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My Father's UFO Photo

Austin Popper

Emperor of Antarctica
Joined
Aug 13, 2017
Messages
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Location
Colorado, where the gold is still elusive
This introductory post has been copied from its original location in:
The Transdimensional Gas Station
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-transdimensional-gas-station.23173/



Disappearing photos are as annoying as they are common in these topics. My dad took a Polaroid photo of a very strange object, seemingly floating above a building, in the mid 70s. It turned out he had seen the thing before, in the same area, but said nothing to anyone about it. He was taking a photo of a nearby building, saw the thing nearby, swung around and snapped the photo. He said the sixty seconds or whatever it took for the photo to appear seemed like a week. The thing had disappeared as soon as he snapped the photo.

A few of us went poking around near the building in the photo, and of course found nothing out of the ordinary. One of Dad's fishing buddies was a professional photographer, and he took a keen interest. He copied the Polaroid and made several enlargements. I had one of the copies for some years. Dad kept the original in a drawer, and some of the enlargements he kept in other places. The original would often go missing, only to turn up in odd places later. Eventually it never came back. I have no idea what became of my copy. As of about 20 years or so after the photo was taken, we could find no trace of it or the copies. The photographer had closed up shop and moved away; none of us knows where to. I have considered trying to track him down, but never have. I don't recall his name. Dad will know, so I should ask him.

So what did the thing look like? Not a flying saucer. It appeared to be a green sphere with a vertical rod or antenna sort of thing sticking up, the length of which appeared to match the diameter of the sphere. Below the sphere was a red conical looking shape, again about the same size as the sphere. None of the shapes were very crisply defined, but they were unambiguously there, if a bit hazy around the edges, particularly the wide part of the cone, at the bottom. In more recent discussions with people who saw the photos, some think I have the colors inverted. That could well be. One of my sisters said she saw something very similar on a TV show about UFOs. As I recall, she said it was at the very beginning, in a montage or something. The narrator said it was from somewhere in the Soviet Union, if I'm correctly recalling what she told me. All of this was a long time ago.
 
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So what did the thing look like?
Interesting post, Austin. Frustrating when things seemingly just vanish. Happens a lot to stuff - though I have to say I've never snapped a UFO or a ghost or anything. I wonder if you could post a sketch of the mystery object as far as you can recall what it looked like (but not necessarily in this thread, as it might de-rail the discussion). You never know, someone might recognise it from their research, especially with the link to the Soviet Union and it having been featured on a tv programme. ... Cheers - Kam
 
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Interesting post, Austin. Frustrating when things seemingly just vanish. Happens a lot to stuff - though I have to say I've never snapped a UFO or a ghost or anything. I wonder if you could post a sketch of the mystery object as far as you can recall what it looked like (but not necessarily in this thread, as it might de-rail the discussion). You never know, someone might recognise it from their research, especially with the link to the Soviet Union and it having been featured on a tv programme. ... Cheers - Kam
As it happens, I can do better than that. I just found my copy! After posting my message above, it occurred to me that there was that one shoebox of photos not five feet away that I hadn't got around to going through. "It's entirely possible it's in there," I told myself, and it was high time I looked in there anyway to see what was in it. Not surprisingly, it's a bit different than I recalled.

It's just a snap of the print with my phone, including some new blue artifacts. I'll see about getting a decent scan, but this isn't much worse than the old print.
 
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As discussed here, my dad caught a very strange object with a Polaroid camera, almost by accident. He was getting a snapshot of a different building when he noticed this thing, turned and clicked the shutter. He said the thing was gone when he looked up from the camera, and he didn't know if he had caught it (or even if it was real) until the print developed before his eyes. He had seen it before, he told me, but never mentioned it to anyone. We lived in a very small town full of people who were full of all sorts of prejudices, so something like that getting around would have made for a shitshow. One of Dad's friends was a professional photographer, and he got all excited about the photo. Dad lent it to him, and he made several copies and enlargements. Over the years, the original Polaroid would disappear from its spot in a certain drawer, and eventually turn up in odd places. It hasn't been seen in something like 25 years, that I know of. I was sure my own copy was missing until I managed to dig it up a few minutes ago.

The original was far more crisp, and the colors more vivid. This is an enlargement, which only really served to make things less distinct. Looking at the Polaroid through a good glass showed some intriguing details that are not present here. I don't know if the photographer changed setting and experimented much, but I would expect so. Anyway, here it is.

