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The Cumberland Spaceman

WeirdExeter said:
Next: the photo of the giant snake rising up to the airplane above the Amazon and the huge black hole in the Artic seen by the satellite. Both from the wonderful 1980s 'Unexplained' magazine series....
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The what now? How have I missed that?

Wasn't the Arctic black hole just down to missing data on the image, or am I thinking of something else entirely?

As for the this thread's titular astronaut, now that it's been solved (and I am convinced that it has been), it makes you wonder how so many people were puzzled for so long.
 
was this image used seriously in Aliens-Amongst-Us theories, or was a pop culture bit of weird fun? I remember it on Nationwide!
 
Peripart said:
The what now? How have I missed that?

Wasn't the Arctic black hole just down to missing data on the image, or am I thinking of something else entirely?

As for the this thread's titular astronaut, now that it's been solved (and I am convinced that it has been), it makes you wonder how so many people were puzzled for so long.
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I wrote that from memory. It was in fact a giant 50-foot snake allegedly seen and photographed from a helicopter in the Congo:

https://itsmth.fandom.com/wiki/Congo_Giant_Snake

"Col. Remy van Lierde (14 August 1915–8 June 1990) was a Belgian pilot who served during World War II in the Belgian and British Air Forces, shooting down six enemy aircraft and 44 V-1 flying bombs, and achieving the RAF rank of Squadron Leader. In 1958 he became one of the first Belgians to break the sound barrier while test flying a Hawker Hunter at Dunsfold Aerodrome in England. As Lt. Colonel Van Lierde he was made Deputy Chief of Staff to the Ministre of Defense in 1954. Van Lierde is considered a hero of World War II and a flying ace.

In 1959, as full Colonel, he commanded the air base at Kamina in the Belgian Congo. While there, in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while returning from a mission by helicopter, he encountered a Giant Congo Snake emerging from a hole as he flew over the forests, describing the snake as being close to 50 feet (about 15 meters) in length, earning its place among the largest snakes ever reported.

Upon the incredible discovery, he then turned around and made several passes over the snake at a lower altitude in order to allow another person on board to photograph the creature [continues]"
 
JamesWhitehead said:
It is on p.149 of Modern Mysteries of Britain by the Bords
1987 and it is very grainy there. Also the helmet is cropped,
if you'll pardon the expression.

Covering the visor in that version makes the spaceman disappear
as the other marks can all be interpreted as the girl's greasy hair,
flying up and out of focus at the back.

Looking at the online colour versions, the body looks more like
a very sculpted cloud.

The Bords themselves take a sceptical line on this one, noting
the way we are wired to make human faces and figures out of
random stuff.

The MIB scenario is not mentioned in this book but has been
given at some length on tv - sorry can't remember on what
but within the last five years or so.

It savours of a second pressing of the grape to me.:rolleyes:
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Is it likely that the mundane-seeming authors of that photo would even know what MIBs were, for them to concoct a story about them?
 
Cecil Baargs said:
Is it likely that the mundane-seeming authors of that photo would even know what MIBs were, for them to concoct a story about them?
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Templeton himself eventually said he thought the odd MIB-style visitors were fakes. This was in a Cumberland News article published on 4 September 1964.

CumbNews-640904.jpg

IMAGE SOURCE: https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/secret-files/the-solway-spaceman-photograph/​
 
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Cecil Baargs said:
So Templeton was not making up the MIBs, they were real but not what they purported to be perhaps?
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It appears the pair of guys who asked to meet with him and see the photo site were real, but they weren't MIBs. Once Templeton told them he hadn't witnessed the mysterious 'spaceman' figure at the time he took the photo, but first noticed it only on the photo prints later, they left. This left Templeton stranded without a ride at the Burgh Marsh location, and he had to walk at least a mile to get a ride home.
Later that summer Jim was visited at the Fire Station by two men. ... They asked to be taken to the place where the photograph was taken. ... Once they reached the marshes Jim said the following conversation took place: “Pull up on here. This is where the photograph was taken.’ They asked, ‘Can you take us to the exact spot?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So we walked across, and I said, ‘This is where the photograph was taken.’ One looked at the other, and the other looked at him and said, ‘This is where you saw the large man, the alien?’ I said, ‘No, we didn’t see anybody…I never saw anybody.’ ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, and he walked away.” In a somewhat bizarre conclusion to the encounter, the two men drove off, abandoning Jim to walk a mile to the nearest garage for a lift to Carlisle. Jim Templeton never saw the mysterious Men In Black again.
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SOURCE: https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/secret-files/the-solway-spaceman-photograph/
 
