• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Cumberland Spaceman

GNC said:
The One Show tackles the CS:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09ql6z8/the-one-show-07022018

Go to 42 minutes in. They try to recreate the pic, but oddly don't mention the treated version of the original that blows the spaceman theory out of the water. Doesn't explain the MIBs, though. Needed more Jenny Randles! She did an excellent BBC programme on the case about 25 years ago and could have brought them up to speed.
Click to expand...


Thank you kindly for the above.

That BBC 2 show is on You Tube, I think, or was a few years ago when somebody pointed it out to me. It got a lot of very negative publicity from some big media commentators and an expose in a tabloid about my TS status (though that had already been done by a previous tabloid behind my back which the paper obviously missed). We got the last laugh as the press got us great ratings. We beat a new episode of Star Trek on the same channel that week!

It was made on a budget of under £1000 and a hand held camera that the BBC lent me for a year. I have lots of material that I never used as I only had 28 minutes for writing the entire script and we had traced some airmen involved in the 1956 Lakenheath radar visual and that had to go into the programme as well.

The media have not been talking to me for many years now since I 'retired' from writing to be a full time carer and so declined to do stuff when asked. So I have stuck to just my FT column.

But I am back writing now and after working with Alan Godfrey on his current best seller I have my own projects in hand.

I don't expect to be doing any media stuff these days - they have their pet sources and I am not playing their game any longer.

However, I hope to make use of the many hours of interviews that I filmed when making that BBC documentary but never got chance to put on screen. There is some very interesting stuff - including, of course, much more with the Templetons that might be of value in light of the developments in this case.

So watch this space.
 
Last edited:
Set up your own channel on Youtube, Jenny!
 
You can monetise it and link the videos with your books (i.e. point people at the relevant books you've written).
 
Cochise said:
There's nothing wrong with the angles. It's what happens with that type of camera if it is tilted, and it clearly was if the (verbal) evidence to the effect that the surrounding land was flat is to be believed. The fuzziness is due to the camera being used with settings for a limited depth of field, as you do if taking a portrait .

I'm dead against superficial 'nothing to see here' explanations of the abnormal, too often it results (IMHO) in the possibility of real but rare things being ignored but in this one case I'm convinced.
Click to expand...

You're right, there's nothing wrong with the angles. It's just that they are incompatible with a woman standing behind the girl. It can clearly be seen on the photography that the camera was tilted, both to the left and slightly to the ground, as shown by the position of the girl's eyes ; but it can not affect the discrepancy in the way the woman would have to be to appear on the photo (in any case, that it is shot from slightly above would make things even worse, but you can't make something more impossible than it already was).

Relating to the shape of the sleeves, I am not sure what you mean, as the mother appears to be distinctly sleeveless, while the figure appear to 'wear' long sleeves. A mere detail, anyhow.


I knew the story of the 1817 Tower of London's ghostly cylinder, as I had read it in a number of books on "UFOs from the past". The case exemplifies the problem with the ambiguity of many apparitions, retrofited in this instance by modern ufologists as a UFO case, while it was considered at the time as a bizarre ghost. The paranormal field is indeed full of such spectral oddities. Similarly, the shape on the Solway photo was branded as a spaceman because it was in the mood of the era, while it could easily have been labelled as a ghost.
 
"the mother appears to be distinctly sleeveless, while the figure appear to 'wear' long sleeves. A mere detail, anyhow."

I just revisited the colour-corrected photo posted by bakelite on the 10th page of this thread (31/12/2014) and the figure standing with her back turned, a short distance behind the girl, is clearly wearing a blue, sleeveless dress.
 
Just jumping in because the Cumberland Spaceman has always been one of my favourite unexplained stories ever since I was younger, and I always like to think there's something in it :actw:

I'm kind of on the fence about it being the mother; I would have thought she'd know whether she was standing there or not, but I don't know for sure of course. Certainly the Men in Black aspect is also curious and the possibly related incident at Woomera?

