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

The Cumberland Spaceman

charliebrown said:
This is not really a straightforward situation.

This photo has captured the imagination of the world for 57 years.

I still go back to Kodak saying this picture is genuine, so I vote a paranormal situation like another dimension present.
Click to expand...
Picture IS genuine.
It's genuinely the mother.
What happened to all of the other snaps taken that day...?
 
charliebrown said:
This is not really a straightforward situation.

This photo has captured the imagination of the world for 57 years.

I still go back to Kodak saying this picture is genuine, so I vote a paranormal situation like another dimension present.
Click to expand...
Yes it IS genuine. As in not monkeyed with. A genuine photograph with the photographer's wife in the background. Give me strength.
 
An archivist is not necessarily a professional photographer.
But good luck keeping this going.

 
The person behind the child is big and fat.

Did the wife instantly gain 50 pounds ?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sid
scotmedia said:
The apparent photographer, James Templeton, reportedly
claimed:

"As an amateur photographer on a day-trip with my family,
I took the photograph on Burgh Marsh on May 23, 1964,
using an SLR camera loaded with the new Kodacolor film
which was processed by Kodak. I took three pictures of my
daughter Elizabeth in a similar pose - and was shocked
when the middle picture came back from Kodak displaying
what looks like a spaceman in the background".

See, for example,:

ufologie.net/press/dailymail13dec2002.htm
Link is dead, and the domain name seems to have been reused for an unrelated site.
The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090721033231/http://www.ufologie.net/press/dailymail13dec2002.htm


Can anyone please confirm a source for all, three, cited
snapshots being published?

Obviously, it would be essential and informative to see
each of these, consecutive, photographs.
Click to expand...
Here's the post I referred to earlier today. Seems the story has changed over time, or this quote is wrong. The poster is no longer registered here, and citations are lacking.

While looking for this, I ran across a post from jayceedove, where she mentions Mrs. Templeton told her that her husband had shot several photos out on the moor.

Here is that post from jayceedove:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/cumberland-spaceman.5003/post-1737398

And the pertinent quote:
Annie was there on the day and that was the reason Mrs Templeton was so adamant to me that it wasn't her in the shot in question. She said she was playing with her behind the camera actively to keep her out of shot at the point where Jim was trying to get a good image. The shot you see above is one of several where she said she was trying to stop her getting in the way. But she was pretty sure to me she never went behind or intruded into the shot in question.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ChasFink said:
Interesting. I've never seen the family photo. Does anyone have a bigger, clearer version? It would be nice to see full-length images of everyone there that day, and their clothes, so we can see if there is better correlation with the "spaceman".
Click to expand...
No. Over the years I've spent a lot of time searching for any mention, much less a specimen, of that third snapshot. I've never even been able to determine what video or article the photo I posted above came from. That's why I made a point to save that photo - it was the first and only representation of the third snapshot I've ever seen.
 
charliebrown said:
I still go back to Kodak saying this picture is genuine, so I vote a paranormal situation like another dimension present.
Click to expand...
Kodak determined the photographic print and the film from which it was made were authentic and hadn't been modified, mishandled or manipulated. That's it; that's all ...

In other words, Kodak certified the image appearing on the print is what the camera captured. Kodak did not, and could never, certify that what a viewer makes of any figure or feature visible in the image is indisputable evidence for one or another interpretation of what the figure / feature represents. The image of the figure is not the figure. The map is not the territory.
 
I don’t know if this web page has been mentioned before, but it gives some interesting info and links, including details of Templeton’s camera (a Pentacon F), and - more interesting to me - the locus of the questioned photo:

“They chose a spot near a large concrete arrow embedded in the ground, which was a guide for RAF military pilots on World War II practice bombing runs, the target being in the Firth.”

