Tag Archives: Photo

Thoughts on the Dorset Monkey

News broke earlier this week of a monkey sighting in the Dorchester area of Dorset reported by a 17-year-old girl who said

‘‘It looked about the size of a small gorilla. It was walking like one as well, using its arms and feet. It was such a shock I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first. I managed to get a photo but it quickly went out of sight. I couldn’t see it very clearly. It was definitely a monkey because you could tell by its hunched back and the way it scampered across the field and up the tree. It wasn’t a black dog. I have no idea what the monkey was doing there. It could have escaped if someone was keeping it as a pet.’

Here is the photo taken by the eye-witness that allegedly shows a monkey.

monkey in Dorset

Although what we’re looking at does indeed look monkey-like I wasn’t convinced when I first saw this, and although the eye-witness herself says that she saw a monkey I wasn’t about to just accept her word as proof of that – especially after my 2009 sighting of a ring tailed lemur in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire that turned out to be a black and white dog…

I sent a curious email off to Monkey World in Dorset to ask for their opinion on this. They’re an Ape and Monkey Rescue Centre who offer not only a great visitor attraction, but also educational outreach work and rescue and rehabilitation for primates bought as pets by people who quickly realise they’re not ideal domestic pets. Basically, Monkey World rocks.

A spokeswoman got in touch to answer my questions and explained that they are not missing any apes or monkeys. She also told me that they were unable to identify the animal as a monkey or ape

You are correct that the picture is of poor quality which is surprising with all the modern technology and advancements today with camera phones. As the picture is of such poor quality, we are unable to identify exactly what it is and as I have been telling reporters for days now, I can confirm that all of our rescued monkeys and apes are safe and well at the park.

A personal opinion was offered that this looks like a deer grazing – side facing the photographer, with it’s head down on the left hand side of the photo, and I think that is a good possibility. I thought it initially looked like a large black dog facing away and to the right from the photographer, with its head obscured by its shoulder (head would be on the right).
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Of course, just because Monkey World aren’t missing a monkey or ape doesn’t rule that out completely. It could be an escaped animal from a private collection, but let’s think rationally about that for a moment. The eye-witness reported that it ‘It looked about the size of a small gorilla.’ A small Gorilla is still pretty big considering adults are roughly 5 foot plus in height –  adult male gorillas usually measure in at around 5.5 – 6 foot in height, while females are slightly shorter. I am extremely skeptical that a rogue gorilla would go unnoticed other than for this brief sighting. Gorillas do not make such popular pets as chimpanzees and other primates and zoos are usually very keen to ‘snap up’ gorillas that need re-homing.  Not only that, but we also know that eye-witness testimony isn’t great for accuracy because our memories can so easily distort information over short periods of time. I refer you back to my ring-tailed-lemur-that-was-a-dog sighting.

‘It had a long tail! With black and white rings! It was running like a lemur!’
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‘It’s a bloody dog’

So, if not a gorilla could it be a smaller primate? You can certainly own certain primates once you have been granted a Dangerous Animals License by your local council – this involves inspections from the local authority and other such measures to ensure you have adequate space, and can prevent escape and the spreading of disease etc. I have made contact with Dorset County Council about whether a license has ever been granted for a Gorilla, but I’m not sure I will get a response (I’ll update this blog post, if I do). This was something I questioned the Monkey World representative about. Their response

There is a growing problem in the UK with people keeping primates as pets and there are several species that are legal in the UK as long as you have the correct licences available from local authorities, however these generally tend to be smaller primates, nowhere near the size of the thing in the picture. For example squirrel monkeys, marmosets and capuchin monkeys – we know all about this as we generally end up picking up the pieces from members of the public who buy them thinking they are cute and very soon realise that natural behaviour (such as urine washing) is not conducive to living in a house.
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Often these primates are in a poor state of health by the time we are called in to assist, although small, these primates require companionship, the correct diet and veterinary care, adequate space, housing and mental stimulation and in most cases this is not provided to them. It is entirely possible that someone could have bought one of these primates from a pet shop, got bored with it and let it out, but I can assure you that the blurred image shown in damn nearly every single newspaper is not a squirrel monkey, capuchin or marmoset. The thing is far too big to be any of these.
You can read more about the problem of primates being kept as pets here, it truly is an appalling problem. So although it could possibly be a Gorilla or perhaps a giant sized monkey, I think it’s more likely that what we’re looking at here is an object (there is no evidence other than testimony that it was moving) or animal that has been misidentified.

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UFO over Somerset: Initial speculation

ufo

The ‘This is Somerset’ news website reported on photos taken by local photographer Annie Henderson that shows an odd and unidentified object in the sky. The object appears to be fiery orange and red, and travelling upwards at quite some speed. The apparent speed lends weight to the idea that the object is propelled, and initial speculation between local researchers is that what we’re looking at is a water propelled rocket of some type (hat tip to Robert Moore).

Below is a photo of a whole load of water propelled rockets being shot up into the sky, they don’t look overly similar but that’s laregly due to the fact that the lighting conditions are different. In the photo below the sun is high in the sky, whereas in the Annie Henderson photos the sun is very low.

