The Men in Black (MIB) are humans or humanoids who supposedly appear anywhere major UFO sightings or other strange phenomena take place. They have been known to threaten people who have claimed to have seen UFOs and alien beings into not asking about what they witnessed. They wear sunglasses and black suits...usually they have olive complexions. They drive black mint-condition vintage luxury cars or fly in black helicopters. Some say that they are government agents...others claim that they are alien agents.
The first reported occurrence of MIB was traced to Albert K. Bender, the editor of a flying saucer publication called the "Space Review". In the October 1953 issue he placed an announcement stating that he had come across information that would solve the flying saucer mystery but could not print it because he was ordered not to. He ended the announcement warning others in saucer work to be very cautious. He then stopped publication. Later in an interview Bender stated that three men wearing dark suits had ordered him to stop publishing flying saucer material, and that he had complied with the order because he had been "scared to death" of them. He later published a book called Flying Saucers and the Three Men
In his book, Mystery of the Men in Black: The UFO Silencers
, Timothy Beckley has attempted to provide an overview of important and representative MIB encounters. According to Beckley, MIB have been with us for many hundreds of years, speculating that such diverse characters from the history of witchcraft and folklore as the Elizabethan "Black Men", the Native American "Black Man" and late nineteenth century reports of malevolent traveling salesmen, might have been manifestations of what we now know as Men in Black.An odd incident in the history of the Men in Black is the strange case of Mr. O. H. Krill.
Mr. Krill's writings first gained publicity some time in the late 1980's when a text file called The Krill Papers
was placed on the ParaNet B.B.S. The file told the story of shadow governments in cooperation with gray aliens, secret underground bases, exchanges of human organs for alien technologies, and the like. He offers the following information on the Men in Black:
The men warn him about spreading the story of his experience around and sometimes even threaten him personally, sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly. Any evidence, if it exists, is confiscated in one way or another. Sometimes the visit is for some totally meaningless reason and the subject of UFOs is hardly mentioned, if at all. But again, the men all seem to look alike.
We actually seem to find ourselves in close proximity to beings who obviously must be directly connected in some way with the objects themselves or the source behind them, yet they seem to be functioning unobtrusively within the framework of our own everyday existence.
The classic conception of an MIB is a man of indefinite age, medium height and dressed completely in black. He always has a black hat and often a black turtleneck sweater. They present an appearance often described as "strange" or "odd." They speak in a dull monotone voice, "like a computer," and are dark-complected with high cheekbones, thin lips, pointed chin, and eyes that are mildly slanted.
The visitors themselves are often on absurd missions. They have reportedly posed as salesmen, telephone repairmen or representatives from official or unofficial organizations. Their mode of transportation is usually large and expensive cars -- Buicks or Lincolns, sometimes Cadillacs, all black, of course.
I might note at this point that their physical appearance also has included beings that have pale-grayish skin, and that some of them have been seen to have blond hair, yet they wear the clothing and drive the cars previously described.
Their cars often operate with the headlights off, but ghostly purple or greenish glows illuminate the interior. Unusual insignia have been seen emblazoned on the doors and the license plates are always unidentifiable or untraceable.
The fabric of their clothes has been described as strangely "shiny" or thin, but not silky -- almost as if they have been cut from a new type of fabric.
Their often mechanical behavior has caused them to be described by some as being like robots or androids.
A lot of descriptions of some of these "folks" are pretty bizarre. A businessman's family in Wildwood, New Jersey, was visited by an unusually large man whose pants legs hiked up when he sat down, revealing a green wire grafted onto his skin and running up his leg.
There are other cases of MIB appearing on the other side of a wet, muddy field after a heavy rain, but having no mud whatever on their brightly shined shoes and in the bitter cold, out of nowhere, wearing only a thin coat. Their shoes and wallets all seem new and hardly broken in."
O.H. Krill's career was ended by John Lear when he made a television appearance with William Cooper.
Lear was the son of the famous aviation engineer, heir to the Learjet company. He claimed that his business connections with the military had given him access to secret Air-force documents related to U.F.O.s. He had posted to ParaNet his own U.F.O. files, which were also full of secret alien-government conspiracies.
