All language subtitles for Britains.X-Files.S01E01.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

I'm Tim Tate.

I've been
an investigative journalist

for almost half a century.

And what I specialise in
is exploring official archives,

unearthing dusty old files
from government departments,

spy agencies, the police.

This strange figure
looked very much like an astronaut.

And what I have found
in those collections,

both in Britain
and in the United States,

is a truly extraordinary collection

of real-life X-files.

True cryptids, like the Yeti
and the Mongolian death worm.

And those files disclose...

investigations by the police,
by governments, by spy agencies...

Shortly
after that transmission,

Captain Schaffner's radio went dark.

...to examine and uncover
the truth...

about phenomena which are truly...
out of this world.

It's a great piece of branding.
The death ray.

Everyone knows where they stand
with a death ray.

The first X-file we open
takes us above the clouds,

where an examination of a spate
of frighteningly similar air crashes

can't ignore the possibility
that their cause

has otherworldly origins.

In the wake of World War II,

passenger air travel really took off

due to new technology,
the jet engine.

Comet jetliner,
pioneering the first

pure jet commercial airline service.

Britain sought to lead
the way with the de Havilland Comet,

but then a series of crashes
saw the project halted.

What was causing the Comets
to mysteriously fall out of the sky?

Was there an as-yet-unidentified
design flaw?

Or could the answer
have an otherworldly explanation?

On Thursday, November 4th 1954,

one of the strangest exchanges
ever recorded

in Britain's remarkable collection
of X-files

occurred at the Institute
of Civil Engineers in Westminster,

presided over by Sir Lionel Heald.

And Sir Lionel Heald's question
in the august halls...

of a public inquiry...

asked whether...

the plane crashes
could have been caused

by contact... with a flying saucer.

The de Havilland Comet
was the first...

jet passenger airliner.

The world now had
its first passenger jet air service.

Prior to the Comet,
all passenger aircraft were

piston-engined aircraft,
as used in bombers during the war.

The airliners were noisy,
couldn't fly particularly high,

so they'd be buffeted in the winds
as they flew along.

The Comet airliner was able
to get up to much higher heights,

which was a much more stable journey
for the passengers.

So all in all, the Comet was

a much, much improved airliner.

In fact, some of the advertising
actually showed somebody building

a stack of cards
on one of the tables.

And here,
40,000ft over the Alps,

en route, Rome, first of five stops
on the 6,700-mile flight.

London to Rome,
two-and-a-half hours.

On Sunday,
January 10 1954,

at 10:30am,

BOAC Comet G-ALYP
took off from Rome airport.

It climbed to 31,000ft and headed
off over the Mediterranean Sea,

but barely 200 miles
into its journey,

it exploded, killing all on board.

Local fishermen reported
seeing a ball of light in the sky

and hearing an enormous bang.

The initial mystery
that surrounded the Comet

was the fact that
they couldn't find the cause.

They had tested
the aircraft considerably

prior to its entering of service,

and this was actually the first
Comet to enter commercial service,

so it was a trusted aircraft.

So then the investigators
had to look for this deadly problem.

It would take several
months to reassemble the parts

of the Comet to try and determine
the cause of the disaster.

All of the fleet were
taken out of service for ten weeks,

and 60 modifications
were made to the aircraft

to allow them to fly again.

Once they flew again
after the ten weeks,

a further three weeks elapsed,

and another plane crashed...

that was on charter to South African
Airways, in exactly the same way,

oddly enough,
in the same area off Elba.

Following this second
Comet air crash of April 1954,

the fleet was grounded indefinitely.

The fact that this was
such a trusted aircraft

added to the mystery
and the intrigue,

as well as the fact
that the crew was so experienced.

These were pilots that had served
in the Second World War,

that had Distinguished
Flying Crosses, flying medals.

And so for this aircraft
to have such a disaster,

it was very unsettling
for the aviation industry,

and particularly in Britain.