The arrow is still there, just at the edge of the area l suggested upthread as the likely place where the photo was taken:

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_OS_1-50,000_circled.jpg


Actual locus:

2478B336-3D91-4624-9A4F-90B09E43F92F.png


lt’s just north of the hamlet of Easton, and about 125 yards off the road.

maximus otter
 
Last edited:
Jayceedove said:
I disagree because we KNOW he is wrong and the MoD did indeed visit witnesses in certain cases. Aside from all the other unproven cases where we just have the witnesses story but of the ones I have interviewed for my MIB book I am sure they were being honest - we have the two police officers - Alan Godfrey and Colin Perks - both of whom did not report visits to them by the MoD at the time because they both later told me they were asked not to under the Official Secrets Act which as police officers they had to sign.
Alan has now chosen to publicly reveal the story he told me in confidence years ago and which I verified via his sergeant (who was married to my cousin). And, whilst the Godfrey MoD file has gone AWOL like the Templeton one, the Perks file WAS released and does document that two men from the Ministry followed his sighting up and interviewed him on site and took away samples of a glassy material found beneath where he saw the UFO on the night. No analysis of that material was released.
Click to expand...
Don't quite get this connection with the Templeton's photo? What UFO on the night?
 
cycleboy2 said:
That's my concern too. I wouldn't say big and fat (!) but the arms do seem larger than the arms of the mum in the crawling picture.
Click to expand...
Have you ever put your hands on your hips and looked at yourself from behind? A lot of women, as they get older, get slightly, er, saggier, and their arms, which can look perfectly normal from the front, contain some excess flesh which sort of sags and is mostly visible from behind.

Not that I am a woman of a certain age who has observed this quite a lot in herself and her friends. No sir. Absolutely not.
 
catseye said:
A lot of women, as they get older, get slightly, er, saggier, and their arms, which can look perfectly normal from the front, contain some excess flesh which sort of sags and is mostly visible from behind.
Click to expand...

The legendary "bingo wings".

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
I don’t know if this web page has been mentioned before, but it gives some interesting info and links, including details of Templeton’s camera (a Pentacon F), and - more interesting to me - the locus of the questioned photo:

“They chose a spot near a large concrete arrow embedded in the ground, which was a guide for RAF military pilots on World War II practice bombing runs, the target being in the Firth.”

The arrow is still there, just at the edge of the area l suggested upthread as the likely place where the photo was taken ...

lt’s just north of the hamlet of Easton, and about 125 yards off the road.
Click to expand...
Yep ... I discovered the Conrad webpage some months ago, and it contains many interesting points.

RE: The location where the snapshot was taken

The bit about the family having been near the concrete air navigation arrow was new to me. I don't recall ever seeing any mention of this arrow prior to seeing the Conrad webpage. I'd love to learn where Conrad found this tidbit about the family's location. I checked the webpage Conrad credits for the aerial shots (VisitCumbria) and the second webpage with more info on the arrow:

https://www.visitcumbria.com/car/burgh-by-sands/
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rwbarnes/defence/ranges.htm#brg

... but found nothing on either mentioning the alleged connection to the Templeton family's outing and photos.

RE: The photo(s) of Elizabeth

Conrad's webpage consistently refers to the three photos he compared as three prints of the same snapshot. He consistently refers to there being a 'negative' (singular). These aren't three prints made from three different snapshots (and hence three different negatives). They're three prints derived from a single original snapshot (at least one of which seems to have been made from a negative created from a positive print).

I can't figure out when or where the story of there being three successive exposures of the famous pose originated. The earlier post quoted by Austin Popper above indicates it was Templeton himself who made this claim in 2002(?) - 38 years after the fact. I wonder whether, and for how long, Templeton had been making this claim prior to 2002.
 
Jayceedove said:
Annie was there on the day and that was the reason Mrs Templeton was so adamant to me that it wasn't her in the shot in question. She said she was playing with her behind the camera actively to keep her out of shot at the point where Jim was trying to get a good image. The shot you see above is one of several where she said she was trying to stop her getting in the way. But she was pretty sure to me she never went behind or intruded into the shot in question. ...
Click to expand...
Because Austin Popper quoted this I thought it might be wise to point out that it's misleading.

At face value this passage seems to indicate Mrs. Templeton had been playing with an Annie (the older daughter?) to prevent her from interfering with Mr. Templeton's setup of a snapshot of Elizabeth.

The obvious slip-up lies in the fact Annie *IS* Mrs. Templeton. The other daughter's name was Frances.
 
WeirdExeter said:
This thread continues to be so fascinating...!

