The authors of the “most impressive UFO photo in history” mysteriously disappeared after a visit by Men in Black.
On August 4, 1990, two young cooks were returning home after a tiring workday. They were walking up a gentle hill when suddenly, in front of them, a very large UFO appeared in the sky in the shape of a disc. In 2022, a photograph of this unusual UFO was published in British media, quickly earning the title “the most impressive UFO photo in history.” The photo is actually remarkably clear for a typical UFO sighting, especially considering it was taken 35 years ago with a regular camera. The photo was reportedly taken in Scotland by two unnamed young cooks who worked at the “Fisher” hotel. On the evening of August 4, 1990, they were walking up a slope near Cairngorms mountain, not far from the village of Calvine. Suddenly, they saw a very large disc-shaped object about 30 meters in diameter, and they were terrified. They hid in the bushes and then heard a sound resembling a jet engine.
Soon after, they observed a military jet approaching the UFO, likely from a nearby military base. The jet circled the disc before quickly flying off. At that moment, one of the cooks managed to take six photographs. Shortly after, the UFO disappeared. A little later, the cooks handed the photos to journalists from the Daily Record newspaper, but they were never published. However, the photos were handed over to the Ministry of Defence. Shortly after, the two cooks seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth; no one saw them again. In 2022, one of the photos was finally published, thanks to journalist David Clark and Craig Lindsay, a press secretary at the BBC. Over time, these photos passed through several hands before disappearing into the archives of the British Ministry of Defence, but Lindsay managed to keep one copy. “All the photos and negatives were confiscated by the Ministry of Defence, and no one has seen them since. We wanted to bury it—and we did,” said Lindsay.
Lindsay also managed to speak to one of the cooks before both of them disappeared. During his investigation, journalist David Clark was able to see the reverse side of the photograph, which Lindsay had kept. It was labeled “Copyright Kevin Russell, Daily Record.” At first, Clark thought it referred to an employee of the newspaper, possibly the one who received the photos from the cooks. However, the Daily Record informed him that no one by that name had ever worked there.
On January 20, 2018, the Curiosity rover captured a series of photos during its stay in the Gale Crater. On this site, there was also a shot of… Craig Lindsay with a photo. Subsequently, Clark started searching for all the Kevin Russells living in Scotland and found 140 individuals. Among them was one Kevin Russell who worked as a cook in the same area where the UFO photo was taken. However, this person categorically denied his involvement in the incident. Clark doesn’t believe that the cooks actually saw an alien ship. He thinks it was more likely some sort of secret aircraft from a military hangar. “The witnesses simply found themselves in the right place at the right time, when the chance of this happening was one in a million, and they had to be silenced. Remember, this was 1990, just a year before the end of the Cold War and just days before the Gulf War began. The world was— and, as many assert, still is—divided into ‘us’ and ‘them,'” Clark says.
Conspiracy theorists believe that both cooks were either severely intimidated or even killed to ensure they never spoke about what they saw. This theory is partially supported by Richard Grieve, who worked with the same two cooks at the “Fisher” hotel. According to Grieve, one day a black car arrived at the hotel, and two men in black suits emerged. They entered the kitchen, shouted “Operation completed!” and then ordered the cooks to come with them. “They were those creepy Men in Black. And they (the cooks) stood under the pouring rain, talking to them… They came back to the hotel pale as ghosts. Something happened to them. They saw something. The people who got out of the car scared them to death,” Grieve says. According to him, after this visit, the two cooks “became different.” They started drinking heavily, frequently took time off work, were afraid to sleep at home, and slept in their cars near the hotel. A month later, both of them mysteriously disappeared.
“Chefs don’t just disappear from the kitchen for 34 years and remain unemployed. You can’t just take off and never work again. Where are they?” Grieve asks. British journalists tried to ask the Ministry of Defence about this, but they received only the following response: “Sorry, we no longer comment on UFOs, NVA (unidentified aerial phenomena), etc.”
