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Greenhaw Photos: Falkville, Alabama (1973): Shiny / Metal-Clad Figure

Fire protection suits aren't made of shiny material. The figure in the Alabama photo also appears to be wearing something 'crinkly' and looks a lot thinner than someone wearing a fire protection suit, although that could be the camera aspect or something.
 
Even if it was a fire protection suit, it doesn't explain how Greenhaw's life fell to pieces straight afterwards. Maybe some greater power was having a laugh with him.
 
Well, just so I don't seem like a total sceptic, there are a few cases with shiny dudes that are difficult to explain (the original post being one of them). I also believe that something really odd did happen to the patrol-man. But I also believe that although he saw something inexplicable, he didn't - at the time - manage to take any photos. So he got a mate to dress up in a SHINY fire protection suit and pose for him. So even though the photos are obviously not paranormal, I reckon something odd did happen. That's my theory, anyway, and since it fits the evidence better than most I'm sticking with it! :D
 
Thanks for the link to the Greenhaw photos, gncxx. At first I wondered why an alien would be wearing a fire proximity suit, then I realised - it's Alabama. One can't be too careful - especially if one looks a little different.
 
This is worth repeating:
Although Greenhaw was exhilarated by the strange encounter, he would soon regret the whole affair. He was mocked and ridiculed by many of the town folk, and he received threatening phone calls.

A string of bad luck began to affect his life also. Whether related to his report or not, his house burned down, and his wife left him.

Approximately a month after the incident, the town council fired him. So much for the theory that reports of many UFO encounters are made by individuals who are looking for notoriety or financial gain.
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rynner2 said:
...(Greenhaw) was mocked and ridiculed by many of the town folk, and he received threatening phone calls...his house burned down, and his wife left him...Approximately a month after the incident, the town council fired him.
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In time honoured fashion, I've seen it stated that this was all down to CIA dirty tricks to make him keep shtum, or just look non-credible. To some True Believer Ufologists, if the case looks even slightly ropey then invoke shady Govt departments who have obviously fiddled around with things to make them look fake when in fact they're obviously genuine, ho yus indeed. For further examples of this mentality see a good many conspiracy theories, for which the less evidence there is the more certain it must be a cover-up. Indeed, if there's no evidence at all it must be a very thorough cover-up, and thus a terrifying conspiracy.
 
rynner2 said:
So much for the theory that reports of many UFO encounters are made by individuals who are looking for notoriety or financial gain.
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The negative reactions he got don't speak to why he published story. It's possible he was either hoaxer or hoaxed, but how can we tell which just from knowing that he went through hell afterwards?
 
This separate thread was established in September 2018 to consolidate scattered posts relating to the 'metal' or 'tinfoil' clad figure photographed by policeman Jeff Greenhaw in Falkville, Alabama (1973). For example, see:

http://www.cryptopia.us/site/2010/03/metal-man-of-falkville-alabama-usa/


Here's one of the photos ...

63.jpg

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This happened to Dale Spaur, a Portage County Ohio sheriff's deputy who, along with his partner, chased a UFO across northeast Ohio back in 1966. His life went off the rails after his encounter too. I just learned that Spaur and his partner took a number of photos of their UFO but the film was allegedly confiscated by Project Blue Book and the images never released.
 
I have always loved that old 'tin foil alien' pic.....if it's not an alien(of some kind) then obviously it's a hoax...yet that didn't turn out too well for that policeman.
Could someone have perpetrated a hoax on him...? But you'd think that after all that time someone would have come forward to talk about it. One of those high strangeness cases that remain bizarre.
 
EnolaGaia said:
This separate thread was established in September 2018 to consolidate scattered posts relating to the 'metal' or 'tinfoil' clad figure photographed by policeman Jeff Greenhaw in Falkville, Alabama (1973). For example, see:

http://www.cryptopia.us/site/2010/03/metal-man-of-falkville-alabama-usa/


Here's one of the photos ...

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Bipedal.

Bilateral symmetry.

Proportions well within Human range.

Hands.

Feet with shoes/boots.

An alien just like in Star Trek LOL.
 
I would think the rural South would be a dangerous place to try to perpetrate a hoax like this. Lots of armed people down there who would have very little compunction about shooting you. Even though Greenhaw was young (in his 20s) he was still a responsible-enough person to be selected as chief of police. That doesn't sound like someone who would risk his livelihood for joke. Still, people do all kinds of inexplicable things...
 
