A bizarre photograph from my youth -- has anyone else ever heard of something similar?

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: DavidDuchovny
Your drawing doesn't look much like a covered wagon, in any case, but it does remind me of one of these:

I was going to say the same thing.

Sky critter. Like jellyfish that usually live up in the clouds and are made of a kind of light, gelatinous body -- almost like an air gel -- and sometimes a kind of bladder (presumably helium filled?) that allows them to float around. When then get knocked to the ground by weather or whatever, they dissolve into a puddle of goo that evaporates.

There have been a surprising number of these reports over the years. They don't account for all UFO sightings, obviously, but they might account for some.

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit
a reply to: DavidDuchovny

Thanks for the interesting story.

Reminds me of the UK's Nick Pope story of having the best UFO photo he'd ever seen (from the 1990 'Calvine' case in the Scottish Highlands, and not seen by the public aside from a newspaper editor who liaised with the MoD) displayed over his 'UFO desk' at the Ministry Of Defence... only for it to disappear years later and never to be seen again - aside from a very, VERY bad photocopy on FOIA files.

An artist's impression of the original:

And the crappy photocopy:

Frustrating, eh?

By the way, did your father specifically show you this photo, or did you have to point it out whilst perusing an entire set of pics? I assume the former.

And did he or his friend ever show it to anybody else? I'm assuming he didn't approach the USAF.

My father showed it to me specifically as an oddity. He'd told other people throughout the years, but only close friends and family from what I understood -- he knew he had captured something very out of the ordinary on film, but not to the point that he thought it was anything worth delving into on any official basis. The other man died in a crash 3-4 years later according to him, so what he may or may not have done with that photograph, if he even had his own copy of it, is entirely unknown.

My family was and always has been terribly messy. I'm very doubtful the "mysterious circumstances" that he lost it under were anything more than my dad being my dad. He was an intelligent man, but by God was he disorganized.

a reply to: DavidDuchovny

What kind of "wagon"? Like a covered wagon used on the Oregon Trail?

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: DavidDuchovny
The aura could be consistent with some type of blemish, for example a bubble could cause distortions around where the edges of the bubble were.

Anyway this "UFO" was photographed by the Costa Rica government which likely rules out a hoax.
It reminds me of your story, in that it was photographed from an airplane and nobody in the airplane saw it. Also there were photos taken 20 seconds before and 20 seconds after this and nothing unusual appeared in either one of those photos so someone estimated the object would have to have been traveling at supersonic speeds to only appear in this photo and not the others. Therefore a real physical object should have made a sonic boom, but it didn't, so it's unlikely to be a real physical object, but nobody has figured out what it is to this day, that I know of.

Location: Lago de Cote, Costa Rica
Date: September 4th, 1971

UFO photos: Lago de Cote

It's an interesting and credible explanation for a lot of UFO pictures, older ones especially, but it's much easier for one of these blemishes to warp our perception of it with the help of paradolia when it's a black and white photograph. My father's picture was fully in color, and there were obvious and clearly denoted details on the surface of the object that don't line up with the usual form that blemishes take. The dark green color is something else that makes me believe it was a real object in the sky that day -- I have no idea what could have caused it to have that particular shade of green if it was nothing more than an error in the developing process

a reply to: 3n19m470

Yes, exactly that. Like a covered cloth roof with concave indents in the front and back of it -- at least, what I've always assumed were its front and back. Looking at it made me feel like it was something beyond the comprehension of current technology, something that worked entirely differently to how aircraft today would operate.

Shouldn't the title be 'Bizarre photograph from my youth, which I don't have anymore...'

Would have saved us all a click and a scroll.

a reply to: DavidDuchovny

Have you seen this thread on ATS? www.abovetopsecret.com...

Here is a zoomed in version of the photo from that thread. If you were to rotate above the craft in this image it would take on a bit of a fuzzy domed effect. Just thought it may be helpful.