When firefighter Jim Templeton snapped three photos of his 5-year-old daughter on a marsh in Cumberland, England in 1964, he had no idea he was about to capture one of the strangest images in UFO history. It wasn't until the photos came back from Kodak that he noticed something extraordinary — a figure in what appeared to be a space suit lurking in the background of one shot.
"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," Templeton wrote in a 2002 letter to the Daily Mail. He insisted no one else was present when he took the photo, except for "a couple of old women sitting in a car at the far end of the marsh." The peculiar image quickly made headlines worldwide, with Kodak analysts confirming the photograph hadn't been tampered with.
The story took an even stranger turn when news emerged from Australia. Just days after Templeton's photo was taken, technicians at the Woomera Test Range aborted the launch of a Blue Streak missile after spotting two mysterious figures in the firing range. When they later saw Templeton's "spaceman" photo in their local newspaper, they were reportedly stunned by the similarity to the figures they'd encountered.
Soon after the photo was made public, two men in dark suits, identifying themselves only as "Number 9 and Number 11," arrived at Templeton's workplace in a black Jaguar. They insisted he guide them to the marsh where the photo was taken. "The men bombarded him with questions — what was the weather like, where there any other witnesses, how were local animals behaving," The Unredacted recounts. When Templeton explained that no one had seen the figure at the time, the men's demeanor suddenly changed. They accused him of fabricating the story and abruptly departed, leaving him stranded on the marsh.
To this date, the figure in the photo remains a mystery. But in a 2014 BBC interview UFO researcher David Clarke, offered a boring explanation for the photo: the "spaceman" was likely Templeton's wife Annie, who was present that day wearing a pale blue dress that appeared white from overexposure. "I think for some reason his wife walked into the shot and he didn't see her because with that particular make of camera you could only see 70% of what was in the shot through the viewfinder," Clarke explained.
Templeton's daughter Elizabeth disagrees with Clarke: "I think it was somebody from another planet. It is pretty selfish of us to think that we are the only intelligent form of life," she told the Dumfries Courier in 1996.
"Over the four decades the photo has been in the public domain," Templeton told The Daily Mail in 2002. "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."
Previously:
• Canadian authorities hope that releasing low-quality photocopy of Yukon UFO photo will make people less interested in seeing the real thing
• Leaked US military photo of a UFO
• What happened to the Burgie Beer UFO of Melrose Avenue?
• Vintage UFO photos sold at auction, including the one from The X-Files 'I Want To Believe' poster
• Photo of dead extraterrestrial in gutter after UFO sighting
• UFO turns out to be balloon
• Canada defense department reveals details of UFO shot down by fighter jet over Lake Huron
• Scores of UFO reports flooding the US Pentagon