Calvine UFO Photo - Reflection In Water Hypothesis

[deirdre]

Pitrevie Lock if I'm not mistaken

Pitlochry

which has flowing water rather than a static pond.

well when the water is flowing it is flowing.

i did read in 1989 england (the whole island) was in a major drought. i assume they stop the flow if they need to refill the loch. no?

but i personally believe all the greenery is real greenary that was in the way of the shot. typically greenary means you hung something from a tree, so if faking a ufo you want to avoid greenary.
but there are smooth parts depending on the camera angle... smooth enough for that crappy ufo ic anyway




this tree is pretty clear

 

[deirdre]

The white upper blob is not symmetrical with the bottom blob,

rocks arent going to be symmetrical because they are bumpy. sometimes extremely bumpy. so what you see from eye level isnt always what the water sees when it looks up.

 

[saucerpilot]

I've inexpertly equalized the brightness of the two halfs. It doesn't really help me tell if the image shows a reflection. But it did occur to me that (re: hill hypothesis) the darker part might be in shadow cast by a cloud bank, so this might be closer to what it would look like without that shadow.

 

[Ann K]

I've inexpertly equalized the brightness of the two halfs. It doesn't really help me tell if the image shows a reflection. But it did occur to me that (re: hill hypothesis) the darker part might be in shadow cast by a cloud bank, so this might be closer to what it would look like without that shadow.

It doesn't really matter, does it? If it's a reflection, it'll usually be darker on the bottom. If it's a real object with (presumably) a top and a bottom, it'll usually be darker on the bottom. Take your pick. Either way it's harder to explain that difference with the "upside down" hypothesis.

 

[Ann K]

I made a simple gif using the hi res picture, where I tried to find the mirror line by eye. I think I did an honest job here, but two things bother me. The white upper blob is not symmetrical with the bottom blob, and I notice these "herringbone" shaped lines diagonally.. Am I the only one seeing those?

The fact that those lines follow mirror image trajectories is ...well... exactly what you'd expect of a reflection.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Dishwashers, yes. But all we know is that Lindsay said one of them had an English accent, not where he or the other was from.

He said they were holiday workers, which implies students - but yes in theory they could be local students.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Prof Simon Holland crowdsourced some ideas that led him to suggest this 20m island in Loch Errochty he showed this photo of the island and a nearby fence (island on the right):



This island is only visible in the 2021 google earth images when the water is lower.

Then Oli (Alien_Addict) while scanning the area on his podcast a few hours ago found, in the 2005 google earth image, a much smaller triangular jutting piece of rock about 5m across. In later images it's just part of the shoreline. I think it's a good candidate but I dont know if there's a fence near.


The loch is an 8km drive from Calvine and the road is 170m from the shore at this point. From the right angle, there's over 400 meters of water before you hit the shore on the other side.

Now the only reason this triangular piece of rock was found is because someone else had a photo of the loch showing a different island - so it would be a huge stroke of luck if this turns out to have led to the Calvine UFO! But it's worth someone going out there to see what they can see (unless of course that piece of land is currently submerged) not only in this loch but the surrounding ones that could be plausible locations with boulders etc.

 

[deirdre]

2021 google earth images when the water is lower.

i see it in 2010 too. problem is i dont see any trees or even highish bushes in the entire area.


2006

 

[Charlie Wiser]

i see it in 2010 too. problem is i dont see any trees or even highish bushes in the entire area.

The loch has a few different kinds of landscape around it (rocks, grassy, trees). If the larger island is the UFO, the undated photo that Holland was sent (above) has bushes near the fence.

If (big if) the Calvine image was inspired by the Puerto Rico hoax 2 years earlier, they may have inserted branches into the shot to frame it like that one. Foreground framing foliage always looks nice! Bonus if they needed to hang a moving model plane from something (Lindsay implied the other 5 photos showed no change in the UFO, only the jet was moving).

As with those people trying to match up mountain peaks with the UFO, I'm pretty sure we could find many candidates based on google earth and photos, but only going out there to check each one is going to help.

 

[deirdre]

has bushes near the fence.

in 2021.

 

[deirdre]

they may have inserted branches into the shot to frame it like that one.

its a really long trek too for someone who allegedly just got off a shift of work. and if youre gonna add branches and a model plane you can use any size rock anywhere

but only going out there to check each one is going to help.

if that. it was 30 years ago. fences change. foliage changes. lochs raise and lower.
fingers crossed some scot spots it eventually in his travels and posts it for us!

