In 1946, as Europe recovered from World War II, people in Sweden went into a panic at what

seems to be Soviet missiles streaking through their skies.

Publicly, it was a rash of UFOs called the Ghost Rockets, but intelligence experts worried

it might be far more sinister.

But today we have better data and a better perspective, and can put a more probable explanation

on the Ghost Rockets.

And we're going to do it right now on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com, the Swedish Ghost Rockets.

It began in early 1946 with a report out of Finland of something streaking across the

sky at a high altitude.

Even more stories came in of similar sightings from Norway, and even more from Sweden.

1946 had become the year of what we now call the Swedish Ghost Rockets.

Unexplained bright objects moving across the sky during both the day and night, frightening

and confusing eyewitnesses.

Some say fragments were recovered, and others say the objects were tracked on Swedish Air Force

radar.

At least one was said to have crashed into a lake, though nothing was ever found.

Today, we're going to follow the history of this story and see if we can solve what

might have been in the sky that resulted in today's popular UFO legend.

Reports of the number of Ghost Rockets sightings range from a few hundred to two thousand,

and reports of radar traces from zero to two hundred.

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