50 Million UFO Documents, Books and Magazines Later: 50 Years of AFU
Turns out “AFU” doesn’t stand for “Absolutely Freaking Unbelievable.” Our very own Fortean frequent-flier, Bernie O’Connor, talks to the only guys who hoard more books than us.
By Bernie O’Connor – bernieoconnor109@gmail.com
Imagine coming to work on any given morning and finding that 3,000 UFO books were donated to you and delivered right to your doorstep. Sounds like a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, right? And those someones are the dedicated staff of the Archives of the Unexplained (AFU).
The AFU was founded on March 17th, 1973. In 2023 they celebrated 50 years of preserving all things UFO. It was founded in Södertälje, Sweden by Kjell Jonsson, Håkan Blomqvist, and Anders Liljegren. All three of the founding members were young UFO researchers and avid readers of UFO literature. Especially Kjell Jonsson, who in 1972 started collecting UFO books and creating a lending library as a service to other UFO investigators in Sweden. Eventually over time, the library project took on a life of its own, over shadowing the trio’s own field investigations. Wanting to learn more about how the AFU grew to the impressive size it is today, I reached out to Chairman of the AFU, Clas Svahns, who kindly consented to an interview.
B. Thank you Clas for speaking with me today and corresponding with me over the past few weeks. I know your preservation effort will be of great interest to the readers of The Observer.
C. Thank you Bernie, I am always eager to talk about the AFU.
B. Please share with our readers Clas, what’s a typical day like at AFU?
C. It is rather hard to describe a typical day. At our AFU HQ in Norrköping, Anders Liljegren is heading the day to day work and the staff that scans and organizes the incoming files. Since our inflow is so big, we are always behind in that work. Some are working with cataloging books, others with publishing new additions to our AFU Shop where surplus books and magazines are sold. We often have visiting groups that need a tour in some of our 15 localities and we help researchers from all over the world with answering their questions through emails. On distance, in Örebro, Håkan Blomqvist is busy scanning files and in Järfälla I am working with securing new donations, giving interviews and a lot of my time is spent traveling to other countries to bring back files and archives.
B. What was the biggest collection you ever received and who was it from?
C. The largest collection was the Hilary Evans’ collection from London. Hilary was a good friend, and we always used his big house as our hub when securing archives from all over Britain; today we use Fortean Times founder Bob Rickard’s house. Hilary’s archive filled a 12-meter (40 ft.) lorry but it should be noted that we had collected a lot even before that last donation. But there have been other large and important collections as well, like the Borderland Sciences Research Association from the US, the Spanish archives from Centro de estudios interplanetarios, and the entire BUFORA (British UFO Research Association) collection of UFO files. And of course, the late editor of Flying Saucer Review, Gordon Creighton’s massive archive.
B. As a non-profit, does the Swedish government help you with any funding or any other type of support?
C. No, we have no funding from the government but from the employment agency which pays a part of the salaries for some of the persons put at AFU by them. To run AFU costs around $2,800 USD a month.
B. How many locations do you have and how big is your staff? Are they all interested in UFOs and the paranormal? Do you celebrate when you get a unique or large collection?
C. We have 15 locations in the same area, altogether more than 700 square meters (2300 sq. ft.) and with a shelf capacity of more than 4,000 meters (13,000 ft.) when full!. Our staff consists of volunteers and people put with us from the employment agency, all in all around 10–12 persons. Four of them from the employment agency. Many of them has an interest of ”the unknown” but not everyone. As for celebrations, unfortunately no. Maybe it’s because we do get a lot of nice contributions and that we are rather used to them.
B. What made you switch from being a UFO research organization to an organization dedicated to preserving UFO literature and research materials?
C. AFU started as Arbetsgruppen för ufologi (Working group for ufology) which was dedicated to investigating UFO reports, but the early members (Anders Liljegren, Håkan Blomqvist and Kjell Jonsson) soon realized the importance of having a library. During the first years books and some magazines were the main object of our collection. We also saw that future generations would need to be able to look back and see what was done during the early days of ufology and when I became a part of AFU we soon started to save material from countries outside of Sweden and later on also on topics other than UFOs; i. e. the paranormal and the ”unknown” in general. No one else did this on an international level. Since the early 1990’s I have dedicated much of my time to speaking about and promoting the AFU, traveling and transportation of collections. I feel the most important part of my job is talking with researchers or their relatives to make them understand that AFU could honor the memory of their husbands/wives by taking care of their work. I travel to many countries meeting with such people, securing their donation then transporting what turns out to be tons and tons of files back to Sweden. AFU is unique, not just by the volume of our holdings but by how we look upon the importance of preserving not just the unknowns and the best stuff but also the worst and the IFOs. We want to show how these topics were seen in a sociological context as much as to save and preserve the basic data of the phenomena that may lie behind the unsolved reports.
B. How successful is your AFU shop? How many items are in inventory on the average? Are those all doubles from your archives? Does most of your business come from Europe? Do you get much business from the U.S.?
