UAP Unidentified Alien Podcast - UAP Greatest Hits: The Solway Firth Spaceman Mystery

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

The Solway Firth Spaceman is considered to be one of the most mysterious and intriguing alien cases of all time. Listen to all of the eerie details of the story and try to figure out what many have had trouble explaining for almost 60 years...Just who is that standing in the background of that photo?!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everybody talked about it since I first moved to Oregon. The big one, the earthquake that trashed the whole West Coast, total destruction. Officially calling it the largest natural disaster in American history. I just didn't know what would help me next. So I took it all. Even the gun. It was time. Cello?

CY American Afterlife is the number one fiction and drama podcast in America. Presented by pair of thieves. Listen on Apple Podcast. Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Available now. In a place like Los Angeles, people don't stop being who they are. Writers, thinkers, creators, people with stories still unfolding. That spirit lives on at Kingsley Manor, a community shaped by individuality, creativity, and lives well-lived. So when the conversation turns to what's next, it isn't about stepping away.

It's about continuing the story. Explore your options at kingsley manor.org, a non-profit month-to-month senior community within the Front Porch family. Hi, you're listening to Meditating with Jan from Toyota. Soften your focus and visualize yourself off-roading in a Tacoma. Now engage your senses. What do you hear? A donkey! Because you're driving the kids to a farm sanctuary in a Grand Highlander. Breathe in, breathe out, and go from dreaming it to drive. it today. Dealer inventory may vary. See your participating Toyota dealer for details. Event ends March 31st.

Toyota. Let's go places. Well, hello there. Welcome back into UAP for this greatest hits edition. Stephen Dean are here with you as always. Got some new episodes coming out, but I wanted to present this one first with one of my favorite subjects that I actually don't think I've been able to cover since this episode came out. This goes all the way back to August of 2021. It was episode 7 of UAP with myself and Karen Curtis at the time where we spoke about the Solway Firth Space Man, the famous photo there that shows this weird figure in the background of this guy who's taking a picture of his daughter in a park in England. And you're going to hear all about this story here. This was actually one of the shortest episodes of UAP, I think, going back into

the annals of time for UAP in the history of the show. But it's still to this day, number one, unsolved, though some people have explanations for it that they think might answer it. Officially it's unsolved. And two, it remains one of my favorite stories and one of my favorite mysteries because it's just so darn strange. And it is one of the things that I really, one of the first topics in the UFO world that I really kind of dug deep into and really, really intrigued me that was the Soulway for Space Man.

It was one of the first. Obviously there's others out there like Rendellstrom Forrest, which was, I believe, the first episode I ever did of UAP. But this was one of the first that really, really intrigued me because it's just such a strange picture. And no one could explain it, not even the film developing company, which I believe was Kodak. So you're going to hear all about it here in this episode. UAP's greatest hits really, really enjoyed this one. I remember being so excited to be able to do it. So I hope you enjoy this look back on the Soulway Firth Space Man Mystery.

right here on UAP's greatest hits. And stay tuned for a lot of great new stuff coming out as well. My interview with Matt Ford from The Good Trouble Show will be out. Can't wait to speak with him and can't wait to present that to you. And so much more coming up here before the holidays. But right now, it's the Solifurth Spaceman right here on UAP. Enjoy. All right, welcome in to UAP, the Unidentified Alien Podcast.

Episode 7. We promised you a very intriguing, fascinating episode today. and we will be delivering because it's all about the mystery behind the Soul Wayford Spaceman. Karen Curtis over there. Stephen Deane are here. How are you, Karen? I'm well, and I found a little tidbit. I just love impressing you with my uphology.

Yes. Did you know that the planet Venus has been reported as a UFO more times than any other object in the universe? Really? There's a lot of dumb people out there who are doing it's a planet. It's like right off the horizon, it turns different colors, and I thought that was really interesting. Look at Earth. No, that's Venus. That's Venus.

That is interesting, though. I didn't know that because I've always heard, oh, well, it's a weather balloon, or it's the swamp gas reflecting into the Aurora Borealis or something. All these weird explanations that people come up with. Well, not so much anymore with the release of that congressional report a couple months ago, which led us to say, hey, why don't we do a podcast about all this stuff? Because they finally, Congress, that is, finally acknowledged that, well, there's something out there and we don't know what it is. The topic is blowing up UFOs. And you have been an expert on it.