 

[Charlie Wiser]

its a really long trek too for someone who allegedly just got off a shift of work. and if youre gonna add branches and a model plane you can use any size rock anywhere

It's only a 170 meter walk from the road... They could've brought the fence posts with them too! Since they sent this to the paper for $$ and not to a UFO magazine, it seems planned in advance - right down to the decision to use B&W film. But yes, it could be literally anywhere - a good hoax is as truthful as possible, though, so I presume it was at least done around the date claimed, somewhere near where they worked.

if that. it was 30 years ago. fences change. foliage changes. lochs raise and lower.
fingers crossed some scot spots it eventually in his travels and posts it for us!

I hope so!

 

[supermoof]

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but I didn't see it anywhere:
A user on reddit posted a link to this location as a possibility for the photo's source. Everything lines up quite nicely- it's close to Calvine, the fence looks similar, and the trees look similar (compare the hanging branches here with those in the UFO photo (switch streetview to 2009 to see this):




Additionally, there's some wooden debris in the water a little father down the road which could potentially make a nice shape in the water when the levels are higher, and maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but these fenceposts could match up and the mossy leftmost one could be responsible for the furry mass in the bottom left of the UFO photo (the more I look at it the less I'm convinced about the mossy fencepost, but since I started typing this out I'll finish):



The final thing to mention is that there's a pretty steep bank on the other side of the road. If a person was up on the bank they could probably get an angle down at the fence and the water that could match up pretty closely. All of this is speculation!

Edit: one final note is that the location where this is taken, the "Lick Estate", has some nice photos on Google. Check out this one- rocks reflected in the water, tree branches hanging down, etc.

 

[deirdre]

It's only a 170 meter walk from the road... They could've brought the fence posts with them too! Since they sent this to the paper for $$ and not to a UFO magazine, it seems planned in advance - right down to the decision to use B&W film. But yes, it could be literally anywhere - a good hoax is as truthful as possible, though, so I presume it was at least done around the date claimed, somewhere near where they worked.

well dont forget the one thing you really need (unless they really did hang a moldy ravioli from a tree) is the reflection. and reflections arent guaranteed.

 

[Rory]

Since they sent this to the paper for $$ and not to a UFO magazine, it seems planned in advance

How much are you thinking they would have been hoping for for these photos? My guess would be between £50 and £200. But perhaps I'm overestimating.

 

[FatPhil]

I think the issue I have with this location is that it is a river - Pitrevie Lock if I'm not mistaken - which has flowing water rather than a static pond. Any picture of the surface of the water would show ripples, eddies and would not look as mirror-like as in the original photo.

Mirror-like's possible:

 

[Max Phalange]

it could be literally anywhere - a good hoax is as truthful as possible, though, so I presume it was at least done around the date claimed, somewhere near where they worked.

But if we assume their intent was to deceive, then really any of the information that accompanied the photo is untrustworthy. It could even be a diorama built on a kitchen table, unless it can be proved otherwise.

The best evidence we can hope for it the other five frames they allegedly shot - see what changes from frame to frame could rule out a lot of possibilities.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

How much are you thinking they would have been hoping for for these photos? My guess would be between £50 and £200. But perhaps I'm overestimating.

Maybe they asked so much that this is what prompted the paper to get an opinion from the RAF first.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

But if we assume their intent was to deceive, then really any of the information that accompanied the photo is untrustworthy. It could even be a diorama built on a kitchen table, unless it can be proved otherwise.

The best evidence we can hope for it the other five frames they allegedly shot - see what changes from frame to frame could rule out a lot of possibilities.

And the pics could have been months or years old before they even sent them to the paper.
I'd like to hope the paper returned the negatives to the photographer, especially as they didn't even run the story and presumably hadn't (yet) paid anything.

 

[Ravi]

I see we are more and more entering in the situation that we can make it all work by just introducing all kinds of unknowns..
I am pretty sure guessing, and just basically fantasizing about things we do not know at all, is not promoted on Metabunk. Perhaps I am wrong.

 

[jarlrmai]

I see we are more and more entering in the situation that we can make it all work by just introducing all kinds of unknowns..
I am pretty sure guessing, and just basically fantasizing about things we do not know at all, is not promoted on Metabunk. Perhaps I am wrong.

It's the problem with the hoax theory, it has endless paths.

The problem is the photo just isn't good evidence, but there is a history and a story to it so it is getting huge attention. If it were produced as pure evidence today then it would be noise.

