Maury Island Incident -- The Photographs: Lost Evidence

Maury Island Incident -- The Photographs: Lost Evidence

The Claim

Harold Dahl claimed to have been carrying a camera aboard his boat on June 21, 1947, and to have photographed the six doughnut-shaped craft during the incident. The photographs, he said, showed the strange airships clearly. After returning to shore, the photographs were developed.

The developed prints, Dahl said, showed the craft. However, the negatives had unusual dark spots or marks that he compared to radiation damage -- consistent, he suggested, with radiation emitted by the craft having affected the photographic film before development.

The History of the Photographs

The photographs' subsequent history is entirely a story of absence and claimed loss:

• Dahl initially claimed to have given the camera to Crisman after the incident
• Crisman claimed he had developed the prints and that they showed the craft
• When investigators arrived, no photographs could be produced
• Crisman later claimed (approximately twenty years after the incident) that he also had copies of the photographs but could not find them

The photographs exist only in description. No verified photographic evidence from the Maury Island Incident has ever emerged.

Assessment

The absence of any verifiable photographs from the case is consistent with the hoax interpretation. In 1947, handheld cameras capable of photographing distant objects in midday conditions were available and functional. If six craft of 100-foot diameter had hovered at 2,000 feet then descended to 500 feet, a competent photographer with a functioning camera would have produced multiple clear frames. The claimed radiation damage to the negatives serves as a convenient explanation for why the photographs cannot be examined while simultaneously (in the mythology's logic) constituting additional evidence of the craft's unusual properties.

The "radiation-damaged photographs" motif is a recurring element in UFO evidence claims -- claiming photographic evidence that is unavailable for examination due to anomalous film damage is a way of having the evidence claim without the evidence scrutiny.