Dad's picture.jpg
Dad's picture.jpg


The green and red colors I mentioned in the other thread seemed much brighter. I see there is a tiny bit of the reddish glow from the bottom of the "cone" visible here. Seems like that was much more distinct in the Polaroid. This is just a cell phone shot of the old print. Had a hell of a time getting it into my computer, and then it was way too big a file so I had to shrink it. Now it's busy uploading or something so who knows when this will post. This image has been a weird one for 45 years now.

Sort of looks a little bit like a lightning rod. :)
 
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Where was this photo taken? What is the building visible in the foreground?

Edit to Add:

How precisely can you specify the date when this photo was taken?
 
Dad was nominally the caretaker at an essentially abandoned institution. It's now full of crazy people, and I don't mean it's any sort of officially sanctioned hospital or anything like that. I'm being vague for good reasons, several of them. Sorry. Anyway, in them days he was also a sort of local contact, negotiator, and representative for the out-of-state owners. The owners were looking at options for development, but the reactionary locals seemed to want the place to sit there and fall apart. They got just what they deserved in the end, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not bitter at all. :evillaugh:

So this was in the Midwest, at a beautiful old campus that still exists more or less (definitely less) in terms of buildings. The building in the image is a gymnasium, from about 1890 or so I think. I was just out of high school and sometimes helped out with mowing and such. I'd often borrow Dad's big old ring of keys and go exploring. It was a fascinating old place, empty of activity for quite a few years. I'd love to go into detail about some of it, but not just now.
 
Juist curious but where in the midwest?......I live in northwest Indiana and went to school at IU Bloomington.
 
One of the big rectangular states. I'm trying to avoid getting into some nasty and frankly disgusting political BS that still pisses me off 45 years later. I can't really separate these events, so I'll just discuss the photo.
 
Thanks for putting up the photo, Austin. Excellent work. It prompts a few questions, if you don't mind, though I guess you might not know the answers to them. Maybe your dad would though.

Either time your dad saw the thing, did he see it moving?

If so, was it the movement that caught his eye?

Was it making any sound?

Was there any indication of how close he felt the thing to be?

Sorry for the interrogation! Thanks again,

Kam
 
No problem. I think both times he saw it, it was just a glimpse. It was there and then it was not. I don't recall any mention of movement. I'm sure there was no sound. He said it seemed close by.

I'm the first person he showed the picture to. I was working at a store downtown. He came in when no one else was there, seemed to be bothered by something. I asked what's up? He said he was going to show me a picture, and wanted me to tell him what I saw. He then laid the Polaroid on the counter and I said "What the hell is that?" It was just about the last thing he needed right then, due to other circumstances that would have become even more ridiculous had he reported it or given it to the local newspaper. He didn't show it to many people, and those of us who had seen it didn't really talk about it outside the family. Later on, someone would hear about it now and then, and want to see it. He kept it handy, but it wasn't always available.
 
Thanks Austin. It is very intriguing. It sounds like your dad was a little disturbed by seeing such an odd thing. I have no idea what it could be, but then I am far from an expert in these matters. Maybe others more steeped in research on UFO/UAP phenomena will be able to say what it could have been.
 
I've looked at way more images of anomalous things than any healthy person really should, and I've never come across anything much like it. It's just a weird thing. I'm sure if he hadn't caught that picture, he'd never have mentioned seeing it at all. It is interesting to ponder how many other weird sights go unmentioned.
 
I've been discussing this photo with Austin in private, so as to respect his request for keeping things anonymized. Having said that, here are some additional (anonymized) items to help set the context.

The photo was taken around 1976, from a distance, and using a Polaroid camera.

The old gymnasium building in the foreground still stands. Its features are critical to determining the exact location and camera angle / vantage point for the photo.

Here are 2 images of the original building, taken from postcards dating back to the 1920s or thereabouts. The captions have been cropped out of the images.

SMAC-SMK-G-1.jpg

SMAC-SMK-G-2.jpg

The portion of the building visible in the "UFO" photo is the main entrance(?) section with the cupolas at each corner of its roof - the section at the left in both photos.
 
Here is a recent aerial view of the institution and its grounds. The old gymnasium building is the white-roofed structure to which the red arrow points. The dotted line was my suggestion for the probable line of sight afforded the camera when the "UFO" photo was snapped. Austin confirmed this suggested line of sight was approximately correct.