I was lucky enough to visit the Solway Firth area with Mr Zebra last year; we weren't sure exactly where the incident took place (we had actually been visiting Carlisle and made a last-minute decision to see the Solway Firth while we were there, so we weren't able to research the exact location beforehand) but we drove all the way along the road as far as Bowness-on-Solway so I like to think I've now driven past the area where it happened so that means a lot to me :)

Has anyone else been to the area where it happened?
 
Ask yourself the question. Is this a picture of a family day out or did a ufo come down, an alien in a slightly tight-fitting dress and a bra get out and crash the photo?
 
jimv1 said:
Ask yourself the question. Is this a picture of a family day out or did a ufo come down, an alien in a slightly tight-fitting dress and a bra get out and crash the photo?
Click to expand...

Who says a UFO came down? Could have been someone popping in from another dimension. I don't think it's completely debunked yet. :)


GNC said:
A friend of mine visited there on one of his jaunts, said it was the most terrifying experience of his life!!! No, not really, he said it was quite peaceful, no one about. I don't think it gets many visitors, then or now.
Click to expand...

Hmm... true enough there weren't a great deal of cars when we drove along there. We were quite taken by all the signs saying that the road could flood amd little height markers every so often; never really seen that before so it was a bit of a novelty. Lovely countryside and villages though.
 
Jayceedove said:
So I am sure the two men did visit Jim Templeton and, despite Nick Pope's view, not convinced they could not have been from the MoD.
Click to expand...

Yes this is a very interesting aspect of the case... I wonder what those men believed the Templeton's had photographed... to my knowledge the government agencies don't just randomly visit people due to strange photos , but they might if they know of something in the area that *could* have been seen, regardless of whether it actually was.


Um... :shy: you are the famous Jenny Randles, aren't you? :) Hope you don't mind but I just want to say hello because my all-time favourite book, genuinely, is Time Storms. I've owned the book for many, many years and it means a lot to me, for a couple of reasons. Never in a million years did I expect to encounter the author of my favourite book on this forum. Thank you.
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
Just jumping in because the Cumberland Spaceman has always been one of my favourite unexplained stories ever since I was younger, and I always like to think there's something in it :actw:

I'm kind of on the fence about it being the mother; I would have thought she'd know whether she was standing there or not, but I don't know for sure of course. Certainly the Men in Black aspect is also curious and the possibly related incident at Woomera?

I was lucky enough to visit the Solway Firth area with Mr Zebra last year; we weren't sure exactly where the incident took place (we had actually been visiting Carlisle and made a last-minute decision to see the Solway Firth while we were there, so we weren't able to research the exact location beforehand) but we drove all the way along the road as far as Bowness-on-Solway so I like to think I've now driven past the area where it happened so that means a lot to me :)

Has anyone else been to the area where it happened?
Click to expand...

Yes, it was an interesting case, but it's been satisfactorily explained in this thread some pages back. Post 289 to start you off...
 
From Blessmycottonsocks post #412 above......

"the mother appears to be distinctly sleeveless, while the figure appear to 'wear' long sleeves. A mere detail, anyhow."

I just revisited the colour-corrected photo posted by bakelite on the 10th page of this thread (31/12/2014) and the figure standing with her back turned, a short distance behind the girl, is clearly wearing a blue, sleeveless dress.

-I think the color correction clearly show it was the mom standing there....
 
It's still an interesting case; not that there is any real mystery left as to who or what is in the image but for the peripheral aspects that tell us volumes about human nature, the directions taken by investigations at the time, and of course what is revealed by the MIB activity. I don't think anyone was lying. Mr Templeton was apparently focused on the subject of the photos and his camera. Mrs Templeton would not have been keeping close track of when exactly the shutter was open, especially when she had her back to the rest of the family. Those are easy mistakes to make.

What surprises me is the apparent lack of analysis of the photo back in the day. The claim is made earlier in this thread that what can be done with a jpeg plucked off the internet and manipulated in a home computer would have taken years and piles of money back then. Even if that's just a slight *cough* exaggeration, I know from my own experience that the color and exposure characteristics of the negatives could have been easily dealt with in a darkroom by a competent technician. Were they? The idea that the "spaceman" was really Mom was of course floated at the time, but it seems to have been eliminated by the Tempeltons' insistence that it could not have been her.

