The Solway Firth Spaceman

On May 23 1964 Jim Templeton, a fireman and amateur photographer from Carlisle, Cumbria, took his wife and 5 year old daughter out onto Burgh Marsh, a virgin natural wetland near the Solway Firth to take some photographs. They parked their car and walked out over a field with a lovely view. "All the animals on that particular day were away on the other end of the marsh, all huddled together, as though they'd been frightened." Jim said. "The weather was warm and sunny, and everything seemed normal". At a good spot they decided to take a photograph of his daughter in her new dress sitting with a bunch of hand-picked flowers. The snap taken, they moved off and took many more pictures of the walk. A few days later Jim got his photographs back from the chemist. The man behind the counter said that it was a pity that the strange man in a costume had walked past had spoilt the best shot of Elizabeth holding a bunch of flowers. Jim was puzzled. There had been nobody else on the marshes nearby at the time. But sure enough, on the picture in question there was something odd: overlooking her left shoulder, at a canted angle, was what appeared to be a man in a bizarre all-in-one white suit with a tinted visor. I've heard of this case before but never seen this picture in colour. I read about the case in Janet and Colin Bord's Modern Mysteries of Britain, but the picture they reproduced was black and white. I used to assume it was taken with a black and white camera, but not now. It looks far more impressive in colour and harder to write off as a fault on the film or a crushed insect in the photolab. Notice how the entity is definitely behind little Elizabeth's head and doesn't overlap it.

I'm not surprised to find out that Jim Templeton was harassed by Men-in-Black in the weeks following the incident. This was many years before the concept of Men-in-Black became well-known in popular culture. I've recently spoken to other people who've been visited by these frightening people, (if indeed they are people in the sense we understand it). The person dressed in a white suit like the one in this case are common too and I know several people who've encountered them. If you can't see their face then it's not really safe to assume that whatever is inside the costume is an ordinary human. Look at the picture again and see the unnatural position of the being's arm. It looks as a normal arm would look seen from behind, yet the head looks likes it would shot from the front.

The dome-shaped building just visible on the horizon is Sellafield nuclear power station. UFO's and aliens seem to be strangly attracted to nuclear installations for some reason. Cumbria was also the place where Blue Streak rockets were developed and scientists testing them in Australia around the same time saw a very similar entity in the vicinity too.

(NB: I posted this article on HPANWO last year and it has mysteriously disappeared. Keep your eye on this one and see if it does the same.)

Here's another post about this incident: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/01/solway-firth-spaceman-2.html

Addendum: I was interested to reread this old case with the hindsight of The Solway Firth one: http://www.ufocasebook.com/Zamora.html . Just a few weeks earlier a New Mexican policeman called Lonnie Zamora had a close encounter with a pair of beings that he describes in a way that makes them seem very similar to the Solway Firth Spaceman; on this occasion they had a craft with them!