 When The Book of THoTH website began in 2004, I wrote a small article about an anomalous object photographed in the UK, and not that far from where I live. It puzzled me ever since I first saw the picture, because it was unlike anything I’d seen pictures of before.
It’s a surreal picture, given the fact that none of the people in the picture are remotely aware of what is there. When the photograph was taken, the object was far to the left of centre, indicating (to me at least) that the object was not seen at the time of taking the photograph as claimed by the photographer. Given the size of the object too, if it had been visible it surely would have caught the attention of all involved in the picture and the photographer herself.
The picture shows a group of “Morris Dancers” an old English tradition dating back hundreds of years. Mrs E who took the picture, owned a public house and was wanting to get some pictures of these dancers who were in the car park of the establishment.
 Cropped area from original photograph, please bear in mind that this was the left most part of the picture, and the original centre of the pic was focused on the dancers, and not the object.
After discussing this incident with a member of The Book of THoTH he suggested that he perform some initial photo analysis to determine if this picture was hoaxed, or contained an anomaly due to film processing. The results do seem to indicate that the picture is not a processing fault or a hoax and shows a real object of some description.
The original article by THoTH
May 30th 1983, outside a hotel/public house the owner Mrs E, was taking some photographs, of some folk dancers. She reports hearing a strange sound (she described it as a whooshing sound) but nothing else unusual. She took a picture you see a small version of here.
When it was developed however, there was something highly anomalous on the photograph. What appears to be a huge orb or orange ball of light. At first, suspecting it may be a fault on the film, she took the picture and film back to the developers.
They pointed out it could not be a processing fault as it didn't effect the trees, they suggested a balloon as an explanation, but she knew full well, as did everyone present, there were no 8ft balloons around that day. She certainly wouldn't take a picture and not notice it!
Some people in a research group I was in, found out about the mystery photograph, and set off to talk to her about it.
After arriving, they found out they'd missed her by about 30 minutes, so to pass the time, they went over to some people who were camping nearby. They explained who they were, and asked if anyone had seen anything unusual lately.
They had, and had done for some time apparently, what they'd seen was anomalous balls of orange light, that used to dance like huge fireflies at night. They mentioned that it was part of the local history, people had seen these things for many years.
The even more bizarre twist to this, is that none of them were even aware there was a picture of one. I know that the lady who took the picture, wanted to remain anonymous, for the reason that if her employers found out about it, she'd surely lose her job. So that anonymity was respected. She's known only as Mrs E.
I've never forgotten about this case, and yesterday I thought I'd look it up on the Internet. Theres not a trace of the story that I can find (if anyone else can please let us know). In the forums (a link below) Kira has made a plea for any further information on this case.
One of the main reasons is to get a better picture of this thing. The ones you see have been scanned from a magazine article many years ago, hence the poor quality.
The magazine article was written by the original investigator of this highly unusual case. The picture and camera were both checked. Its not an orb created by a digital camera, this was in 1983 and it was taken on regular film.
I can't account for what this thing is, I had a hard enough time deciding what category to post this in. In the end I decided UFO, because technically that's correct, even if the F refers to floating !
I've put resized versions of the pictures in the Gallery, and the full size ones, I'll make available as downloads soon. Because there are some significant points to note about it.
1 - It appears to be semi transparent
2 - It appears also to have a white glow around it
3 - It is behind the tree either that or its some weird kind of camera fault that no one knows about.
4 - It's huge!
Again, I do apologise for the poor quality, I've asked WhiteTiger to do an analysis of the photograph to see if it's anything that's been overlooked and/or to offer some technical background to it.
The follow up
By: evadatam5150
The truth is out there...!!!
Last week THoTH posted and article called, "Mystery at Appletreewick UK 1983", in which a photograph was taken of an orb like object behind some tree's by a woman working at the Craven Arms Hotel. Interesting indeed, yet THoTH didn't have a lot of background information concerning the picture or details surrounding the event.
I managed to find a small, interesting article written by Mike Priestley, entitled: "Big Bird riddle that was never solved", that I posted in reference to THoTH's article. This article had a little insight for us into events in and around the same area and time frame as the Appletreewick orb incident. However, this left me wanting and needing more information.
So I decided to write a letter to Mr. Priestley, in order to, hopefully, see if he had anymore information in regards to the Appletreewick photograph. Fortunately Mr. Priestley is a kind and generous sort.
Following is his response to my e-mail. And although there still remains alot of questions needing to be answered I thought I would be remiss in not sharing his e-mail with you. Enjoy..!!
Hello Dave
I've had a look through our cuttings and there's nothing specific about the Appletreewick photograph. What there is, though, is a cutting from (I think) the Yorkhire Evening Post (Leeds) of July 19, 1983 which says that there had been more than 30 sightings of UFOs in the North Yorkshire area since the start of the year at places including Grassington, Skipton, Carlton, Addingham and Gargrave. It doesn't mention Appletreewick. The report says: "There were two strange incidents at Grassington. One involved a large, circular object, glowing white and flashing, hovering above a woman as she walked down her garden path. In the other case a man heard a high-pitched siren noise early one morning and discovered an orange glow in some trees. When the glow had vanished the trees were examined and one was found to be badly scored (sic). A sample of the bark was analysed by Leeds University, which reported that it had definitely not been damaged by lightning." This news report was based on an interview with Mark Birdsall, research officer of the Yorkshire UFO Society.