C. AFU Shop is very successful since it is the only surviving business selling used UFO literature after the late Bob Girard’s Arcturus Books Inc. which folded many years ago. We sell for between $1,000 USD and $2,500 USD a month which is a great help to maintain AFU. Every day you can find around 10,000 items there. All of them third copies of what we already have (when it comes to books) and second copies (when it comes to magazines). Our business is worldwide with customers from Japan, Europe, and other parts of the world. We do get many orders from the U.S.A.
B. You offer a tremendous amount of reference materials that can be downloaded for free, do you ever run into copyright problems from any publishers?
C. Everything we publish on our download site is cleared with the copyright holder. We also have tens of thousands of other scanned magazines, for instance, that are not cleared behind a wall, only to be used by researchers and on request. We also have thousands of books in digital format that can not be displayed publicly.
B. What book or other item was the biggest surprise you found when going through a donated collection?
C. I am seldom surprised anymore. Although I have done this for so many years, I have no means of keeping track of exactly what we already have. Many times, I have showed Anders Liljegren a book that I thought we did not have, just to find out that we are already in possession of at least two copies, sometimes more! But of course, inscribed books are always nice. And books from UFOlogists that have been used by them with notes by their own hand. One item that I am particularly proud of is British policeman Alan Godfrey’s uniform jacket that he was wearing at the time of his alleged abduction in 1980. That I bought from a British UFOlogist. We very seldom buy stuff, but it happens from time to time when we are coming across a very special or one-of-a-kind rare item.
B. How did the exhibition, UFO Norrköping and the movie UFO SWEDEN, that was released around Christmas time (2023) both come about? I understand they were both inspired by the AFU archive. How has this publicity helped the AFU?
C. Me and several members of AFU and UFO-Sweden helped the film crew with everything from educating them in an eight hour crash course in UFOlogy, reading the early screenplay and lending them items to be used in the film. Some of us were even featured in the film in cameo roles. The film resulted in a huge interest from the press and AFU was reported about in articles running over several pages in some of Sweden’s largest newspapers. As for the exhibition, it has drawn more than 60,000 visitors during its first six months. The awareness of AFU is now much bigger than before. The exhibition helped us to reach out to the politicians in Norrköping as we are now looking for a larger building to move to. I would say that the film and the exhibition are hugely important for AFU’s future and the possibility for us to grow. If people know about us, they can relate to us when we are trying to grow. All of this publicity may help AFU to find funds for that a little more easily.
B. Clas, let me ask you the most important question here. From your experience of looking at and reading all those UFO books, all those UFO magazines, and all those UFO researcher files—What do you and the other people at AFU think UFOs are?
C. We have probably different opinions on that. To me there is not one answer, but many to this question. I really don’t have a favorite, but one thing is clear, some of the reports suggest that we are dealing with a solid, physical phenomenon. But I agree with, and say as Jacques Vallèe states, the “ET hypothesis is not strange enough to explain all of the reports.” But, I do have an open mind on this question.
B. Having worked for a non-profit in the past, I know you are in constant need of funding. But what else, besides donations, can you use right now or in the near future? And what’s the best way people can get in-touch with AFU and get involved with your on-going preservation effort? Would people be able to work remotely with you? Say from another country?
C. That is indeed the case. We are always trying to find more sponsors beside the +50 we have today; 50 of them Swedish, putting in between 5 and 100 Pounds a month. Our goal is to either rent or build a new premises with a museum in Norrköping. To be able to do that we need donors with and interest in what we are doing and of the topics that we are preserving. And of course, with money to spend on this. There are ways to work remotely but right now we are mostly in need of funds to be able to pay for people in the area that could help out in scanning.
If any readers of The Observer want to volunteer and get involved with the AFU, just drop me and email. My address is: clas.svahn@gmail.com
And, most importantly, there are still plenty of collections out there waiting to be saved! Please let us know if you do know about one. Help us save our history of the unknown!
B. Clas, that phrase would make for a great T-shirt! And thank you again for your valuable time today. There is only one thing I wish for.
C. What’s that Bernie?
B. I wish that Sweden was only a short drive away from Pennsylvania, if it was, you’d never get rid of me.
C. If you can ever make it to Sweden, Bernie, you’ll be always welcome.
For a complete history of the AFU, visit Håkan Blomqvist’s Blog
Visit the Flying Disk Press to see their many other UFO books (not a paid endorsement).
This incident is considered one of the most unusual—some might say most bizarre—UFO landing and entity cases on record. The original, on site investigator of this case was Norman Oliver of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA). When Norman passed away in 2022 at the age of 95, his archive of materials, including the original case file on this investigation was donated to the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU). Here, for the first time in print, are Oliver’s original research materials.
This book is the first collaboration with the Flying Disk Press of the UK and the AFU. If the sales of Special Report Number One are encouraging, there will be future books in this one-of-a-kind series. Sales will help fund AFU’s important preservation efforts and bring almost impossible to find original source research materials to UFOlogists all over the world.
Please consider helping support the AFU and help further the future of quality UFO research by adding this important new book to your UFO library today.
