The Solway Firth spaceman-SOLVED!!!!!!

reply to post by Imagewerx


I had the privilege of meeting Jim (RIP) about 15 years ago at a local show, he stuck by his story and I personally don't believe he made any of it up.

What exactly it is in the picture is still a mystery however, and although your theory is just as good as anyone elses...it doesn't solve it.

reply to post by virraszto

I didn't get the eMail notification but have now replied to it.

woogleuk
reply to post by Imagewerx

 

I had the privilege of meeting Jim (RIP) about 15 years ago at a local show, he stuck by his story and I personally don't believe he made any of it up.

What exactly it is in the picture is still a mystery however, and although your theory is just as good as anyone elses...it doesn't solve it.

Ok thanks for your input and you were indeed lucky to meet Jim.I guess the real truth went with Jim and this is as close to the truth as we'll ever get,but to me it will always be his wife in the photo.

I'm convinced it's a woman in the photo.

But it doesn't mean the photographer was pulling a hoax. He still could have been honestly confused and convinced it was a space-man. Kodak apparently never figured it out, so it's possible the MIB's were just as confused / convinced as everyone. So even the MIB visit could be true, despite the photo just showing a woman.

Overexposure was quite the mystery back then it seems. lol

Yes, I believe it's a woman; possibly the wife, but definitely a woman.

The fact that she's heavy-set is merely a detail (has nobody seen a heavy-set woman before?). It could even be a man, but if it is, he's wearing a dress.

If you enhance the contrast, you can clearly see the outline of the dress and that it's blue-ish compared to the arms which are appropriately flesh-coloured.

It's simply an over-exposure.

So this is what I believe really happened.

When Jim was getting ready to snap his daughter, he knew the woman was walking up the hill behind her, and didn't mind her being in shot.

When the photo was developed, he could see the over-exposure looked a bit like an astronaut, and he ran with it as far as he could. And why not? I don't blame him.

But to suggest Jim was not in on this deception is naive.

The visit from the MIB...didn't he later retract it, and said it was a joke?

And what of the daughter, Elizabeth? Has she mentioned anything about this?

She'll be about 54 now. Does anyone know what became of her?

reply to post by woogleuk

he stuck by his story

Very difficult to admit you spent the last 50 years telling a lie.

If the subject in question is heavyset/plump, has short legs and has a small head then I believe the Solway Firth Spaceman is indeed solved and is nothing more than a person who's back is behind the camera standing in an elevated position a few meters away from the girl.

But if the subject doesn't possess any if not all of these...

I really think the guy just took an honest to goodness picture during his family's picnic, it happened to have an unidentifiable figure, got blown out of proportion, and he rode with it.

I'm sure there's a perfectly normal explanation for everything, and the subject being a spaceman isn't one of them.

I really like the jogger theory though. Heavy jogger trying to lose a couple of pounds...short legs...lol

reply to post by CJCrawley


Even if it was his wife....some random jogger...or some other logical explanation (which I'm sure it is), it doesn't mean he lied, he was just simply not aware at the time of anyone else that could have been in the shot.

It's the Woomera / Bluestreak story which adds more mystery to it I think, especially when you consider that some of the parts for the missile were made about 20 miles from the Solway Spaceman picture. (I think)

CJCrawley
Yes, I believe it's a woman; possibly the wife, but definitely a woman.
The fact that she's heavy-set is merely a detail (has nobody seen a heavy-set woman before?).

Quite clearly a lot of people who've left comments in this thread believe that every woman ever born is the spitting image of Helen of Troy,apparantly the most beautiful woman ever born.They really do need to spend less time on conspiracy websites and more time out in the real world.

woogleuk
reply to post by CJCrawley

 

It's the Woomera / Bluestreak story which adds more mystery to it I think, especially when you consider that some of the parts for the missile were made about 20 miles from the Solway Spaceman picture. (I think)

edit on 4/11/13 by woogleuk because: (no reason given)

The claimed connection is RAF Spadeadam.The actual connection is about as tenuous as saying my dad used to dress up as Father Christmas,therefore he really is Santa Claus and really can deliver 10 billion presents in just 8 hours.
People all over the world wear white suits/overalls,amongst them are workers at missile launch sites,bakers,doctors and fish market workers.Strangley enough though firemans wives wearing short sleeved blue dresses aren't included in this group.

To me it looks like a double exposer. You can see it overlaid on the left side of her hair. There is also what seems to be processing damage if you look the upper right side of the original photo. Looks like it could have come from a staple. Many scratches also.

Am I the only one who has ever seen this?

reply to post by pktrkt

Thanks for your contribution and good of you to join ATS just to comment in my humble little thread.