World Record for Most Water Rockets shot into the sky simultaneously. Source: Wikimedia

In this comparison photo (click image for a larger view) you can see similarities in the movement of the objects. The current record for greatest altitude achieved by a water and air propelled rocket is 2044 feet (623 metres), held by U.S. Water Rockets on 14 June 2007, and it’s difficult to calculate how high a rocket would have to be during sunset to be illuminated like it is in the Annie Henderson photo. However, it was pointed out by both Robert Moore and Tim Farley that this could simply just be a jets contrail illuminated brightly due to the position of the sun in the sky. This was my initial thought too.

A jet with illuminated contrail Source: The Living Moon

Jet with sunlit contrail Source: The Living Moon

Could this UFO be a water propelled rocket? Or perhaps a jet? Without knowing more about the time the object was seen, how it moved and how long it was in the sky for we can’t really be sure. I have contacted the newspaper that published this story to see if that information is available, and to see if it might be possible to get a copy of the original photo for further analysis. I’ll update the blog if I get more details. In the mean time, what are peoples thoughts?

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Posted in: Musings, Paranormal / Tagged: , , , , ,

The Stone Tape Projector – Science?

The ‘Psychic and Science‘ stage show stars alleged psychic Derek Acorah, and television “historian” Richard Felix, who both worked on most Haunted together when it was still on air. The shows website entices potential audience members…

Experience amazing and incredible sights and occurrences as the two celebrity Psychic and Scientific investigators explore, explain and decipher the existence of the paranormal.

The website goes on to list the various techniques that will be used, including Psychic readings from Derek on stage, explanations of the realities of ghosts from Richard, Glass Divination, Table Tilting, and Human Pendulum live on stage (with audience participation), A chance for 1 lucky person to conduct a lone vigil in a hunted part of the location, 10 audience members will take part in a seance with Derek in a haunted location, Q & A session with Derek and Richard, and a spectacular Grand Finale using The Revolutionary Stone Tape Projector.

‘The what now?‘ you might ask, and until yesterday I was right there with you. Many have heard of the Stone Tape Theory that suggests the very fabric of a location can capture the events that happen there, for those events to be replayed years later, often in ghostly form. I can remember being a rookie ghost hunter and being told that those ghosts who walk through doors that are no longer there are ‘probably caused by the stone tape effect’.

I did a little digging, and the first mention I found of the Stone Tape Projector was an article in the York Press where the paper reported

“Derek and Richard will try to bring an apparition out of the stonework of the old York Prison, using the Stone Tape Projector. “This will test our theory of traumatic events being recorded in the fabric of a building – in other words, can the walls talk?” ask the psychic and scientific investigators.”

This still didn’t reveal the technicality of this method though, and so I spoke to a contact of mine who has the inside scoop on the Psychic and Science stage shows who told me that

Basically, the idea was that if the Stone Tape Theory worked, they would pump power into the object, which then fed back into the machine. This was then ‘projected’ out via the Plasma bulbs… but to ‘project’ the image from the bulbs, they had to use a smoke machine to ‘cast the image’ onto because they didn’t have a screen.
 A member of York Skeptics attended one of the stage shows in York and reported on the show for the York Skeptics Blog. Of the Stone Tape Projector they said

The audience were invited to take lots of photographs and look for faces. I took over 150 and did not see a single face, but other people were much more fortunate, with a number of ghostly apparitions caught on camera.

I found the following photos on the Psychic and Science Facebook page which appear to show the Stone Tape Projector in action which show exactly what is happening on stage. The use of a smoke machine instead of a screen helps people see faces – faces that are illusions caused by the blue light being cast onto the swirling and moving smoke. This is something often known as simulacrum or the Pareidolia effect. Those observing this taking place don’t see the faces with their naked eye because the swirling shapes and patterns of the light and smoke are moving so fast, yet a camera will capture a still frame of this movement, and the movement and shapes caused by the smoke coupled with the light causes illusions.
In the second photo you can see a face like illusion at the lower part of the blue area. This was sent to me by an audience member who was convinced they had captured a hangman in this photo. I also can’t help but notice a screen in the background of the second image… was the smoke really needed after all? I suspect not, and I suspect that it is added for theatrical effect which is fair enough. However it is slightly concerning that people are leaving these shows thinking they have really experienced a ghost because of dodgy techniques like this.
The Stone Tape Projector relies on a scientifically weak hypothesis, and a sciene-y looking set up on stage to convince people that they’re experiencing something genuinely paranormal as the finale of this show. There is nothing credible about this technique whatsoever.

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Steve Feltham has the hump from the latest Nessie photo

Click here for update - 3rd September

I wrote previously that skeptics were being too quick to label the latest Nessie photo as a hoax without any supporting evidence, and how this was illogical behaviour. Yesterday a comment was left on my post by Steve Feltham about the photo and how he’d discovered that it was not a genuine photo containing something unidentifiable, or something naturally occuring that had been misidentified. Steve said

That was my first impressions of Georges photograph [quoted in this blog post], pubished exclusively by the Inverness courier. I have since then spent a lot of time getting to the bottom of what actually went on here…. i can quiet catagorically, with no fear of him ever daring to sue me, that George Edwards has deliberately punted a photo that he know to be of a fibreglass prop from a documentary as a real picture of something unexplained… no question. I now have this hump, i also have film of it being used in the water, and i also have film of it on the DECK OF HIS BOAT!

