Looking for Mummies and Gnomes with Fred Andersson
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange show.
AP Strange:I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and today's show is brought to you by Sven's self mummification kit. If you are, at the point where you're ready to cash in your chips and you don't don't wanna take any chances that you're gonna commit any evil deeds before your days are done, you can mummify yourself right now and go to that final real reward where they're going to end up weighing your heart. So, you know, that's what happens in the afterlife. If you feel like it's not gonna get any better for you karma wise than it is right now, you can mummify yourself.
AP Strange:And there's a good process, there's a whole thing you can do that'll get you around the trick of pulling your own brain out as you're on the table. Really easy stuff. So just look up Sven's self modification kit. And today on the show, we have a return guest because our guest is Fred Anderson. He was on to talk about Jaws three d a while back.
AP Strange:And if you missed that one, go back and listen to it because it was a lot of fun for our third time's the charm thing. But I was so torn when I originally wanted to invite Fred on because I know Fred loves movies and I wanted to talk movies with him, but he's also just such a wonderful paranormal investigator, UFO guy, TV professional. He's done so much and he's written a wonderful book. Sorry, I don't have it right in front of me. Shit, I just blanked on the title.
AP Strange:It's Northern Lights, High Strangeness in Sweden. And it is a wonderful read and he's working on more. I love reading his work. I love talking to him and I love hearing him on other shows. So welcome to the show Fred Anderson.
AP Strange:How are
Fred Andersson:you doing? Thank you. I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. I'm very happy to hear about Sven's self mummification kit, know, and it's like to hear the name Sven, it warms my heart, you know, it's one of those beautiful classic Swedish names, you know.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's also one of those names that when they use a name in mostly American movies, someone who's supposed to be Swedish, they call him Sven. Or I need to say this now, they also use the name Olaf for Swedish people, but Olaf is a Norwegian name. So if there's any movie producers out there thinking about using Olaf as a Swedish name, don't do that.
Fred Andersson:Use Olaf instead. Oh,
AP Strange:how is that spelled?
Fred Andersson:Olof is with the that's the Swedish version. It's o l o f. Oh, okay. And the Norwegian version is o l a f.
AP Strange:Right, right.
Fred Andersson:It's a big difference, you know. But Sven, Sven. Yeah. I'm fine. I'm fine here.
AP Strange:That makes me curious if we're talking about names. Are you a Frederick?
Fred Andersson:No, no, no, no. I'm a Fred. Fred?
AP Strange:Fred, yes, my full name?
Fred Andersson:Yes, I don't have any second names or anything. It's like Fred.
AP Strange:Okay.
Fred Andersson:My mom was a peace activist in the 70s and 80s, you know, out doing demonstrations and protests and such, and means peace in Swedish. That's the Friad, It's the same spelling. It's the same. It means peace. That's why.
Fred Andersson:So I was suffering a lot from that as a kid because people were expecting me to be a nice, peaceful boy all the time. So I had to live up to that. I mean, it's true. It's trauma, basically, nothing. But anyway, what am I talking about?
Fred Andersson:Names. Yeah, exactly. Shut the up Fred
AP Strange:okay well no that's very interesting I mean I assumed because if I ever meet someone named Fred in The United States that could be short for Frederick I'm sure that you know there could be other versions of that you know so that's actually a really interesting backstory to the name. I had no idea.
Fred Andersson:Yeah I met Michael Ironside once the actor, you know, from Total Recall, etc. And lots of other Star Wars And he introduced himself like Michael and I say, I'm Fred. And he's like, we have the same name. And I'm like, what? And he said, my name is Fredrik, Michael Fredrik.
Fred Andersson:And I said, yes, because I didn't want to spoil the fun to say that my name is not Fredrik, my name is Fred. So just a little note here.
AP Strange:Well, is a funny thing in The United States. Basically because of the Screen Actors Guild, if you have the same name as somebody else that's currently in the guild, you have to change it. That's why a lot of actors change their names in The United States. It's interesting.
Fred Andersson:So you must do that. That's like a is there a law, basically?
AP Strange:Well, I mean, that's the bylaws of the union, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. To reduce confusion. That's why you'll see people like like William H.
AP Strange:Macy. There was probably already a William Macy, so he has to be presented as William H. You
Fred Andersson:know? Oh, okay. Okay. So a lot
AP Strange:of a lot of actors change their names just to be in the guild and
Fred Andersson:Yeah. I would probably change my name to something really cool then. I'm sure there's other Fred Anderson in the American movie business, would change my name to like steed macho or something like that.
AP Strange:Right. Well, that's probably why he picked iron sides though. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Sounds like a pretty tough name, you know?
AP Strange:Probably.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. I'm not serious, by the way. I'm not going to rename myself Steve Macho, but you never know.
AP Strange:Well, if I ever see a Steve Macho out in the world, I'll know who it was. So you can't fool me. That's just French.
Fred Andersson:Darn. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. So yeah. I mean but with that little sponsor that we had today, the Sven's self mummification kit, because I don't think our listeners would would normally associate mummies with Sweden, but in fact you have a whole bunch of mummy stories and I'll also preface this by saying there's been a number of times that independently of each other we've kind of looked into similar topics, which I think is great because I'm like, oh you know like Fred and I are kind of on the same wavelength in some way. And this is one of them because we both ended up kind of writing about mummies around the same time independently of each other. Yeah.
Fred Andersson:Well, mummies are cool. I think they're kind of underrated, especially nowadays. You don't see many mummies out there. You see other kind of monsters and vampires and stuff, but mummies are, they're charming. They're a bit shy, but, you know, yeah.
Fred Andersson:I mean, shall I mention it? But we had a mummy flap in Sweden in The Middle East, which I think is so cool. I mean, it's mummy. It's a mummy, damn it.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Fred Andersson:Well, shall run through it a little bit? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's
AP Strange:Because I was thinking like, looking into this stuff, I think a lot of people fall into this trap where they wanna look into paranormal stories and they're looking at ghosts and they're thinking about UFOs as aliens from another planet or, like, mystery monsters and, well, could Bigfoot be real? Could there really be a serpent in Loch Ness? And you think about things like that. And then mummies and vampires and werewolves are like, that's just movie stuff. You don't even consider it.
AP Strange:So it's really, really cool if you come across an actual mummy sighting, let alone a mummy flap. So so definitely take us through this. This is early 1970s, right?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, we had a mummy flap and it began in March 1973 in Satra. But it's way more complicated than that. There was a number of witness account coming in mostly from kids but also from a couple of adults that there was a mummy running around in the city scaring people. He was hiding in the forest, he or she, I guess, hiding in the forest, chasing kids to school or after school. I remember there was one boy who was actually, he claimed to be hiding down a sewer, you know, like an itch, you know, looking up there hiding from the mummy.
