The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Mysterious UFO Photo That Was Hidden For 30 Years (The Calvine Incident)

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

See the video here - https://youtu.be/tS56_PCbo4k The Calvine UFO photo has finally been released. Often spoken about for years as one of the clearest photographs of a UFO ever, the photo has long been thought lost. That is until now. The Original Calvine UFO picture is available for all to see and attempt to debunk. In this episode of The Tape Library, we're going to be delving into the world of UAP's, cover ups and get a behind the scenes look at the UK governments response to this image. https://youtu.be/IgekUVzMSCc - EXCLUSIVE: ORIGINAL CALVINE 1990 'UFO' PHOTO FOUND! REVEAL & INVESTIGATION VIDEO. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a... https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2021/0... https://www.newsweek.com/best-ufo-pic... https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/... You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers - https://therealtapelibrary.podbean.com/ Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True tales of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

August 4th, 1990, 9pm. The sun would have been setting on this summer night in the Scottish Highlands, but still, its warm rays lit the sky. Regardless of the time of year, it seems an odd time of day to be out on a hike across the secluded moors. But from all the evidence we can gather, two men pulled up in a car just outside of the Scottish village of Calvin. It appears the two men in question were English holiday workers, washing dishes in a nearby hotel for extra cash. What they were out there doing that night appears to be another part of the mystery of this incident. But regardless, the two men parked their car and began walking through the wooded area. They soon approached a low barbed wire fence, nothing too imposing, but placed to clearly mark out someone's land.

The pair hopped over the fence and continued on their walk. into the endless moors. They hadn't gotten far, when one of them noticed something in the corner of their eye. He glanced up. It wasn't long before his companion joined him. Momentarily frozen to the spot.

They stared at it. Before the fear, set in. The pair turned and ran. What they were running from, I doubt they could tell you at that point. But they were clearly filled with the overwhelming sense that they were not safe. They leapt back over the fencing and hid behind some bushes in the woods, waiting a few seconds before carefully peering out from behind them. The object was still there,

high above the field in front of them. What was most eerie about this scene was the silence all around them. What they were witnessing, they likely knew no one would ever believe. But luckily, on that summer's evening, they had brought a camera. The two men took six photos at night. And after 32 years, just last week, one has finally been released to the public. This image is potentially the clearest photographic evidence that has ever been seen of a UFO. But it has been dismissed and hidden from view for over three decades. Is this an extremely well-done hoax?

A foreign government testing secret projects? Or could it be evidence that we are not alone? Dim the lights and get comfortable. It's time to talk about the Calvian UFO incident and how, after all this time, we can finally see what so many had decided we shouldn't. Craig Lindsay, public relations officer to the RAF in Scotland, received a call one morning in the late summer of 1990

from the Daily Record, a newspaper in Scotland. With an unusual request, they claimed that two hikers had taken a picture of something in the air just outside of Calveen and asked if the RAF would like to comment on it. Lindsay was obviously perplexed. The reporter on the phone hadn't given him much information to work off,

and so he said he couldn't comment without knowing what it was that had been seen. He asked the reporter if he had sent him the photograph. The reporter informed Lindsay. that they in fact had been given six negatives of the incident. Obviously, not taking the whole thing too seriously, Lindsay asked they just send over the best photo they had, and he would get back to them. The next day, a hard-backed envelope was sent to Lindsay's office.

He tore it open and had his first glance at this now infamous photograph. After a few minutes of evaluating it, he clearly decided that this needed to be taken a little more seriously and quickly got on the phone to the Ministry of Philipsy. speaking to his colleagues in London, they at first seemed equally dismissive. Oh yeah, another one, they joked on the phone, as Lindsay explained what he was holding in his hands. But Lindsay said, this one is more interesting than anything I've ever seen. He faxed over a copy of the image to the London offices. By the time he returned from the fax machine to his office, the phone was already ringing. It was his contact in London.

demanding to know more about the photograph. Lindsay laid out as much of the story as he knew at that time. They asked Lindsay to get the negatives from the daily record, as well as the names and contacts of the witnesses. He quickly got in touch with the paper, who seemed all too eager to help. It might have been naive behaviour on the reporter's behalf to provide the RAF and MOD with the material. But maybe they felt this was the start of a much bigger story,

and by cooperating, they could be directly involved in what could potentially be a life-changing moment for mankind. The newspaper handed over the information about the witnesses to Lindsay and sent the negatives directly to the MOD offices in London. To my knowledge, it is unknown if the newspaper kept any copies. Lindsay phoned the number he had been given by the newspaper, which took him to the front desk at a hotel close to where the incident had taken place. After asking to speak to the two individuals in question. He discovered that they were temporary staff at the hotel, washing dishes in the kitchen. Lindsay doesn't recall much information about the pair, but he did state in an interview

