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The Cumberland Spaceman

SpaceParrot said:
>...The picture is easily hoaxable with a 1960s camera, the photographic experts are plainy talking through their arseholes

I assume then with the same kit, same film speed, grain, no photoshop, no pc help at all in fact you'll knock up your own unfathomable duplicate? (Lest ye be judged to be talking out of your nether region too).

I suspect you too are suggesting Mr Templeton was blind or a liar. Or that there are hulky women knocking about the meadows with heads that do that Exorcist thing.

If anyone out there ever sees anything genuinely fantastic, don't bother photograph it, for it'll never be accepted for what it is.
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Sorry, SpaceParrot, but that really is most probably a woman with her back to the camera, hand on hip, possibly bending at a slight angle to compensate for the gentle slope. She seems to be wearing a headscarf and a soft, white, figure hugging, cardigan. Just the sort of clothes a woman might have worn on a slightly windy, but fine day, back in the Sixties.

Why someone would still wish to insist that the figure is facing the camera, when the figure's elbow is quite clearly bent towards the the camera, I must admit, I find that a bit baffling.

As to the photographer, not noticing the figure in the background of the shot. This is the sort of snap someone might take with an 1960's Instamatic, which would have had a very primitive viewfinder. Concentrating on framing the close up shot, the photographer may simply not have noticed what was going on in the background.

Is the woman 'hulking'? Not sure, but she does seem the sort of solid, middle aged, type to have enjoyed a day out in the car with her hubby, having packed a thermos flask of sweet, milky tea and a picnic lunch of bloater paste sandwiches.

Next time you see, for example, a muslim woman on the street, wearing a head scarf, take a good look at her from the back. You might be surprised as to just how solid she appears to be. ;)
 
SpaceParrot said:
>...The picture is easily hoaxable with a 1960s camera, the photographic experts are plainy talking through their arseholes

I assume then with the same kit, same film speed, grain, no photoshop, no pc help at all in fact you'll knock up your own unfathomable duplicate? (Lest ye be judged to be talking out of your nether region too).
Click to expand...

What's difficult in faking it? You get a friend in suitable gear to stand a way back so that they're slightly out of focus. Stand them on a box, if you want to get the floating effect. That assumes the man's a liar.

If you look at the clearest versions of the picture, the head isn't doing the Exorcist thing, it's the back of someone's head.

I don't think the chap faked it or is lying or is blind, it's possible he didn't notice the other person in shot as he was obviously more concerned with his daughter.

Have you ever seen the man in the gorilla suit at the basketball game video clip? If you set the observer the task of counting the number of passes in the game, a remarkable number of them don't notice that a chap in a gorilla suit walks right through the middle of the game and don't believe that such a thing happened until the video's run past them again.

Human attention can be highly selective.
 
I really don't believe that this thread has gone blathering on for so long.
The most probable answer was given pages (and years) ago, by Niles IIRC.

Today I thought I'd found a photographic anomaly.

I'd scanned a slide of a woman and and a young girl on a beach. At first it looked OK, the people were standing upright at the water's edge.

But then I saw the sea horizon was wonky. It seemed to me that if I rotated the pic to level the horizon, the people would appear to be leaning sideways.

But when I did this rotation (by 3 degrees), the people still seemed upright!

Which goes to show that the human eye is good at distinguishing off-kilter things when they are straight or regular (like a sea horizon), but not when the image is irregular and asymmetrical, as in most human photos.

My experience of scanning photos shows me that the eye can detect horizon errors of about half a degree, smaller than my software can correct!
 
Sigh...Iposted earlier but for some reason it didn't appear!
I shall re-post even though Timble (She's ace!) posted more or less what I was saying.
There's nothing odd about any of the angles and the pictures you posted Space parrot. The axis you illustrated are not worthy of any reasonable meaning. You appear to have misinterpreted everything in the scenario in order to bolster your yearnings to believe in some paranormal existance in an obsessive way.
There's nothing to suggest in ANY WAY...that the woman dressed in a white top and FACING WITH HER BACK TO THE CAMERA is in any way not simply firmly on the ground. Nothing at all.
You appear to be making something out of nothing. (Meiere/Horn).
Look at it this way...If a murder took place and the victim was stabbed to death with no thread of evidence where another human or animal was present or responsible, or the victim had committed suicide, you would suggest a poltegeist or similar and let the real murderer get away Scott free?
Think about it and try to use Occam's Razor as a guide to explaining something vaguely odd looking as this photograph. Also look at my earlier suggestions illustrated in pictorial presentations as well as other peoples'.
You sound slightly illogical in your posts. Have you not seen photographs which look mental but are easily explained mundainley?