That's all I can offer, I'm afraid.
Regards,
Mike Priestley
Take from this what you will, as for me, I will continue to search. I have responded to Mr. Priestley and thanked him personally, as well as for The Book of THoTH.
WhiteTigers Analysis - The Appletreewick Orb Photograph Examined - WhiteTiger
Below is a zoom of the anomaly itself along with details of the background and foreground that will be discussed as part of the examination of the photo. First, the basics: this is not a lens or camera artefact, since it is both occluded by tree limbs which are not washed out nor distorted and it also occludes the skyline behind it.
It can not be a dust mote reflecting flash, nor a dust mote or droplet of moisture on the lens because there is no distortion of the tree limbs in front of the orb. A dust mote or droplet refracting incoming light would blur the limbs and overlay background color values on them, and neither of these things are present. The same would be true of lens flaws, internal camera reflections, etc.
I'm told that the Kodak firm has examined the original picture and could offer no explanation, though they did rule out film flaw and related known anomalies.
 When viewing the full size original there is an impression when concentrating on the orb that it seems to be showing part of the horizon through itself, that is, it gives the impression of being partly transparent. On close examination this turns out to be no more than an illusion caused by the dark red/orange color of the orb and coincidental positioning of leaves and limbs of the tree in the foreground.
This is a greyscale blow-up of the lower part of the orb, including enough horizon to offer perspective. The areas enclosed by the ellipses show where dark foliage in the foreground just happens to be in the right location to give the illusion that the horizon is visible through the body of the orb. On the left, there is a leaf overlapping the edge of the orb at almost exactly the skyline level and a line of other leaves and branches arrayed to the right of that. In the right-hand ellipse the limb is in nearly the same horizon relative position and is a continuation of the false skyline. In the blow-up the eye can easily see the coincidental line-up of dark limbs and leaves that create the illusion of transparency, as well as the "clump" of dark foliage that adds to the overall impression of a dark lower section on the orb when looking at the full sized picture.
 One of the most interesting features of the picture is the halo or corona surrounding the orb. This was one of the areas I concentrated on, because the presence of the corona rules out the "big balloon" explanation for a variety of technical reasons that will be explained as we go along.
Part of the examination process was checking out the color and brightness values of the corona, and the picture at the right is a screen capture illustrating this. The image shows relevant parts of the screen display of the image processing program used in this examination. The crosshair cursor shows the position being sampled while the display to the right of it shows the red, green and blue values for that location on the picture.
The numbers simply describe the "degree" of each color represented in the pixel highlighted by the cursor. The values shown are for a randomly selected pixel, and represent accurately the consistent values I found all throughout the corona.
These numbers are not terribly important in their own right but they become highly significant when they are compared to the numbers found in the background sky, as illustrated in the fourth picture.
 This again represents the r/g/b distributions I found all through the sky in the area around the orb. Notice that the values are closely similar with the single exception of a small but disproportionately strong shift to the red in the corona sample.
This turns out to be a significant point because of where it lead and what was found as a result, but there is a bit more information to cover first.
Virtually all color film that is available to the public responds to red shades that are beyond the ability of the human eye to see, that is, such film "sees" infrared (the heat portion of the spectrum) to a limited degree that varies from one film type to another.
Add a touch of red to the r/g/b mix of the sky and because of the way r/g/b mixing works you end up with a yellow shade, as seen in the corona of the object. This seems counter intuitive, but it's not the same as mixing paint, and the outcomes are different.
Taking into account both the known infrared response of commercial film and the noticeable red shift of the corona, it seemed prudent to do a simple check to see if perhaps the corona was primarily a red spectrum artefact, perhaps caused by a layer of heated air surrounding the object.
 To the right is a size reduced version of the first image in this article, which has had both the red and green completely removed, and displaying only the blue component.
As is obvious there is no trace whatsoever of the corona to be seen in this filtered image, which shows that whatever light source or other energy source created the corona image was not noticeably active in the blue portion of the spectrum.
This lead me to consider more closely the idea that perhaps the corona was caused by a layer of heated air near the object, since I'd already noticed a small spike at the other end of the spectrum, but this was an idea that did not pan out.
The heated air would radiate in the infrared, possibly accounting for the corona, but there turns out to be a major problem with this idea. For the object to be heating the air that much it would itself have to be much hotter than the air it would be heating, and if the film is reacting to infrared, then the object istelf should glow brighter on film than the corona, which is obviously not the case.
In fact the exact opposite is true, and the brightness levels of all pixels within the body of the object are significantly lower than those of both the surrounding sky and the corona of the obect.