Fred Andersson:This came in, maybe it was like a week or so, and there were tons of witnesses contacting the police and the police were like, what should we do? I mean, they're seeing a mummy. It could be some crazy person, you know, just wrapped in bandages or something like that. Anyway, there were so many stories around this mummy, it killed cats, for example, it could kidnap people, it scared horses because there was riding school, a horse place nearby and the mummy was sneaking around there a lot. So there was tons of this and it was in the newspapers, there were, I'm not sure if you can say it was a serious police investigation around it, but the police were involved in trying to locate this mummy for sure.
Fred Andersson:But one need to understand what happened in 1972 because this was kind of the last part of a trio of flaps in Sweden because it all began in November 1972 where kids at Pilivalskulam in Treleboi claimed they saw a werewolf. And they've seen the werewolf, he was hairy, had long claws, and there was also a couple of ladies, older ladies who saw the werewolves down in the basement where he was hiding out. And this one was like even created even more panic, you know, because it was a werewolf. It was like a brutal monster out there and people actually got, you know, stalked and followed and attacked because they were hairy. People saw a bearded guy and at this time it was mostly hippies of course, who was bearded and they were chased by other people and kids and their cars were surrounded.
Fred Andersson:So it was a lot in the newspapers at the time. So you had a week or so in November and a couple of weeks later there was yet another werewolf flap in Jakobsberg here in Stockholm, where people continued to see the werewolf and they could see the werewolves lurching around on the rooftops, and here it was more adult witnesses to this monster. And like with the mummy, that was kind of the third part of it all, they never, you know, found any definitive proof that there actually was someone running around dressed like a werewolf or a mummy or an actual monster out there, didn't find anything like that, but the witnesses were all there and to be fair, most of them were kids and they actually interviewed some of the kids during later years. They did a story on this maybe ten years or so ago and while they're now grown up kids, they didn't say that they were faking it or something like that, but they said that of course they were out looking for the mummy or they were chased by the mummy or something. But I think what they maybe wanted to acknowledge was that their imagination had been running wild and they were seeing stuff like they never seen before, basically.
Fred Andersson:It's actually so many details about this and I'm trying to remember them all. I wrote a pretty extensive article on Medium about it, which is, I think it's quite okay actually, if you want to follow the whole story from the beginning to the end. Right. But the reason why I'm fascinating by this is because It's something that people laugh about today. You know, people still in these towns and neighbors, say, do you remember the mummy or do you remember the werewolf?
Fred Andersson:And people laugh, but it was a serious issue at the time. I mean, yeah, there was police involved, were newspaper writings, there were witnesses, there were, you know, was panic for, I mean, maybe in total a month in 1972 and 1973.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean well you have to though because like you said some maniac that's not well or potentially dangerous could wrap themselves up in bandages and run around and that would be dangerous you you can't just brush it off or a werewolf could be just some mystery beast or a rabid dog or like somebody does need to get involved. They never find any physical evidence, it's kind of brushed off as mass hysteria or hoaxing or kids with wild imaginations. Well,
Fred Andersson:some people claim to have evidence of the existence of the werewolf specifically. There was one boy who claimed to own a claw, they also claimed to have found a werewolf shoe, Okay. Which could have been a good sequel to a Lon Chaney werewolf movie, think. The werewolf shoe. But these objects have never surfaced, I can tell you that.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. But what I mean, yes, what I do like with this so much is whether these things happened or not, I mean, of course the events happen because they experience something. But what I mean, if it was their imagination or something else, find quite, it's not important to me because they had a full experience by a monster from another world, basically. It could be the world of imagination or it could be something else or it could be, it was a story that was created by other stories basically. It was a, I know Steve Berg, his favorite word is hyperstition, I think, where you tell these stories and they kind of come alive.
Fred Andersson:And I kind of see this as the same thing. I mean, to me, this is not any different from a typical UFO flap. It's the same thing, you know, people claim to see something and experience something and it seems like most of them thought this was something rewarding. This was a fun thing to have experienced. It was scary at the moment.
Fred Andersson:It's like with horror movies, you know, you watch horror movies because it's fun or scary or creepy and then you're out of it. This was like a kind of like a live horror movie.
AP Strange:Or any dangerous situation that you survive. You know, people always have big tales to tell when they narrowly avoided death or something like that, you know. And it doesn't even have to be that extraordinary. It's like I I knew a guy once that had basically saved a little old lady from a a rabid fox. A fox was attacking this woman.
AP Strange:It because it had rabies, it was insane. And he managed to get it away from her, and then he got bitten a bunch and had to get these shots. And, man, that guy rode that story for decades. He'd love to hold court and talk about how he fought the fox and everything.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, I mean, I understand him. I would do the same, you know. Would for sure. I mean, it's a rabbit fox for fuck's sake, you know.
AP Strange:It is a weird one.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, it is. I don't have any stories like that actually but no, I don't. I mean because I'm so I don't I never want to risk my life, you know, really and especially with a fox, but of course I would spring to action if someone needed my help, of course, of course, but I'm a little bit too comfortable nowadays to even go out at night, so yeah. Right.
AP Strange:But if you saw a mummy, you would definitely tell us, right?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, of course. Was definitely. I mean, okay, okay, there is one story I'm milking all the time. I call it my Men in Black story. Wrote about in the book and I've been mentioning it in other podcasts.
AP Strange:That is a really good story and I have a note on that so if you want to share it with my audience because I don't know if you've heard it but yeah.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. This happened during a time when I was researching Swedish men in black stories, which there aren't many, I can tell you, but I was like deep into it, I was talking to other researchers, I was contacting the elders in Ufosverje to see if they heard something, there was like, I was totally immersed in it, trying to find every possible many black that's been walking the Swedish soil. And I mean, one day during this time, went down to stores to do some shopping and I walked home and there's a man passing me on the street and he walks by me and it probably doesn't take many seconds until, you know, the expression, the sense of being stared at, you can kind of feel that someone is looking at you. So I stopped on the street and I turned around and he's standing there on the street with his hands down, like kind of apathic kind of posture, you know, like Michael Myers in the Halloween movies. He was standing there and he's looking at me.
