has anyone seen that photograph taken by a man of his daughter and in the background there is a floating figure that looks like an astronaut, of the story i heard the man was taking pictures of his daughter in a place called Cumberland, near a space station of some sort, and at the time he did not see anything but these figures turned up in almost every picture he took of his daughter, and supposedly he somehow lost some of them due to shadowy interferencce but 1 remains that famous photo, anyone heard that?

http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case385.htm

Freaky. He looks like a beekeeper.

wow that is such a hokey pic, no offense to anyone believes in that pic

Full Report / Article

Source: Daily Mail, London / England - December 13, 2002

"Photographer Comments On Cumberland Spaceman Picture"

by James Templeton
Daily Mail, London / England - Dec 13.02

As an amateur photographer on a day-trip with my family, I took the photograph on Burgh Marsh on May 23, 1964, using an SLR camera loaded with the new Kodacolor film which was processed by Kodak.

I took three pictures of my daughter Elizabeth in a similar pose - and was shocked when the middle picture came back from Kodak displaying what looks like a spaceman in the background.

I took the picture to the police in Carlisle who, after many doubts, examined it and stated there was nothing suspicious about it.

The local newspaper, the Cumberland News, picked up the story and within hours it was all over the world.

The picture is certainly not a fake, and I am as bemused as anyone else as to how this image appeared in the background.

Over the four decades the photo has been in the public domain, I have had many thousands of letters from all over the world with various ideas or possibilities - most of which make little sense to me.

It should also be noted that I have received no payment for taking this picture.

The only suggestion that struck a chord with me was a letter from Woomera in Australia which came a month after the picture was shown around the world.

The people there were keen to see a good colour copy of the photo, as they had stopped a countdown of the Blue Streak rocket within hours of my photo being taken.

Apparently, two similar looking 'spacemen' had been seen close to the rocket.

Only later did I find out that part of the Blue Streak rocket was made and tested within sight of Burgh Marsh.

Looks like a spaecman toy strapped to the back of the girls head

lol yeah it does. But the sincerity of the witness is quite impressive..
If you’ve ever seen an interview with him he definitely comes across as genuine but who knows..

LOL, looks like a hot air-balloon in the shape of a spaceman. Pitty we can't see the basket that's hanging below it (obscured by the girl's head). I've seen hot air-balloons in all sorts of shapes and sizes (footballs, houses, ...). What an appropriate place to send one up in - near a "space station of some sort".

EDIT: It was probably an 'open day' of sorts for visitors, and you get a show bag too.

Looks like an inflatable toy to me. See link.

yeah.. mind you it was 1964. I don't think those inflatable type toys were around back then?

If they were faking it ,why make it plain that as he took the pic he didnt see a thing?? Hardly lends creedence to a *fake* does it?

IMO, it may well have been a case of knowing say a hot air-balloon was there and even a case of lets take a photo of it in the background with daughter in foreground. Upon developing the photos it may have been a case of "this looks like a spaceman behind her (daughter), and it looks so real, hmmm" and the ideas start flowing (knowing perfectly well what it was). No wonder the other photos went missing - they showed what it really was, IMHO.

Notice the visible 'arm' on our right of the object is facing away from the girl but there appears to be a visor looking towards her?

Fake or real, it is creepy looking. Almost like the start of some horror movie...

This could be anything??? it's really aweful!

As far as today goes, with all of the photo editing tools avl. even if someone showed you a picture of a real alien people would have a hard time believing it...

Inflatables were more common then as toys then today.
Every little boy usually had a inflatable figure to punch that would pop back up.

Hot air ballon??? ok ok this is where i get the skeptics can be every bit as *out there* as the most rabid of believers pen out...

This was the early 1960s the guy took his daughter out to take her pic in her new dress she was so proud of... He didn't see anything strange at all whilst taking the pics and sent the film to Kodak to be processed. Ie, he conformed to everything a real skeptic could ask..Kodak have apparently said no -one has ever admitted to *faking* this pic at their lab and extensive tests have confirmed that the negative was not touched up or played around with...