No you are not alone in thinking it might be a double exposure,in fact one theory is that is was a trick being played on Jim by the chemist to get him back for all his practical jokes and they altered the photo.
I don't think so though.You can only zoom in to a certain extent before all you can see is a blurred outline and digitisation artefacts.As far as I'm aware the original negative of this photo has never made it into the public domain,so all we ever see is a photo of a photo (or at least a scan of a photo),along with all the scratches and other damage that it has suffered from over the years.The process now matter how well done of turning a photographic print into a digital image introduces artefacts that weren't there in the original,and it can be very difficult if not impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff when looking at something like this where you're zooming right in to pixel level.
Also in the mid 1960s no one could do double exposures this accurately,and don't forget that this was shown to the experts at Kodak and they found no evidence of any such tampering with the image.Even nowadays if we did this with Photoshop,it always leaves some evidence which experts will always find to prove it has been manipulated.
What I (and many others believe) is that what/who ever it is behind the girl was definitely there when the photo was being taken.

Hi there - ages since i've posted on ATS but this story has always fascinated me - though my views on it have changed...

My take on it now is that is a hoax for these reasons. I have tried to provide links where I can but I seem to have forgotten all my ATS protocol and some of the information is too hard to find.

Mr Templeton was an admitted practical joker.

He was a Firefighter based Carlisle. He would have, in the course of his duties, visited local factories and industrial developments to familiarise the firefighters with risks. One of these risks is almost certainly RAF Spadeadam. Fire Services still undertake these visits - I think they are called 11D visits - we have them at my workplace.

At RAF Spadeadam the Blue Steel missile system was being tested and there would have been a requirement for an on site Fire Service. I have been unable to find out if this would be Rolls Royce (who were building the missile) Fire Service or RAF/Army.

Standard Firefighting uniform for Airfield firefighters was a funky green wool suit however in hot climates and at test sites they wore asbestos 'Silver-Suits' like these. The Standard Airfield firefighting Crash Helmet or 'bone-dome' is modelled by the mannequin on the left in this photo. Combine the two and you have a spaceman costume like this one...

i40.tinypic.com...[/IMG]]American Firefighters

Admttedly these are American firefighters but the resemblance is striking.

These are a more modern version with the asbestos removed

Mr Templeton could have easily befriended a RR or RAF Firefighter and arranged to borrow a Silversuit for an afternoon.

The Co-conspirater could have hidden on the otherside of the flood defence and popped up when the photo was being taken. No one else would need to know. Why did he continually deny that it was a hoax? Initially it could have been that the other Fire Service employee would get into trouble for taking the suit off site and then after a while it would become harder to admit the hoax... Who knows..? That's not the issue.
I think i've provided a motive and a means...

What do you think? Again apologies for the links in post I'm sure it wasn't like this last time i was on ATS. But then in those days it was all fields...

reply to post by mark ten

Thank you for your thoughts on this subject mark ten.The white suited figures seen on the launch pad at Woomera are of course nothing more the safety crew wearing the very types of fire resistant suits you went to a lot of trouble to provide links to.
Your so called "co conspirator" didn't exist at the time the photo was taken though.It is still in my mind just Jim's wife wearing the same dress she is wearing in the other photo.No matter how hard I look and crank the levels etc in Photoshop,I still can't see the bee keeper/jogger/spaceman/Russian shot putter that other people can see.
It was an innocently taken family photo and nothing more at the time.The suggestion by the chemist sparked off a practical joke in Jim,only then his wife became a possible co conspirator.

Hi, I know this is kinda old but I heard about this whole mystery for the first time today. I honestly believe that the figure in the photo is the wife- I thought that from the moment I saw the photos. However I do have one question.. The other photo.. If the wife is on the right, the daughter is in the middle with her shadow in front of her, and the husband is taking the photo in front of them, that means his shadow would be behind him, going the same direction as the daughter and wife. Soooo... If they're in an open field and there's no one else around.. Whose shadow is on the far left? Can someone explain this to me? I've been searching the web for the answer but no one seems to have noticed that other shadow. I circled it in photoshop for reference...

a reply to: ashleyjones25

Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier Ashley.Thanks for your input on this,but the extra shadow has been pointed out and discussed in this or one of the other threads about this topic.
I can only guess at it either being the shadow of Jim himself and the camera was on a tripod with the photo being taken using the camera's self timer function,or it could have been one of the numerous signposts that are dotted around that area.

You nailed it Imagewerx. I've been fascinated and quite disturbed by this image for years and always saw a spaceman but I'm now 100% convinced by your explanation. Thanks for posting and good work.

a reply to: crystaloftruth

Imagewerx explanation is a good one, but still has its flaws, I am a sceptic in these matters, but maybe I have a personal bias on the subject..but Jim himself told me there was no-one there...that doesn't mean he was mistaken, but the truth is not yet apparent on what is in this photo.

I really just read the whole OP, which I rarely do, for no conclusion..... WTF

originally posted by: ashleyjones25
Hi, I know this is kinda old but I heard about this whole mystery for the first time today. I honestly believe that the figure in the photo is the wife- I thought that from the moment I saw the photos. However I do have one question.. The other photo.. If the wife is on the right, the daughter is in the middle with her shadow in front of her, and the husband is taking the photo in front of them, that means his shadow would be behind him, going the same direction as the daughter and wife. Soooo... If they're in an open field and there's no one else around.. Whose shadow is on the far left? Can someone explain this to me? I've been searching the web for the answer but no one seems to have noticed that other shadow. I circled it in photoshop for reference...

It's the idiot who took the picture