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

jsettica
So the wife did not tell him O by the way that is me in the picture ?

For him to go through all of this would mean that his wife was not in the picture?

And how could he not remember not seeing her up on the hill after he took the picture?

Still to many questions as to what was going on.

Yes she probably did tell him-eventually.Jim was known to be a bit of a practical joker and saw the opportunity to have a bit of a giggle with a few people once the chemist had mis-identified Jim's wife in the photo as someone wearing a space suit.Maybe they didn't get to talk about it straight away,but by the time the photo had gone viral (or the 1960s equivalent of going viral) it was too late to admit it was a joke/hoax.
As already explained by me some pages back and in just about every other investigation into this photo,the field of view of old SLR cameras was very limited and as he was concentrating on taking the photo of his daughter,he just didn't see his wife in the background.
The only unanswered question for me is the extra shadow in the second photo,all the others are now well and truly answered.

Some say, that he mysteriously appears in developed photos. All we know is, he's called The Stig.

Imagewerx

MysterX

Xaphan
So it's just his wife? I guess Annie was a very masculine looking woman. I mean look at that heavy set torso and broad shoulders. Was she a pre-op tranny maybe?

My thinking exactly.

The arms are very masculine looking to be his wife's.

Plus, even accounting for the slight slope, the figure is much too tall. If you look nvery carefully, you can just see what would be the 'spaceman's' right foot, just below the girls hair.

The figure, whoever or whatever it was, has very long legs and appears to be facing away from the camera.

Muscular, tall and wearing what looks like a white NBC suit.

I'd say your theory isn't correct OP.

ETA: The body looks to be facing away from the camera, but on closer inspection it may be that whatever or whoever it was, had turned it's head to face the camera.

The face looks kind of...symian. Like a kind of monkey or something.

Could Britain have been conducting chimera type experiments during the 60's? Ape / Human gene splicing?

I say this because that's what the face (if that's what it is) kind of looks like, well like a monkey but also because of the strange question put to Jim from the MIB...'did you see any strange animals?'

A human / monkey hybrid would count as a strange animal!

edit on 27-10-2013 by MysterX because: added info

The "solved" part of the mystery is correct in MY mind,of this I have no doubt.The only part I haven't yet solved is why so many people still don't get the concept of Occams razor,the simplest explanation is almost always the correct one.
I refer you to my post not too far up this page where I explain the perspective that means that this photo was taken from VERY low down (something that the majority of grownups don't normally see).Again I show a photo even more recently that shows it's a bit more than a "slight" slope,it's not far off 45 degrees or 1 in 1,this angle can easily account for the apparent height of the figure in the photo.
I spent some long hours before I first posted this thread looking at both the photos in Photoshop and trying to see things in them that other people are seeing and also to try to pull detail out that no one else has seen yet.I tried every conceivable filter and combination of levels,curves,inversion and everything that can possibly be done to an image,and I still only get an image of the wife walking away from the camera.The so called "foot" you think you can see is just another of the flowers that the girl has been picking.

edit on 27-10-2013 by Imagewerx because: (no reason given)

First off Imagewerx, i respect your right to see anything you want to see in the image, and be as sure as you can be under the circumstances, i'm just unconvinced by the 'wife' theory, that's all. Not saying you cannot be right about that, just that i don't think you are.

I was a bit of an artist back in my day, so i know all about perspective - and the tricks it can play on the mind in some instances. I'd mentally compensated for the small hill, but even so, the figure appears to have very long legs in relation to it's body.

I don't agree the 'foot' is one of the flowers seen elsewhere in the image. It's much larger than the other flowers and seems to be a solid object, which for me looks very much where a foot would be.

But who knows eh?

It was a valliant effort to clear up a long standing mystery, and perhaps you have done, and i just cannot see the image with your eyes.

For my mind, if Jim's account of the MiB is true, the questions they asked and way the acted leads me to believe there is much more to this case, and therefore it's still a mystery.

Good effort though mate.

reply to post by MysterX

The only problem I have with whole story is the MIB bit.I'm the same age as the girl in the photo give or take a few months,so wasn't in any position back then to know if the concept of government agents acting in this way is real or not in 1964.
I believe that Jim made up the story about the men in the Jag just to add credence to the spaceman story,and maybe even got a taxi to take him out to the marshes that day just so he could be truthful about having to walk the 5 miles back to town.

OP: Excellent effort to explain the photo. Visually I am pretty convinced that it's the overexposed back of a woman. The false-color photo convinced me that this makes sense. When the dress is colored blue and the hair brown, then it really does look like a stocky woman with her back to the camera, and kind of hunched over w/ bad posture. Sure it's unflattering but it makes sense lol.





As for the foot of the figure, I'm not convinced that it is a foot, and if it is, I'm not convinced it shows some super-height.

I'm a bit of an artist too, and one thing I know is that real-life photos can always look odd in ways that are unpredictable (compared to drawings / paintings). Photos always have a million small details, shadows, shadowing, etc. that most drawings will never have at all. It's one reason that a lot of computer-graphics art will look "too smooth & perfect" bc it lacks all the small details & shadows of a photo.

^So given that, yes it's easy for a photo to have a weird perspective. It seems to make sense that the guy was laying down, or crouching down at least, which makes the figure look tall. Plus there is the hill incline / decline to make things look distorted & weird.