Fred Andersson:And I actually think he had some kind of hoodie also or something, but that might be my memory being fucked up here. But he's standing there and he just looks at me completely still. And I feel, okay, this is weird. So I turn around and I continue to walk up to my apartment complex and through that I need to pass through a park and there I decide to, I think this maybe the third time actually, I stop and I turn around and he's standing there completely still, maybe 20 or 30 meters behind me. So every time I stop, he stops and he stands there and he watches me.
Fred Andersson:And now I was pretty close to my own building, my own home, so I was a little bit nervous. Is weird, what's this up to? So I hurry inside and lock the door, of course, check out the balcony, I can't see anyone, check out the window, I don't see anyone. Then I just, okay, I'm going to relax a bit, watch a movie or read something. And after, I don't know, an hour, thirty minutes, an hour, I see how our two cats is behaving strange out in the hallway.
Fred Andersson:I can see that from my living room and they, you know, it's like they're looking at something. So I go and check on them what they're up to. And so they're standing in the hallway and they're looking at the apartment door and I can see how the door handle is slowly moving up and down like a really cliched horror movie, someone wants to come And I look out at the peephole and I see this man standing quite close to the door and he's touching the door handle. And, you know, I'm stupid, so I'm just I'm opening the door because why not? And I ask, Hey, are you looking for someone casually trying to be relaxed or something like that?
Fred Andersson:And he says, Loam to me. L O A M. He doesn't say it Lom or something. He says Luam. And I said, There's no Luam here?
Fred Andersson:And he's like, Luam. This really freaks out because he obviously only knows one word and that's Luam. And I closed the door and after a couple of hours he leaves, he doesn't touch the door anymore. Anyway, this sets off.
AP Strange:Wait, just to stop right there. He stayed outside for, he just was outside your door for hours?
Fred Andersson:Yes, yes. But it gets
AP Strange:weirder, you know. I know it does, but every point along this way is so weird, you know, so I have to point it out.
Fred Andersson:Because what happens after this is that he did this every day for a month. He stood outside the door for hours. Sometimes he moved a stair up so he could look at the door from slightly above, but he was standing there outside the door whenever I left the apartment or when I came home. Of course, from the beginning I was very, very, very, very disturbed by this. Of course, I didn't really want to go out and my partner at the time had to, you know, go and basically scare these people, this guy away.
Fred Andersson:But he said Luam all the time. That was the only word he said during this month, Luam. So he was there every day and I remember one of the first, maybe a week in, we woke up in the middle of the night, it was midnight I think actually, exactly midnight, and we could hear the doorbell ringing. And of course it was him who wanted inside the apartment and he was saying Luam. A couple of nights later I found him outside the balcony and I was looking, it was evening and I was looking out and I saw, it's so freaky, but I saw his white eyes glimmer basically in the darkness when he was looking up at the apartment because we're kind of on the Bottom Floor.
Fred Andersson:But I mean, to be fair, after months with this guy around the apartment, it was like when I come home from office, he's standing there and I was more like, hello, and then go inside. It was such a I got so used to it anyway. So after a month or so, he disappeared and I've never seen him since. During this time, I was really struggling with this experience. What is he saying?
Fred Andersson:Who is Luam? Or what is Luam? And I remember reading something by our old friend Alastair Crowley and I remember his channeling of Luam, the alien entity who kind of looks like Crowley himself or a grey, whatever direction you come from there, you know. And I mean this name Lum is some kind of mud, what I understand, some kind of mud or some kind of soil if you look it up. It can also be spelled Luam with that spelling for some reason.
Fred Andersson:Was more complex things revolving this Crowley thing but I kind of, I don't remember everything. I need to go back and read my own notes about it. So maybe a month or two later, I don't remember exactly when, I had this weird synchronicity chain that led up to a specific spot. One morning I got an email from a friend in Norway who said that he sent me a photo of a giant footprint and we were joking that this was a troll footprint because it's Norway. A Couple Of Hours later I got an email from a UK production company who asked if they could use a photo of a troll that I had in my possession.
Fred Andersson:It's like a peridole effect, it kind of looks like a troll in the background. And I thought this was quite funny with the two trolls in a row. So that evening I went down my usual route to go shopping and I went through the park and I can see something on the trail at the exact same spot where this guy stood, where the Luam guy stood in the park looking at me and there was, it looked like a tiny humanoid, like a tiny human or something, like one and a half decimetre tall, maybe two decimetres tall. And I was like, what is that? I remember there is the same spot And I walk closer and closer and I find a wooden troll, you know, someone carved a troll, a classic SwedishNorwegian troll from a piece of wood and put it on that exact point.
Fred Andersson:Now I realized that the connection between the Luam guy and the troll thing might be a bit far fetched, but for me at the time it was like, what the fuck is going on?
AP Strange:Well, it's the same
Fred Andersson:spot. Yeah, so for me, this guy has always been connected to the Men in Black phenomena. You know, it was like some kind of weird warning from some other world or just a crazy I have no idea, but it was creepy as fuck, I can tell you.
AP Strange:Yeah, did you never involve the police during this whole time that he was basically harassing you or surrounding you?
Fred Andersson:No, I didn't and because I've had I'm not too fond of the police because I had a couple of instances early in my life where I went to them because of hate crime things. People were stalking me because of me being gay, etcetera, etcetera, and at the time they basically just laughed at me and didn't do anything. So for me it was like, no, I'm not going to contact them. I'm going to just wait to see what happens here. But yeah, maybe I should.
Fred Andersson:Maybe I should, but I'm
AP Strange:Well, the other thing that strikes me too is maybe somebody didn't carve it out of wood. Maybe it actually was a troll that just returned into wood, you know? Yeah. Yeah. With magical entities.
Fred Andersson:It is maybe the troll is the same as Luam. He just wanted to introduce himself or something like I never thought about this. I might re evaluate this experience actually.
AP Strange:Well, mean when you think about it as a word for like earth or mud basically and in English that would be pronounced loam. Yeah. In some places people will say loom sounds more like loom but loam loom but like a troll is kind of an earth spirit anyway they're kind of earthen kind of so that's interesting connection.
Fred Andersson:Yeah and why haven't I thought about that before? And now when talking about it, he wanted to get inside the apartment all the time. Didn't succeed. What did he do? He transformed himself into a wooden troll and that troll is in my apartment now.
Fred Andersson:Oh no. Fuck.
AP Strange:How do your cats react to it?
Fred Andersson:Oh, I don't know. I think he's in some closet somewhere at the moment. I invited a troll in the apartment. I never I never made this connection before.
AP Strange:Maybe maybe it was meant to be. I mean, this was a while ago, so I think that has happened yet. Know?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope so. Really? You know, I like this. I like this version of it better, actually.