Cooper claimed to be a high-ranking naval-intelligence officer, though records show that he was never anything more than an audio/visual technician for a Pacific fleet briefing team.
Lear heard William Cooper use the O.H Krill name, while John Lear wanted to use the show to announce that he made the "O.H. Krill" paper as a joke together with John Grace (head of the Nevada Aerial Research Organization). William Cooper went on to claim that he had first seen the Krill Papers in the early 1970's while working for the Office of Naval Intelligence.
John Lear immediately pulled William Cooper aside and quietly told him, "Bill, O.H. Krill is a joke!" Lear says that he and John Grace had used the name "Krill" from Bob Emenegger's special UFOs - It Has Begun
In the T.V. special a woman claims to have channeled an entity named CRYLLL. They had posted the file on ParaNet as a prank.William Cooper replied that Lear was mistaken. He said that Lear was a liar and continued to do so until the day he died. Cooper was known to accuse all who disagree with him of being agents working for the 'Conspiracy' (NOTE: On November 5, 2001 Cooper was fatally shot by a law enforcement officer at his Eagar, Arizona home after confronting deputies trying to arrest him and shooting one of them in the head. Authorities said the handgun-toting Cooper fled when Apache County deputies identified themselves and tried to arrest Cooper on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from earlier disputes with local residents. Federal authorities reported that Cooper spent years trying to avoid capture on a 1998 arrest warrant for tax evasion and according to a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service, vowed "he would not be taken alive".)
Lear and Grace did not pull the Krill files entirely out of thin air; it was really a satire of the most extreme and bizarre UFO stories that circulated among the circles of UFO enthusiasts. If the descriptions of MIB are not directly from "real" stories from alleged witnesses, they at least bear a resemblance to some of the weirdest accounts.
And many people did believe in the Krill files for a long time. Copies of the files are still to be found on the internet. These files have had an influence on the public perception of the Men in Black legend, and have almost certainly affected popular culture.
John A. Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies
, is a great book regardless of your beliefs. Much of it focusses on the MIBs. They are definitely not simply agents of the government in this one. These excerpts from the Christiansen family's meeting with one will attest to that. They had just moved into a new home, and had not yet been published in the phone book. A visitor came to the door, asked for Edward Christiansen by name. The huge man, at least six foot six (two meters) tall, and very broad-shouldered, said he was from "...the Missing Heirs Bureau" - (NOTE: The Christiansen Encounter: In 1967 the Christiansen family from New Jersey, USA, had a bewildering encounter with a hovering UFO. Shortly afterwards they were visited by a strange man in black wearing a badge engraved with unusual insignia. Inviting himself inside the man proceeded to question the family for nearly an hour. They described him as massively tall wearing a long black coat, and a Russian style fur hat complete with dark visor. Most frightening of all were his ominously bulging eyes and tinny computer like voice. The family also noticed what appeared to be wires running down the inside of the mans leg. Wires that actually appeared to penetrate the skin, and were held in place by a large round spot. When the man left the house he walked to the edge of the pavement where he was picked up by a black Cadillac with dimmed headlights and tinted glass windows.):"...an unusual head, large and round while his face seemed angular, pointed...his eyes were large, protruding, like `thyroid eyes,' and set wide apart. One eye appeared to have a cast, like a glass eye, and did not move in unison with its companion...When he sat down they could see a long thick green wire attached to the inside of his leg. It came up out of his socks and disappeared under his trousers. At one point it seemed to be indented into his leg and was covered by a large brown spot...The Christiansens said their visitor had an unusual pallor. They assumed he was sick. His voice was also strange, with a high `tinny' voice...he spoke in clipped words and phrases, `like a computer.' Connie said he sounded as if he were reciting everything from memory." - ufoevidence.org / BUFO / APRO
Then there is the case of of Robert Richardson, of Toledo, Ohio, who in July 1967 informed the Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation (APRO) that he had collided with a UFO while driving at night. Coming round a bend, he had been confronted by a strange object blocking the road. Unable to halt in time, he had hit it, though not very hard. Immediately on impact, the UFO vanished. Police who accompanied Richardson to the scene could find only his own skid marks as evidence; but on a later visit, Richardson himself found a small lump of metal which might have come from the UFO.
