On May 24, 1964, British firefighter and amateur photographer Jim Templeton went on a weekend tour with his wife Anne and five-year-old daughter Elizabeth. They decided to take a ride through the moorland off Solway Firth, on the west coast. During the trip, he took several photographs, and in one of three pictures of his five-year-old daughter, a figure appeared that looked like an "alien."
Immediately a hypothesis arose, which eventually turned into an "urban legend". According to it, the "Solway alien" in invisible camouflage wanted to kidnap Elizabeth, but was frightened by Templeton's camera, mistaking it for an unknown weapon.
The "Cumberland astronaut" (Other names: Solway-Firth astronaut, Solway spaceman) rushed away to his "flying saucer", and at that moment he was photographed by the fireman. Ufologists also explain a brief moment of visibility of the alien: it was very sunny - Templeton, opening the diaphragm, set a very slow shutter speed, and the alien's camouflage used "blinking mimicry", hardly noticeable to the human eye.
Skeptics immediately criticized the version with the landing of an invisible alien ship and offered a much more plausible version of events.
“I brought the photo to the Carlisle police, who, after many doubts, examined it and said there was nothing suspicious about it. The local newspaper "Cumberland News" picked up the story and within a few hours the whole world learned about it. The photo, of course, is not a fake, and I am surprised like no other how this figure appeared in the background.
Over the four decades that photography has been in the public domain, I have received many thousands of letters from all over the world with different ideas and perspectives - most of which don't make much sense to me."
Other pictures of Templeton that day are clues. They are filmed brunette Anne in a blue sundress. If you imagine that the girl's mother is standing behind her and is out of focus, then the photo gets a very simple explanation.
The "alien helmet" can also be explained. According to Templeton himself, Annie was wearing a beautiful Panama hat. Thus, if you remove the excessive contrast of the photo, you will see dark hair, pink back and sundress sleeves that cover the shoulders of the "Cumberland Alien".
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Templeton himself believed in his "alien" until the end of his life. He also claimed that shortly after the photograph was published in the Daily Mail, he was visited by "Men in Black." Instead of badges and badges, they menacingly declared that they were "working for the government" and named some unimaginable personal numbers of numbers and letters that Templeton did not remember. Secret agents took the fireman to the place of photographing, measured something with strange devices for a long time, and then, without saying goodbye, left.
Later Templeton also claimed that figures resembling the Cumberland Astronaut were also seen at the Australian Woomera rocket launch site. Because of this, they even had to interrupt the launch of the satellite launch vehicle, and the figures themselves disappeared without a trace …