There was a lot of speculation.
What was it?

Was it sabotage?
Was it terrorism?

What had caused
these two aircraft to explode

and all these people
to die as a result?

But the investigation
into the reassembled Comet

ruled out both sabotage
and a terrorist bomb.

The rational...

if excitable, newspaper coverage...

gave way...

to more conspiratorial thinking.

And British government files, files
maintained by the Air Ministry...

...began filling up with claims...

that something supernatural,
or paranormal,

had been involved.

So this was something
that was actually, amazingly,

taken seriously
by the board of inquiry.

So in the National Archives,

there are files of letters
from members of the public saying,

'Have you looked at the possibility
that the Comet was struck

by a flying saucer
over the Mediterranean?'

And people saw a big flash
and explosion in the sky,

so it was perhaps quite logical

that maybe there was
another object involved.

And that goes some way to explaining
the extraordinary exchange

between Sir Lionel Heald, QC,

and the Director
of the Aircraft Establishment...

during the inquiry
into the Comet disasters.

From this point on,

stories spread that the doomed
Comets may have been victim

of some kind of alien attack.

The higher and faster
the jet planes went,

the stranger
their encounters became,

all adding to the UFO myth.

When the report into the Comet
disasters was finally finished,

it was indeed
a tale of the unknown.

But this was a case
of pushing the envelope

beyond the capacity of the plane.

The flight reached
operating height,

which was around about 35,000ft.

At that height, the...

structure of the hull failed,

which is likened to...

sitting somewhere
and a 500lb bomb going off.

So it exploded...

...and blew the whole plane apart,
effectively, at that height.

The aircraft in pieces...

with the passengers all on board,

who would have been dead by then...

then fell to the sea
off the isle of Elba.

The real culprit?

It wasn't a spacecraft from
another planet or little green men.

Thousands of tests revealed
a catastrophic weak point

in the Comet's design:

tiny flaws in the riveting
around the Comet's windows.

What they eventually discovered
going through all of these tests

was that actually 70% of the stress
on the aircraft

that came
from the pressurisation cycles

was actually located at the front.

It was around
where the windows were.

The reason why they burst
was because...

the rivets had been
punched into the metal,

creating the hole
by which the rivet was sealed.

But around it were minute cracks,

which elongated
over a period of time.

The phenomenon
of metal fatigue

was not yet fully known in this era.

So as a result, this was a case
of trying to over-engineer it,

but also using metal that was,
ultimately,

far too thin to take these strains.

The Comet jetliner
pioneering the first pure

jet commercial airline service.

In this footage
of early jet passengers,

you can see that unlike modern jet
planes, the windows are not round.

This also played a part
in both disasters.

The windows
were slightly square.

Where you get a window that's round,

there's less pressure
on all points around the window.

When the window is slightly square,

there's more pressure on the corners

than there is
on any other section of the window.

Hatfield, England,
the 72-ton, 4-jet Comet 3,

destined for transatlantic service,
is unveiled.

This giant is the latest improvement
of the original Comet airliner.

The Comet 1 was grounded
due to a series of accidents.

They uprated the engines
to make them more powerful engines,

and they also reskinned the plane,

so they put a thicker skin
on the aircraft.

And they obviously modified
the way they made the windows,

but the skin made it more able to...

withstand any pressure situations.

The Comet 3
will be modified

to comply with
the inquiry's suggestions.

Both disasters
had been caused by metal fatigue:

an ill-understood problem
at the time...

and were definitely not...

the result of attacks by...

spacecraft from Mars.

Non-stop New York
to London in six hours,

as Britain hopes
her commercial jetliners

will set a new pace
over the Atlantic.

But while the cause
of the crashes

appeared to have been identified,

it couldn't save
the makers of the doomed airliner,

de Havilland,
or the British aircraft industry.