In the early 1960s balloons were party sized things.. or, made from a ton of canvas..They didnt come in any other shapes but almost spherical or those ones they use to make sausage dog models from let alone *guy in weird looking asbestos/space suit*..


The guy also claims that shortly after the pic was published that he recieved a visit from two men from the ministry who insisted he take them to exaclty where the incident happened, near an early warning installation i believe. They questioned him on every aspect of the incident and repeatedly made sure he was showing them exactly where it happened.They then climbed into their car and drove off never to be seen or heard from again.


Now ok, those guys could have been practical jokers, it is a possibility but it does seem that the incident was taken quite seriously by the security forces as it took place in such a sensitive area..

The pictures before and after the one published were of the same subject, so that rules out some weird sort of bleed through explanation from a previous frame.

That leaves us with an image on a photograph that no-one can , as yet, satisfactorily explain where it came from... and therefore, in my books, a genuine phenomenon worthy of serious investigation... It doesn't really matter, that to us we look at it ,and think... Astronaut, as it stands, the image simply existing even it were a large pink elephant, remains a fascinating subject...

Ar,the cumberland space man.Sounds like cucumber land.Heres a negative shot of him/her/it.



Sorce-
1)http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/
2)http://home.wanadoo.nl/a.w.r.v.b/ufos/iarga/cumberlspacemslctdnegnoblue.jpg

That is really strange...the person is facing away from them.

But the visor is looking at them!

Reminded me of the girl in the exorcist but in some weird sort of space horror.

Who knows really....maybe its a 200ft tall space traveler in the background.

Ok...As i was looking at it there seems to be a sort of cross looking symbol on the persons back (or chest, i can't tell which is which) :]

Could just be the way the clothing is wrinkled or it has something to do with those ministers that visited him.

Looks completely fake to me...

Fake what??

A fake pictuire of the sunset over the Gobi desert? yes i'd agree with that?

This was 30 years before photoshop the image has been around since 1964 and it has never changed...

What was he trying to fake?? The loose strand of the girls hair shows you quite conclusiively that the figure was not added after... the technology to fake a pic that well back then simply did not exist outside of the security services like the KGB... And, to be honest, i doubt they could manage that level of detail...


So what is it an attempt to fake then?

One can extrapolate WHATEVER they want from this pic FireMoon. You can't say with certainty that there was no such either hot air-balloon or blow-up toy, can you? You can believe anyones words if it makes you more comfortable and in that case you may as well believe in unicorns.

There are a number of problems with the figure. As has been mentioned, the supposed 'visor' is in the wrong place for one. If you have a look at the arm the 'spaceman' is wearing a leotard (very skin fitting ) and the body is very very disproportionate. ie we have a new kind of humanoid/alien with a very very small head, large torso and strange arms.

I rest my case. You can believe whatever you like it's not my mind that is being clouded with rubbish It's an unidentified floating object to me, nothing more, nothing less.

One question I have for you FireMoon, why do you think 'he's' wearing a 'spacesuit' with no visible life support system?

Cheers

A beekeeper's mesh goes all the way around like that.

Maybe he's a beekeeper from Dimension X.

Monkey, the science people at Kodak say it's not a cross-contamination, uh, fookin', thing.

At what point did isay its an Astronaut??i said, given out cultural backgrounds and expectastions we see what looks like an astronaut..

What it isnt is a faked pic where something has been super imposed...

it's about time some people actually read what people posted rather than assumed...

I will reiterate, there is somekind of phenomenom here we do not , as yet understand, that makes the picture worthy of serious investigation. it's no use deciding to critique the shape and form of something when you have no real idea of what it actually is.

For the record, i didnt think spaceman when i first saw it , i thought some kind of asbestos fire fighting suit.

It's rather fuinny that people have decided that its a guy in a space suit and are determined to undermine the pic on that basis... thats not what investigation is about...inxestigating is about having an open mind and seeking the truth ,not seeking to back up your own predjudices , despite, whatever the actual facts are.