I would still like to see a re-creation of the photo, which should still be relatively easy to do. I don't doubt that it's Mom in the photo, but still it's quite an odd image. Weird stuff happens with cameras sometimes. I know a professional photographer who has a picture with weird light effects that one would swear was something over the top strange, or a fake, but she says it was an accident with exquisite timing and amazing luck. I tried several times to get a copy from her, but never succeeded. Wish I could post it here, because it's pretty wild.
 
jimv1 said:
I vote we retitle the thread ‘Cumberland Spacemum’.
Click to expand...
Well, if there's retitling afoot, the "There's a sausage in my movie" thread is proving popular. We could follow suit with thread titles, and what better thread to start with?

I reckon The Sausage Spaceman has quite a ring to it.
 
Waymarker said:
Here's the pic of the 'Cumberland Spaceman' that appeared in the national Brit papers around 1964 and turned everybody's knees to jelly.
I was as fascinated as anybody, but it wasn't til a few years later that I came across a vital clue, namely that the girl's dad (or other relative) was a member of the fire brigade.
Bingo, so he must have dressed up in a silver fire-resistant suit just for fun!
Alternatively he could have been a genuine visitor from another galaxy..;)

cumberland-spaceman-1964_zpsalmay5wi.jpg~original



Below- Some google search results, take your pick-

silver-suits_zps5ykbm27i.jpg~original
Click to expand...


good troll post but it was mum who was the spaceman and it was due to wind and a weird camera angle. Google it mystery solved.
 
Do you think Waymarker knows his theory is wrong?
Unless that is true, he's not trolling.
 
Yithian said:
Do you think Waymarker knows his theory is wrong?
Unless that is true, he's not trolling.
Click to expand...

It's just that I don't have the time or inclination to wade through every post of ancient 17-year-old threads (yawn).
Anyway it's not a "theory", I'm simply reporting what I saw and heard in the media in the 60's, is that "trolling"?
To me, "The Sixties" is not just an abstract thing, I was there as a teenager.:)
 
I don't think your being alive at the same time as an event is going to give that much additional insight, if I'm honest.

Edit: thread pruned to remove digression.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
good troll post but it was mum who was the spaceman and it was due to wind and a weird camera angle. Google it mystery solved.
Click to expand...

FFS I was president of the Cumberland Space man club for years since the early sodding 70's so when I discovered it was the kids mum as proved by other photos I figured out it want't an alien. i as a British man accepted I was wrong.
 
Kryptonite said:
I find much of the evidence for it being the photographer's wife pretty convincing.

But... I've always found that this pic has something really unsettling about it, and I still feel that way looking at it now.
Click to expand...

I reckon its because your brain struggles to make sense of the perspective.
 
"the backwards elbow just makes it look even stranger. "

Once you appreciate that it is the mum in the photo, with her back to the point of view, there is nothing remotely strange about the angle of her elbow in the photo.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"the backwards elbow just makes it look even stranger. "

Once you appreciate that it is the mum in the photo, with her back to the point of view, there is nothing remotely strange about the angle of her elbow in the photo.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I get that. What I mean is that when I look at the photo without thinking about how it is the mum, just taking in the image and staring at what appears to be a helmeted spaceman, it looks even odder with its distorted limb.

I'm not sure that makes sense, but hopefully you know what I mean!
 
Kryptonite said:
Oh yeah, I get that. What I mean is that when I look at the photo without thinking about how it is the mum, just taking in the image and staring at what appears to be a helmeted spaceman, it looks even odder with its distorted limb.

I'm not sure that makes sense, but hopefully you know what I mean!
Click to expand...

I do. But once you've seen the colour-corrected version of the photo, which clearly shows the mum, you can't unsee it.

PSX_20180930_214015.jpg
 
The elbow seems odd only if you interpret the figure as facing toward you. The darker area on the lower part of the head is often mis-interpreted as being a visor on a helmet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top