When did you start getting interested in it? I want to say probably the early 2000s, early, maybe even late 90s. So it's been a long time. It's kind of been like a hobby of mine even growing up. And it's always been something that intrigued me. just a mystery behind it and that's what we have here today because last week was a doozy

with the you know Dulce base in New Mexico and that was and we're still alive yes we made it I can't believe it the people who killed Philip Schneider for telling that story

did not come after us yet but maybe they will after the sole way for the spaceman because this is this is fascinating and it's one of those stories that I heard a long time ago and it's intrigued me for a long time

so I thought well let's go ahead and do this one this week because this is one of those things, Karen, that did not get covered in the congressional report. No. Well, yeah, way before. Yeah, way before. It didn't happen before 2004, never mind.

And that was the thing. We thought, well, they're only going back to 2004 with all these reports. All these things happen in 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, not to mention all the ancient times, but, I mean, that's a whole different thing. Oh, yeah. I mean, hello, who built the pyramids. Right. So we've been wanting to get into a lot of that stuff from previous times, and that's what

we've been doing here on the podcast. So if you ever missed any of the episodes, you can always go back and listen to the previous ones wherever you find podcasts. Just search Unidentified Alien Podcasts. So this thing, you sent me to the photograph. It's about a photograph that was taken on a bright sunny day. It was in the summer of 1964. I was two. Oh, good.

You weren't even born. So you remember Karen, see, people don't know this. Karen as a two-year-old would actually pick up the newspaper on Sunday mornings and just read away. I did. You've been into news your whole life. Yeah. Yes. I was a news consumer at two. That's right.

So it was a Carlisle Fireman took a photo of his daughter, and it created headlines around the world. So let me just, this is radio. It's not television or YouTube. We're going to paint the picture for you. So I'm going to paint this picture of this kid. She's really cute. Yeah.

She's kind of got like, dirty blonde hair. It's a cut in a bowl cut with bangs. It's like a severe cut. She's got on this brand new dress. It's like, grassy green with red flowers on it and she's holding a little handful of white flowers and she's kind of got a little Mona Lisa smile but behind her there's something right over her head and it looks like a spaceman and that's where the controversy comes in with a visor and some

people oh no that's his wife standing she's got her back turned to him and that's her blonde hair uh no yeah And it's odd because, well, here's the thing about it. And this is where the story kind of takes a strange turn and really has been one of the greatest photographic mysteries debated anyway for almost 60 years now. Yeah, she's sitting there in a, like a park or a... Yeah, so they went to a park. This is her dad, Jim Templeton, and he explains what they were doing there. But there's no one around for miles behind her in the background. That's just what they said.

It's just grass. and here he is. She was anxious to pick some sea pinks, you know. Sea pinks. Because these sea pinks are on, bruffmarsh. So we went out on the normal outing and picked our spot, sat down and I said, no, I'll take some photos of you with the new dress on. Right. And so that was really, this was just a normal family.

He was a firefighter in England, you know, near Solway. He's the Solway Firth over there with this park that they went to. and he just thought, you know what, you have this nice new dress on. You're my, you know, my little kid. She's basically around my kindergarten age at this time. Right, I forgot to give you her age. Yeah, she's, no, no.

She's a little girl. Yeah, she's a little girl. And he thought, you know, you look so cute in your new dress. We're going to the park as a family. Let me take my camera. We'll take some pictures. So he snaps. And here's the key, Karen.

This is why I don't buy into some of the debunked, in air quotes, theories out there that say it's his wife, and we'll get into that in a second. second because he took three consecutive pictures. Oh, I didn't know he took three. Three consecutive pictures. And now, again, this is 1964. So there's no iPhones.

This wasn't, now there were Polaroids. It was on a brownie box camera. I had a brownie camera. So, I mean, this is an old style camera, okay? And it wasn't even like a Polaroid where it would print out and you would shake it in the air and it would develop right in front of you. No, this was something where the role of film was in there and you had to go get it developed at your drugstore, right?