Whatever the reason, after his sighting and report, his house burnt down, his wife left him , and he lost his job with the police. I also doubt that he had anything to do with it...but it's possible someone did prank him....yet he claimed that the 'alien' ran so fast he couldn't even catch it with his car which was going about 35 miles an hour due to rough terrain through the fields. No human can run that fast.
So....was the officer making this up? ...But he had pictures and the original report was by a local woman who saw a ufo landing outside town in a field. During that investigation of a landing was when he sighted the 'alien' by the road.

What are we to make of this? I find it hard to think he was lying....something strange happened...but what?
 
dr wu said:
....yet he claimed that the 'alien' ran so fast he couldn't even catch it with his car which was going about 35 miles an hour due to rough terrain through the fields. No human can run that fast. ...
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If one accepts the account at Cryptopia ( http://www.cryptopia.us/site/2010/03/metal-man-of-falkville-alabama-usa/ ):

Greenhaw was away from his truck (distance unknown) on foot when the mystery figure ran away.

Greenhaw had to run back to his truck, start it, etc., before taking off after the fleeing figure. The article indicates Greenhaw saw the figure at a distance of circa 75 feet, then exited his truck and approached to something like 15 feet from it / him. This suggests Greenhaw may have needed to sprint up to 50 to 60 feet just to get back in his truck.

There's also the problem of locating the fleeing suspect once Greenhaw is back inside it and ready to go. The only way Greenhaw could have immediately tracked the figure would be if it had fled down the gravel trail / path / road by which Greenhaw had arrived.

Greenhaw estimated he made it to 35 mph in a pickup truck on an open field, before sliding into a ditch. That's all that can be ascertained. The duration of the truck pursuit is not specified.

The mystery figure had a head start. That much seems certain.

Greenhaw supposedly accelerated to circa 35 mph and spun / slid out within an unspecified length of time. That speed is excessive for off-road travel, and it explains his crashing.
 
^Yes...but none of that explains who the figure in the tin suit really was.
I think Greenhaw was telling the truth...so taking that as a starting point how do we explain the being in the tin foil suit...?
 
One more thing ... If Greenhaw saw the figure and initially supposed it might be someone in need of his assistance, why did he make a point to take his camera with him?

It's odd enough that he thought to bring the camera in the first place - especially since he was in or going to bed when the call came in, and the call seemed to be quite urgent.

It's even more strange that he would think to tote the camera along when leaving his truck and approaching an unknown person in the middle of nowhere and the middle of the night.
 
He took the camera because the woman phoned in that a ufo landed near her farm field...that was the reason he was out in the first place....he only saw the tin foil man after he left her property. That's the way I understand the tale.
 
His life falling apart doesn't sound all that 'abnormal' to me. His house burned down and his wife left him, maybe one led to the other? My SO's house burned down a couple of months ago and he stays with me only at weekends, and if I have to hear once more about the replanned kitchen he's going to put in when the insurance pays up, then I will be not far behind Greenhaw's wife in the leaving stakes. Trauma can lead to cracks in a relationship becoming wider. And then he was fired - perhaps his wife leaving him meant that he became persistently late for work (maybe through drinking/staying up late or maybe just because nobody was there waking him up in time)?

A chain of unpleasant events can be triggered by one event, there doesn't need to be any MIB's behind it or any paranormal influence.
 
^ Not sure where you are getting the MIB thing from....no one has even brought that up.
The reason I mentioned it was due to practical joking or hoaxing by him as being involved in it. Would a young police chief jeopardize his job that way. I don't think so....unless he was crazy.
Based on what I have read I'm convinced something strange happened to him.....but was it a hoax on him or an unknown event..?
 
catseye said:
His life falling apart doesn't sound all that 'abnormal' to me. His house burned down and his wife left him, maybe one led to the other? My SO's house burned down a couple of months ago and he stays with me only at weekends, and if I have to hear once more about the replanned kitchen he's going to put in when the insurance pays up, then I will be not far behind Greenhaw's wife in the leaving stakes. Trauma can lead to cracks in a relationship becoming wider. And then he was fired - perhaps his wife leaving him meant that he became persistently late for work (maybe through drinking/staying up late or maybe just because nobody was there waking him up in time)?

