On the evening of January 7, 1970, the Finnish winter forest near Imjärvi, northwest of Heinola, was silent and bitterly cold. The temperature had dropped to minus seventeen degrees Celsius, the sun had already set, and the snow reflected the faint light of early stars. Two men, both experienced skiers, entered a clearing expecting only a moment of rest on their usual training route. Instead, they became the central figures in one of the most unsettling UFO cases in European history. The incident would leave one man with lasting physical ailments, introduce a humanoid entity into the record of close encounters, and later spiral into claims of repeated contact with beings that further divided opinion. More than half a century later, the case continues to be studied, doubted, and defended in equal measure.

The witnesses were Aarno Heinonen, a 36-year-old woodcutter, and his companion Esko Viljo, a 38-year-old farmer. Both were well known in their community, considered sober and trustworthy, and both were involved in competitive skiing. That day, they had paused in a small glade, skis planted in the snow, as they caught their breath. For nearly five minutes they stood quietly, surrounded only by the stillness of the frozen landscape. Then, faint at first, came a buzzing sound. The noise grew until it was impossible to ignore, and the men looked skyward. A bright light was moving across the sky in a sweeping arc. It circled, changed direction, and descended toward them, carrying with it a swirling mass of red-grey mist. Sparks or bursts of light shot upward from the top of the cloud. What had begun as a distant glow was now a vivid, looming presence above the clearing.

As the mist thinned, the shape within became clearer. It was metallic, disc-shaped, approximately three meters in diameter, with a dome on top. Around its lower edge were three equidistant protrusions that looked like spheres or rounded nodes. From its underside extended a tubular structure about 25 centimeters wide. The buzzing continued as the craft hovered at a height of only three to four meters. Then the tube emitted an intense white beam that illuminated the snow below in a sharp circle about one meter wide, bordered by a coal-black ring in the snow. The two men, rooted to the spot, could hardly believe what they were seeing.

What followed made the incident more than just another UFO sighting. Heinonen described the sensation of being pulled backward, as though an unseen force had grabbed his waist. At that instant, something appeared within the beam. A small figure, no more than ninety centimeters tall, stood in the circle of light. In its hands it held a black box, and from the opening of the box shone a pulsating yellow light. The figure’s skin was pale and waxy, its arms and legs unusually thin, and its nose hooked. Its ears were tiny and pressed close to its head. The being wore a green one-piece suit, boots of darker green that rose above the knees, and white gloves extending to the elbows. Its claw-like fingers gripped the box tightly. Viljo recalled that the head was covered by a metallic helmet shaped like a cone and that the being glowed faintly like phosphorus against the snow.