The Little Blue Humanoid The issue of Flying Saucer Review of January-February 1969 (pages 15 to 16) contained an article by John Keel entitled “The ‘Little Man’ of North Carolina”, revolving about an incredible photograph of a small figure holding a dark object and standing in front of a white sphere placed on the ground.  It had been attached to a letter that a 14-year-old boy named Ronnie Hill had mailed to the magazine Flying Saucers-UFO Reports, which had ceased publication by then and the editor decided to send it to Keel. According to the boy’s covering letter, he took the picture on July 21, 1967 in a small town of Pamlico County, North Carolina. It all started when he noticed a strange odor in the air, like a gas that made his eyes water, before he realized there was a complete silence in the environment. 15 minutes later, Ronnie heard a buzzing sound and saw an object flying near. He ran to his house (but said nothing to its occupants), grabbed a Kodak Sabie 620 camera and by the time he was out again a white ball about 9 feet in diameter had landed nearby. Five seconds later a loud noise was heard. “I was breathless –Ronnie writes-, because a little man about 3½ to 4 feet tall came from behind the ball-shaped object, carrying with him a funnel-shaped black object in his right hand.” The being was 15 feet from the boy.

  The picture as published in FSR, an enlargement from a black & white negative made from the original print. © Ronnie Hill.

John Keel showed the photograph to “several professional photographers in New York City” and “studied it minutely” to conclude that “(it) does not seem to be a doll or other hoax”, findings that were confirmed by the editors and art directors of SAGA magazine.

Regarding the original picture –the only one that came out-, Keel wrote: “(it) is bluish and marred by fogging on both edges.” Keel embraced the veracity of the document, in fact he found many details in the boy’s story reminiscent of true UFO sightings and photographs, like the smell, the sounds, the fogging and even the humanoid’s suit. Amazingly, in order to avoid that the photograph

was published and the photographer did not receive a penny, Keel reported that “(it) has been copyrighted in Ronnie’s name.” It is a curious decision, to say the least.

Nothing else was known about this photograph until the issue of November-December of FSR was released. A small inset in page 11 reported “doubts about ‘little man’ photograph”, and specified that “John Keel, and correspondents of his, have kept a watch on this case and now report that developments have cast doubts on the authenticity of the photograph.”

It was the end of it in the literature for years. In the summer of 1969 I obtained a color copy of the print from Roger Perrinjaquet, a Swiss ufologist, president of the GEOS group and an active collector of UFO photographs. The picture I received is a cropped enlargement, obviously from a second-generation negative. The copy is obliquely traversed by a number of white dots of unknown origin.