We often hear eyewitness
accounts of strange things at sea,

but if we take a closer look,
and they become even stranger,

then they might well make their way
into the British X-files.

Paranormal encounters on land,
or in the sky,

are difficult enough to understand,

but when something strange
happens at sea,

the possibilities
that lurk in the fathoms below

conjure even greater primordial
fears in our fragile minds.

The sea is a very alien

and dangerous
environment for human beings.

It's filled with dangerous animals,

things like giant squid,

the great white shark,
the saltwater crocodile:

an animal that makes the great
white shark look like a pussycat.

And it's deep.
We can't see beneath the waves.

It's a psychological thing.
We never know what's lurking there.

There could be anything,
something ready to devour us.

We could be dragged down
by undercurrents.

We could be caught in a storm.

So the turmoil of the depth
of the seas, and what lurks there,

is as much psychological
as it is an actual physical thing,

and we populate it with monsters,
perhaps with good reason:

perhaps because there are monsters.

Sometimes, sailors
get a glimpse of these monsters.

These are often dismissed because
they are so fleeting and vague.

But that is not the case
of a sighting made in 1848

by the British frigate HMS Daedalus.

HMS Daedalus was
a mid-19th century navy warship.

And it was on a long voyage.

And it was had
a very experienced Captain

and a very experienced crew.

The HMS Daedalus
had been employed fighting pirates

off the coast of Borneo,

and she was on the long voyage back
to England.

About halfway there,

on August 6th 1848,

at about 5:30 in the evening...

...Captain Peter M’Quhae...

and six other people
saw what they said...

was a sea serpent.

It was a long, straight-bodied...

creature, they described,
with a head and neck...

just above the water's surface.

The visible portion
that they could see above the waves

was approximately 60ft long,

and its head was...

held out of the water
at around 4ft high.

The witnesses thought that...

there was considerably more
of the creature below the water.

And it had a mane
resembling seaweed.

They said
that it didn't move side to side...

like a snake, or up and down
like a marine mammal,

but it just seemed
to slide along in the water.

They described
the head of the sea serpent,

and an estimate
of what the tail would have been,

and assume that it was
about a 60ft-long sea serpent.

Captain Peter M’Quhae said that...

if it was on land,

and it was a man he'd have known,
he would have been close enough

to recognise his face:
that's how close it was.

And it was in view

for a good 20 minutes,
which was a long sighting.

If only one person sees it,
then it's only one person's opinion.

But in this case,
it was the Captain,

the Lieutenant... a couple of men.

But what's really interesting
about this

is that he was
a really proper Captain,

and so he recorded latitude,
longitude,

and of course,
being an experienced Captain,

all of this information is very,
very accurate.

Whilst the Captain's log
records all the nautical details,

such as position,
speed and weather conditions,

it makes no mention of the sighting,

but there was
a very good reason for this.

There was a ship's superstition,

dating probably
from about that time,

that mentioning
a sea serpent in the log

would bring a lot of very bad luck.

Tongues wagged.
Somehow, the story got out.

And the media seized on it
in a feeding frenzy

not unlike the tabloids of today.

A letter was published
in the Times,

so there was a much exaggerated
account in the Times.

The stories
reported in the newspapers

might have been exaggerated,

but these were accompanied
by illustrations based on drawings

made by the ship's
first Lieutenant, Edgar Drummond.

There were
some illustrations produced

by the Illustrated London News,

which were very detailed.

But, of course,
not necessarily very...

representative of what was seen.

What was more representative
of what was seen was...

...the diary of Lieutenant Drummond,

which only resurfaced recently.

There's an illustration in the diary
which is a lot less elaborate...

...than
the Illustrated London News...

...pictures.

Drummond's illustration
does not show

the typical representation of a sea
serpent with a long body and humps,

which might have been expected if
he was following nautical tradition.

There have been
sightings of sea serpents

as far back as ancient Babylon
and Mesopotamia.

They're seen all over the world,
in every sea and ocean.