What one can say for sure, given the vintage of the picture is this...it is NOT somekind of ballooon or inflatable toy... and anyone who thinks it is is , in all probablity, a zillion miles off from the truth...

Exaactly.
Do you think that that old man would be soo dumb to expose this pic taken by him(if it was fake) just so everybody can make fun of him and call him a liar? I don't think so....but then again some people would do it just for the fame, so i don't know what to think about this one

What was the guy faking though??? A bad pic of a guy in what may be a space suit he claims he didnt even see at the time he took the photo??

That would make him one of the cleverest fakers ever IMHO... and having heard the guy talk..I really dont think that is him... He comes across as just a down to earth bloke who is mystified by something that happened to him and his family

We can probably agree on this one

Oh, I see. My bad. I'll rephrase the following (as it is the only thing I could find that would give rise to the above)...
If anyone believes it is a 'spaceman', why is he not wearing life support? Better?

I beg to differ. How many years are we going to spend investigating a photo that after 40+ years has not given any conclusive answers. There's less and less people (from that era) every day and memories of those that could shed some light are fading fast. And BTW, critiquing the shape and form is part of the investigation, don't you think? Disregard that and you will be investigating, well, nothing. And such critique is equally valid for a bee-keeper or an asbestos fire-fighting-suit clad man.

If this is directed at me, perhaps you should evaluate your own critique of ASSUMING

That's one mighty solid statement there, care to back that up?

Here I'll back mine up Scepter inflatable toys since 1949

This was just a rushed search, I bet there's tons more

Right so let me get this right.... A guy from a place that is the back end of no where asre Britain.. (You really think they stick early warning stations in the middle of populated areas?) at a time when many many ppl didnt even have an inside lavatory or a telephone bought an inflatable toy from where??

If there were 1000s of these inflatable toys available why didnt a world wide audience for the pic at the time go...hey thats a Humpenstrafer plastic inflatable toy??

Now care to explain how in 40 years no-one even now has said.......Oh i had one of those??of did the guy have it specially made?? and why??

Now explain to me how, when the girls hair clearly shows that there was at least a breeze the figure is totally static? If its an inflatable it would moving as it would be so light. it isnt, it is seemingly *frozen* still..

I know the area of the country this pic was taken in..it is virtually flat and rarely ever windless as it it is one of the most exposed parts of the country lying next to the the North Sea .


The problem i have is when you get loads of ppl pronounicing on a subject who dont seem to have the slightest clue of the social anthropological context of the picture but view it through 21st century eyes.

Its pretty saimple really isntit/?if it was a toy do you really think by now someone wouldnt have said...Ah ha.i had one of those and here's a picture of it and this is who made them??

Well there's a noticeable deafening silence on that score isn;t there?

And that's exactly what im getting at.... the inflatable toy as an explanation has absolutely no creedence in it whatsoever does it??

Look at the girls hair in close up and the wind is blowing in exactly the wrong direction that the shape is leaning in...

Like i said, investigation is about approaching things with an open mind not an attitude of ....well its looks fake so im going to prove it is no matter what the evidence says to the contrary...

First I'd like to credit Lilly with the inflatable toy idea, forgot to give credit where credit is due

From where is anyones guess. Perhaps it was made. You keep on mentioning this open-mindedness, then open it up to the myriad of possibilities

Perhaps there weren't 1000s available, perhaps it was bought on a trip somewhere, perhaps it was made as a project - people kept themselves amused with all sorts of projects - kites, model aeroplanes, balloons. And perhaps the commercial availability of helium (well before 1960) made things a little more interesting. We'll never really know, but open-mindedness tells me it's a possibility.

See above comment and also more than half the figure is obscured.

That's what photos usually do - freeze things still. I haven't seen a moving photo yet (discounting holograms of course). And under low velocity movement you will not get blur as is evident with the girl's hair

The social anthropological context is just half of the evidence and based on studies of human behaviour and psyche has less credence than the photo.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. As I've shown there's plenty of credence in it.

