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The Mystery of the Solway Firth Spaceman

July 3, 2021 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger, Starting a Novel Series with a Partner by E. J. Williams tagged as 1960s, Men in Black, mystery, Photos, space, Spacemen

“We went on a normal outing and picked our spot,” Jim Templeton recalled of his May 23, 1964 outing. They sat down to take a picture of his 5-year-old daughter. He never expected anything out of the ordinary.

When they developed the pictures they found a figure of someone…or something.

Templeton contacted the Kodak Company. They found nothing out of the ordinary and offered a reward to anyone who could prove the photo was faked. Interestingly enough, the reward was never claimed.

The photograph eventually came to the attention of the local paper, the Cumberland News. A media frenzy followed. It was picked up by the Daily Mail and Express. Mr. Templeton began receiving letters from all over the world.

He then received a visit from two “Men in Black” who wanted to be taken to the location where the image was taken. They referred to each other only as Number 9 and Number 11.

Just days after Templeton had taken his photograph, the planned launch of a Blue Streak missile in Woomera, South Australia on the other side of the world was aborted by technicians who reported seeing two men in the firing range. Upon later seeing the Solway Spaceman picture on the front page of an Australian newspaper, they were stunned as the figure looked the same as the figures they saw close to the missile.

Templeton’s picture spiked public interest due to the space race between the United States and Soviet Union, and because the image behind his daughter looked like a NASA Astronaut.

More than four decades later, an explanation was finally found. Another photo taken that same day showed Elizabeth and her mother Annie. Annie was wearing a sleeveless dress of a very light blue color. They deducted that the “spaceman” was just Annie, with her hair tied giving the impression of an astronaut visor, walking away from her daughter. Templeton, however, remembers his wife was standing behind him when the photo was taken.

The eerie photograph can still send a chill

Janet Elizabeth Lynn
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into this moment
I fall

weightless in a space
no ground
no walls

oblivious
to past or future

it is
only here
I remain

undefined, imperishable

though my skin
may decay
and my bones
warp