And sightings have continued
to the present day.

There seem to be
a number of different types,

but the two primary ones
are an animal with a long neck

and a bulky body,

and an elongate animal
that throws its body

into a series of loops or humps.

There was
a lot of speculation as to

are these things
an unrecognised animal?

Not are these things real,
but are they an unrecognised animal?

In an attempt
to try to explain the sighting,

numerous experts came forward
offering their own interpretations.

Henry Lee, who was
directing the Brighton Aquarium,

and wrote a book about giant squid

possibly being the subject
of sea serpent encounters...

so he thought it was
a squid perhaps...

trailing its tentacles
across the surface.

In the meantime,

there is the discovery of...

marine reptiles from the Jurassic...

on the South Coast of England,
which are now being publicised.

And people began
to think of the sea serpent

not as a mythical
Scandinavian tradition,

but more as a plesiosaur,

with a much longer neck
but a much shorter body.

Even the Natural History
Museum in London got involved.

Richard Owen made suggestions

that angered
the Captain and crew of the Daedalus

and ended in
an angry exchange of letters.

Owen suggested
that he'd seen an elephant seal,

which doesn't grow to nearly that
size and is not found in the area.

Then he suggested it was a native
canoe that had harpooned a whale,

and it was being dragged along
by the whale.

And then he said it was
a whale shark,

which doesn't remotely resemble
what the people saw.

And the Captain and his crew
argued quite fiercely against that.

Eventually, it was decided...

that no, that's not what this is.

It's an anomaly. And it stayed
an anomaly for a very long time.

I don't think the crew were lying.
I think...

they reported accurately
what they saw,

and I'm a believer in sea serpents.

I think there are a number of large,
unknown animals

that we call sea serpents
living in the seas and oceans

right up to the present day...

that we have no explanation for.

But in this case,
I think there is an explanation.

Recently, because there was
so much precise information,

someone had a look at this

and sort of said,
'Well, if you look at this,

and think of it in terms
of the animals we do know,

this sighting,
and the behaviour of the animal,

is consistent with a rorqual whale,
a sei whale,

which is a baleen whale,
who eat plankton, basically.

In order to do this, they skim along
the surface with their mouths open.

And so the top of this animal's jaw
would be above the water,

and they would be going along
at just about...

the same speed
that the Captain suggested.

And indeed, if you see pictures of
the sei whale sort of going along,

and you kind of don't know
that it's a whale,

then it does look very mysterious.

It does look very, very strange
because you can't see the eyes

because of the way it's going.

But it's taken a very long time
to really come to an explanation.

And one of the reasons you can come
to such a good explanation,

which is very rare,
is because it was such interesting

and specific information
to start with.

But not everyone is
convinced that we can explain away

the phenomena of sea serpents
quite so easily.

These things have been reported
since time immemorial.

And we must remember
the ancient legends of dragons

all over the world...

in ancient cultures like Babylon,
Sumeria, China, Japan.

They all associate them with water,
the ancient element of water,

rather than fire, and there
could be a reason for that.

Just because one sea serpent
sighting has an explanation,

it doesn't mean that all of them do.

It's like saying that
if one Rembrandt painting

turns out to be a hoax,
there's no such thing as Rembrandt.

Logic tells us
that you can't kill something

that isn't alive.

But if you could, it would change
more than just the laws of physics.

It would change the way
we think of death itself.

Most ghost stories are told late
at night in an eerie atmosphere

designed to create fear
in the listener.

But one ghost story not only
resulted in a very real death...

but also had consequences that were
still reverberating 180 years later.

The tale of the Hammersmith Ghost,

and the murder
which resulted from it,

has a unique place
in Britain's collection of X-files.

Because although the arrest, trial
and conviction of the ghost's killer

were all wrapped up
within a space of just ten days,

in January 1804...

...the case itself...

would pose
substantial legal problems

for the next 180 years.