 

[Mendel]

I see we are more and more entering in the situation that we can make it all work by just introducing all kinds of unknowns..
I am pretty sure guessing, and just basically fantasizing about things we do not know at all, is not promoted on Metabunk. Perhaps I am wrong.

what happens is that we're hypothesizing about possibilities, and sometimes someone finds a way to support one and sometimes nobody does. That we're doing this is not concerning, but that we're still doing it after several days of intense discussion makes me feel this one isn't going to be declared "[debunked]" anytime soon, if ever.

the thing is that the "alien craft" hypothesis is also "making it all work by just introducing all kinds of unknowns", so if you're going to do that anyway, we have a wide variety of choices.

 

[Unys]

I've been following all threads on this subject from the beginning and would like to throw in my 2 cents, as I haven't seen anyone mention this hypothesis:

It's not an airplane, it's a bird that photobombed their Nessie hoax, it's flying between the camera and the top of the lake, so we're seeing it from top-down, flying from right to left. Then they went home to develop the film and noticed they had a better hoax than Nessie.


https://drdavidclarke.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/watermarked-jpeg-2.jpg






Any thoughts? What bird would fit the silhouette? The bird could had just took off or was coming for landing, thus it was adjusting its feet and flying close to the water, and the neck was not fully extended. Grebes are endemic to the UK and Scotland, but it may have been another bird if it's a bird at all and not pareidolia.

The lack of reflection from the "bird" is an argument against it being too close to the water, but still high enough that its reflection would fall in the cropped area of the photo, that would also require the bird to be closer to the photographer.

Another hypothesis that fits is that the "bird" was high up and the quality of the photo cannot tell us if we're looking at the dorso or the belly of the bird through its reflection. If it's the reflection of the belly, it explains why the webbed feet (or tail) are seen extended.

Could be, a lot of UFO photos have turned out to be birds caught in flight.

Need now to establish if those lads named the type of aircraft to either the paper or RAF or simply said "a military jet" or words to that effect. Harriers were high profile aircraft after their role in the Falklands just seven years earlier and their unique ability to hover. I do feel at least one of those lads would have recognised a Harrier if one flew past.

 

[jarlrmai]

As a bird photographer it doesn't feel like a bird to me, something about the geometry, wing placement, thickness of neck etc just doesn't feel right. Of course it's way too blurry to tell for sure, the feet being raised in flight is also very not bird like.

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

I'm no ornithologist but I'm uncomfortable with the one wing flapping bird hypothesis.

I totally lost it when I'm supposed to believe it's possible to discern bloomin' feathers from such a poor quality photograph.

Of a bird.

That's how far away?

 

[Mendel]

Harriers were high profile aircraft

and also birds

Article:

Source: https://identify.whatbird.com/obj/28/overview/Northern_Harrier.aspx

 

[Rory]

I see we are more and more entering in the situation that we can make it all work by just introducing all kinds of unknowns..
I am pretty sure guessing, and just basically fantasizing about things we do not know at all, is not promoted on Metabunk. Perhaps I am wrong.

Yeah, I think I'd personally like to see a little less speculation. Floating out ideas to explain the photo is one thing but proposing backstories for the photographers and others involved doesn't seem very 'metabunk' - especially the more outlandish ones.

But I guess all it does is create extra posts to read and tangents to wander down, as well as opportunities to explain why those imaginings might be unlikely (which is maybe good for the imaginer).

I dunno. One for the mods I guess.

 

[deirdre]

Could be a bird carrying a small fish?

could just be carrying a piece of cotton he found. they collect stuff like that for their nests.
(although i too find the bird dimensions in the tail area a bit off. but it is another country, so they could have a crazy tailed bird)

 

[deirdre]

Yeah, I think I'd personally like to see a little less speculation. Floating out ideas to explain the photo is one thing but proposing backstories for the photographers and others involved doesn't seem very 'metabunk' - especially the more outlandish ones.

But I guess all it does is create extra posts to read and tangents to wander down, as well as opportunities to explain why those imaginings might be unlikely (which is maybe good for the imaginer).

I dunno. One for the mods I guess.

sometimes it sparks something. like when we were joking about moldy ravioli and kitchen staff, i realized if i believed that part of the story then a long drive and hike after a kitchen shift seemed iffy to me so i started looking "closer to home".

I think the only issue is if people state things as if they were fact. Probably confuses some readers. Even the bits of "facts" (from MOD files) we do have, are sometimes misstated in these threads and then i cant remember which version is right and i have to relook it up.

 

[Rory]

sometimes it sparks something. like when we were joking about moldy ravioli and kitchen staff, i realized if i believed that part of the story then a long drive and hike after a kitchen shift seemed iffy to me so i started looking "closer to home".

That's true. Though I will say when I worked in a restaurant (aged 21) I still had plenty of energy to get into activities after even a double shift (and the drive here was only 20 minutes - allegedly).