And given all that, I don't think most folks can glance at the photo & mentally analyze the slant, the camera position, the slope up / down of the hill, the shadows, etc. These things can easily look weird for photos, but for normal reasons. And it's almost impossible to judge these things just by eyeballing it.

reply to post by peacefulpete

Thank you for your input on this Pete.Jim was said to be quite an experienced photographer,so should know that portrait photos are normally taken from as close to the level of the subjects eyes as possible.Although this one is taken from slightly below the level of the girls eyes,this may have been the only position he could steady himself to take the photo given the rough nature of the ground where they were.

Imagewerx
reply to post by peacefulpete

 

Thank you for your input on this Pete.Jim was said to be quite an experienced photographer,so should know that portrait photos are normally taken from as close to the level of the subjects eyes as possible.Although this one is taken from slightly below the level of the girls eyes,this may have been the only position he could steady himself to take the photo given the rough nature of the ground where they were.

Yeah the low height of the camera seems to explain the odd perspective & height of the figure, plus the incline / decline to possibly make things look even more weird.

To be clear, I'm not some masterful artist or something lol. But I do like to make artwork.

My basic point I was trying to say before, was that photos have a million details that a painter / drawer might never think of, ever.

And so photos can easily look weird in totally unpredictable ways, and it can be almost impossible to judge at a glance such obscure details as shadows, shadowing, light sources, height of camera, etc.

So it's easy for a photo to look weird, without a weird reason lol. And those unpredictable details can be impossible to see & analyze.

For example, the shadows (on the grass) may look weird, but without anything weird going on. And I wouldn't really trust anyone's eyeballs, to be able to accurately judge such shadows on the grass lol. My same thoughts for those trying to estimate the position of the sun in the photos lol. I can't trust anyone's eyes for such things.

BOLLOCKS.

the chemist is a pro troll, THE PROTO troll.

crafty bastard lol

reply to post by peacefulpete

You are of course correct about the small details.I see quite a few Photoshopped images done by so called "experts" that are spot on in ALMOST every detail,but there's always something nagging away at you that you can't quite put your finger on at first glance.Normally it's shadows in the wrong places meaning two or more light sources when there should be just the one.
I can normally spot these anomalies at first glance,but the photo of the alleged spaceman doesn't ring any alarm bells for me,everything is exactly where and how it should be for what I believe to be the most rational explanation for this image.

reply to post by Imagewerx


I agree that the stocky woman's back, seems a perfect explanation, given how convincing the false-color image is (with dress colored blue & hair colored brown).

I don't mean to be the only one who keeps posting in this thread lol. But this case has drawn my curiosity for YEARS & I never felt it was solved, till that false-color pic in this thread. I'm surprised more folks haven't posted. I thought this was such a famous, classic case.

I was always leaning toward the woman's back explanation because the ELBOW seems to be the BACK of someone's arm, although it ALMOST looks like the front. The leaning of the figure makes more sense as a hunched-over woman leaning away from the camera. The lean makes sense for THAT, but if it was a spaceman standing there & facing forward, then he had a weird lean to one side.

I still can't decide if there is any DELIBERATE deception in this case. Did the photographer really think it was a spaceman? Did MIB's really visit him? So many details could be embellished in his story, or not...

lol, I will give you a massive amount of kudos for a good theory, but unless the woman was around 6"7' and had a chest and biceps like Mr Universe. and also the proportions are all wrong.

reply to post by peacefulpete

Yes that's the one that finally did it for me as well.It's been properly done that even though the colour isn't there in the original image,it's been sort of extrapolated using what colour is available to what it would look like had the image not been over exposed.
As to where fact stops and fiction takes over in Jim's story,I don't think we'll ever know unless the missing photo of the three ever turns up in the public domain.I think it's "lost" on purpose (if it ever existed in the first place),and would be the smoking gun we've been looking for all these years.

reply to post by PLAYERONE01

PLEASE PLEASE read back through the last couple of pages where I have explained repeatedly why the person in the photo isn't as tall as people think she is.

reply to post by PLAYERONE01


Nah man lol. She looks huge because the camera is low to the ground, plus there were crazy inclines and declines on the ground. She was probably standing on ground that was a couple feet taller than the rest.

The huge chest is actually her fat, hunched over back lol!

Oh and I just noticed we need to wish this thread a happy birthday as it's exactly one year old today!

Happy birthday Solway Firth spaceman-solved thread!

a bi-pedal being with time phase technology using implants to spy?

reply to post by truthermantwo


Yes, spying on what fillings they had in their picnic sarnies no doubt. Happens all the time - once the MIB snuck into my house to see if i was packing Vimto or Ribena, the fiends.

OP you nailed it..as soon as I read your answer and looked back at the photo.. It stuck out like a turd in a punch bowl.. As far as the MIB and the rest.. Easy... He embellished, exaggerated, took liberties with the truth, in a nut shell, he lied!

HooHaa
OP you nailed it..as soon as I read your answer and looked back at the photo.. It stuck out like a turd in a punch bowl.. As far as the MIB and the rest.. Easy... He embellished, exaggerated, took liberties with the truth, in a nut shell, he lied!

It had me fooled for enough years as well,until it was pointed out to me.

reply to post by Imagewerx


Imagewerx,
I sent you a pm a week or so ago. Not sure if you got it.