Mystery: The Cloud Giant

The photo in question by Nick O'Donoghue.

Let’s take a trip up into the skies as it’s where our story takes place. It’s a rather short one and certainly far from the most extraordinary, though I still think it still offers something unique. I found it on the ObscUrban Legend Wiki and it’s simply titled the Cloud Giant. Let’s take a gander.

The Story

This little tale is one I picked because today’s unfortunately been very busy for me. So I wanted something relaxing and rather simplistic to look over. This story really fit that bill—in my eyes. Back in 2016, a 30-year-old Irish man by the name of Nick O'Donoghue was on a flight to Gatwick, England from a work ski trip in Austria. It was during this flight that he photographed something quite peculiar: a large humanoid figure that looked to be walking on the clouds. You can see the image as it’s the header for this write-up, but here’s a close up if you’re curious.

Some people have noted that this figure looks to resemble the loveable giant from the animated film “The Iron Giant”. I sort of see the resemblance, but we’ll get to this fact more in the theories section.

Anyways, this photo managed to make the news—or somewhat made the news. It was reported on by the Daily Mail, which has a very sketchy reputation. While I don’t like to label news outlets as being “fake news”, the Daily Mail’s reputation is one that’s very heavily ridiculed and reviled thanks to its sensationalism and generally poor fact checking. That said, everyone views news outlets differently and as such, I’ll let you judge on if the Daily Mail is worth trusting.

Nick, in an interview with the Daily Mail, stated that as he was en route home to Gatwick when he saw something as he was looking out the window. That’s when he saw the shape that you can see in the photograph above. He was astonished by this and asked the women that were sitting next to him if they could see it, to which they said yes. Nick proceeded to snap a few pictures before they flew off. He ended off the interview by stating that he believed the figure was likely just a “funky cloud formation”, but that he wasn’t entirely sure about it.

That’s where Nick’s story concludes. It’s a short, but sweet, one. Though the theories are a fair bit longer, so let’s dig right in.

Theories

1. It was an angel

First up: the entity was an angel. While most people envision angels as humans with wings, a halo, and a radiant glow that would rival the Sun, there have been numerous portrayals of angels throughout time. As such, there is no “correct” way to depict an angel and that extends to here too. In this particular case, the angel was what looked to be a being that would be dozens of feet tall—if not taller. Certainly an imposing sight and not one that I’d imagine would be greeting me at the pearly gates of Heaven. Rather, it’d be the bouncer that would throw me into the fiery pits of Hell.

Well, nobody ever said that God slacked when it came to security.

2. It was Project Blue Beam

My favorite topic in the world, this theory posits that it was a test for the be all, end all of conspiracy theories. If you don’t know what Project Blue Beam is, click here. Some images are broken, but I need to find them in order to fix them. Sorry in advance.

3. It was an alien

Ah, the theory of aliens. It’s a staple whenever there’s something unexplainable. In this case, the idea is that there was either a massive alien surveillance drone on the clouds or that it was an alien from another planet that had come to examine us. Some also suspect that we live inside of the Hollow Earth and that the entity was from the surface.

4. It was a robot

Given that I mentioned some people have pointed out that the entity in the photograph resembles the titular character from the Iron Giant, it stands to reason that there’s a theory that it’s a robot.

The topic of robots is one that I want to someday cover because there are numerous theories and allegations when it comes to what sort of technology we truly have in the way of robotics. Namely, there are claims that we’ve reverse engineered alien tech; the type of stuff that allows for regenerating cells, traversing the sea floor, space travel, and much more. Because of this, it would stand to reason that that kind of technology would allow for us to either walk on clouds or have massive robots that could fly and potentially walk on clouds. Though what purpose would that type of thing serve? That’s something I honestly couldn’t answer or even speculate on. So I leave it up to you.

5. It was smoke from a smoke stack

A theory that skeptics have proposed, the idea is that the smoke emitted from a smoke stack ended up creating what looked like a humanoid/robot. There’s little more to it than that, though I should point out that given we don’t know exactly where Nick was when flying, it’s hard to pinpoint if there was even a smoke stack at that location.

6. It was a peculiar cloud formation/illusion

Another theory put forth by many skeptics and one that even Nick himself proposed, the idea here is that the so-called giant was in fact just a simple cloud formation and/or a trick of the eye and light. There are many fascinating and incredible cloud formations that can be found with a simple Google search, so this theory should come as no surprise. Rather, it’s merely par for the course.

7. It was an interdimensional entity

Speaking of par for the course, this theory is—which is our seventh and final one—is that the giant was in fact an interdimensional being that ended up slipping into our own briefly. If you’re new to this blog or the concept of interdimensional beings, then I would strongly recommend looking into the Man From Taured or Jophar Vorin. With that said, the idea is that there are numerous dimensions and realities out there. Every now and then, they “overlap” and we can see beings and even locations from there and vice-versa. Some have even said that UFOs are actually the results of interdimensional travel and that they’re humans from the far, far future.

In this case, our dimension overlapped with one where there are either massive beings or robots that can walk on the clouds—or have structures that are extraordinarily tall and this person/robot was out for a walk or patrolling a skyhigh roadway.

My Take

It’s been said countless times when people photograph “smoke rings” in the sky and other weird cloud formations as proof of portals to other dimensions or Project Blue Beam, but clouds can take many weird forms. This, to me, is the explanation for this picture. While the theories are all really cool, I doubt that what we’re seeing is proof of something supernatural.

Now with that said, I do want to address the theory about the smoke stacks. While I believe it’s possible it was the formation of—or from—one or more of those, there’s one serious flaw in that theory. We don’t know the specific location of where the photograph was taken. As such, this makes it extremely difficult to cement it. Though even then, I don’t think it’s likely that a smoke stack would result in such a fantastical creation. That’s just me though.

Conclusion

While this story is far from the most exciting, I must confess that today was a very rough day for me; I’ve had some serious real life stuff come up recently and I’ve taken a bit of solace in short, simple, rather down-to-earth mysteries. Hopefully you’ve all enjoyed them, though if you haven’t, do feel free to let me know in the comments below. I fully intend on finishing this month’s daily blog post series (or marathon, whatever works) though; I refuse to allow anything get in the way of that. I’ve promised too much in my life and failed to follow through on said promise. So, I hope that you understand the reason for some rather bland/simplistic stories as of late.