A chain of unpleasant events can be triggered by one event, there doesn't need to be any MIB's behind it or any paranormal influence.
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All very true, and a run of extremely bad "luck" by no means occurs after every UFO sighting, in fact I struggle to think of any others. Claiming to have witnessed a spaceman can harm your credibility, after all.

But none of that explains who the figure was, and why they were wrapped up in foil like an oven ready chicken. If they were a local, did they don the foil on impulse once they knew there was a cop with a camera in the vicinity, on the offchance they would snap them? Or was it an elaborate, pre-planned prank? The more you look into the case, the less useful information there is.
 
^Exactly...either it was a hoax or we have a genuine paranormal event. The pictures exist.
So who is in the suit and if it's a hoax (with or without Greenhaw) why did no one ever come forward after all these years?

...and btw that's a hell of a lot of tin foil...unless the hoaxers had another way to do that back in the day
;)
 
dr wu said:
^Yes...but none of that explains who the figure in the tin suit really was.
I think Greenhaw was telling the truth...so taking that as a starting point how do we explain the being in the tin foil suit...?
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I have no problem accepting the idea Greenhaw took those photos of a figure unknown to him on that particular night and in that particular place. However ...

Because he was using a Polaroid camera, there's no way to verify when the photos were actually taken.

All the photos are of the figure standing still and facing the camera, as if posing.

I've never seen any mention of footprints or other evidence to substantiate Greenhaw's claim the figure ran away from him.

As to the figure itself ...

It's human-proportioned, and the upper portion of the suit quite clearly seems to be bulky, as if too large for the person wearing it.

The helmet sits 'way too high above the shoulders. For the figure to have run away with any measure of vision it would have to be a notably long-necked humanoid with an even more notably human profile below the neck.

I'm not 100% certain the reflective material is opaque and metallic.

In one of the photos there appears to be a vertical seam running up the upper left leg, as if we're getting a glimpse of pants underneath.

The chest area is surprisingly dark in relation to the limbs, and can easily be construed as a half-zipped hoody over a white tee shirt, wrapped with translucent or transparent reflective material.

I can't see anything that convinces me the figure's outermost layer is metallic foil rather than (e.g.) multiple layers of plastic wrap reflecting the intense illumination from both Greenhaw's truck's high beams and the Polaroid flash.

Finally ... The figure was described as small in stature, and it was two weeks before Halloween.
 
^So then 2 weeks before Halloween some kid in the area pranked a police officer...? Really..?

Or are you implying Greenhaw was involved? Why would the police chief do that?

IMHO those ideas are as silly as an alien in tin foil.
 
Consider all the items that don't add up ...

- A nighttime phone call that's never been verified - e.g., I've never even seen any claims Greenhaw's wife confirmed the call.

- An allegedly frantic caller who remained, and still remains, unknown.

- A police chief responding to an ostensibly urgent call, but making sure he took a camera.

- ... which happened to be a camera producing photos that were immediate and untraceable.

- A mystery figure in an ill-fitting suit that doesn't run until it's posed for four snapshots (if it ran at all).

- An alleged chase described in a way that contradicts the affordances of the scene.

I finally located the particular Falkville incident photo I was looking for ...

falkvillemetalmanroad.jpg

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This is Greenhaw after the incident, showing the spot at which he claimed to encounter the mystery figure. 'X' marks the spot.

Now, forget the spot and look at the surroundings ...

It's a reasonably wide and flat gravel lane / road with heavy foliage on both sides. There are no indications of a ditch on either side.

If the figure ran away from Greenhaw, it had to be down the road. If the figure had dodged into the underbrush on either side, Greenhaw couldn't have followed it / him in the truck.

Where is there any sufficiently open field across which Greenhaw could have chased the figure in his truck?

And where's the ditch into which Greenhaw supposedly slid his truck?
 
^ That's not Greenhaw after the incident...he was only 26 at the time of the event...that's obviously many years later since that man looks far older than 26 to me. I would ask when that photo there was taken.
So the terrain could have easily changed then...so the objections in that regard are probably useless.
But the other points you raised are meaningful in that he was off duty when he went out and we still don't now who the woman was that made the call.
But I'll ask again why would a 'young police chief' do such a thing and as a result lose his job and career at that time ? Does that make sense..?
And no one has ever come forward to say they were in the tin suit and part of the hoax.. ....whoever it was...child or man.
 
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