So they go through about their day They don't see anything suspicious It's a quiet day Right, when he took the photo He didn't see anything behind her Correct Until he takes the photo Gets it developed at the store

And he comes back a few days later Because for us old people We remember you have to wait a few days For the film to get developed That's right So he goes and gets it Which is kind of creepy Because other people are looking at your photos

I know that always creeped me out But that's neither here nor there But so the developer of the photos, the guy who's working at the store, says, you know, here's your photos. He's like, boy, you know, these are great photos of your daughter. It's got, this guy in the back here, he ruined your shot. You know, that's so annoying. It's such a nice shot.

And Templeton says, what, what guy? There wasn't anybody else there. He looks at the three photos. The first photo and the third photo have no one there behind her. Hey, guys, so before we get back into the conversation, I just want to talk about something that affects all of us. And it's scary. Starting something new, right?

It's hard and it is kind of terrifying because you think about all the work that goes into it. Are you going to be able to succeed? What new challenges am I going to face? It's that uncertainty. But I know how that is because I can think back when I started UAP, I was just hoping for the best. And it's just like that when you're starting your own business. That's why Shopify is so great and why I'm so happy to be able to talk about them. Because despite all the fears and hesitations when starting something new,

it certainly helps to have a partner like Shopify on your side to help. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from household names like Death Wish Coffee, Brooke Linnon, and Kylie. But what if people haven't heard about your brand? Well, Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. But what if you hit that wall and you get stuck somewhere? Well, no problem because Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer support. tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more.

No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place with Shopify, making your life easier and your business operations so much smoother. So it's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash UAP. Go to Shopify.com slash UAP. That's Shopify.com slash UAP. Picture the two of you, sitting side by side, a Mai Tai in your hands, and the sounds of Hawaii around you.

You almost forget you're on a plane. And that's the point, because when you fly with Hawaiian Airlines, it's hard to tell where your flight ends and vacation begins. Hawaii starts here. When you fly with Hawaiian Airlines, it's hard to tell where your flight ends and family vacation begins. From the moment you board, feel the Aloha spirit. Hear the sounds of Hawaii and relax with local entertainment at your seat.

Let us welcome your family to our island home. Hawaii starts here. When you fly with Hawaiian Airlines, whole family enjoys free access to Starlink, the fastest Wi-Fi in the sky, thanks to T-Mobile, stream, scroll, message, and game while sipping a passion orange guava juice. Everyone stays entertained, and your vacation gets a head start. Enjoy every moment of your trip, even before you land. Hawaii starts here. It definitely looks like a spaceman, and here's her dad, Jim Templeton, about him. That's the question. Who is he? Where's he from?

wrong. Those are the two questions we won't answer. And that's a thing. And that's something that people still ask to this day, almost 60 years later, is where did this guy come from? Again, three photos take you consecutively, and in the second photo only, you see this figure. What looks like to be a spaceman, they say spaceman, because it looks like they're dressed in all white, and it looks like a visor above where the eyes would be. Right. And it's so, and he just stands there with basically his or her hands on their hips standing in the back, in the foreground behind his daughter in the picture. So they had no idea what it was.

Of course, rightfully so, Jim Templeton was freaked out and said, who was this person standing behind her? We didn't see anybody. And so he sent it to the police. He actually went to the police. Right. And then they got Kodak involved, right? They did.

The police were like, well, you know, we don't know what to do. Which, by the way, I have to correct myself. Did you know that Paul McCartney's wife, Linda Eastman? Her dad's name was Epstein and he changed it to Eastman. She had nothing to do with Eastman. Kodak. Okay, good. So now we know. Zero. I thought this is how they, how she met him because of this whole Kodak.