 To the left is a filtered image which displays only the red values and which clearly shows the corona to nearly the same extent as it is seen in the full color original.
The green is not illustrated simply because it shows only the barest detectable trace of the corona and it wasn't worth confusing things with one more picture and a bunch of extra words to fill the space next to it.
Since the flare of the corona is the most noticeable thing in the picture and neither the photographer nor the dancers are aware of it, I'm forced to tentatively conclude that it's film image is indeed the product of a source of infrared energy, but for reasons already covered not heat/infrared from a radiating hot object.
Where this all brings us to:
So far we have a set of facts uncovered by examining the picture which rule out the dust mote orb explanation as well as the lens and camera artefact theories. The Kodak examination of the picture has eliminated film flaw and other film related explanations. (If anyone should be able to see and recognise a film artifact it would be the Kodak labs) Also eliminated are the balloon possibilities, both mundane and glowing.
Some additional details are that where the corona is blocked by a tree limb or branch there is a slight "bleed over" of the corona luminance into the edge of the obstruction, just as there is when anything is photographed against a background of strong light. This bleed over is everywhere consistent with the apparent brightness of the corona and with the shapes of the objects it is bleeding around. The easiest place to see this bleed effect is in the topmost image where the branch crosses the orb at the 11 o'clock position; you can see that the branch seems skinnier right where it crosses the corona but is larger immediately on either side of that point.
Also there is a clean and clear demarcation between the corona and the orb itself; if the corona were produced by strong background light showing around it's edge then there should be bleed over producing a "mixed" zone at the edge of the orb just as there is where the corona meets the leaves and limbs, but this is not to be seen anywhere.
To have faked this picture by photo editing would have required literally weeks of man hours and thousands of dollars of expense, if it were done with 1983 technologies.
If done photographically the only means I can see to achieve such a result would be to make a series of extremely large negatives and prints and meticulously airbrush in the orb and corona, adjusting details such as edge bleed on the limbs and leaves with each enlargement and reduction and also carefully blending all edges of the foreground and background where they meet either the image of the orb or the corona. This would require access to photographic poster enlarging equipment and use of very expensive large negative film and print paper, of which a considerable amount would have to be used in the various stages.
Similar problems argue against digital editing, given the 1983 state of the art. It would be possible to edit the orb into a digital image of the picture with editors of that day, but then would come the problem of how to transfer the pixelated digital image to film with such high resolution that Kodak would not immediately notice the pixelation when asked to do an examination. Again the process would have to involve a long series of expensive large negatives and prints on expensive materials with very expensive equipment.
Either of these possible means of fakery should leave some trace of a linear edge somewhere that doctored sections have been blended to make the overall picture. I have been unable to locate any such anomalous edge feature anywhere on the picture using any edge finding tool at my disposal, so the fakery idea seems to be excluded along with the "accidental image" notions already mentioned.
What we're left with is an image that by all measures appears to be of a real and solid body surrounded by a luminous nimbus or corona. The details of the photograph are overwhelmingly and unanimously in support of the theory that this was an actual "something" present on the scene and behind the tree at the time the photograph was taken.
On to the speculation!
Having disposed of the boring semi-technical stuff now comes the fun part, playing the what-if game. Rather than further bore the reader, I'll restrict myself to toying with just one what-if.
It was noted that neither the photographer nor any of the other people present seemed to see or notice the anomaly at the time the picture was taken. A died in the wool alien believer would probably jump to the "telepathic blocking" theory, but I'm leaning in another direction because of one of the oddities about the picture.
Remember the two screen capture pictures with the color value numbers? Remember how strikingly similar the numbers were for the sky and the corona? The speculation I'm drawn towards is that perhaps the bright corona is a surface layer of somehow manipulated background light... and yes, I'm talking something along the lines of a "cloaking device", a la star trek or the invisibility cloak of the arabian nights.
If one assumes less than total efficiency in such a mechanism then it would explain a lot of the puzzles about this picture. Remember the added red element in the corona colors and the possibility that it could result from infrared radiation? That heat/infrared energy could be system losses of the energies used to manipulate the light, conveniently arranged to occur in part of the spectrum that won't register to the human eye.
In playing this particular what-if, and assuming a typical inefficiency of the imagined process, the bright corona becomes understandable since at the edges of the object one would be looking through a deeper slice of the active layer and radiative losses would be coming from a "larger" source. (for the technically minded, the chord of the visible arc is longer/deeper than the major radius minus the minor radius). Or, in simple terms there would be more glowing stuff looking your way at the edge of the object than where you are looking at the object itself.
Just a what-if, but one that accounts for an oddity measured in the picture and which might explain a mystery about this fascinating image of an unseen object that should have been in full view of several people
Conclusion
Frustrating as it is, this is all that we discovered about this strange object, maybe someone out there can provide more information, or followed up this incident in more detail, in which case we would love to hear from you.
UPDATE - Nigel Mortimer has a good article about the Appletreewick UFO here.. AppleTreewick UFO History
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