Three days later, at 11 pm, two men in their twenties appeared at Richardson's home and questioned him for about 10 minutes. They did not identify themselves, and Richardson - to his own subsequent surprise - did not ask who they were. They were not unfriendly, gave no warnings, and just asked questions. He noted that they left in a black 1953 Cadillac. The number, when checked, was found not yet to have been issued.
A week later, Richardson received a second visit, from two different men, who arrived in a current model Dodge. They wore black suits and were dark-complectioned. Although one spoke perfect English, the second had an accent, and Richardson felt there was something vaguely foreign about them. At first, they seemed to be trying to persuade him that he had not hit anything at all; but then they asked for the piece of metal. When he told them it had gone for analysis, they threatened him: "If you want your wife to stay as pretty as she is, then you'd better get the metal back". The existence of the metal was known only to Richardson and his wife, and to two senior members of APRO. Seemingly, the only way the strangers could have learned of its existence would be by tapping either his or APRO's telephone. There was no clear connection between the two pairs of visitors; but what both had in common was access to information that was not freely and publicly available.
Then there is a case where a man had supposedly taken a shot at a humanoid. One inclement evening in November 1961, Paul Miller and three companions were returning home to Minot, North Dakota, after a hunting trip when what they could only describe as 'a luminous silo' landed in a nearby field. At first they thought it was a plane crashing, but had to revise their opinion when the 'plane' abruptly vanished. As the hunters drove off, the object reappeared and two humanoids emerged from it. Miller panicked and fired at one of the creatures, apparently wounding it. The other hunters immediately fled.
On their way back to Minot, all of them experienced a blackout and 'lost' three hours. Terrified, they decided not to report the incident to anyone. Yet the next morning, when Miller reported to work (in an Air Force office), three men in black arrived. They said they were government officials - but showed no credentials - and remarked unpleasantly that they hoped Miller was 'telling the truth' about the UFO. How did they know about it? 'We have a report,' they said vaguely.
'They seemed to know everything about me; where I worked, my name, everything else,' Miller said. They also asked questions about his experiences as if they already knew the answers. Miller did not dare tell his story for several years.
In September 1976, Dr Herbert Hopkins, a 58 year-old doctor and hypnotist, was acting as consultant on an alleged UFO teleportation case in Maine, USA. One evening, when his wife and children had gone out leaving him alone, the telephone rang and a man identifying himself as vice-president of the New Jersey UFO Research Organization asked if he might visit Dr Hopkins that evening to discuss certain details of the case. Dr Hopkins agreed; at the time, it seemed the natural thing to do. He went to the back door to switch on the light so that his visitor would be able to find his way from the parking lot, but while he was there, he noticed the man already climbing the porch steps. "I saw no car, and even if he did have a car, he could not have possibly gotten to my house that quickly from any phone," Hopkins later commented in delayed astonishment.
At the time, Dr Hopkins felt no particular surprise as he admitted his visitor, The man was dressed in a black suit, with black hat, tie and shoes, and a white shirt, "I thought, he looks like an undertaker," Hopkins later said. His clothes were immaculate - suit unwrinkled, trousers sharply creased. When he took off his hat, he revealed himself as completely hairless, not only bald but without eyebrows or eyelashes. His skin was dead white, his lips bright red. In the course of their conversation, he happened to brush his lips with his grey suede gloves, and the doctor was astonished to see that his lips were smeared and that the gloves were stained with lipstick!