We said that at the end of the episode last week. Sorry. I'm just completely wrong. No, that's okay. So basically what ends up happening from there is, and I know if we have more sound from Jim Templeton himself, maybe he can explain a little bit too. This is what he said. He was recalling what happened when he spoke to the BBC in an interview right before his death in 2011. So we went out on the normal outing and picked our spot.

sat down and I said, no, I'll take some farting after you with the new dress on, never expecting this to happen. Right. And it's amazing. I mean, you say that, Karen, 2011, he dealt with this his entire life. That's almost 50 years when he took that picture. And he still got questions about it because the questions have never still 10 years after that interview been conclusively answered. Just there's really just assumptions. There's conjecture, right? There's educated guesses really as to what it would be. I mean, for euphologists, it was clear. They said it's a white space. suit a helmet, dark visor, and they believed that Mr. Templeton photographed a spaceman. And so if you're seeing in there saying to yourself, well, obviously he faked a picture. He did some type of double exposure trick.

You know, they were doing that back in the 1890s. I get that. Yeah, they used to do that. They would pretend that you had spirits. Yes. Yes, that's right. Ghosts. And it was a big, it was actually like a little industry.

Like these guys were making a lot of money, these photographers saying, oh, we could, you know, take a photograph of your dead loved one. And they would be taking old photos and doing double exposure. It was not very nice. But this was not that. So how do we know that? Because after Jim Templeton went to the police and to the newspapers, he went to Kodak itself. Yeah.

And actually Kodak reached out too because it was becoming kind of a big story in the news. Well, when you said he took it to the police in Carlisle, they declared there was nothing out of the ordinary from the photograph. And then they contacted Kodak. Right. And they said the same and even offered a reward. award to anyone who could prove the photo was faked. And it was never claimed, by the way. Right.

And then there was a media frenzy because it came to the attention of the local newspaper, the Cumberland News. That's right. And there it ran and ran. And it was picked up by the Daily Mail and Express, which are the only newspapers to trust these days. Yeah, really? I'm sorry. And then there was this Dr. David Clark, an author on UFOs, and he picked up on it, and it just

got weirder and weirder. Then came the visit from the men in black. Yeah, so that was a weird one too, because after Kodak looked into this, they said, well, you didn't doctor this photo. Whatever this is, it's real. I mean, the people that the heads of Kodak investigated it and they came to the conclusion, this is not a fake photo. You mean it's not CGI, Stephen? That's right. Yes, there was not CGI, especially since there was not in 1964, but that's not here nor there.

Which makes it even more interesting because now when you have photos of UAPs, you know, UFOs, or aliens or whatever, there's so much speculation now, especially that things are fake because you can always say that, oh, well, someone did that on their computer using their MacBook or whatever, but this is done with an original role of film in 1964.

So that's why this thing has been so hard to explain for almost 60 years. So these men in black that came to visit Mr. Templeton, he was asked to be taken to the spot where he took the picture. That's right. And the two men in black referred to each other as number nine

in number 11. Yeah, very strange. And they said they were working... And it wasn't Will Smith. No. They said they were working for the Queen's Royal Majesty or something like that.

And I mean, there's been different reports that those guys. They were like pranksters and it wasn't even real, but we don't know. They weren't real men and black. You know, we don't know. There's been two different reports about it.

But again, you know, as we move on then into the explanations, right? What could this have been? Kodak says it's a real photo. Jim Templeton didn't know. The police didn't know. Nobody could figure it out.

The prize, by the way, that Kodak put out if anybody could figure out what was in the photo was a year's worth of free film. Oh. I think that might be a little outdated now if anybody's going to figure it out. I was going to say, yeah, who uses film. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from household names like Death Wish Coffee, Brooke Linnon, and Kylie. But what if people haven't heard about your brand? Well, Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns.

But what if you hit that wall and you get stuck somewhere? Well, no problem because Shopify is always around to share advice with their reward-winning 24-7 customer support. Tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place with Shopify. making your life easier and your business operations so much smoother. So it's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash UAP.

Go to shopify.com slash UAP. That's shopify.com slash UAP. So what happened was this thing went viral. It did. If it could in the 60s. Right. And it made it to the newspapers in Australia. Yes.

And there they were stunt. Because the figure they said looked like the same guys, the same figures, that they saw close to a missile. That's right. And here's Mr. Templeton on this Australian spaceman missile thing. The men in that was at the stage where they were firing first Blue Street rocket. They saw on the monitors, somebody in the firing area. And of course, the countdown was stopped.