Fred Andersson:Because I'm fond of trolls in general and gnomes and, you know, these kind of beings. So yeah. Well, cool. Thank you.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, I think you handled it really well because I I probably would have freaked out, you know. Well, I guess your partner had some strong words with him and tried to scare him away. Right? Yeah.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
AP Strange:That's what I would have done.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. I'm I'm I'm, you know, I'm very, very Swedish of me and I'm the cliche Swedish person and they just kind of, you know, they just What did you say? I can't find the word now. They just
AP Strange:carry on
Fred Andersson:yeah they carry on they just okay let's let's see he might go away one day sort of just he's probably a nice guy you know so.
AP Strange:Well because I had an event at my old apartment apartment and not nearly as dramatic as yours but it almost felt like I had suddenly stepped into like a David Lynch movie or something just because of the very odd behavior of the person at my door Yeah. I broke immediately. Like, I'm not ashamed to say that I just completely something snapped in my head and I I started, like, screaming at this guy because he just was very strange. Yeah. But it was a younger guy and he was looked like maybe 19 or 20 years old and he had a had a badge that was on on one of those kind of necklace type things wearing around his neck and he was from some company that was offering inspections to help us save money on energy they were gonna like give us tips on how to like be more energy efficient and so he knocked on the door and I he started giving me his sales pitch basically and I told him well you know I don't own this place I'm just a renter you know so you probably would want to talk to my landlord about that and I thought I could get rid of him easily with that and at this point it's a normal interaction it's a door to door salesman basically and he says no there's a program for renters as well you can sign up for the you know I'll just need some information from you and you know this is I had just gotten home from work I was looking to just sit down and relax and I had hoped to just get rid of the guy and I just said no, you know what, I think I think we're okay, we're good and I expected him to just thank you very much like take his clipboard and his little badge and walk away and instead he just stood there and he had this weird reaction as though like I insulted him.
AP Strange:But it was almost like I just said fuck your mother, you know, like because he he just closed his eyes and like looked down and went, what? And I was like, you know, I don't know what to do. And then he starts giggling and he's standing there with his head tipped forward and his eyes like kinda shut and he's like giggling like a lunatic And he won't leave. He's, like, halfway he's in my entryway to my my apartment. You know?
AP Strange:Mhmm. And he's standing there, and he's just laughing at me and and, like, giggling. And I was like I lost my mind immediately. I was like, what the fuck? I'm like, what is wrong with you?
AP Strange:Like, get the fuck out of my house. I'm like, go. Get out of here. Know? It was like because it was like in the David Lynch thing, you know?
AP Strange:Was just what is this frigging Mulholland Drive or something? Yeah. What am I looking at?
Fred Andersson:Oh, it sounds like a super freaky experience, really. Yeah. I mean
AP Strange:And he he stepped back and I closed the door. I slammed the door and then I went inside and I was I was like shaking from it and then I thought, oh wait a minute where is he gonna go next? I should probably warn my neighbors or something. I look out the window and I didn't see him. So I immediately went back outside, and I looked everywhere.
AP Strange:Like, I looked down the street, and I looked down my driveway. I looked behind my house to the parallel street. Mhmm. And he was just nowhere to be seen. And I was, like, asking people.
AP Strange:I'm like, did you see a guy walk through here? And they're like, what are you talking about? Really? I have no idea what that was all about maybe he just napped after getting doors closed in his face too many times that day yeah
Fred Andersson:yeah yeah
AP Strange:you know but I really don't know but it was just a bizarre it was a complete off the wall reaction to me just saying, no, thank you, you know. It just, I don't know.
Fred Andersson:Really? Yeah, but it, I mean, I have so strong visuals. I mean, can see this scene in front of me so clearly now, really. I don't know if I mentioned this experience before. I will mention it shortly because it's one of those that takes forever.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. But it's also one of those where reality feels off. There's something off. This was, I don't know how many years ago it was with my former partner and we felt hungry, so we decided, okay, let's go and eat at that new Thai restaurant down the road. So we walk out and there's, first of all, you have this strange fog outside.
Fred Andersson:It's just an odd fog. It's moist air. I can't really explain it, but you know, we're in a good mood and we're hungry, so we just take a walk, maybe seven, eight minutes, come to the restaurant and we step inside and there is something strange in there. The whole atmosphere, the whole feeling of the place is like this is everything felt staged. It was like we come into a movie scene once again.
Fred Andersson:By the entrance, it was quite a big place, you know, and there were no other guests. And just by the entrance, exactly by the entrance, there was a family sitting and there was they kind of looked cartoonish. There was a mom and dad and two children, a son and daughter, And they all were I don't know how to put this in a nice way, but they were chubby. They're very, you know, almost like a comic book chubby family, you like you can see. Very round faces and round hands and, you know, and they were sitting there eating in silence.
Fred Andersson:This strange family for some reason. We felt them very, very odd. So we went inside, we took a table in the corner, and we just noticed that there was something was off with the staff, everyone was behaving odd, they were distanced, it was like they weren't there really. We ordered food, and we felt that this something's fucked up here, so we ate very, very fast, you know, was quite okay food and then we paid and then we left the restaurant. So we had to pass this shabby family on the way out.
Fred Andersson:And just when I stepped outside the restaurant and was about to close the door behind me, I heard a voice saying, do you think this was a fast eating competition or did you think this was a fast eating competition? And I was like, what? And I turned around and it was the father in this family sitting there and he was looking at me and he was repeating the question, did you think this was a fast eating competition? And because I'm Swedish, I was like, no, we were just hungry or anything, you know, something like And then we closed the door and walked really fast. Might not sound totally weird now, but at the moment this was one of the weirdest evenings I've ever had.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean these are the kinds of experiences that are really difficult to describe because you wonder should you even describe it to someone because it's not going to there's nothing particularly paranormal, but it's just like you feel like like you said, it sounded like you you know, or the way I said it was I felt like I'm in a David Lynch movie like I feel like I'm in Twin Peaks all of a sudden you know something shifts because your expectations are suddenly not met and it's significant when you're with another person and they also feel that way.
Fred Andersson:Oh yeah, yeah.
AP Strange:It's not just you're feeling unwell or you know there's something wrong with you. You had somebody with you and you both felt uncomfortable, you know.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, very much. We talked about this.
AP Strange:What a reaction from the man at the table. I'm trying to like challenge you for eating quickly and leaving, you know?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, don't know. Yeah, it's so weird. We were talking a lot about this afterwards because especially I couldn't let go of it, the other thing. And my partners thought everything was weird too, of course. But we were like, it felt staged.
