For several days, the tiny outpost has been cowering in fear of the raging blizzard that threatens to tear the buildings and structures apart. Suddenly, sometime after 4 am, a metallic screeching and a terrible crash is heard through the roaring storm...

Engineer Berggren and two other men are sent to investigate. They find that the tramway that transports the coal from the mine to the pier has been severely damaged. 

Three of the one hundred and forty-feet high cableways are shattered, as if struck with tremendous force. One of the miners also claims to have seen a bright light moving southbound, and disappearing in the blizzard over the Van Mijenfjord ice.

The next morning the storm is not yet weakened, but the work to repair the tramway starts all the same. At noon a large explosion is heard from the Paula glacier, from across the fjord. At midnight the storm calms down somewhat, and a bright light is observed in the south.

As soon as the weather permits, three men on dog sledges are sent across the fjord to examine the source of the light and the explosion. First Mining Foreman Persson, fear that an aeroplane has flown into the tramway and crashed on the glacier. The wind is southerly, and a peculiar, sharp, burning smell settles over the village.

Three days later the expedition returns. They have found the wreckage of a flying craft and have also recovered the bodies of four crewmembers that apparently died in the accident. There were also graves at the crash site. It’s therefore assumed that some of the crew survived the crash, but later succumbed to injuries’ or the cold.

The company doctor examines the bodies. First Foreman Persson also inspects the corpses and decides that no one else should see them. The bodies are sewn into canvas and locked up in a shed awaiting spring and a funeral. First foreman Persson also dispatches another expedition to better examine the crashed aircraft. Parts of the wreckage are transported to the mine and are examined by the engineers. In March, the unfortunate crewmembers of the downed aircraft are buried.

Towards the end of March 1925, the company Doctor is starting to suspect that something is wrong. 

All of those who participated in the first expedition to the crash site on the Paula glacier have developed strange burns and symptoms of poisoning. In early May, all three men have died.

Soon after, all those who participated in the second expedition are falling ill. Even the engineers who examined the recovered wreckage are showing similar symptoms. Rumours are spreading among the workers that the crew of the downed craft was carrying a deadly infection. First Foreman Persson gives the order that the salvaged parts of the craft are to be placed in an abandoned mine shaft. The entrance of the shaft is then to be blasted. This is done, but on May 10th is a mysterious explosion somewhere in the mine causes a devastating fire. The fire is fought for several months but the workers must finally give up. The mine is abandoned and the surviving workers are sent home.

The Royal Airforce coverup

 In 1927 may Major Gösta von Porat is assigned by the newly formed Swedish Royal Air Force, to investigate the rumours of a strange plane crash near the Svea coalmine on the west coast of Spitsbergen. After a short investigation, von Porat confiscates all known documents concerning the Svea incident, both from private citizen’s and from the mining company Spitsbergen’s Swedish coalfields Incorporated’s archives. This includes most of the photos, diaries and letters related to the incident.

The whole story could easily have been forgotten, but in 1939, Dr Eric Stensjö from the Swedish Museum of Natural History heads an expedition to Svalbard that makes a remarkable discovery at the Svea Mine...

 Dr Stensjö´s paleontological expedition to Svalbard 1939

In the summer of 1939 Dr Stensjö´s Swedish-Norwegian paleontological expedition arrives to Svalbard. The Norwegian Governor Wollmer Tycho Marlow insists that the expedition must examine a strange skeleton that has been discovered after a landslide earlier in the spring. The Governor speculates that the skeleton could be the remains of one of the mysterious ghost-flyers, believed to be buried at the Svea mine.

According to rumours, there is supposed be at least four graves, but none of these can be found. The foreman at the now Norwegian Svea mine, wants to sell the strange skull to Dr Stensjö for the huge sum of 500 Norwegian crowns. Dr Stensjö refuses to pay. The expedition is however allowed to examine the peculiar cranium. Photographs are taken and detailed drawings made. Dr Stensjö and the Russian professor Dr Anatol Heintz agree that the skull originates from an unknown or disfigured deep-sea fish, probably from the family Stomiidae.

All of Dr Stensjö’s and dr. Heinz’s notes and pictures of the skull is later borrowed from The Uppsala University by the German Kaiser Willhelm Institute where they disappear without a trace at the end of The Second Word War. There are many indications that The Kaiser Willhelm Institute's interest in Dr Stensjö’s findings has a direct connection with the Thule Triebwerk project and their operation codenamed Zitronella.

Operation Zitronella

It is a well-known fact that Germany, from the mid 30's, experimented with aircrafts based on alien technology. The project is sometimes referred to as The Thule Triebwerk project. 1943 the Thule Triebwerk project initiates a raid on Spitsbergen in order to salvage the bodies and wreckage buried in Svea Mine 18 years earlier. On 8 September Special Forces disembarked  from a German submarine at the Svea Mine. The village is searched and blasting is carried out inside the mine. After eight hours, several items are packed in crates and loaded on the submarine. All the buildings in the village are blown up or shot to pieces. The submarine then disappears as suddenly as it appeared.

American involvement

On 20 August 1946 New York Times reports that two U.S. experts on aerial warfare, aviation legend General Jimmy Doolittle and General David Sarnoff, president of RCA, has travelled to Sweden, allegedly on private business and independently of each other.

However, The New York Times can confirm that the two generals on numerous occasions, are briefed by the Swedish National Defence Headquarters concerning the ghost flier phenomenon, and that they are given access to classified reports. Anonymous sources also claim that General Doolittle, towards the end of August, travels in secret to Spitsbergen and Svea mine, but returns empty handed.

On 23 May 1955 the American journalist Dorothy Kilgallen writes in The Cincinnati Enquirer, that the British government have been involved in the salvage of the alien craft on Spitsbergen. The information comes, according to Kilgallen, from a slightly tipsy Lord Mountbatten at a cocktail party in London. The story has been impossible to confirm, since Kilgallen was found murdered in her home shortly after that article was published.

British and Norwegian authorities have subsequently claimed that the craft that was salvaged at the Paula glacier where the wreckage of an experimental Russian aircraft that crashed in 1952.

Epilogue

In the autumn of 1971, The Curator of Dr Cagliostro Cabinet of Curiosities’ was travelling between Tromsø and Narvik in the northern parts Norway. By chance he encountered an old man that for a small sum of money wanted to show the curator "the skull of a ghost flier". 

The man claimed to have found the skull during his time as a foreman at the Svea coalmine on Spetsbergen. The strange skull captures the curator’s interest and he manages to acquire it for an inconsiderable cost.

The research concerning the skull's history, however, resulted in more questions than answers. Was this the skull that Dr Stensjö and Dr Heintz documented in 1939? Was this the object that made the Thule Triebwerk Project initiate the entire Operation Zitronella? Was this the skull of one of the alien crewmembers that crashed on the Paula Glacier in 1925 and contaminated an entire mining outpost with radioactivity? Does The Dr Cagliostro Cabinet of Curiosity’s possess one of the few pieces of substantial evidence proving the existence of extra-terrestrial life? Or are we just the lucky owners of the remains of a deformed fish?

Regardless of the origin of our strange skull, there are many more pieces to add to this exciting puzzle, and we will return to The Ghost fliers in future articles and exhibitions.

Read more about the Ghost flier phenomenon.