that he seemed to remember them having English accents. They explained in detail the whole incident, as it had played out that August evening. After hiding behind the bush, the two men glanced out to see the object had not followed them. It just hung there in the sky. Not moving an inch and not making a sound. They sat there in stunned silence, watching the object for several minutes before the silence was shattered

by the sound of an incoming jet. The jet shot over them heading north, but after a few seconds turned and started heading back in their direction, the sound of the jet broke them out of their shock state. and they pulled out a camera and began snapping shots of what they were witnessing. They claimed that the jet started making large circular passes around the object, moving in an anti-clockwise direction.

After three or four passes, the jet turned one final time and continued on its original course. Still, the object did not move. After a few more minutes, the object began slowly moving upwards. before suddenly shooting off in a vertical motion towards the sky, vanishing into the clouds. Even during this dramatic speed boost, the object didn't make a sound. Lindsay passed all the information onto his London contacts,

who simply thanked him and said, from this point on, leave it to us. Several weeks later, at a routine meeting in the London offices, Lindsay was surprised to walk into a room to discover one of the prints had been blown up into a three-foot colour poster and pinned to a wall, as well as a number of smaller photos of the other six prints. The London office told Lindsay that they had sent the original negatives back to the daily record. They told him they had taken a good look at them and found no evidence that the photos had been manipulated in any way, but they had seemingly not decided to investigate any further. Strangely, however, despite the photos supposedly being returned, and the images declared not to have been altered by the MOD, no story was ever published by the paper. No one ever thought to contact Craig Lindsay and request the original print that the Daily Record had sent him.

He had passed the information onto his higher-ups and had been told to stay out of it. The reporters of the Daily Record had gone quiet. So Lindsay filed away the photo and left it to that. for the next 30 years. It was only when Dave Clark at Sheffield Hallam University and a small team of UFO investigators ended up in contact with Craig Lindsay that this photo would finally see the light of day.

After a number of discussions, Lindsay agreed to donate the photo to the university, so that after years of speculation and a number of recreations, the original photo could be provided to the public. I have taken the majority of descriptions about the incident from an interview with Craig Lindsay. As the provider of the image and the person directly involved with the report, he seems to be a reliable source. Highlights of this interview can be seen in the

Disclosure team's incredible Calveen video. I'll post a link in the description to it. It's well worth an hour of your time. They have done incredible work to bring this entire incident to light. But it is worth noting that other versions of the events on that August day in 1990 have been spread for many years. Some claim that the two hikers, weren't the only witnesses. Motorists on the nearby A-9 road are said to have seen the object in the sky. Others have claimed that MOD representatives went to the Daily Records offices and confiscated the photos soon after they contacted the RAF for a quote. It's also worth noting that the plane in the images has been identified as a harrier. However, no harriers were reported as being operational

in the area, and no reports from the pilots have ever come to light. Back in 2009, in a move that several countries have made in recent years, the Ministry of Defence made its UFO files available to the British public. With the notable exception of the Calvin photo, and for a number of researchers, this image has become almost the Holy Grail of UFO evidence. The poster that Lindsay claimed to have seen is said to have remained up in the Ministry of Defence headquarters.

quarters for a number of years and apparently ended up behind the desk of chief UFO investigator Nick Pope. However, one day the head of his division entered the office and took away the print. It wasn't seen again from that day. Depending on who you ask in the world of UFOs, Nick Pope is either a controversial figure or one of the most important characters in the disclosure movement. Either way, he was a key part of the government releasing its UFO evidence to the public, a little over a decade ago. When the MOD opened its UFO files to the public, numerous questions were asked about the Calvin photo,

to which the MOD responded with, well, we don't know. It's gone. It appears there have been some suggestion that the head of the division had decided this was some sort of top-secret US project. However, the United States denied any involvement. Nick Pope claims that the photos attracted the attention of military officers up to the highest levels. He said that these photos were the clearest

and most impressive UFO photographs that a ministry had ever seen and were extensively tested and scrutinized. Pope's retelling of the responses to this photo is fascinating. I'm going to read a handful of quotes from Pope on this topic here. I felt it was important

to keep the information in his own words. The MOD has all sorts of equipment and expertise that we use to analyze and enhance imagery to tell whether there were any signs of fakery. This picture was assessed by our digital experts, who concluded it was a real photograph, showing a solid structured craft,

which was estimated as being around 25 metres in diameter. There were no wings and no visible signs of any propulsion system. It was exotic and unknown in a way far beyond even the most modern stealth aircraft being trialled at a time. Even now, years after these events, I can't discuss the details. of this process, as so much of the information is top secret. The Defence Intelligence staff sent these images to J.A.R.C.