Hammersmith, which was still
very much part of the countryside

rather than the great metropolis,

became awash with rumours...

that the ghost of a suicide
had left its grave in the churchyard

and was menacing the neighbourhood.

There were several notable
sightings of the ghost itself.

One of them was a man by the name
of Thomas Groom,

who was the Drayman
to the local brewer, Mr Burgess.

He was actually
walking through the churchyard

of Hammersmith one night
when suddenly,

the ghost came out
from behind a tombstone

and grabbed him by the throat.

He said he struggled
with the ghost for a few moments.

Then he hit out at it with his fist
and connected with something.

He said that was... it felt
very soft, like a great coat.

He managed to then wriggle free,
but he was actually took to his bed.

When he got home,
he took to his bed for over a week,

he was that terrified
by his experience.

The ghost, on one occasion,
attacked a wagon full of people

travelling by night
through Hammersmith.

It also appeared to one woman
who was pregnant

and threw her
into a terrible state of hysterics

and was blamed for a miscarriage.

One of the appearances
that was reported at the time

was a man called Thomas Millwood,
who was 22 years old.

He was a bricklayer.
Some accounts said a plasterer.

He was walking along
Hammersmith Terrace one night

when a couple going past in a coach
started screaming,

saying, 'It's the Hammersmith Ghost,
it's Hammersmith Ghost.'

And he became quite irate
and told them off.

'I'm no more a ghost than you are.'

He thought it was hilarious and went
home and told his mother-in-law.

His mother-in-law said, you know,
'You really have to be careful,'

cos he was dressed,
being a bricklayer,

he was dressed in his
regulation outfit or work clothes,

which consisted of a white
canvas overcoat, white waistcoat,

white trousers
hanging over his shoes.

So that's what the people had seen
and why they thought he was a ghost.

Whilst the British X-files
don't contain the name of the ghost,

they do tell us
why he was attacking people.

As far as we can ascertain, the...

actual person who came back
from the dead as a revenant

had committed suicide
the previous year.

Now, up until 1824,

it was a practise that suicides
were buried not in churchyards

but at crossroads, sometimes
with a stake through the heart.

The ghost had become
so commonplace -

nightly appearances were
happening all around Hammersmith -

that in early January 1804,

a clergyman and a gentleman
offered a reward of five guineas

to anybody who would go out
and capture the ghost.

So in early January 1804,
you get lots of young men

going out into the dark of night,
armed with guns,

and fowling pieces and pistols,

determined to apprehend the ghost.

On December the 29th, a Night
Watchman called William Girdler

stumbled into the taproom
of a local pub

and said he had just seen...

the Hammersmith ghost.

And he regaled
the customers in the bar

with the spine-chilling details

of the white-clad spectre.

One of those in the bar
that night was Francis Smith,

and he resolved
that over the next few nights,

he would go ghost hunting.

After first fortifying himself
with drink,

he went out and sat waiting
for the ghost,

having first collected
his fowling piece:

basically a gun which was used

for shooting ducks and geese.

And he sat there
until he saw a white figure

coming up the lane...

about 10 o'clock in the evening.

He was shocked...

by the sudden appearance
of the ghost.

He was hunting.
It rose up in front of him.

And Smith cried out, 'Damn you, who
are you? Damn you, I'll shoot you.'

And when the ghost didn't reply,

he fired a single shot.

The shot hit the ghost,

which crumpled to the path
in front of him.

And Thomas Millwood
was dressed in his work outfit,

his white waistcoat, his
white overcoat, his white trousers.

And Francis Smith simply cocked his
fowling piece, demanded who he was,

Millwood made no reply,
so Francis Smith shot him.

And he died instantly.

He was killed instantly
by the bullet.

It actually hit him under the chin,
and he died instantly.

Smith very quickly, and to his
credit, realised what he'd done,

that he had shot to death
someone posing as a ghost...

