The Ilkley Moor Photograph

Philip Spencer was crossing Ilkley Moor early on 1 December 1987 with a camera when, by his account, he came on a small figure in a ravine. He photographed it. He describes giving chase, and then seeing a silver disc rise and go.

What is on the record

Three tellings on a single channel, two claimants, and a National Archives file recorded against the case as reporting rather than primary corroboration. The grade is testimony.

The photograph is why the case survives. The figure is put at about four feet six inches. Three separate photographic examinations are described in the record as concluding the figure was really present in front of the lens rather than added to the negative, and Dr A. Leonard of UMIST is named among those who examined it without being able to explain it. As with the McRoberts photograph elsewhere in this batch, the archive holds the analyses as reported and does not hold the original material.

Two physical elements accompany it. Spencer reported his compass reading reversed afterwards, and about two hours missing from a walk he thought had been brief.

The onboard material came later and by a different route. Under hypnosis he described being levitated aboard, examined under a scanning light, shown the Earth from space and shown films warning of a polluted future. The archive records the route because it matters: everything in that paragraph arrived through regression, while the photograph, the compass and the missing hours did not.

Why it sits where it does

L3 on multiple tellings from one channel. What Philip Spencer photographed in that ravine is not resolved here.