1964 Jim Templeton photo

[Huscroft6]

Really into the series Unsealed: Alien Files, lot of good episodes, and like alot on here, enjoy any show like that. Anyhow, maybe its been discussed before, but I just saw this episode again and was wondering what thoughts were on it? Real or fake, its flat out freaky...

 

[Burnt State]

This is a cropped image of this photo. The full photo extends down further to show the rest of the girl who is holding flowers in her hands.

 

[Burnt State]

I've always assumed it was someone in a beekeeping suit that strolled into frame but the two really curious points are that the photographer never saw anyone else on the field and if you are shooting pix you know what enters your frame. The second issue is the 1964 appearance of the MIB figures - gov't officials? Amybe Mi8 instead?

I'm not sure about how much credence can be given to the Templetons' feelings about how the air was electric, or that animals behaved strangely, though such anecdotal reports are in the literature, so it's doubly odd when you consider the questions brought up by the MIB dudes that show up later.

The other super odd aspect is the whole MIB aspect where the two guys in dark suits riding in the Jaguar refer to each other as number 9 and number 11. Did their descendants write the script for the MIB movie? It's just one really weird tale. So I would give it a high strange rating of 4 out of 5 stars. It does seem to be about more than just beekeeping.

BBC News - The mystery of the Solway Spaceman

 

[Wade]

I thought this pic got debunked a couple of years back. His wife was wearing a light blue dress if i recall and it was suggested she was in the background and the shot came in a little light in the contrast. The shot is clearly of someone with their back to the camera given the position of their arm and you can see some shoulder blades.

 

[Burnt State]

So his wife is wearing a light blue beekeeping dress that is like inflated or something - check out those arm contours, and is standing with her back to us?

 

[Burnt State]

This is mom in dress on right - they don't match.

 

[Wade]

I think this was the site I was thinking about
"...I believe this is no more that a shallow depth of field camera setting with a washed out individual in the background..."

Debunked!: The Solway Firth Spaceman

I'm sure it's not someone facing forward, they have their back to the camera with their hand on their hip, not an uncommon pose for people. In putting her (his?) arm like that makes the shoulder blade more prominent. I suppose it could be a guy in a beekeepers outfit but that would suggest there would be a kept colony there, this isn't the type of place I'd go for a picnic.

 

[Burnt State]

Yep, I was just about to post the same link but I don't buy the camera explanations or his technical argument of sun bleaching the image or the dress in the distance comparison.

Besides, what the hell is she wearing on her head - I mean I don't really care if that's supposed to be her back or not but that's the strangest looking bonnet I've ever seen.

None of this debunking accounts for the MIB parts of the story.

 

[Huscroft6]

I also disagree with the whole beekeeping aspect. As if he just appeared in 1 of 3 shots and Templeton didnt see beekeepers working right there? It does look like a shot from someones back though. Also, seems like a strange place to have a bee colony and bee keepers to me.... Not saying its anything real but as I said in my original post, it is kinda freaky.

Thanks for the replies and input fellas!

 

[Burnt State]

Wade and Huscroft6, I'm looking more closely at this photo now and can see some of the argument regarding the lines of the dress at the shoulder and the issue of sunlight creating high contrast and overexposure. However, the image that has mom sprawled on the ground is an overexposed image and you can see that in the girl's image as well. However, the image with the spaceman is not an overexposed image as the girl is fairly well balanced in terms of light in the photo and so are the surroundings so I find the idea of the light blue dress getting bleacher not working for me. There is also an issue around proportions, the size of mom's arms in both photos that just don't match for me, neither does her head gear make much sense at all. The space man image looks to be substantially bigger than mom IMHO. now I'm usually the first one to be skeptical, but I'm giving a little credence to the MIB angle, the questions asked, and what was reported by the family - there's some oddities there are work which lean towards validating the space man.

Problems with the photo - if you can take a picture of it then your eyes can see it as both respond to light getting reflected off of surfaces and if one image capturing device can get that image than so can our eyes. I agree, that you can't miss a beekeeper in the field, nor can you miss your wife who suddenly appears in a photo, though, if it was on a tripod and he had already framed the shot then he might not even be looking through the view finder at all anymore and just looking at the girl, waiting for the right smile and then *click* you're totally oblivious to what's in the background, including your own wife.

So in the realms of possibility I'm going to re-evaluate my score and give high strange marks for the aftermath of the event with the MIB and reduce the score for the actual photo itself as it is conceivable, and in a Sherlock Holmes universe it can only be one answer - it's the wife. Visually is does not make sense to me, the shape and light are all wrong, but I know from a life of photography that anomalous things can happen e.g. clouds overhead could be minimizing light on the subject but clear sky could be causing overexposure.