I think the only issue is if people state things as if they were fact. Probably confuses some readers. Even the bits of "facts" (from MOD files) we do have, are sometimes misstated in these threads and then i cant remember which version is right and i have to relook it up.

Yeah, makes me think again some sort of "distilled thread/post" would be useful in a case like this. There's a lot of repetition and relinking of sources too, which shows that people haven't read what's come before (understandable, since there's so much of it).

Are we gonna see a split to a "bird hypothesis" thread too?

 

[JMartJr]

RE: speculation in this thread and elsewhere

I looks to me like a little "brainstorming" is going on --which has its good and bad features. To "crowd source" an investigation into a case, especially one like this with so little hard information, may well require a bit of speculation, "IF this is true, what bits of confirming evidence might we find?" That might lead to possible solutions that otherwise would not be explored. The downside is that dead ends and false leads wind up in the thread.
An example of this working well is the thread on the Kumburgaz, Turkey UFO thread (https://www.metabunk.org/threads/2008-ufo-footage-from-kumburgaz-turkey.9844/) While no firm conclusions seems to have been reached yet (and may never be) a variety of ideas have been explored and a lot of useful information has emerged. Some speculative theories have been rules out, some remain in play. In cases where identifying the exact aircraft seen by the witness is not going to be possible, or a hoax deinitively proved, that might be the best we can do, and is worth doing.

It might help future readers of these threads if we are scrupulous in saying, up front, "This is speculative, but I wonder if ... " type statements when speculating or proposing hypotheses. Though I feel that is already made pretty clear.

 

[Rory]

And when it's to do with aspects of the evidence that's one thing - but speculating on the possible financial motives of unknown people based on speculations on where they might have been from and what they might have been doing, which is in turn based on speculation seems not quite in the mb spirit - but then how would anyone know not to do that unless they were explicitly told?

 

[Ravi]

RE: speculation in this thread and elsewhere

An example of this working well is the thread on the Kumburgaz, Turkey UFO thread (https://www.metabunk.org/threads/2008-ufo-footage-from-kumburgaz-turkey.9844/) While no firm conclusions seems to have been reached yet (and may never be) a variety of ideas have been explored and a lot of useful information has emerged. Some speculative theories have been rules out, some remain in play. In cases where identifying the exact aircraft seen by the witness is not going to be possible, or a hoax deinitively proved, that might be the best we can do, and is worth doing.

That one is a bit different though as we know a lot. We know who shot the videos, we know what he supposedly used, we know when it was done and where. A lot different to the Calvine case IMO. We have literally zero facts, apart from testimony (being DOD doesn't matter).

 

[Rory]

Anyway, here is something definite, Clarke has posted an image of the envelope one of the two witnesses used to send the prints to the Daily Record:

https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/2022/08/12/the-calvine-ufo-revealed/

Two things came to mind: it looks like an older person’s handwriting and whose name and address is that upside down in the top right corner? It is not that of Lindsay or the Daily Record but a residential address in Edinburgh

1. That's not one of the witnesses' envelopes, it's the envelope used by the Record to send the prints to the MoD (thoroughly explained in the other thread).

2. The upside down address was also explained there a few days ago (but not posted for privacy's sake - it was the address of a former journalist - now deceased - for the Edinburgh Evening News, apparently written on there by Craig Lindsay for something unrelated).

 

[Unys]

1. The envelope was discussed here a few days ago.

2. That's not one of the witnesses' envelopes, it's the envelope used by the Record to send the prints to the MoD (thoroughly explained in the other thread).

3. The upside down address was also explained there a few days ago (but not posted for privacy's sake - it was the address of a former journalist - now deceased - for the Edinburgh Evening News).

Post deleted, apologies, I missed that and will have a look back

 

[Rory]

Looks like your Twitter followers feel you've gotten behind the reflection hypothesis @Mick West - is that the case?

 

[deirdre]

Post deleted, apologies, I missed that and will have a look back

. (gets confusing when we have two or three threads on the same topic.)
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-original-calvine-ufo-photo.12571/post-276522

 

[Rory]

I'm pretty sure this hasn't been posted here yet - a neat animation (created in Blender) of how the reflection hypothesis might work:


Source: https://twitter.com/RuanLotter/status/1559886354879848449

 

[Mick West]

Looks like your Twitter followers feel you've gotten behind the reflection hypothesis @Mick West - is that the case?

Not really. I don't think it can be eliminated, but I think there's also a few problems with it. I would not rank it that differently from "model on a string"

 

[deirdre]

I'm pretty sure this hasn't been posted here yet

that's awesome. ive been too lazy to look up how to make a mirror in Blender.. now i can jst steal his mirror
thanks Ruan!!