Fred Andersson:It felt like this It was a setup or something. There was something odd with it. And we were speculating, like this man, was he the new owner or something? Was he someone who were about to, you know, he was some kind of star guest or he was about to buy? There was something and everyone was nervous around them or something, but I have no idea.
Fred Andersson:And a couple of months later, the restaurant went bankrupt like every restaurant in that corner. There's bankruptcy for all of them, so it's a cursed place obviously.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I mean, brings up one of the things that you look into, which is phantom strangers. Yeah. Kind of out of place people because it's a very similar thing, you know. But this is almost like a phantom location you know
Fred Andersson:oh yeah oh yeah
AP Strange:I think it's worth mentioning on the liminal earth site on the map there's there's a couple stories a lot like the one that you told One of them was at a rest stop somewhere in the American Southwest, and I think they went back and the restaurant wasn't there when they came back the second time. It just never existed. Mhmm. I know Jeremy Puma has another story on there from Florida that's kind of similar strange interactions like at a fast food restaurant. And then Johnny Elteni has a story about a diner that he went to that apparently never existed, you know.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. Heard about that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Fred Andersson:Well, from my side, I'm trying to find Swedish, once again Swedish encounters with Phantom Strangers. And once again, there's, I think I brought this up regarding Men in Black too, you know, in my book or somewhere else that, I mean, this seems way more common in United States than in, for example, Sweden. I think because United States is a more paranoid country with more secrecy. In Sweden, we're like happy go lucky, you know, come on, let's have a picnic in the military area, whatever. But I found a couple who I find pretty interesting anyway.
Fred Andersson:We have a listener to I have a Swedish podcast, Merkleadsvakton, where we used to read the latest wacky, weird paranormal news from the last two weeks and one of our listeners emailed me and told me about an event that happened thirty years ago near the lake in Dalarna, very close to Norway and they were up on the, you know, out in the wilderness, he and his friend or friends or whoever he was with, and they like hiking. This is wilderness. You have good clothes on, you have good boots, you have food, everything, you never know what's going to happen out there. And I believe, if I remember this correctly, they have walked quite far and they come up on a mountain where you can look out at the, you know, the valleys around, you know, it's stunning, stunning scenery up there. When he sees a family come walking and they're dressed, you know, they have like quite nice clothes, they have like loafers, you know, shoes, they're tidy and they're very, they just don't belong up there, up in the wilderness.
Fred Andersson:And they if I remember it correctly, this family I don't remember if it was two children once again and two adults there but they woke up to the listener who sent this and I don't think they said hello or something like that. They were kind of just looking and the guy who emailed this felt that he needed to be friendly, so he asked, do you want to borrow a binocular? You can look at the view from it, you know. So he just, do you want to borrow a binocular? And they just took the binocular and they didn't say anything.
Fred Andersson:They didn't say thank you or how nice or what. They just took it and they kind of looked around, gave it back, and then he described it as they kind of floated down the mountainside.
AP Strange:And
Fred Andersson:he was very, very perplexed by this. He was checking it afterwards, you know, was there a family lost up there? Is there a way to land a helicopter somewhere? You know, something happened there, but he never found anything and he never heard about his family again. So it's quite common when you meet phantom strangers in Sweden that they have a certain ghost aura also.
Fred Andersson:They can be weird people, but they can also be ghosts. One of my favorite stories and I can never, mean, I can't tell it as good as the guy who experienced it, but he and his pal were once again out in the wilderness to go to the cabin to do some fishing and this is far away. There's no villages nearby, there's no cities, there is a road, so they parked their car and they walked into the forest to, I think there's a river and there's a bridge or the river, a slim narrow bridge, and they stay there to rest and this is in the middle of the night. It's definitely after midnight, maybe even one in the morning, and they're completely alone. It's silent.
Fred Andersson:It's just the nature, and suddenly they hear steps. I don't remember it was on the road or on some train, but they hear someone coming and maybe 10 meters away, maybe five meters away, they suddenly see two men who look funny. One is tall and slim and one is quite short and shabby and they have these old style clothes on and big hats, and they're just walking, you know, with almost zombie like eyes. They're just staring blank in front of them, and these guys on the side of the road, they're just standing there and say, hello, you know, because when you meet a stranger far out, you know, you need some reaction. But these two guys, these two men just walked straight past them a couple of meters away and disappeared into the darkness, never to be seen again.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, that's
AP Strange:pretty weird.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, yeah, and it's way more spooky when you hear him tell this story, but it's like, why it seems like many of these phantom strangers is happening in the wilderness too, because I guess it's often so weird to meet the guy with a suitcase or some, you know, some guy with a suit in the wilderness, but it also makes it extra creepy somehow, because you really understand that this doesn't belong here, you know, this is something else.
AP Strange:And as you said, those can be kind of rolled into classic ghost stories because I mean they are kind of phantoms, know, in a way, but if you don't see them do anything specifically paranormal like vanish between before your eyes or fly or something like that. I mean, I guess the first witness that you mentioned, they seemed like they were floating down the hill, you know. Yeah. But with the these two men, it just They're it's improbable that there were just happened to be these two guys that well dressed in the middle of nowhere in in the middle of the night, you know, like, they're walking. Mhmm.
AP Strange:But not impossible. But, again, it's just this it's a very strange encounter. And ghost a ghost might explain it, but, you know, what else could it possibly be?
Fred Andersson:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It could be like some kind of time rift, some kind of, you know, rift in time or something. But I mean, it's also, I'm sure that's common practice in The United States and other countries.
Fred Andersson:If you meet someone out in nature, you say hello. I mean, it's to know that I'm fine and you're fine. So, you know, it's I think it's just normal behavior, you know. It didn't happen, not even with the family of course they had some interaction but they didn't say hello they just took the binoculars and looked at it.
AP Strange:It kind of sounds like a time slip sort of story because sometimes in like time slip stories the people around don't seem to notice you at all, know, like the the experience or walks suddenly steps into a different time period and the people can't see him or something like that, you know. So it might be something like that, but it's very strange.
Fred Andersson:It is. It is. Don't don't know. Of course, last time we talked about Jaws three d, but I mean, I've been investigating quite deeply a possible time slip or whatever it was here in Sweden that happened in 2013, where we actually I don't want to tell too much because this will be one hour of television this autumn, but we've found at least four people on the same island in Sweden who have experienced very, very similar things. The first couple of guys were driving a car and suddenly, and this was a professional driver who worked on the island, who found himself and his son somewhere else.