 

[Wade]

I Do have to admit that right arm(?) DOES look a fair amount bigger to me in the "spaceman" pictute that it does in the picture where she is splayed out half in the frame, and yes while i am open to the suggestion that there is an issue about contrast and or saturation I don't see where that could play a part in the size discrepancy of the upper arm even of it is flexed a bit, but you can see she does appear to be quite pale in the shot where she is off to the side

 

[Wade]

The funny thing here is i am the opposite (in a sense) to burnt because I tend to be a little more receptive to anomalous explanations then he probably is but on this event we pretty much flip flopped. but I like this. I think it shows we do have a common thread in that we can't be painted into a corner when it comes to quantify our "belief" systems. The same goes for nearly everyone else here.

 

[Burnt State]

sure, so long as you are not talking about AGW, 9-11 or the most extreme of UFO cases e.g. Mr. Meier's supporters come immediately to mind for some reason.

but I also liked this interchange. I was very dismissive of this image previously. getting to now the rest of the story certainly helps to open it up more.

 

[Burnt State]

Sometimes I can't let things go. I found this image online that has filtered the image and revealed mom as the culprit. Perhaps that is mom's body shape, plain and simple. It would be nice to have a better copy of the photo to work with as i'd like to confirm that the image on the right was not manipulated in any way in order to retain the clear deliniation of what appears to be mom's dress. I will play in photoshop to see if I get anything different from other web images of the Solway Firth Spaceman, but I'm starting to feel like this case confirms a bit of Ufological history: something interesting may or may not have been seen and then that is blown out of proportion by the military, 3 letter agencies or history's broken paranormal telephone of journalism. Strange beliefs follow.

 

[Stagger Lee]

Interesting. The problem I have, mom seems to have gained some weight in the arms -comparing the earlier photo of her with the figure in the image. Although the cut of the dress or sleeveless does match the image.

 

[Wade]

Sometimes I can't let things go. I found this image online that has filtered the image and revealed mom as the culprit. Perhaps that is mom's body shape, plain and simple. It would be nice to have a better copy of the photo to work with as i'd like to confirm that the image on the right was not manipulated in any way in order to retain the clear deliniation of what appears to be mom's dress. I will play in photoshop to see if I get anything different from other web images of the Solway Firth Spaceman, but I'm starting to feel like this case confirms a bit of Ufological history: something interesting may or may not have been seen and then that is blown out of proportion by the military, 3 letter agencies or history's broken paranormal telephone of journalism. Strange beliefs follow.

I spotted this myself but I hesitated at using it even though it validated my thoughts because I thought the filling in with color was a bit of a cheat. What I mean is you can use this process to enhance a picture but also to change it to your liking. I'm not a photography expert but I would think there was a more "scientific" way of bringing out detail than just by adding coloring.

It could be that mom had short hair and was wearing a cap of some type but given the era I don't know if that would be the style. Having said that, This type of thought process is rabbit hole thinking because who's to say she didn't have an individualistic sense of style. I don't think that "glowing crown" could just be the result of direct sunlight.

 

[Burnt State]

I spotted this myself but I hesitated at using it even though it validated my thoughts because I thought the filling in with color was a bit of a cheat. What I mean is you can use this process to enhance a picture but also to change it to your liking. I'm not a photography expert but I would think there was a more "scientific" way of bringing out detail than just by adding coloring.

It could be that mom had short hair and was wearing a cap of some type but given the era I don't know if that would be the style. Having said that, This type of thought process is rabbit hole thinking because who's to say she didn't have an individualistic sense of style. I don't think that "glowing crown" could just be the result of direct sunlight.

Well I took the best original images online that I could find into Photoshop to try to replicate that altered image and see whether or not it really is mom's dress creating the outline. I worked to look for edges and colour in the centre of that space body but there is really nothing there to work with except a bit of shadow under the right shoulder, that's if that is a humanoid back facing us. There is no real blue to create a dress at all there and in the false colour altered image that I posted above, not only has the dress been coloured, but they have also drawn more detailed lines to create the edge of the dress hem on the shoulders as well which is only very faint in the original image.

I was really hoping I would be able to make some simple adjustments with curves, saturation, or even in trying to pull extra blue out of the highlights and midtones of that space person image but I could not get anything out of it at all that makes it look anything like that false colour image.

It could be a hat on her head, I suppose, but if that area of the picture was in fact overexposed by sun then certainly the hair should also suffer in the same way. That would not yield black but a lighter brown. So I know I'm waffling here, but I'm sticking with the notion that this is simply a very, very odd photograph, with strange proportions to the body, almost to the point of being comical. The image itself seems to scream at the viewer, "all that space man stuff....that's all just in your head, silly human."

I think the trickster is at work here.

 

[Huscroft6]

Interesting image work you found Burnt. Does look like the mom in a way but the arm thing gives me that little bit of doubt. Thanks guys for all the very interesting input and responses!