That's the Joint Air Reconnaissance and Intelligence Centre. Now, this is the UK's military centre of expertise when it comes to imagery analysis. These intelligence personnel come to the conclusion that these photographs are real. It's a solid craft and no one has the faintest idea what it is. I remember going to a briefing with the Defence Intelligence staff where the photograph was discussed. Most of the details of our conversation are classified and must remain secret. While I took early retirement from the MOD in 2006, the official Secrets Act binds me for life, but I can reveal the sensational conclusion to our top secret briefing.

Summing up, the intelligence officer ran through the possibilities, gesturing to the left with his finger. He said the object in the photograph wasn't Russian. Jerking his hand to the right, he said it wasn't American. He looked at us intently and said that only left one other possibility. He pointed straight up. My boss and I couldn't help looking up too. Then we looked at each other and then we looked back at the intelligence officer.

His face was inscrutable. Nothing further was said and my boss and I walked back to our office in silence. The MOD's standard line on UFOs was that the phenomenon was of no defensive significance, a meaningless whitehall soundbite that meant whatever we wanted it to mean. At best it was misleading, and at worst it was a downright lie. We constantly played down the true level of our interest in UFOs, telling Parliament, the media and the public that the subject was of little interest, all the time behind closed doors.

We struggled to make sense of cases of our own. sense of cases like the Calvin incident, despite an extensive investigation. We never found a definitive explanation for what was seen at Calvin. One time, they nearly caused a diplomatic incident that threatened to unravel the UK's special relationship with the United States. By the mid-90s, a bitter struggle had erupted within the MOD in relation to UFOs. A skeptic versus believer dogfight was raging. In relation to the Calvinian photos, the only remotely possible skeptical theory was that the object was a secret prototype aircraft or drone. We knew what we did and didn't have at a time when it came to such things, so realistically that only left the Americans.

At the same time as this row was raging, speculation arose that the Americans had developed a secret prototype aircraft, codename Aurora, a hypersonic replacement for the iconic SR-71 Blackbird. We asked the US authorities if they had been testing such an aircraft over the UK, but received firm denials. With the Calvin photos in mind, some MED officials didn't believe the US assurances, so asked again. The Secretary of the Air Force, Donald Rice,

was incensed by the questioning, and the implication that he had lied to US Congress when he told them that Aurora didn't exist. Arirotasatat at the British Embassy in Washington wrote to senior RAF officers, pleading with them to defuse the row. As a result of this diplomatic bust-up, My head of the vision removed the Calvin incident photo from our office wall.

He, like my immediate boss, was a skeptic and clung to the belief that the object had to be American because the concept of extraterrestrial visitation was too terrible a truth for him to face. In 1996, MP Martin Redmond tried to get answers about the missing photos, to which the MOD told him. A number of negatives associated with the sighting were examined by... staff responsible for air defence matters. Since it was judged they contained nothing of defence significance, the negatives were not retained, and we have no record of any photographs having been taken from them. However, it's strange that even in late 1991, officials have been asking for detailed drawings of the incident. These images were included in the released UFO files. Subsequent

requests for the photos and information about the witnesses through the Freedom of Information Act were denied, citing that the privacy of the witnesses was important, and for that reason the information would be classified for the duration of their lifetime. While it's possible the two witnesses change their mind about going public, it seems odd that they were happy to go to the press with these images, but then quickly decided they wanted no path in the story. The full contents of the MOD dossier will now not be released until 2076. The release of this photo is potentially one of the biggest developments in the world of UAP disclosure. Had the MOD been trying to hide and downplay the importance of this image,

or had it genuinely been discarded as not worth further investigation and subsequently lost in the mountains of evidence they have? If this is indeed a genuine UFO, then it might be the clearest image anyone has captured of an unidentified object in our skies. Depending on what this object is, we may look back at the release of this photograph, as one of the most important moments in our history as a species. So where do you sit with this new photograph? Are you a believer or a skeptic?

Do you have a suggestion for what this object could be? Please leave a comment and let me know. I'd love to hear all your thoughts on this subject. UFO stories tend to be very complicated, with a lot of moving parts and conflicting information. So if you have any further information about this case or have evidence to the contrary of anything I've spoken about here, then please let me know.

As always, thank you for joining me. Before you fall asleep tonight, why not take a look up into the night sky? You never know what you might see.