I wonder if the 'spaceman' was deliberately edited in to the photograph by the person whom developed the picture - just for a laugh?
 
Sid said:
I wonder if the 'spaceman' was deliberately edited in to the photograph by the person whom developed the picture - just for a laugh?
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Surely a conspiracy too far?

If the developing lab wanted to create a spooky hoax, they would have inserted a more enigmatic image and not an over-exposed shot of the mum's back.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Surely a conspiracy too far?

If the developing lab wanted to create a spooky hoax, they would have inserted a more enigmatic image and not an over-exposed shot of the mum's back.
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Except that know one really knows if that is a shot of the Mothers back? And maybe the image that they used might have been the only one to hand at the time?
 
Sid said:
Except that know one really knows if that is a shot of the Mothers back? And maybe the image that they used might have been the only one to hand at the time?
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Only to the extent that one never 'really' knows anything. All the evidence points to this being the case. And any photography shop worth its salt would have had access to LOADS of images, most of them far more 'woo woo' than something that looks a bit like a bloke in a white suit, and really quite a lot more like the back of a person in a headscarf.
 
catseye said:
Only to the extent that one never 'really' knows anything. All the evidence points to this being the case. And any photography shop worth its salt would have had access to LOADS of images, most of them far more 'woo woo' than something that looks a bit like a bloke in a white suit, and really quite a lot more like the back of a person in a headscarf.
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Might have been more help if we knew what the Mother actually looked like at the time, and who actually developed the film (as I'm assuming it could have also been developed at home - as I did a bit of that myself years ago). It's all a bit sketchy as to why anyone would take a photograph with someone standing in the background facing away from the camera at a very odd angle, and as the person who took the photograph (if I remember correctly) stating that he didn't notice anyone standing there at the time he took the child's photograph?
 
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Templeton's excuse for not seeing the mother (whomever) was that he was viewing his daughter through a very limited viewfinder. In other words, he was able to see only a small portion of the overall scene his lens was going to capture.
 
Sid said:
Might have been more help if we knew what the Mother actually looked like at the time, and who actually developed the film (as I'm assuming it could have also been developed at home - as I did a bit of that myself years ago). It's all a bit sketchy as to why anyone would take a photograph with someone standing in the background facing away from the camera at a very odd angle, and as the person who took the photograph (if I remember correctly) stating that he didn't notice anyone standing there at the time he took the child's photograph?
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That has all been discussed earlier in this thread. There are other photos from that same visit to the moor that show Mum in a blue dress. Really not much room for mystery in this episode. It's an excellent example of the value of examining old cases. Digital technology has made it much easier to figure out. The only unanswered questions, as far as I know, are who the dingbats were who left Templeton on the moor, and why they were there in the first place.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Templeton's excuse for not seeing the mother (whomever) was that he was viewing his daughter through a very limited viewfinder. In other words, he was able to see only a small portion of the overall scene his lens was going to capture.
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Ah, thanks' for explaining that one 'EnolaGaia.'
 
According to Wikipedia, all photos were verified by the company Kodak as genuine.

No weird stuff going on with these photos.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Templeton's excuse for not seeing the mother (whomever) was that he was viewing his daughter through a very limited viewfinder. In other words, he was able to see only a small portion of the overall scene his lens was going to capture.
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It's also very very common to only focus on the thing you are taking the photograph of and somehow 'tune out' whatever is going on in the background. Never taken a photo of your new couch only to realise that it also features several pairs of your pants which are drying on the radiator behind it?

...just me, then.
 
charliebrown said:
According to Wikipedia, all photos were verified by the company Kodak as genuine.

