On the first of December, 1987, while walking in an area of moorland in Yorkshire, England, he witnessed a UFO, and took a picture of one of its occupants.
Alien Photography
On some occasions the picture shows a well-focused object but most are suspicious and many have been proven to be hoaxes - the photographer and associates using man made objects to convey something otherworldly, often for the purpose of fame and fortune.
Even rarer are pictures of the supposed extra-terrestrial beings that supposedly fly these craft, and although over the last eighty years, fifty or so have been said to have been taken, most Ufologists consider about ten of them to be some-what credible or "of not a suspicious or fraudulent nature".
Ilkley Moor is situated in moorland between the towns of Ilkley and Keighley, in West Yorkshire, is considered a place of mystery and eeriness. Like most of rural Britain, it is a bleak landscape of mud, rock, swamp and prehistoric stones. In the Northern area of the moor there are carved boulders dating from the Bronze Age, one of which is called the Swastika Stone. There is also a small stone circle to the East called the Twelve Apostles. The moor has for years been attributed with strange legends, with strange creatures said to roam through at night, and strange swirling lights that appear through fog and are said to have their own intelligence. Situated nearby, however, are Menwith Hill Military Base and Leeds-Bradford Airport, which may account for the numerous reports of UFOs over the years.
After some years of being a policeman in the city, Spencer had moved his family to Yorkshire, to be closer to his wife's family. He was heading to his father-in-laws residence on that December morning through the moor to the North ,and had taken with him a camera and compass to navigate through the foggy area. He hoped to take pictures of the strange lights people were recently reporting in the moor.
It was while he searched for angles to shoot the moor from that he saw a strange-looking being further ahead in the slopes. It was green in appearance and about four foot tall. It seemed to be gesturing to him to stay away, as Spencer perceived it, and he impulsively aimed his camera and took his infamous picture. The creature then ran away and Spencer, for some reason, immediately pursued it. After losing it, he then saw a dome-shaped craft rise from the moor, with a white square atop the dome. It disappeared into the sky, leaving Spencer astounded.
Roughly half an hour later, Spencer made it to the nearest village. He made two interesting observations soon after: the clock tower in the village said it was two hours later than his watch said, and his compass pointed South, not North.
What had happened to him?
Soon after, Spencer made contact with a UFO investigator by the name of Peter Hough, and the photo and film began being sent to a number of experts around the world, including Kodak laboratories in Hampstead and even to the U.S. where an optical physicist from the Navy determined the picture was "too grainy" for proper analysis. It was established to not be a super-imposed image or double exposure, the being in the picture was really there, however, many sceptics argue it could have been a cardboard cut-out.
While his film and picture were being looked at, Spencer began having vividly strange dreams. He sought help from Hough, and was hypnotically regressed to that morning. Under hypnosis, the story changed. He, upon seeing the creature, was instantly paralysed and found himself levitating a few feet off the ground. The green man began pulling him along toward the craft, like a child with a balloon on a string, and both entered the "saucer", where a voice told him to be calm and a group of green men began doing strange medical experiments to him, inserting stuff up his nose and mouth.
He was then shown another film, and it is here that the story gets creepier, as the contents of said film, to this day, and even under hypnosis, Spencer has not revealed. Claiming that it is too important and that they dont want us to know, he has vowed never to discuss the topic, saying he is not allowed to divulge anything more.
He was then, apparently, returned to the moor, where he took a picture of one of his captors, apparently now waving him goodbye and not gesturing for him to stay away, as in his original story.
Sceptics have argued over the years the genuineness of the story, considering that Spencer did indeed leave his house that morning with a camera intending to perhaps capture something of a supernatural nature on film. And many have wondered why he didnt take a photo of the spaceship, as he had an opportunity to do so, and would have been more less harder to fake.
Did a retired English police officer take a picture of an extra-terrestrial being in moorland in 1987?
Or is this another hoax?