I sat in shock for a moment or two before processing what I had just read before rushing onto the Facebook page as instructed where I found a timeline of Steve’s discovery written out before me. I personally know what it is like to believe something is genuine only for doubt to start creeping in when you think about the subject a bit more. Steve posted several photos on his Facebook wall on August 19th showing a Fibreglass hump that had been used in a Documentary by National Geographic for Channel 5 called ‘Truth behind the Loch Ness monster”.

Well that is the George Edwards nessie photograph solved. Turns out he used a fibreglass hump which was being filmed for inclusion in the National Geographic documentary, “the truth behind the loch ness monster” . If you have a copy of this documentary then the first five minutes should be enough to show you what he did, and the final nail in his story is the shot 5.47minutes in that shows the fake hump on the front of his boat! – Steve Feltham [source]

Click on the above photos and stills from the documentary for larger versions.

Steve went to the media with this discovery of his to show how he felt the photo by Edwards had been faked using this prop. He also contacted the producers of the show to ask what had happened to the prop used during filming. He states

Today I emailed the production company that made the “truth behind the loch ness monster” asking for information about the events surrounding the borrowing of the hump, and their use of it, pointing out that i was interested because i believe george edwards took the opportunity to snap a photo of the hump in the water whilst they filmed it from his boat for their doc. The response started with this line…..

” Hi Steve,
I saw that photo on the net and knew instantly that’s what it was.”

Steve also commented about how roughly two weeks ago he paid George Edwards a visit to enquire about whether any other photos of the oddity in the water had been taken. He waited for George’s boat to return to Temple Pier from a cruise out on the Loch. Steve reports that he waited for the next lot of tourists to load onto the boat before engaging George in conversation and reports that their conversation went something like this:

Steve: Alright George?
George: aye steve, how you doing?”
Steve: aye, fine… I was just wondering, because a few people seem to be asking a few questions, is there any more photographs?
George: aye, there is, *untying ropes* there’s maybe ten or eleven in total, but I gave them all to Peter jolly [a  freelance Inverness photographer for Northpix] he’s got them all now.
Steve: oh, I was just wondering because-
George: people can think what they like, Steve. I am too long in the tooth to care about that. I know what I saw
Steve explains on his FB wall that it was at this point that he became suspicious because he, Steve, had gone on record at that point explaining to the world that he thought the photo was genuine. Apparently a few days later Steve spoke to Peter jolly of Northpix who told him that George had indeed stated he would email across the photos to him, but that hasn’t done so yet. You can watch Steve explaining all of this to the media in the video here and from 22minutes 50 seconds here (UK readers only).
This is certainly an intriguing twist to the story and makes for compelling reading and thinking. The hump does indeed look extremely like the oddity photographed by George Edwards, and if George did indeed take more photographs that he hasn’t yet released then it becomes a bit more suspicious. Especially coupled with the fact that postcards of the photo had been on sale for some time before the photo was released to the media. I hope George makes a comment and answers these accusation, but my gut is telling me he isn’t going to do that, which is a shame.
I think the evidence that Steve has provided while suggesting the photo is a hoax is strong, but I still have slight reservations about putting my money exclusively onto that as an explanation. I have a feeling more will be revealed over the coming days and weeks about this that might convince me further, and I should point out that I have no reason to believe that Steve is being malicious or untruthful in his accusations of a hoax. I’ll finish this post off with a quote from Steve Feltham.
For 21 years now I have watched and waited on the shores of Loch Ness for a glimpse of one of these animals. Never have I entertained the thought of creating a hoax sighting. Whilst not yet having a good sighting myself, I have acted as a filter, letting down gently the people who show me their photos and videos if I can explain it as an image of a mundane object or event on the surface of the Loch, and thus keeping bad evidence out of the public domain.
If however I cannot explain somebodies piece of evidence then I do push it into the public arena for others to study and analyze, such as Marcus Atkinsons excellent sonar contact last year. I wish that George Edwards photograph had been the real mackoy, as I first believed it to be when asked to comment on it for the Inverness Courier, before they exclusively released it a couple of weeks ago.
Unfortunately, (especially for George), deeper investigation and conversations with people working here at the loch who i trust have proven beyond any possible doubt that this picture is a deliberate hoax. I could of (sic) kept quiet, as many people have said, all Nessie stories are good for tourism, but I am not here to keep the likes of George in business, I am here to shed light on this wonderful world class mystery, and I am proud to say that. Now unfortunately the truth behind this hoax must get out there into the public arena, to hopefully undo the damage that a cynical man has done.
Update: The opening scene from the Nessie documentary was gone through frame by frame, and what you see below is is the original Edwards photo with the frame by frame shots of the prop that Steve Feltham has sitting on top. You’ll notice the two humps look very similar in the water (though the prop on the right is slightly blurred because of the frame by frame capture process)

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