No weird stuff going on with these photos.
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Yes - turns out that the film apparently was developed by Kodak Labs.
Also found that there is a possible link to another incident that took place in Woomera, Australia. It seems that they claim similar 'white suited people' were seen at the Blue-Streak range, and that the parts for the Blue-Streak were made/built only 25 - 30 miles away from the Burgh Marsh location. Coincidence? Or just newspaper talk?
Maybe that's why those mysterious Government people were interested to know what he saw.
https://theozfiles.blogspot.com/2016/05/alien-intrusion-at-woomera-case-of.html
 
Sid said:
Yes - turns out that the film apparently was developed by Kodak Labs.
Also found that there is a possible link to another incident that took place in Woomera, Australia. It seems that they claim similar 'white suited people' were seen at the Blue-Streak range, and that the parts for the Blue-Streak were made/built only 25 - 30 miles away from the Burgh Marsh location. Coincidence? Or just newspaper talk?
Maybe that's why those mysterious Government people were interested to know what he saw.
https://theozfiles.blogspot.com/2016/05/alien-intrusion-at-woomera-case-of.html
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I think this has been fairly intensively investigated. There's not much new to discover about a misunderstood photograph of a family outing.
 
So, Kodak says photo is genuine, then the image of the person in the back is real.

My opinion is we have a view into another reality bumping up against our reality.
 
charliebrown said:
So, Kodak says photo is genuine, then the image of the person in the back is real.

My opinion is we have a view into another reality bumping up against our reality.
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It was his wife, her mother, blurry and indistinct, but just a normal person unintentionally photobombing the pic.
 
charliebrown said:
So, Kodak says photo is genuine, then the image of the person in the back is real.

My opinion is we have a view into another reality bumping up against our reality.
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This is actually quite an interesting statement. Take my example of the photo of the couch. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the photo was ONLY of the couch. If pressed, I may say that there may have been a bit of background, but I couldn't tell you what it was. If shown the evidence of the photo (complete with pants drying), I would genuinely be taken aback. In MY reality, there was no background, the photo was only of the couch. Presumably brains edit reality.
 
Sid said:
No, probably not - but it's an interesting link to a misunderstood family photograph nonetheless!
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charliebrown said:
So, Kodak says photo is genuine, then the image of the person in the back is real.

My opinion is we have a view into another reality bumping up against our reality.
Click to expand...
This post has a close up colour corrected picture. There is a discussion about this over the subsequent posts.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/cumberland-spaceman.5003/post-1789123
 
I want to walk away from this photo, but it keeps drawing me back.

So, you have the background overexposed to make the mom’s dress white, but the little girl in the front is perfectly exposed.

The person in the background does not fit the slope of the hill.

Just saying it’s strange ?
 
I've taken a look at a few facts we can pull from the account:

1. Templeton was a fireman in Carlisle, so I'll assume that he approached the Solway Firth from the direction of Carlisle, which is about 7 miles southeast of the locus.

Solway-Spaceman-Fortean-context-map-01.jpg


2. The "scenic", isolated, part of the road bordering the Solway Firth is about 2½ miles long:

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_02.jpg


Drumburgh to Burgh by Sands marked in yellow

3. He intended to take a picture of his daughter in her new dress. That suggests that clambering over fences, wading through mud, crossing ditches etc. would not have been his intention. I don't imagine that his missus, a 1964 housewife, would have been much more inclined to be adventurous. (I once read that 90% of the people who visit the Scottish Highlands never walk farther than 100 yards from their cars.)

4. He describes there being "...a couple of old women sitting in a car at the far end of the marsh". As I'm assuming that he was driving from east to west, this suggests to me that he was at or near the western end of the road that borders the scenic area.

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_OS_1-50,000.jpg


OS 1:50,000 scale map, blue squares equal 1km

5. A layby or parking area on the south side of the road would have been most convenient to someone driving - as we do in the UK - on the left side of the road.

