a month researching the site’s underground archives to create her work, a gigantic black wooden structure.

It was inspired by the experiences of witch women, taken from books. According to her, her knowledge has been neglected throughout history.

For Bärtås, people whose experience and testimony are not taken seriously find a space here. “If something is strange or inexplicable, we should not reject it, we should study it and be open.”