The Burgh Marsh photograph
On May 23, 1964, a firefighter and amateur photographer named Jim Templeton took his family to a local beauty spot on Burgh Marsh, overlooking the Solway Firth in Cumbria. He took three photographs of his five-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, with his Pentax SLR camera. Templeton noticed nothing unusual at the time; he recalled the only other people present were two elderly women in a car some distance away. When he had the film developed by a local chemist, he was shocked. The second of the three photos showed a tall, white figure standing in the background, directly behind his daughter's head, appearing to wear something like a helmet and a bulky white suit.
Templeton was adamant that no one else was there when he took the picture. He took the photograph to the police in Carlisle, who found nothing suspicious about it. He then sent it to the film manufacturer, Kodak, for analysis. Kodak's technicians examined the negative and concluded that it was genuine and had not been faked or manipulated in any way. They were so confident that they offered free film for life to anyone who could prove the image was a hoax; the reward was never claimed. The story was picked up by the Cumberland News and soon appeared in newspapers around the world.
Explanations and strange connections
The most accepted explanation today is that the "spaceman" is simply Jim Templeton's wife, Annie, who was present on the outing. According to this theory, she walked into the background of the shot without her husband noticing. Her pale blue dress would have been severely overexposed by the bright sunlight, causing it to appear as a brilliant, washed-out white. Her dark, bobbed hair could account for the darker area on the figure's "helmet." The viewfinder on Templeton's camera might have only shown about 70% of the actual frame, making it possible for him to miss his wife standing in the upper portion of the shot.
Despite this plausible explanation, other theories emerged. The photograph became linked to the British Blue Streak missile program. A test launch of a Blue Streak rocket at the Woomera Test Range in South Australia was reportedly aborted around the same time the photo was taken. According to ufologists, the launch was stopped because two large, white figures were seen on the firing range. Templeton himself claimed to have been visited by two strange men in dark suits who referred to each other only by numbers ("Number 9" and "Number 11") and who questioned him about the photograph before leaving him stranded on the marsh. Jim Templeton maintained until his death in 2011 that the figure in the photo remains a mystery.