SMAC-SMK-Aerial.jpg
 
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The reason for focusing on the building's features and orientation relates to an early hypothesis that occurred to me - i.e., that the mystery "UFO" object might have been a distorted or glare-obscured view of the elevated water tank visible in the aerial shot atop a rise in the upper right-hand corner of the photo. It suggested something resembling the vertically-extended mystery object, and it even had a spar or mast atop it to correlate with the mystery object's extension from its peak.

It was only after wrestling with Google Street View and satellite photos that I convinced myself the mystery photo could not have been taken looking (more or less) eastward so that the water tank would be visible over the gymnasium building. Further futzing with images, etc., convinced me the mystery photo had been taken looking (more or less) northward as roughly indicated by the red arrow in the aerial photo.

Anyway ... There's the additional context and orientational info I was able to find to help readers understand more about the mystery photo.
 
Wow, EnolaGaia! You've really put in some work! I'm impressed.

It certainly looks like the building is interesting - and creepy.

One puzzling feature of note is that Austin's dad reported that the object vanished suddenly. It was there and then it was gone. Clearly that can't be proved from the photo, but the fact that the witness, who I'm sure was genuine and puzzled, noted that it seemed to suddenly disappear adds to the mystery.
 
Thanks, Enola. I'm sure the water tower is not visible from that position, no matter the direction one is facing. I had forgotten about it, actually. I just checked, and it's about 60 degrees to the right, from Dad's vantage point. Even if it is visible from that point now, it would not have been at the time the photo was made because there used to be a tall building directly in that line, and it surely would have obscured any view of the tower. The photo was taken from over 400' away, and as I recall, most of the building was visible in it.

We used the photo to help determine where to look behind the building to see if we could find anything back there. At the time, the area behind the gym was grown up in prairie grass and weeds. There was no road back there that I recall. If one existed it would have been a minor track grown up with vegetation. That area looks much different now. Anyway, we found nothing.

Any sort of hot air balloon would have attracted a great deal of attention in that place and time, not to mention the thing does not resemble a balloon, does not have a gondola, balloons do not tend to vanish in a moment's time, and they make plenty of noise. I've lived in a couple of places where they are very popular, and have had them fly overhead several times.

All this makes me really wish I could locate the original photo. It was much better in terms of crispness and detail. I recall thinking at the time that the enlargements, including the one I have, seemed to do nothing but make things blurry. I'd love to have a high resolution digital scan of that old Polaroid. If it still exists, it's probably not in very good condition though. It could still turn up, so I'll be on the lookout when I'm back that way.
 
Just a thought, Austin... As you say, the copy of the photo is quite blurry. Maybe, with reference to the copy and your recollection of the original photo, you could post a sketch so we can get a sharper idea of the actual shape of the thing, at least as far as you recall it from the original. While realising it might not be 100% accurate, it might prompt someone to say "aah! I know what that might be!"

Cheers,

Kam
 
I might give that a try, but I'm no artist. The red blob at the top appeared to be spherical, as does the main green shape, connected by a narrow rod sort of thing. The lighter green blob at the bottom looked much more like a cone shape, with a reddish glow at the bottom of that, which is barely visible in my copy. None of the edges of the shapes were particularly sharp, but it was a cheap camera and probably had a plastic lens. I have some photos from that time that I took with my Kodak Instamatic, and they are crappy too. Now we take crappy photos with our phones.
 
I might give that a try, but I'm no artist. The red blob at the top appeared to be spherical, as does the main green shape, connected by a narrow rod sort of thing. The lighter green blob at the bottom looked much more like a cone shape, with a reddish glow at the bottom of that, which is barely visible in my copy. None of the edges of the shapes were particularly sharp, but it was a cheap camera and probably had a plastic lens. I have some photos from that time that I took with my Kodak Instamatic, and they are crappy too. Now we take crappy photos with our phones.
I was thinking, as I mentioned up thread, that it may have been an advertising blimp, as you mentioned your father saw it in the same place on more than one occasion, on the ariel view there is a wooded area behind the building, in the direction the photo was taken, was there anything beyond the wooded area that could have employed the use of an advertising blimp, a small mall or car dealership? Something of that nature that, from my memory did use blimps for advertising
 
Other than a cemetery, there was nothing in that direction but pastures and the occasional crop field. That's not strictly true now, as considerable development has been going on up that way since the 90s, but that is irrelevant.