Fred Andersson:This is not the same island he's living on, or he's been driving on, and other two witnesses had a similar thing where they actually got lost on a stretch of road that really has no, there's no curves or turns or anything like that. It's just a straight road for nine kilometers and they get lost, for example. We have some other witnesses also, which is, I find it even more interesting because these are professionals. I mean, these are people who know this place. These aren't tourists or, you know, they're And it's not a
AP Strange:very big island either, right? So, I mean, it's easy to No,
Fred Andersson:no, straight over. No, no, no. It's not a small island either, but believe me, when you've been on this island, you know that there isn't much other places to go actually. If you're on a road, you will be on that road. Right.
Fred Andersson:But I find it incredibly fascinating and truly, truly mysterious, you know. Yeah. Well, maybe there's
AP Strange:a portal there. I know you're a big fan of portals.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, I know. Sorry. Yeah, I'm trying to avoid that word, but yeah, maybe it's portal. Well, first I want to say it's a pity I can't talk about this TV show I'm working on now, because we're doing a four part documentary series about the paranormal in Sweden with one big case in every episode where we have tons of witnesses on every case, and we have experts, we have a sceptic and we have a believer, and it's a very balanced, fun and respectful series where the accounts is the most important thing. Those are the main characters, and then we're just trying to look at it from different angles.
Fred Andersson:So there's no psychic mediums or ghost hunters or something in it, and it's, so I've been doing massive research on lots of cases, but this will be four cases and all of them are so intriguing I can't wait to actually see it on air so I can talk about it, because it's some really strange, interesting stuff, you know. But yeah, that was my teaser. I can't say so much more. Yeah.
AP Strange:Well, I'm sure I'm sure audiences will love it. You know, I think.
Fred Andersson:I hope so. Yeah. I wanted it to be a season two because I'm sure there's more things out there too. Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:Now are these stories that I know you don't want to talk too much about it, but are they well known or are they kind of very niche within Sweden?
Fred Andersson:They're not well known at all. I mean, it was announced in December, we put out on message boards and the guy who's the host of the show sat in television and said that we're looking for interesting paranormal experiences. So and he's a very well respected guy, people like him a lot. Wouldn't say he's a believer and he's not a skeptic, he's just very interested in it. So we got a bunch of interesting stuff in the email, and then I brought in a couple of myself and my own archive, and one of them, we actually found an article in a newspaper from December, and we read it and we felt this is great.
Fred Andersson:Why is this not more well known? So we've been toying with more well known cases, specific areas where things happening and more classic ghosts and stuff, but we decided at least for now to just go with the more personal, more unknown stories because they're, it's good stuff, you know, and you haven't read about them a hundred times before, you know, this is new shit, you know. Yeah,
AP Strange:I mean it was interesting for me as like a TV viewer in The US watching a lot of this paranormal stuff go more mainstream with first with the ghost hunting shows I think, Back in the nineties you had a lot of UFO type stuff but with ghost hunting shows and ancient aliens it's like seeing how people interpret you know the mainstream interprets a lot of this paranormal stuff that I already know about. But as time has gone on, there's been plenty of other shows and as you say it's like the the tendency is for them to hit the the well known cases. You know they're gonna they're gonna just keep hammering the same well known like to the point where like, I never thought I'd get sick of Mothman, but like that
Fred Andersson:It's happening, yeah?
AP Strange:Everybody's told the story by now, you know? So like, it's a very good idea, I think, to focus on personal encounters that are sent to you that people don't know about, you know, haven't heard a million times. Yeah. We need more variety.
Fred Andersson:And I like, I don't know, it maybe sounds weird, but I like to hear normal folks talk about this I mean you have a tendency in this many of these other shows that you have the celebrities, the same witnesses showing up over and over again, because many of them are probably genuine and nice folks of course, but I want to hear the, you know, what the family next door have experienced, or the bus driver down the street, what did he see that night. I like to hear things for the first time and that's what we want to present to people out there. Of course, now I heard these stories a thousand times during the last couple of months, because I've been researching every, and I've turned every stone, you know, to see, can we find some weakness here? Is there some natural explanation around the corner or is it unexplainable, you know? Yeah.
Fred Andersson:People will see this autumn, so.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I don't think I'll be able to see it, but
Fred Andersson:maybe It's like I wrote the other day, it's like a curse. I do all these shows in Sweden and no one outside of Sweden can watch them. It's like
AP Strange:yeah yeah. Well maybe that's what you need to do is push for an American dubbed release or subtitles you know, English language subtitles and go for other markets, you know.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, or that there's someone out there who just rips them from whatever streaming services, you know, there are and just add subtitles to it. Don't dare to do that. If one of my producers are listening now, can't do that. Well,
AP Strange:so now I'm curious because we hadn't talked about this, but I saw you post the other day a few books and one of them was about a lake monster in Sweden. Oh, yes. Is that playing into the show or is that something you're just reading for pleasure?
Fred Andersson:I'm just reading it for pleasure. It's the most famous lake monster in Sweden, the big lake monster, is When it comes to cryptids, we mostly have monsters in this country and the big lake monster or Stufe Ojuret, can you say that? Ojuret? Yeah, quite okay. It's a very, very classic cryptid up in a lake in the Mid North Of Sweden, in the more in the Mid Of Sweden actually, but you have mountains and stuff around it.
Fred Andersson:It's a beautiful place, it's my old hometown, Ostasund, so I've been there a lot, and you've had this encounter since the early twentieth century, is that correct? Early nineteen ten, '19 hundred, but before that there were some certain rumors, there were some mentioning in old scriptures that there were some kind of serpent in the lake. There is the only runestone, what I know, in these parts of the country is by that lake, and of course that runestone has serpent on it, and the legend says that there were some trolls doing something and they put the monster in the lake or whatever. The thing is if you read the runes on the runestone, I might remember this incorrectly now, but I think it's more like the bridge was raised by Sven and Olaf. It has nothing to do with monsters or anything if you just read it.
Fred Andersson:But it's a fun one, it's been written a lot about this. This particular book was from 1959 and it's quite cute book with silly drawings in it, is fun of course, but the articles in it is quite serious, but it kind of just repeats the older witness accounts and older stories and the mythology around it. I claim to have seen the monster once actually. I don't remember which year this was, it was many years ago and I was walking on a street, a couple of streets up from the lake, but I could look down at the lake from one point and this particular day I could see a long object, kind of like, I don't know, twenty, thirty meters long, kind of swimming upstreams, you know, and it was quite visible swimming upstreams. Yeah, and I wrote it down, so I have my original notes somewhere about it.
