Who Was The Solway Spaceman? | Unveiled

Who Was the Solway Spaceman?

During a day out with his family, the firefighter and amateur photographer Jim Templeton took a series of seemingly everyday photos. Weeks later, though, when the photographs were developed, an unknown and mysterious figure appeared in the background of one of them.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; who was the Solway Spaceman?

The photo at the heart of this mystery was taken at Burgh Marsh in the UK, on May 23rd, 1964. A shot of Jim Templeton’s daughter, it might’ve been a totally ordinary image… except it wasn’t. When it was published in the local press, the astronaut-like figure which appears in the background was swiftly nicknamed the “Solway Spaceman”, after the nearby Solway Firth. And, when it was then reprinted in newspapers all over the world, global interest in the apparently unexplained spaceman quickly grew. Was it a hoax? A trick of the light? Or something else?

Templeton had initially taken the photo to the police, insisting that he had seen nobody else on the marsh that day - and certainly not a rogue astronaut. The police couldn’t help him, but something of a hysteria did erupt in the early days. Templeton was even reportedly visited by pranksters posing as the “men in black” later in the year, asking for details of the encounter. But while those “government agents” were fake, the photograph was deemed not to be. The camera firm Kodak investigated the image and found that it was genuine; that it hadn’t been tampered with.

Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of theories put forward, with one notable idea being that the Solway Spaceman was in some way related to a botched rocket launch around the same time, at a base in Australia. Exactly how Templeton’s image might’ve been linked to that was never really figured out, but there were reports of identical figures on the Australian test range around the time of the cancelled launch. With the Space Race and the Cold War raging on in the background, a photo of a mysterious-looking maybe-astronaut was perhaps always going to attract publicity!

Today, the photo is still debated, but one of the most prominent ideas is that the mysterious figure is actually Templeton’s wife, Annie. This was the verdict reached via a 2014 analysis by Doctor David Clarke, for example, an expert in the paranormal and folklore who says that the figure’s strange pose suggests that they are facing away from the camera - which Annie may well have been. For Clarke and other advocates of this theory, the seemingly distinct “visor” is most likely Annie’s hair, and she appears so white because of overexposure - something which it’s said can also be seen in other pictures of her from the same day. Finally, Clarke also notes that Templeton’s camera had a viewfinder which showed only seventy percent of what was in the final image - explaining why he could easily have missed that Annie was in the shot when taking it. It might seem quite a conclusive and convincing argument, but that hasn’t stopped various ufologists over the years from insisting that the Solway Spaceman photo actually shows an alien visitor.

The idea is by no means without precedent. Many of the most famous UFO sightings and encounters in the world have apparent “photo evidence”; usually grainy pictures of flying saucers or possible aliens. This was especially true in the 1960s, but even today mysterious photos showing unexplained phenomena often go viral. From the 1950 McMinnville UFO images, which seemingly display the classic flying saucer shape… to the uncorroborated sighting of a “floating city” in China in 2015… it’s not unusual for people to cry “extraterrestrial” whenever an inexplicable photo turns up.

In almost every case, though, the pictures fall into one of three camps; they’re either intentional hoaxes, accidental effects created by unknowing photographers, or genuine images but of something else entirely. The famous Phoenix Lights sightings in 1997 in Arizona, for example, initially seemed credible because the phenomenon was witnessed multiple times by multiple people. But that was before what people saw was officially attributed to Maryland National Guard jets on a secret test flight to drop military flares. Nevertheless, UFO sightings from the Solway Spaceman to the “Dudley Dorito” - a triangular UFO spotted multiple times since 2007 in the UK - continually capture public interest.

To this end, there has to some degree been unexplained phenomena for as long as we’ve had photography, it’s just that strange sightings haven’t always been blamed on extraterrestrials. In fact, for Doctor David Clarke, had Templeton “taken his photo in 1864 instead of 1964… they (the press and the public) would have said it showed a ghost” rather than a spaceman or alien. In this way, the Solway Spaceman might be described as simply a product of its time; an irregular image, but one taken at the height of the UFO age.

Indeed, back in the 1860s, photography had only just become widely available and was increasingly popular – but its rise also gave way to plenty of skilful hoaxers. William Mumler was one of the first and most successful “spirit photographers” of the time, famously forging a picture of the “ghost” of Abraham Lincoln, and gaining popularity in the wake of the American Civil War, when grieving families would pay top dollar for a photograph purportedly showing their dearly departed. Mumler created his images through double exposure, using an existing image of the deceased, but was eventually proven to be a fraud when some of the lookalike “ghosts” he captured on film were spotted out and about – because they weren’t actually dead at all. To modern eyes, Mumler’s deception might seem crude, but he was readily believed at the time, and though he was eventually taken to court, the business of “spirit photography” continued indefinitely… with other notable fraudsters including one William Hope, a British photographer who produced a vast number of ghost photos after the First World War.

Over the years since, the methods for creating hoax photographs of all varieties have changed… but it’s almost impossible to find an alleged spirit photo that a photography expert can’t debunk. And yet, the Solway Spaceman still creates at least a small sense of the unknown. Even it has been touted as an image of a ghost before now (a theory based on the fact that Templeton insists no one was there), but the alien theory is the one which most refuses to die down - despite mounting evidence that all the photo really shows is an overexposed image of the photographer’s wife!

Crucially, the picture - whatever you believe it shows - is thought to be genuine; unlike Mumler, Hope and the others, Jim Templeton wasn’t trying to con anyone. He simply took some photos, got them developed, and found something weird. Still, even if it was only created thanks to a photographic misfire, and even if it doesn’t depict anything out of the ordinary, it’s captured the imagination for more than half a century. The picture almost certainly is of Jim Templeton’s wife, but no one can deny that the Solway Spaceman is a strange, strange likeness!