Really, I don't see anything blimp-like in that image. Do you mean an advertising balloon? It would seem to be pretty useless bit of advertising. :)

I used to fly kites up there, from that quad as well as a few other open areas. There were no mundane objects around that could explain the weird thing. Dad worked up there for a couple of years, I think, and was far more familiar with the place than I. He is not the sort of person to see a balloon, advertising gimmick, ordinary structure of any sort, and interpret it as something strange. He would not have wasted a dollar on a photo of a balloon, either.
 
One thing I haven't mentioned is that the axis of the thing does not appear to be vertical. It is a safe bet that the Germans who stacked those stone columns got them dead on, which makes it appear that the thing is tipped at least a few degrees to the left. There are of course several variables that could cause some distortion, but given the orientation of the object to the building, my carpenter's eye sees the thing as significantly out of plumb.
 
Thanks, Enola. I'm sure the water tower is not visible from that position, no matter the direction one is facing. I had forgotten about it, actually. I just checked, and it's about 60 degrees to the right, from Dad's vantage point. Even if it is visible from that point now, it would not have been at the time the photo was made because there used to be a tall building directly in that line, and it surely would have obscured any view of the tower. ...
OK, then.

For the record, nowadays the water tower is indeed visible from the street that runs around the west end of the old gymnasium building. I was able to tweak Google Street View so as to show the tower's water tank "hovering" above the end of the building and positioned between the corner cupolas, similar to what's shown in your father's photo. After more research and photo inspections it became apparent your father's photo could not have been taken from that same vantage point, even if the surviving print had been horizontally reversed. The relative wall size, wall features, and windows in your father's photo are definitely the front / entrance side of that building section rather than the side that would have been the foreground if looking toward the water tower from a position west of the building..

(I'd gone through all this before responding with my opinion(s) on the photo in our private conversation.)
 
Interesting. I had not thought to look for that. That angle would have been possible back then, save for the trees around the gym. The original photo showed most or all of the front of the building. The angle of the shot from out there in the parking area would have been quite oblique anyway. All that stuff to the west is new to me. That road behind the cluster of buildings to the left was not there. There was a gravel path one could drive on, but it didn't go past the cluster of buildings. At any rate, that would only get you a picture of the water tower sticking up a bit above the building. It appears there is an antenna fastened to the side of the tank, not centered on the roof. I don't think there were any projections on it back then.

Lots of new stuff on that road around back. Someone drove the Google car all over the place.
 
One thing I haven't mentioned is that the axis of the thing does not appear to be vertical. It is a safe bet that the Germans who stacked those stone columns got them dead on, which makes it appear that the thing is tipped at least a few degrees to the left. There are of course several variables that could cause some distortion, but given the orientation of the object to the building, my carpenter's eye sees the thing as significantly out of plumb.
That's a good point, but it raises another issue for me in evaluating the photo. If you look closely at the photo print there are two faint parallel horizontal streaks or lines beneath the mystery object and trailing off to the right. These look like artifacts of the photo rather than features of the scene - unless (e.g.) the streaks were features of a window through which the photo was taken.

The mystery object's long axis is out of plumb with the building, but it's nicely perpendicular to these two odd streaks - insinuating they could be related in some way. With all due respect to your father's account of the sighting / photo-snapping, this is a big reason why I can't rule out the mystery object being an artifact of the photo rather than a part of the actual scene.

I'd love to see the original print of this photo.
 
That's a good point, but it raises another issue for me in evaluating the photo. If you look closely at the photo print there are two faint parallel horizontal streaks or lines beneath the mystery object and trailing off to the right. These look like artifacts of the photo rather than features of the scene - unless (e.g.) the streaks were features of a window through which the photo was taken.

The mystery object's long axis is out of plumb with the building, but it's nicely perpendicular to these two odd streaks - insinuating they could be related in some way. With all due respect to your father's account of the sighting / photo-snapping, this is a big reason why I can't rule out the mystery object being an artifact of the photo rather than a part of the actual scene.

I'd love to see the original print of this photo.
The parallel line you mention seem to run across in front of the trees on the right, could they be power lines or telephone wires nearer to the camera?
 
The parallel line you mention seem to run across in front of the trees on the right, could they be power lines or telephone wires nearer to the camera?
It's difficult to tell because they don't extend all the way across the photo. There aren't any such power lines nowadays. I don't know whether there may have been some sort of overhead wires back in 1976.

They don't strike me as objects in the scene at all, unless they represent streaks on a window through which the camera had been pointed.
 
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