Has this been linked to before?

https://jamesaconrad.com/media/Solway-Spaceman-photo.html

It's a very detailed investigation into the photo and has a lot of decent images of the photo, location etc.
Click to expand...
This is another passage which is very misleading. . .
[On the day the photograph was taken in 1964, I was 3,223 miles away in Connecticut in the United States, age 9, the same age as Frances Templeton, one of the witnesses who was present with her family when the event happened.]
Given that Frances is Elizabeth's Mother why has the witness quoted that she was the same age as the young girl?
 
EnolaGaia said:
Because Austin Popper quoted this I thought it might be wise to point out that it's misleading.

At face value this passage seems to indicate Mrs. Templeton had been playing with an Annie (the older daughter?) to prevent her from interfering with Mr. Templeton's setup of a snapshot of Elizabeth.

The obvious slip-up lies in the fact Annie *IS* Mrs. Templeton. The other daughter's name was Frances.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sorting that out. I made several edits to that post, trying to avoid muddying things further.

I don't see anything strange in the shifting narrative, even if it can be traced back to the original participants in the event. It's very easy to conflate things from one's own memory and get a distorted description of past events. Templeton might have been in the habit of "bracketing" his shots, but was low on film that day, or whatever. This has all been beaten to a froth for decades, so I think if anything is surprising, it's that we don't have even more confusion.

As jayceedove points out in a few posts, the accusations of a hoax were particularly threatening to Templeton, and may have had some bearing on his statements. I don't think anyone was lying, making things up, or deliberately omitting anything significant. It's a weird episode, with some aspects that are worthy of study. I may have to investigate some of the links above. Or not.
 
Interesting, in November 30, 2017, The One Show seriously tried to recreate this photo with same camera, but they could not.

So, the original photo is an oddity.
 
Sid said:
This is another passage which is very misleading. . .
[On the day the photograph was taken in 1964, I was 3,223 miles away in Connecticut in the United States, age 9, the same age as Frances Templeton, one of the witnesses who was present with her family when the event happened.]
Given that Frances is Elizabeth's Mother why has the witness quoted that she was the same age as the young girl?
Click to expand...

Just to clarify things, Accompanying Jim Templeton were his wife Annie, 35, and their two young daughters, Elizabeth, 5, and Frances, 9
 
Cochise said:
Try something more difficult to explain like the Lead Masks case.
Click to expand...
No real way to explain their deaths 'Cochise,' as according to reports, toxicology tests were not carried out on their bodies, so no way to know if the capsules they swallowed killed them, or whether it was performed via other means.
 
Nosmo King said:
Just to clarify things, Accompanying Jim Templeton were his wife Annie, 35, and their two young daughters, Elizabeth, 5, and Frances, 9
Click to expand...
So Frances could well have been the other young girl in the other photograph, not the Mother 'Annie?'
 
Nosmo King said:
The One Show is a very poor, light entertainment magazine show, I doubt they went to to much trouble to get the details correct.
Click to expand...
The location is not exactly right. There are no GPS coordinates buried in the EXIF data of the original photo, unfortunately. :wink2: (<-- That's a joke. EXIF data is part of the system of digital photography we use today. It can contain a surprising amount of information.)

Even with all the variables involved, I think the attempted recreation supports the obvious conclusion that it's a Spacemum.
 
Sid said:
So Frances could well have been the other young girl in the other photograph, not the Mother 'Annie?'
Click to expand...
As pointed out by EnolaGaia, Frances does not appear in either photo from the moor on that day.
 
Austin Popper said:
As pointed out by EnolaGaia, Frances does not appear in either photo from the moor on that day.
Click to expand...
I understood that it could well have been a fact - simply after reading the back-thread sent in by 'Jayceedove.'
[Annie was there on the day and that was the reason Mrs Templeton was so adamant to me that it wasn't her in the shot in question. She said she was playing with her behind the camera actively to keep her out of shot at the point where Jim was trying to get a good image. The shot you see above is one of several where she said she was trying to stop her getting in the way. But she was pretty sure to me she never went behind or intruded into the shot in question.
Neither of the girls remembered anything particular about the day but were, of course, aware of the aftermath dimly.]
 
There's nothing sinister in there only being one picture. I'm old enough to remember cameras with film and we very quickly got into the habit of only taking one picture of any specific subject and just taking your chances that it would come out right. In these days of phone cameras we've lost sight of the fact that film and processing was relatively expensive, so you would 'ration' your shots. My kids still berate me for not being able to break that habit and only taking single pictures of any event!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top