No offense to anyone/thing/misc'. :lol:
 
Occams Razor has no place for paranormal and/or events created through undiscovered (by us) laws of physics.
 
And there, ladies and gentlemen, we see the last hope of this argument ever progressing.

All that remains now is for someone to invoke Godwin's law, and we can all go home.

Remember when you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras. Unless you're in the Serengheti, in which case zebras are probably more likely. Last I checked, though, there were more horses than zebras in Cumberland.
 
But you are dwelling on complete hypothosese rather than probability. Doing so is like having an argument trying to prove there is no such thing as a twenty headed human being living in the jungles of China, who wears only Wrangler boot cut jeans and a T shirt with the logo "Arse!" emblazened on it.
I'm all for people believing in what they want to, but when it comes to trying to understand something tangible, it just gets in the way and becomes sensless.
Again, no offense.
 
Agreed. People often confuse the phrase "open minded" with "credulous".
 
Shocking. I am suprised that none of you realise the existence of the race of beings from Stumbletrip, in the star system Rigil Kentaurus.

They are unique in having arms that bend behind them and a face like the back of someones head.

Clearly this photgraph shows one of these beings on a pilgrimage to the Holy Cumberland Shrine to pray to the savoury relic of the sausage.

Show some respect :x
 
Will someone please just go out there and attempt to recreate this picture? I can't believe this hasn't already happened.

For some reason the more I look it the more I am reminded of that bloke who came back from holiday with a Bot Fly larvae sticking out of his head.
 
new idea

I havnt read all of the previous posts so i appologise if this has been said before but i 'think' i have noticed something that no one else has. In the cumberland spaceman photo i noticed that the 'head' is less in focus than the 'body'. I know it sounds improbable but i thought that the body might be a diving bird and the head is a balloon blowing by. with regard to the head, i am not sure that it is a balloon, the thing that got me thinking was that the head and body may be two seperate things. Any thoughts?
 
Hi.
My thoughts on your post...I can't see how the head is more blurred than the body, or how...(And it has been suggested before...) that the body could be of a bird.
I think that it is a person of undifined gender simply in the background, shot at an odd angle. Although...looking closely, there appears to be a line where the arm joins the shoulder. I cannot say what this indicates just yet.
 
It doesnt matter whether its reproducable or not.

What the picture does have is a blurred object behind a little girl.
What it doesnt have is a clear, well defined shot of a 'space man' Reproducing a blur is pretty pointless.

All the arguments about the object (assuming its a humanoid shape) being five feet off the ground and therefore not a passer by also count against the 'space man' hypothosis, unless he was wearing a jet pack as well.

No doubt had the picture been taken 1/2 second sooner or later it may have been obvious what the object was.

If this Rorschach inkblot behind the girl is sufficient for you to believe spaceman then fine, enjoy it and have fun with it.
Just dont be suprised that other people require a higher level of evidence.
 
For what it's worth, I come from carlisle near the solway firth where that photo was taken. Burgh marsh is 5 miles as the crow files from chapelcross nuclear plant which in the 60's was belching out all kinds of nasties along with it's sister plant windscale 40 miles south. Supposing it isn't a photographic hoax, that could well be a guy in a protective suit - and officialdom would obviously rather have a mystery about a spaceman than a discussion about why someone was out on the marsh in full radiation protection...just a thought ;)

PS Forget all the rubbish about 'blue streak' - Spadeadam is 30 miles away on the other side of carlisle
 
spillage1 said:
Think about it and try to use Occam's Razor as a guide to explaining something...
Click to expand...

Occam's razor principle tells us that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Carry on.
 
Frobush said:
spillage1 said:
Think about it and try to use Occam's Razor as a guide to explaining something...
Click to expand...

Occam's razor principle tells us that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Carry on.
Click to expand...

Thank you Frobush, I'm getting sick of folk using Occam's razor as if it was an unbreakable law of physics rather than a handy maxim. 8)
 
Frobush said:
Occam's razor principle tells us that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Click to expand...

Oh No It Doesn't.
Simple observation might suggest that, but looking deeper you can see why it ain't so. Occam's razor demands that a theory fits all the observations, including Foucault's pendulum.
 
wembley8 said:
Simple observation might suggest that, but looking deeper you can see why it ain't so. Occam's razor demands that a theory fits all the observations, including Foucault's pendulum.
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Well, you can prove anything with facts. :roll:
 
Solway Spaceman

Link*

sorry for quick post, have to get to work.....LATE LATE LATE

*EDIT: Link shortened by WJ
 
gncxx said:
bazizmaduno said:
Solway Spaceman

Link
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I can't get this to work, can anyone give me the gist?
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The link is to a BBC video clip. If you get the video clip page but the video doesn't run, try clicking Launch in standalone player - this will play it in Windows media viewer, for example, if you have that.

