Now I don’t know how many people have heard this story. It has been debated, debunked, questioned, argued and dismissed. Why? you may ask, well let me fill you in.
Above and below is a photo of a young girl as taken by her father, Jim. The location is Burgh Marsh, near Burgh by Sands, overlooking the Solway Firth in Cumbria, England. The year, 1964.
You will obviously notice, behind the girl is a figure. This is where the debate starts. Some people say it’s a man in a space suit. Some people say it’s her mom with her back to the camera. Others suggest it is a fourth person who was not in the other photos.
This is one of the other photos.
So you have Jim, the father who took the photo. His daughter, and bottom right just out of shot, the mother. Or Jims wife if you prefer. So could it be a fourth person? Well according to Jim there was only the three of them. To make matters more interesting, not only have Jim and his wife said that it is not her, the figure wasn’t even there! Only when the photos were developed did the figure appear.
Couple of details for the younger folk. Back in 1964 you had a camera with a film inside. When you’ve used up all your film you would take it to somewhere, usually a chemist to have it developed and printed off into individual photos. Also there was no such thing as photoshop or the likes, so photo manipulation was next to impossible. the camera Jim was using was a Kodak SLR. Nice camera for the time and Jim was an amateur photographer. Which does beg one other question, why did he only take a few photos? If I was an amateur photographer with an SLR at that time, I would have emptied the film and definitely walked to the top of that hill to get a view over the landscape??
The big debate is if this is a spaceman or the mother? Here’s the problem with both of those theories. Firstly, if it is a man in a spacesuit watching the back of the girl, why does his left arm appear to be backwards? It does seem to be bending the wrong way. Also, he must have very long legs and where is his shadow? Look at the girls shadow and work out if he is close, so there should be a shadow. Or, he is just over the brow of the hill which will yes, eliminate the shadow from the photo. But at the same time make his legs very, very long!
If it is the mother, same problem regarding the leg length and shadow. Also, if she has her back to the camera, (which could explain the arm), where’s her hair? and how muscular is her back? Doesn’t really fit.
The story now takes a real twist. Jim had reported this to the police. The story found attention across the world and a short time later Jim was contacted by an Australian newspaper who asked for a copy of the negative of the photo. Not long after this, a technician who worked at the Woomera rocket launch site where they were testing the Blue Streak missiles contacted Jim personally. He had seen his photo of his daughter and told Jim that him and some colleagues had seen two identical figures on security cameras on the launch pad, resulting in the launch being aborted. All this happened only a couple of hours after Jim took his photo in England. Maybe coincidence, but the Blue Streak missiles were manufactured at an RAF site just 25 miles from Burgh Marsh.
Now Jim claims after this he was visited by two government officials who did not give their names or provide I.D. They took him back to the spot and asked him a series of questions before telling him that what he was doing was a hoax. Just a hoax and he had to admit it. When he didn’t go along with them, they left him there and he had to walk back home.
About a year later Jim went back to the same spot and took more photos. Every time he attempted to collect the photos from the same chemist there was a note attached to his film saying they could not be processed?? Jim eventually used a neighbours name to collect his photos.
I have many problems with this case. If Jim was an amateur photographer, why didn’t he take more photos and if he did, why was it only the middle of three photos that he took of his daughter that shows the spaceman? If he had so much trouble with the chemist, why didn’t he just develop his own photos? He was after all an “amateur photographer.” I’m also astonished how any one in Australia would have got wind of this story in 1964. There was no media frenzy surrounding it and it’s not like social media existed then. It was a local story disregarded by the police as anything suspicious.
I called in some expert help to figure this one out. I called upon by teenage son. At first glance of the photo he said it is an old man in the background. I asked why and he said “Well, you can see his grey hair”! i pointed out that it may be a man in a spacesuit and he said “mmmm…….nahhh”.
I then gave him my theory. It is a toy figure being held up by someone lying a bit away from the girl. If they are lying down just over the brow there would be no shadow and it would explain the angle of the figure. But I still couldn’t explain why the head looks backwards. He replied, “I used to turn my toy figure heads backwards all the time”. Ok, but why? What was the point of all this. It’s not like Jim got any financial reward for any of it. I didn’t understand, and my teenage son said “Attention”!! Simply attention. “People do things for attention maybe hoping for some cash payout at some point. But initially, just the attention.”
He could just be right, and the Conspiracy, is Jim!!
The Conspiracy Kitchen 
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