...and he confessed his crime.

In January 1804, he appeared
at the Central Criminal Court,

or the Old Bailey, on a charge
of wilful murder of Thomas Millwood.

Francis Smith's defence was...

that he hadn't intended
to shoot Thomas Millwood.

He'd simply gone out
and intended to shoot the ghost,

and his defence was
he bore no malice whatsoever

against Thomas Millwood, so
therefore, he hadn't murdered him.

Unfortunately, the court
took a different view.

As the law stood at the time...

...deaths had to be
the fault of somebody.

And this was a case of murder.

As the Judge said,
the law is the law.

And the law states
that if you shoot somebody dead,

and it's not self-defence, if it's
not done under official sanction,

then it's murder.

The jury
returned with a verdict.

It convicted Francis Smith
of wilful murder.

And the Judge
donned the black cap...

and imposed the only sentence...

allowed by law: death.

Fortunately,
a recommendation of mercy

was made to the King.

The pleas reached His Majesty...

King George III,
who granted a royal pardon,

and so the sentence was commuted

to one of hard labour
for six months.

The trial of Francis Smith,

and the tragedy of the shooting dead
of Thomas Millwood,

did lead to information being given
to the local magistrate,

whereby at least
one of the perpetrators,

who may have been the ghost,
was identified.

And it was a local man
by the name of John Graham.

John Graham was very religious.
He attended a local chapel.

He had a family.

In short, he was the last person
you'd expect

to go out at night
disguised as a ghost.

And the Magistrate asked him
why he'd done it, and he said,

'Well, I did it to take revenge
on my apprentices

because they've been terrifying
my children with stories of ghosts.

So consequently,
I decided to get revenge on them.

That's why I went out as a ghost.'

But he maintained
he'd only ever done it once,

so that meant that the ghost
was still out there somewhere.

It might have started out
as a prank

and ended up in a tragic death,

but the Hammersmith Ghost would
reverberate across the centuries.

Then in 1949,

a leading academic lawyer
called Glanville Williams

rediscovered the curious case
of the Hammersmith Ghost.

Glanville Williams raised the case
of the Hammersmith Ghost

as part of a wider debate

about reforming
the law of manslaughter.

This led to the Homicide Act 1957,

which introduces the plea
of diminished responsibility.

And similarly,
the law on mistake developed,

until finally, in 1984,

it was accepted
that an unreasonable mistake

might also provide some degree
of mitigation, or excuse,

as much as
a reasonable honest mistake.

And at that point,

the case of the Hammersmith Ghost...

became one of, effectively,

a historical precedent.

Because that was a real-life case

where the situation of a mistake,

an unreasonable one,

suddenly came into its own.

But it took 180 years...

...for the law to actually evolve
to recognise it.

Famously,
the camera doesn't lie,

so when a photograph seems
to show something extraordinary,

we tend to look for
an extraordinary explanation.

But that isn't always
where the truth is to be found.

When we think of photographs
of paranormal phenomena,

we expect to see dark,
blurry, mysterious images.

What we don't expect is a little
girl holding a bunch of flowers.

But that is exactly what we see in
one of the most mysterious images

ever taken that has remained
an enigma for over 60 years.

Jim Templeton was a firefighter,

who was based near Carlisle,
in Cumbria.

And he was also
a very keen photographer.

And during the 1960s,
he took one of the...

the most bizarre, baffling,
iconic mystery photographs

in the history
of anomalous photography.

In May 1964,

he was out
with his wife and daughters.

Not only was
he trying out his new camera

but he wanted to take
some pictures of his wife,

because she'd just bought
a new dress,

so it seemed an ideal opportunity
for him to...

play around with his camera
and spend some time with his family.

Jim was there with his wife
and his young daughter,

and they were
in Solway Firth in Cumbria.

And as far as Jim can remember,
there was nobody else around.

They were there by themselves.