Fred Andersson:I don't know, maybe it was a wave or some timber or whatever. I don't know what it was, it really felt like, okay, this something organic and living and it's swimming upstream, you know? Maybe I saw the monster. Yeah. Or maybe not.
AP Strange:So this is kind of like the Swedish version of the Loch Ness Monster.
Fred Andersson:Definitely, and the local mythology, the local lore about it is that this lake is connected to the Loch Ness in Scotland, so it's basically the same monster, you know, swim in some tunnels around or whatever.
AP Strange:Right, I always love that idea that there's subterranean tunnels under Loch Ness that connect out to the ocean or to other lakes. This
Fred Andersson:is the lake, you know, so it might be the same monsters swimming around up there. So, it's good. If you ever come to Sweden, go up there sometime, they have specific spots just like in Loch Ness where you can stand and you can see if you can catch a glimpse of the serpent.
AP Strange:Nice, yeah. I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave the country. Seems like they're putting up gates around it right now.
Fred Andersson:Oh, yeah. Well well, you know, I've we'll arrange some kind of the secret mission, whatever, something like that. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Fred Andersson:Yep. It's a deal.
AP Strange:Alright. Well, I definitely don't wanna let you go without talking a little bit about gnomes at least. Don't. So around this lake, you said that there, you know, this is kind of wilderness too. Is or, you know, the are there trolls in in Tomten up there?
Fred Andersson:Yeah. I mean, we have Tomten everywhere in Sweden. Yeah, everywhere. Not so much in the big cities, of course. I mean, continue to just dig after new Tomta stories all the time.
Fred Andersson:I sometimes, for your listeners, sometimes I call them gnomes because they kind of look like the classic gnome with beard and pointy hat and everything like that, but the real name is Tomte or Vete, which is kind of a smaller version of it and you'll basically find them everywhere around farms or old houses in Sweden. You need to respect them, of course, because they're helping out, taking care of the farm. Sometimes they show up when they're unhappy with something and they probably tell you quite brutally or harsh at least. Yeah. And there is a particular road stretch in Sweden which had a lot of accidents, or they say so, I think it's quite exaggerated, but it's one of those death roads where there's a lot of accidents, because it's kind of curbed oddly and people have a tendency to drive quite fast, and I've been investigating that place to see if there is something beyond the headlines, because maybe ten years ago, so there was a lot of headlines in newspapers about Tomtar and other nature spirits causing accidents there, but it was mostly just people had heard things.
Fred Andersson:There was nothing more than that. Yeah. So I've been digging around quite a lot about it and actually found a couple of real life encounters with these creatures on this particular stretch of road or just beside it, including a hunter who was sitting in his tower, you have this hunting tower, I don't know what you call it, and he was looking around and suddenly he saw a thomte with, what do you call it in English? Little, say a little wagon, pushing a little wagon in front of it, yeah, and the thomte is standing down there looking at him and he's looking back and he's like confused. I mean, it's a tiny, small bearded man with a pointy hat looking at him out in the forest and he turns around and he looks back and of course the little one is gone.
Fred Andersson:I talked also with another guy who actually was in a car crash on the site and when the car had stopped stuck in the snow by the side of the road, he looked out and he saw Tomte standing a few meters away just looking at him at the car, maybe checking if he was okay or maybe if, you know, maybe he caused it. I don't know. Yeah. I can't trust these little fuckers, you know, because they built this stretch of road on a holy place. I mean, it's a forest which is surrounded with mythology and stuff around nature spirits.
Fred Andersson:So, you know, you shouldn't fuck with those places. It seems like I'm saying fuck the longer this episode goes. I'm sorry for that.
AP Strange:But
Fred Andersson:with that said, so many experiences of gnomes in Sweden. It's ridiculous.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean, just seems like it's It seems like if you were in Sweden and you brought up the subject of UFOs or something like that, may shake their head, but if you say Tomte, everybody just accepts that they're around. Is that the case?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, not everyone, but I totally feel that the belief in Tomte is more accepted, especially outside the big cities, without a doubt. Mean, it's this, yeah, like I said, there's so many stories and experiences out there. But yeah, I don't know. I'm getting There's so many Tonte stories out there, so I don't know where to begin. But I mean, phenomenon itself, it's so interesting.
Fred Andersson:I find it also weird that, for example, the UFOs are changing over the years as we, you know, the style of them, they're getting this kind of looks like different technology and it's a fashion, for example, in UFOs or UAPs, as some people say. But with Tomta, that looks basically the same since like one hundred years back or something. They don't change. It's the guys, you know.
AP Strange:It's mostly something really nice about that.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, you know, stays the same at least, you know. Before that, they were more considered like demons or devils, you know, sent here Lucifer or something like that. They were more sinister beings, but still helpful. They took care of the farm, you know, some of them were considered ghosts of past owners of the land or earlier owners of buildings who have had become some kind of tiny ghosts basically, you know, taking care of stuff, which I do enjoy. That detail I actually learned from Joshua Kutchin's Psychology of Souls.
Fred Andersson:I didn't know that, so I had to check that out after I read it in his book. The ghost part that they're connected to death in that way, which I find very, very intriguing.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah, I mean I think like the think the evil associations were largely brought there by you know Protestant missionaries and you know people that were convert trying to keep a dominant Christian view over people, you know, recording the folklore, but working that into the folklore to make sure everybody knows these things are evil, you know.
Fred Andersson:Oh yeah, mean the early Christians in Sweden were really pissed off at Tom Thar. You can find it in all scriptures, for example, Saint Bridget of Sweden, in one of her visions, she talks about it, she's upset that the farmers are worshiping the God Tomte instead of the Christian God, for example, and so she's not happy about that, but you know, that didn't stop people from, you know, worshiping or being friends or at least respecting these little creatures.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean I feel like that's the way to go with a lot of entities that could largely just be referred to as fey or nature spirits is you probably don't need to be like buddy buddy. You don't need to be good friends. You you just need to respect, you know, respect and privacy. Share share the land. You know?
Fred Andersson:Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:Are there any legends about offerings that could be left for the to help them or?
Fred Andersson:Oh, This this I mean, we still to this day, and this might be something that you do in other countries too, you put out porridge outside the house, for example, when Santa Claus, then it's for Santa Claus, but that tradition itself is from the old Tomte, the gnomes. Should put out some porridge, maybe some milk on the porch, so they'll be happy. The same, you can put out a glass of Bruce, for example, or, you know, some kind of hard liquor. They like that too. I have a friend who had problems with these kind of creatures this summer actually, and we were talking about it and he said he believed that they were living in an old, that looked kind of like an old grave mound nearby.