They searched the area Nobody to be found, not a saw And it was put down as a technical fault But those two men, whoever they were, reckoned when they saw the picture that was flown out That it was exactly the same type of man, Same dress, same figure, same size As the picture that was taken on Brookmarsh.

So the plot thickened because the blue streak had been built by the RAF, the Royal Air Force. Right. Just a few miles from where Mr. Templeton took the picture of Elizabeth. That's the girl's name. And as the story gathered momentum, it was also claimed that a UFO was seen at Womera, which was in Australia. Right. So that's the weird connection here.

So you have this missile being built. It was a secret project called Project Blue Streak. It was basically a ballistic missile that's the Royal Air Force of the United States. England was attempting to build and to test in order to defend themselves. So let's test it on the Australians. Essentially, they were, it was kind of like their secret base in Australia. So these two figures. Well, that's where they sent all their convicts.

Yeah, these figures that were seen by the missile site matched the figure seen in the picture. So it makes you wonder. And they had to scrub that launch by the way. Because these guys were like right next to the missile on the launch pad. So like, who are these guys next to the missile? Oh, they weren't. They weren't Australian guys.

Right. So they actually had to scrub that launch, that test flight. Eventually it went off, you know, like a week later. But at first, and then they realized, wait, this mysterious figure in the picture at Solway, Solway Firth, matches the two guys that were mysteriously on the launch pad at Australia, testing this inter-ballistic missile from England. So how do you have these figures who look the same on two different continents, essentially, almost within the same time period.

And like you said, it was being built not too far away from where Jim Templeton was where he took this picture. So it's very odd. Yeah, we know that aliens and UFO show up to, you know, we did our one podcast, I think it was the second one about... Mousram Air Force Base. Right. Same idea.

They want to make sure we don't blow up the earth because it, like, will affect the entire universe. So maybe they were checking it out. Maybe. I mean, this was 1964. Mounts from the Air Force Base was 1967. So it's three years apart where Mountsville. Air Force Base, again, that was episode two.

If you want to check it out, we talked about how these UFOs were seen over the Air Force Base there in Montana, I think. Yeah. I always forget. I think it was Montana. Yeah. And they disabled nuclear missiles there. They did.

For like 24 hours. Right. And then they worked fine after that. This weird. It makes you wonder, Karen, the connection between different things like this. Can we connect Malmstrom Air Force Base, which is 1967, to these two incidents in 1964, where you have the picture of this mysterious figure in the white seemingly looking spacesuit to two figures in the same suit at a launch pad where a rocket was being built not too far away from

where the first figure was. Right. And then they said that there was a UFO seen in Womero, which was near that area. It's in Australia as well. Right. So, you know, there's a lot of weird things going on. And I'll close out with this. The final theory here that is, I guess the accepted theory.

because people don't know what else to make of it. So I should say the accepted theory at this point by skeptics is that that was Jim Templeton's wife in the background. Right, Annie. Right. And they say that because basically they chalk it up to photo experts, modern day photo experts, chalk it up to overexposure, the sunlight affects the picture. It made her look very white. And that was actually her hair that you saw what looks like a visor. And to me, right, it doesn't make any sense because, again, like I said in the beginning of the

episode, three consecutive photos. It wasn't like these were five minutes apart. And don't you think if she was standing behind her with the bag? She would have said, honey, would you please move? Move, right. Good God. I mean, the husband, Jim Templeton's going to say, hey, well, let me take this picture and move out of the way.

He would have known that she was the brownie box. You hold it down and you look, the viewfinder was on top of the camera. Remember that? Yes. And so you're like looking to, and the viewfinder was like three inches by three inches. So that might be an accepted theory to some. But to me, Karen, the mystery of the Soulway, Earth Space, lives on. That's the question.

Who is he? Where's he from? Those are the two questions we won't answer. And that wraps up UAP. So check it out again. Wherever you get your podcast, check out Unidentified Alien Podcast. UAP on Apple, Spotify, all that good stuff. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and listen

to all the other episodes. Yeah, give us five extraterrestrial stars. That's right. We love you. Until next time, check out UAP episode number eight next week where it's going to be a surprise. Oh, goody. I'm not even going to tell you what it is. You hit to tune in. Oh, my God.

I'll talk to you then. Bye.