Ever studied convection currents? All the girl's hair suggests is that there is a gust of wind at that level - which then tends to support the bottom of the figure blowing rather than the top - in fact this indicates that the current at the height of the top of the figure is moving slower. Try to stay open-minded, assuming that the wind is blowing the same everywhere is just not true.

YOUR open-mindedness has been shot to bits. My open-mindedness stands intact - I never mentioned it wasn't anything but a hot air-balloon or an inflatable toy. I said "looks like" and "perhaps". You are the one who says...
...and look what happened to that

Cheers

That was interesting.

So, what are we looking at? Some kind of personal stealth technolgy? Nano whatever, in the fabric of a spaceman's suit?

And, can't they do photo analysis to determine the figure's apparent distance from the camera?

I see that Blue Streak missiles were going to be to nuclear weapons.

I don't know about the picture, but there have been some claims of ufo images that were "not seen at the time" (though, x% are credible). Optical light is either detected above a certain luminosity and rate; or within a frequency range; or, as in the case of gravity, not at all near a black hole.

I want to say the picture is way too convenient. Why has such an event not been reproduced, elsewhere?


There is probably no connection, but remember what the US presidential candidate LBJ ran as a one-time TV add, two months after this English picture emerged? Or, maybe that's a stretch.

http://codesign.scu.edu/coldwar/1964/page2.htm

Just out of curiosity, did anyone notice that the "spaceman" seems to be wearing eye glasses?

It's one of the most examined weird photos of all time, and the fact is that no one in 40 years has been able to say what it is. So we're unlikely to just pull "balloon" or "Bobo doll" out of our butts and instantly solve this 40-year-old mystery here on the internets. Just a thought.

The nearly simultaneous corroborative sighting at a related launch site on another continent might also give a person pause.

Sure, it looks corny or whatever. But let's face it. Nobody knows what it is.

That's exactly right boorite.

I never intended on solving it and IMO it will not be solved. Just like everyone else I came in here to say what it "looks" like. Some people take issue with that - oh well, there's no pleasing everyone.

Cheers

BBC AskAway-

"I am an artist brought up in Cumbria interested the famous photograph taken by Carlisle Fireman Jim Templeton in 1964 which included a mysterious apparition of the 'Solway Spaceman'.
Does anyone know more about this incident or have their ideas as to how the spaceman appeared on the photograph?
Julian Claxton - Bristol


The basic story is that a local Fireman Jim Templeton took his daughter Elizabeth to Burgh Marsh for a picnic, and while out on their trip he took some pictures of his daughter holding some flowers that she had picked out on the marsh.

He then took the film in to be developed and when he went to collect the prints the lady in the shop commented on how it was a shame that somebody had spoiled the lovely picture of Elizabeth, which at the time seemed starnge as there was no one else around at the time the pics were taken and when he got home and looked at the pic properly he realised the figure resembaled a space suit.

The picture was taken to the police and has been sent off to labs all over the world with a large reward offered to anyone who could prove it as a fake or give and explaination, but the reward is still unclaimed and the mystery is still unsolved.

But that wasnt the only time the space man has been seen, at the same time as the photo was taken, a few miles away at Spadeadam the Blue Streak rockets were being built for launch in Woomera in Australia, just as the take off countdown started two men wearing space suits were spotted by more than one person on the launch pad arround the rocket, the launch was aborted and the team went right to the pad to investigate, but there was nobody there, and no sign of anyone been there, and when the members of the team were presented with a photo of the cumberland spaceman, they confirmed that the figures they saw were identical!

What makes the whole thing that little bit stranger is that one night Mr Templeton apparently got a visit from 2 men requesting him to direct them to take him to the exact spot the picture was taken, which he did, they then asked him to confirm that there was deffinatly no one in the shot when the picture was taken, and when he did this the men got back into the car and drove off leaving Mr Templeton to walk home in the dark!!