But some Beeb media links don't work outside UK.
 
rynner said:
gncxx said:
bazizmaduno said:
Solway Spaceman

Link
Click to expand...

I can't get this to work, can anyone give me the gist?
Click to expand...
The link is to a BBC video clip. If you get the video clip page but the video doesn't run, try clicking Launch in standalone player - this will play it in Windows media viewer, for example, if you have that.

But some Beeb media links don't work outside UK.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm in the UK, I took your advice and it said an internal application error had occured! Oh well...
 
Hi gncxx - the link is to a BBC News video, which can be viewed in either windows media or real player.

Essentially...

The 45-year-old mystery of a figure in a photograph known as the "spaceman" could be solved with the release of MoD documents.

An 87yr old man - picture taken with daughter - picture linked with the testing in australia of cumbria-built weapons. The men at the station where they were testing the firing of bluestreak rocket, they saw on the monitors somebody in the firing area and the countdown was stopped. They searched the area and found no one - it was put down as a technical fault. Those two men reckoned when they saw the picture it was exactly the same type of man, same dress, same figure, same size as the spaceman in the picture taken on Burgh Marsh in Cumbria.

The video doesnt say how the spaceman could have got into the picture of his daughter though - still mystrerious

Regards

Baz
 
Thanks! Must be my computer acting up...

But hey, I saw a Jenny Randles documentary on BBC2 back in the 90s that said exactly the same thing! Is she in the clip?
 
Sorry, but don't know who 'Jenny Randles' is. The clip just has the old guy recounting the story and a reporter on the moor with the original camera that took the picture.

The 'spacesuit' does rather look like an anti-blast suit though - no weird alien writing or alien corporate sponsorship logos :lol:

regards
Baz
 
gncxx wrote:
Jenny Randles is a renowned British "Ufologist", she also writes half the UFO column for the Fortean Times.
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Oops... <hangs head in shame> :oops:
 
I posted in this thread almost 7 years back and I'm more glad than disappointed that in that time nobody's come up with any sensible explanation. IMO this is the only photo in UFOlogy that is of any value. The only reasonable explanation is fakery in the development process although I can't see how or why this could have happened.
 
TheOrigDesperado said:
I posted in this thread almost 7 years back and I'm more glad than disappointed that in that time nobody's come up with any sensible explanation. IMO this is the only photo in UFOlogy that is of any value.
Click to expand...
I thought several likely explanations had been proposed here (but I'm not going to reread the whole thread to find them again!). I guess many new people come to the subject, find this thread, but don't bother to read it all, therefore assuming it is still an ongoing mystery.

One important point is that the horizon in the original photo should have been level (as could also be seen in the recent TV reportage): straightening the photo up makes it look far less mysterious, and mundane explanations seem more credible.

The link with events in Australia seems tenuous. Weird stuff happens all the time, so weird coincidences must happen too. Probably if you you dig hard enough, you'll find some UFO reports or other weirdness from various places on the same date.
 
rynner said:
TheOrigDesperado said:
I posted in this thread almost 7 years back and I'm more glad than disappointed that in that time nobody's come up with any sensible explanation. IMO this is the only photo in UFOlogy that is of any value.
Click to expand...
I thought several likely explanations had been proposed here (but I'm not going to reread the whole thread to find them again!). I guess many new people come to the subject, find this thread, but don't bother to read it all, therefore assuming it is still an ongoing mystery.
Click to expand...

Well, I read through every post in the thread and checked out all the linked images and videos. There's nothing been suggested that provides a credible explanation.

It's not a "real" person, it's either too high off the ground or much too big, depending on how you interpret its lateral position. As a photographer and someone who's experienced in image manipulation that's so obvious. A real person would also have required Templeton to lie about it - he said there was nobody there. I've been to that location and it's wide open - you couldn't miss someone within 300 yards, let alone if they were wearing a white boiler suit and loitering behind your young daughter.

Possibly it's a balloon, set up with a hoax in mind, but I just can't see it. It's too intricate. Who would have made such a thing back then, and why?

Perhaps it's a 1 in a billion film processing error, the emulsion being stained in a random shape that resembles a human.

I very much doubt it's an alien but I'm not afraid to say I have no idea what it is. Hence the mystery.
 
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