Fred Andersson:It was a pile of stones or rocks and it was trouble in the house. There was always stuff happening, there wasn't calm, were, you know, it was just he didn't like it. So he said, I think it might be Tomte or Weta, the smaller version, and I said, well, I think you should go out there with a glass of whiskey and put it by the rocks and I'm sure they will be fine and happy. And yes, they didn't become drunk at least and caused more mayhem. The house went quiet and chill, what I understand so far at least.
AP Strange:Yeah. I gotta say it usually works. I've done it before too.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, oh yeah.
AP Strange:I had my own weird little experiences. A lot of it had to do with dreams I was having for a while, but there were some effects like in my physical day to day life. Mhmm. And at one point, I poured some booze into, like, a plastic cup that had been left over actually from my wedding, like a disposable cup that you could throw away. And I left it out in the garden with booze in it, and the the cup was gone when I came back.
AP Strange:I'm glad I used the disposable one.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. There was nothing there. You know? I
AP Strange:left the booze and I left some tobacco and, like, things became peaceful around here. You know?
Fred Andersson:Yeah. So Sounds great to hear. Really. It's Yeah. Awesome.
Fred Andersson:Yeah.
AP Strange:So that's my advice to people if you're dealing with any kind of gnome, elf, goblin, imp, fairy, whatever it is, you know, just give it give it some booze. Everybody likes booze.
Fred Andersson:Yeah. Sorry. It froze up here for a second. So I I just pretended to listen there for a couple of seconds.
AP Strange:Oh, okay. I was just saying that's my advice to people if they have these issues, if they have issues with any invisible little people is give them booze. Good or tobacco like both those things yeah so is is your work on the tanta and gnomes and that includes trolls too, right? Are you talking looking into trolls?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, we have very very few modern troll observations, very very few. So with giants. I've actually dug up a couple where people have seen giants in Sweden, but it's like we're talking stuff that's like 40 or 50 years old at the most. I found a woman who claimed to see a troll woman sitting leaning against her house, preacher that was like three meters taller or something like that, but very few of them actually for some reason. I think it's because they're quite big.
Fred Andersson:It's harder to hide somehow and it may be, you may, if they show up from a different dimension or whatever, they're more visible directly in a way than if you're a tomte or vette or something like that. So my work is mainly because I'm writing a book very, very slowly. My mom passed away, so I kind of just let everything go for a while, but I've been gathering more cases and more stuff, but I'm focusing on tiny humanoids, if you can say that. They should be at the most one meter tall, 60 centimeter. Above that, it's kind of, you know, it's, know, so I think I have like one who's like eighty centimeter tall, and that's kind of I was pushing the limit.
Fred Andersson:I am really pushing the line there. If there's trolls showing up that's smaller than that, might include them, yeah. But my main focus is the more classic farm helpers and the more trickster kind of beings in that size, and they need to look human, or, you know, humanoid at least, you know. I have a few where they kind of look more weird than that. They're kind of small and white, you know, like almost like mycelium taking the shape of a tiny human, for example.
Fred Andersson:Found one where a guy found a giant mushroom, a fly agaric landed in the forest and these creatures came out, and I felt it was so connected with folklore and Swedish nature anyway, so I
AP Strange:included Yeah,
Fred Andersson:that's, but I'm working on it and I had a chance to get a hold of amazing research made by a priest. He passed away some years ago and his folders with research and letters ended up in a colleague's hand and then we scanned it at the UFO archive and so I have the scans of everything and there's some pretty interesting stuff there, both about giants and Tomte and similar thing, but I'm going through it slowly, basically. There's also a small town in Sweden where everyone has seen what they believe is the same, Tonte, you have witnesses from several different, you know, angles at the same time in different houses, and they see this little guy standing there lurking around.
AP Strange:He's like a celebrity town.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, kind of, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I will write about that too, yeah.
AP Strange:Okay, well I definitely look forward to that and I would say take your time because it's just it's really the work you put into these stories and and the service you're doing to the rest of the world that doesn't speak Swedish and doesn't know these stories is is wonderful. I absolutely love being able to experience these tales and the weirdness in your part of the world because nobody else was sharing before you.
Fred Andersson:Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So happy to hear that really. I'm very and I'm very happy to to be the one doing it definitely
AP Strange:yeah yeah well there's there's no better person for the job I don't I think
Fred Andersson:so thanks I'm blushing here yeah
AP Strange:Alright. So, well, as we wind down here, I do wanna direct listeners to be able to check out your stuff that you have online and your current book. Mhmm. So do you wanna just let people know where they can find you and where all your stuff is?
Fred Andersson:Yeah, mean I'll be very very glad if you buy my book, Northern Lights High Strangeness in Sweden, you can find it online, you can support your local bookstore really. Go there and ask them to bring it in stock, that would be the best. Other places you can get it, but you know, support them please. Or else you'll find me always, you know, for a while here I removed so many of my social media accounts because I was so pissed off at certain things in the world, at the moment I'm mostly active on Blue Sky as Homo Sattonis and I'm actually back at Instagram, shame on me as Homo Satanis, where I mostly post books, etc, and I'd say that's the best place to find me and connect with me and see what I'm posting. Sometimes it's just about horror movies or sometimes it's just whining about other things and sometimes it's about weirdness.
Fred Andersson:So it's a bit up and down there, back and forth.
AP Strange:Well, there is of course also your Medium account, so people can check out on Medium and read your long form articles because you have so much good stuff on there.
Fred Andersson:Oh, thank you. Yeah, please do, please do. I guess you can find it if you search for Fed Andersen with two s and medium and you'll find it. There's some really good stuff there. Maybe don't scroll too way back because there's some silly embarrassing stuff at your earliest whatsoever.
Fred Andersson:Stay within the last couple of years, that's the best I think.
AP Strange:Yeah, well I've been reading your stuff for a long time, I don't remember anything that would be interesting.
Fred Andersson:Okay, okay. You know, Yeah, that's where you'll find me. And of course, at the AP Strange Show here at this podcast.
AP Strange:Yes. Yeah. You can go back and listen to Fred's first appearance here, which was the Jaws three d episode. I think it's just called Jumping the Shark with Fred Anderson. Yeah.
AP Strange:We had a lot of fun. But yeah, I mean, it's always a blast talking to you, Fred. Thank you so much for coming on. You're an international treasure and we're all lucky to have you. So
Fred Andersson:Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Alright.