I'm not sure how much the story has been altered over the years, if at all, but i did an A Level Art project on it last year so obviously asked a lot of people who were around at the time what they remember of it and everything i was told seemed to tie in with each other!
Katie - Carlisle"


So, what does the Templeton daughter have to say about the events of that day? Did her father use props that afternoon? A bicycle pump to inflate an 8 ft. toy?

Yes, a plastic inflatable toy , which, given the long hours of research that have gone into the picture in the last 40 years is about as useful a contribution as a chocolate ashtray on a motorbike...

I thought the tenor of my post was somewhat obvious. I bothered to quote "locals",
and then presented a rejoinder to the "prop" thesis. So much for that.

Seems a shame that we still have to chew over stories like this that are older than most of us.

What can I say, testimony, hearsay and 40 years of embellishment. It looks like an inflatbale toy. I've always viewed this one in the same light as I did with the infamous "surgeons" picture taken on Loch Ness, the only difference being he had the balls to admit his fakery, and his hoax, at first glance, was far more impressive.

I suspect this inflatable toy had been drink heavily judging by the way he's leaning.

Looking at the childs hair, it's fair to say there was a breeze that day, perhaps our inflatable toy is suffering the effects of being blown?

Never fooled me for a minute.. waves too big..

I did say at first glance.

C'mon... I understand what you are saying, but unless there is a way to prove it wasn't an inflatable toy, or a balloon, they remain a very plausible explanation. Far more plausible than a 'spaceman' that miraculously appeared behind a little girl while her father was taking a picture of her.

It could be a 'spaceman', it could be a balloon, it could be a toy, it could be a ______ etc. etc. etc.

Like it's been said before, this probably won't ever be solved. Unless of course it turns out to be a hoax.

I don't see the big deal behind this pic... I really don't.
Sure, it's interesting. It makes you think what the explanation could be, but it doesn't change my views on anything. I'm sure other people would say the same.

But it is unexplained, so... It draws attention.

Is the Solway Spaceman a case of life imitates art?

http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpag...hStoodStill.htm

If it's a toy that was ever mass-produced, it should have been identified 40 years ago.

So if it's a toy, what toy is it? Should be an extremely easy question to answer.

Levitating Beekeeper GI Joe with Kung Fu Grip, perhaps.

Its been 40 years and it still remains unexplained. I think I can sadly say that this mystery will never be solved.

LOL leadbelly, I thinks you're onto something there. Seems plausible since the movie was made in 1951 - plenty of time to make some (perhaps not so popular) inflatable toys of Gort. Of course the tin version and a better look spelt doom for the inflatable one

Just imagine the attached image from behind...
[attachmentid=27717]

On a similar note, one can easily draw parallels between the sharp rise in UFO/Alien phenomena and the (1938/1939) radio broadcast of "War of the worlds". Just a thought...

BTW, the MIBs in this instance may have been trying to find their floating galavanting Gort. j/k

Cheers

as soon as i saw that pic i thought it looked like som 50s robot. my suspiscions are confirmed.

Shun, with all due respect, I didn't think your post (from my pov) warranted much of a response. But since you think it should...
Referencing "locals" many years after the fact, to me, is pretty much meaningless. The "locals" weren't in Templeton's shoes and memory (as is evident from many studies) is a fickle thing Of course the "locals" are going to say yep that's what happened because the story DID happen - there's no doubt about that. Actually there is a little doubt because I have yet to see the original news story that was printed at that time - the report that's going around is a 2002 report. If you had a search around re:this story you'd find like me that there is a LOT of inconsistency in this story and some of it right from the horse's mouth so-to-speak. ie. it happened on the 4th May, 23rd May, 24th May just as an example. There's plenty more.

As with regards to his daughter, good question. Has she spoken out? But still, if she did, either way it will still leave doubt. People do protect people especially family members - giving false alibis springs to mind.

As with regards to your rejoinder about the "prop", how many times have you blown up a beach ball/blow-up mattress using a bicycle pump? (especially in the 60's-70's)

Cheers