So he'd set up his camera,

and he got his daughter, Elizabeth,

to pose and really lovely photo.

His wife was standing behind him.

And took a series of pictures

and didn't see anything unusual.

In the days
before mobile phones,

pictures taken on a film camera
weren't instantly accessible.

You had to take the film
to a specialist laboratory

and have it developed,
which normally took a week or so

before they were sent back to you.

About a week later,
he went back to the chemist

to collect the pictures,
and he spoke about the photographs,

and the assistant looked through
the photographs with him,

and the assistant pointed out
that one of the pictures was ruined

by somebody in the background.

And then when Jim looked
at the picture,

he realised this strange figure
looked very much like an astronaut.

When the assistant
handed them back to him,

she said, 'It's just a pity
about that one picture

which was spoiled
by the spaceman...

in the back of the shot.

And he thought, 'What?'
As you would.

And looked through the photographs,
and lo and behold,

standing in the background,
almost, like,

floating behind
the head of Elizabeth,

is this figure that you can
only describe as a spaceman.

It looks very much like a NASA...

astronaut of that period,

wearing a big white spacesuit,

a helmet with a black visor.

Everyone had been watching it on
TV, astronauts in their spacesuits.

So everyone knew
what an astronaut looked like:

silvery-white suits
and the domed helmets.

And this figure
that is standing behind Elizabeth

looks like an astronaut
that's sort of turned.

You can see the helmet almost,
and you can see the white suit.

And so he was absolutely baffled.

What on earth is this figure?

When he wasn't
taking photographs,

Jim Templeton was a fireman,

and he was used
to dealing with the police.

So that was his first port of call.

'I've got this weird photograph,
with this strange figure on it,

and it was taken overlooking
the Solway Firth,

where there's these
Ministry of Defence establishments.

Could it be something we need to let
the Ministry of Defence know about?'

So they looked at it.
They couldn't explain it.

They didn't think it was a double
exposure or anything of that kind.

The head of Carlisle CID
told Templeton

that it wasn't a hoax:
it was a genuine photograph.

They thought that someone
had wandered into the shot

and had been caught momentarily
by Jim,

and that Jim hadn't seen them
when he took the photograph.

Templeton was adamant that
that was not the case,

and no-one could have
wandered into the photograph

without him and his wife noticing.

When the story
of the Solway Spaceman,

...and the picture
that Jim had took...

appeared in national
and local newspapers,

the family became
instant media celebrities.

Newspaper reporters,
television crews...

trekked to the Templetons' house

to interview Jim and Alice
and Elizabeth.

The photo got into the
media. It went all around the world.

He had people writing to him
from Australia, from South America.

He was absolutely open about it.

He used to... He had a collection
of prints of his famous photo,

and he was happy to give them
to people randomly

who was interested in the subject.

Never tried to make
any money out of it.

He said, if you use the print,
if you publish it,

make a donation to charity.

So he had
no financial sort of interest

in making money out of that image.

He just wanted
to get to the bottom of it.

Who was that figure
in the photograph?

As well as people who believed
the face value of the story,

there were people
who also thought it was a fake.

Back in those days, you couldn't
just take a digital print.

You had to have negatives.
There was original material.

And Jim was unwilling
to part with it,

but Kodak could see the prints.

Kodak's technicians came back
and said,

'What we can tell you...

is that the film
hasn't been altered.

What it shows is what you captured.

There's been nothing superimposed...

or modified about that still frame.

They actually offered a reward
of a free year's supply of film

if somebody come up to explain
how it was faked,

I don't think he was a hoaxer,
even though he admitted to me

that he liked playing around
with trick photography,

I didn't detect any...

idea that he deliberately faked
that photograph.

That is all I can say,

and as someone who's worked
as a journalist for decades,

I can read people.

I can tell when someone
is spinning a yarn,

and I didn't pick that up
from Jim Templeton.