6. The Carlisle & Silloth Bay branch of the LNER ran parallel, and close to the road, immediately south of the road. It didn't close until 7th September 1964. I believe it's likely that for reasons of safety, noise and of views, Templeton would have had his picnic on the opposite, northern, side of the road, closest to the Solway Firth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_railway_history#Closures

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_1965_map.jpg


Overview showing proximity of railway line (long black & white alternate dashes) to road (parallel pecked lines)

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_railway.jpg


Closeup emphasising nearness of railway to south side of the road at west end, nearer to Drumburgh

7. He says that the "MIB" accompanied him to the locus of the incident, then abandoned him to "...walk a mile to the nearest garage". I've done a Yell check, and the nearest garage services advertised today (47 years later...) are near Carlisle, which is - as stated above - several miles away to the east. I'm going to speculate that either:

a) There was once a garage in Drumburgh, the nearest village to my best guess as to the place of the sighting, or;

b) Templeton walked to the public telephone kiosk in Drumburgh to arrange a lift.

8. My best guess - and it is a guess - is that the locus of the sighting was within the area I've delineated in a red oval below:

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_OS_1-50,000_circled.jpg


This is based on Templeton's estimate of his having to walk a mile to get assistance (of some sort).

Edited to add:

Two places suggest themselves on a Google Earth Street View flyby:

a) Immediately east of the Easton turnoff there is an apparently popular spot (based on grass wear) on the north side of the road: 54°55'33.62"N, 3° 7'49.18"W

b) Farther east, by the cattle grid at 54°55'30.30"N, 3° 7'7.64"W

Over to my fellow Forteans.

maximus otter
 
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maximus otter said:
I've taken a look at a few facts we can pull from the account:

1. Templeton was a fireman in Carlisle, so I'll assume that he approached the Solway Firth from the direction of Carlisle, which is about 7 miles southeast of the locus.

Solway-Spaceman-Fortean-context-map-01.jpg


2. The "scenic", isolated, part of the road bordering the Solway Firth is about 2½ miles long:

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_02.jpg


Drumburgh to Burgh by Sands marked in yellow

3. He intended to take a picture of his daughter in her new dress. That suggests that clambering over fences, wading through mud, crossing ditches etc. would not have been his intention. I don't imagine that his missus, a 1964 housewife, would have been much more inclined to be adventurous. (I once read that 90% of the people who visit the Scottish Highlands never walk farther than 100 yards from their cars.)

4. He describes there being "...a couple of old women sitting in a car at the far end of the marsh". As I'm assuming that he was driving from east to west, this suggests to me that he was at or near the western end of the road that borders the scenic area.

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_OS_1-50,000.jpg


OS 1:50,000 scale map, blue squares equal 1km

5. A layby or parking area on the south side of the road would have been most convenient to someone driving - as we do in the UK - on the left side of the road.

6. The Carlisle & Silloth Bay branch of the LNER ran parallel, and close to the road, immediately south of the road. It didn't close until 7th September 1964. I believe it's likely that for reasons of safety, noise and of views, Templeton would have had his picnic on the opposite, northern, side of the road, closest to the Solway Firth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_railway_history#Closures

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_1965_map.jpg


Overview showing proximity of railway line (long black & white alternate dashes) to road (parallel pecked lines)

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_railway.jpg


Closeup emphasising nearness of railway to south side of the road at west end, nearer to Drumburgh

7. He says that the "MIB" accompanied him to the locus of the incident, then abandoned him to "...walk a mile to the nearest garage". I've done a Yell check, and the nearest garage services advertised today (47 years later...) are near Carlisle, which is - as stated above - several miles away to the east. I'm going to speculate that either:

a) There was once a garage in Drumburgh, the nearest village to my best guess as to the sighting, or;

b) Templeton walked to the public telephone kiosk in Drumburgh to arrange a lift.

8. My best guess - and it is a guess - is that the locus of the sighting was within the area I've delineated in a red oval below:

Solway_Spaceman_Fortean_OS_1-50,000_circled.jpg


This is based on Templeton's estimate of his having to walk a mile to get assistance (of some sort).

Over to my fellow Forteans.

maximus otter
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Splendid detective work Maximus! If we're doing a mock up, I volunteer to be the 1960's housewife...
 
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