What had started
as a day out at a local beauty spot

was fast becoming a media sensation.

And it wasn't long before the story

found a strange resonance
on the other side of the world.

In Woomera, Australia,
they were testing

a missile called the Blue Streak.

And the Blue Streak
had been partially built

at Cumbria, so there was this link.

There were two technicians there
who said they saw something

like the Solway Spaceman
actually there.

The mission had to be aborted,

and technicians saw
on the rocket range

two figures that looked
exactly like the figure

in Jim Templeton's photograph.

So this got back
to Jim in England,

and he took it on board
as being significant.

I mean,
he was looking for an answer.

'Is this connected
to my photograph?'

But reports
of strange goings on in Australia

weren't the only incident
that made Jim Templeton wonder

how far his story had travelled.

He was about to get
some unwanted visitors.

Jim Templeton did say
that he was visited

by two strange men
who wore black suits.

So, these two guys
dressed all in black,

the classic men in black, MIB,

said, 'Yeah,
we're from the Ministry.

You're not to talk about this.
We're interested in the photograph.

Can you take us to where
you took the photograph?'

When he asked them their names,
they refused to give them.

They said, 'We don't use names.

We use numeric designations.'

'I am number nine,'
said one of them.

'And I am number 11,'
said the other.

So they drove him out to
the Solway Firth in this Jaguar car,

and one of the guys said to him,
'When you saw the spaceman,

what did it look like? What
did you see through the camera?'

And he says, 'I didn't see anything.
That's the whole point.

I didn't see anything
until we had the photos developed.'

And he said, well, at that point,
the guy just said,

'OK, thank you very much,'
and they both turned around,

trotted off back to the car,
leaving him there thinking,

'Hold on a minute. Are you giving
me a lift back to the fire station?'

They got in the Jaguar, disappeared,

leaving him to walk back to the road
about five miles.

This could, of course,
have been just a couple of UFO fans

who were...

drilling Jim
for extra information, really.

He was convinced at that time
that these were genuine...

officials from
the Ministry of Defence.

He said, 'No, I'm convinced
they were from the MOD,

and they were looking into
how the photograph was taken

and whether there was any...

significance from
an intelligence point of view.

If these
really were government officials,

then the reason the photograph
would have been of interest

could be that it was taken in the
vicinity of a nuclear power station,

and that also provides
a possible explanation

for how a man from outer space

has wandered into the back
of Jim's incredible photograph.

Because of
the power station nearby,

there were inspectors who wore...

spacesuit-type outfits

to test the radioactive levels

in the nearby Solway Firth.

One theory is that one of them
appeared in the scene

just as Jim was
taking the photograph.

I think the most logical
explanation for it

is the one that was suggested
by the CID in Carlisle

at the time
when they looked at the image,

because they had access
to the stripper negatives,

not just the one with
the 'spaceman'...

in inverted commas on it.

They could see what Jim had
photographed before and after.

I've seen some of the other images,
and they don't often get published.

And what you see on the other images
is Jim's wife...

kneeling down beside him

as they're getting Elizabeth
to pose with the flowers.

And she's got a very distinctive...

blue-and-white patterned dress on.

And I think what happened was...

his wife sort of
momentarily walked

behind the camera
into the background,

turned her back,
and that's when he took the shot.

And what you're seeing is the light
reflecting off her dress

as she turns around
and walks back behind the camera.

And if he was concentrating
on getting a really good shot

of his daughter,
he wouldn't necessarily...

remember his wife...

getting into the background
of the shot just for a few seconds.

And she might not have even realised

that that's what
had happened herself.

So that is my best guess.

But apart from that,
I haven't a clue.

Next time
on Britain's X-Files...

did an angel rescue British soldiers
in World War I?

Can people really foresee
terrible tragedies?

Why was a woman charged
with witchcraft during World War II?

And did a reckless
climate experiment

destroy a Devonshire village?

Subtitles by Sky Access Services