It was only afterwards, however, that Dr Hopkins reflected further on the strangeness of his visitor's appearance and behavior. Particularly odd was the fact that his visitor stated that his host had two coins in his pocket. It was indeed the case. He then asked the doctor to put one of the coins in his hand and to watch the coin, not himself. As Hopkins watched, the coin seemed to go out of focus, and then gradually vanished. "Neither you nor anyone else on this plane will ever see that coin again," the visitor told him. After talking a little while longer on general UFO topics, Dr Hopkins suddenly noticed that the visitor's speech was slowing down. The man then rose unsteadily to his feet and said, very slowly; "My energy is running low - must go now - goodbye." He walked falteringly to the door and descended the outside steps uncertainly, one at a time. Dr Hopkins saw a bright light shining in the driveway, bluish-white and distinctly brighter than a normal car lamp. At the time, however, he assumed it mt be the stranger's car, although he neither saw nor heard it.
Later, when Dr Hopkins family had returned, they examined the driveway and found marks that could not have been made by a car because they were in the centre of the driveway, where the wheels could not have been. But the next day, although the driveway had not been used in the meantime, the marks had vanished.
Dr Hopkins was very much shaken by the visit, particularly when he reflected on the extraordinary character of the stranger's conduct. Not surprisingly, he was so scared that he willingly complied wdith his visitor's instruction, which was to erase the tapes of the hypnotic sessions he was conductiog with regard to his current case, and to have nothing further to do with the investigation. Subsequently, curious incidents continued to occur both in Dr Hopkin's household and in that of his eldest son. He presumed that there was some link with the extraordinary visit, but he never heard from his visitor again. As for the New Jersey UFO Research Organisation, no such institution exists.
On 24 September 1976 - only a few days after Dr. Herbert Hopkin's terrifying visit from a MIB - his daughter-in-law Maureen received a telephone call from a man who claimed to know her husband John, and who asked if he and a companion could come and visit them.
John met the man at a local fast-food restaurant, and brought him home with his companion, a woman. Both appeared to be in their mid-thirties, and wore couriously old-fashioned clothes. The woman looked particularly odd; when she stood up, it seemed that there was something wrong with the way that her legs joined her hips. Both strangers walked with very short steps, leaning forward as though frightened of falling.
They sat awkwardly together on a sofa while the man asked a number of detailed personal questions. Did John and Maureen watch television much? What did they read? And what did they talk about? All the while, the man was pawing and fondling his female companion, asking John if this was all right and whether he was doing it correctly.
John left the room for a moment, and the man tried to persuade Maureen to sit next to him. He also asked her "how she was made", and whether she had any nude photographs.
Shortly afterwards, the woman stood up and announced that she wanted to leave. The man also stood, but made no move to go. He was between the woman and the door, and it seemed that the only way she could get to the door was by walking in a straight line, directly through him. Finally the woman turned to John and asked: "Please move him; I can't move him myself." Then, suddenly, the man left, followed by the woman, both walking in straight lines. They did not even say goodbye. - 'The Unexplained' - Orbis Publishing
Chinese UFO investigator Shi Bo has uncovered a story that, while far from dramatic, raises some interesting questions concerning the exact nature of the MIB phenomenon, for while UFOs (and, to a lesser extent, MIB) have long been a part of American folklore, they have until only recently been a taboo subject in mainland China. When this set of circumstances is taken into consideration with the fact that the witness in this case was a six year old boy, we may justifiably find ourselves wondering how such an event could occur in the complete absence of a cultural point of reference (assuming, of course, that the existence of MIB is not an objective reality).
In Shi's 1983 book, China and Extraterrestrials, he relates the story of Li Jing-yang who, as a six-year-old boy in Yangguan, Shansi province in May, 1963, had an encounter with a UFO. The day after Li had seen " a shining, silvery disc" hanging in the sky while at play with his friends, he was stopped in the street by "a very tall man dressed entirely in black." The man, while pointing to the exact spot where Li had seen the disc, inquired as to whether the boy had seen anything unusual in the sky recently. Li responded that indeed he had, which elicited from the strange man a warning "never to tell anyone else" what he had seen. The MIB then went around a corner and seemingly disappeared. Li claims that this encounter was witnessed by several others who all noted and discussed the stranger's odd, mechanical movements, his automated-sounding voice, and the fact that his lips did not move when he spoke. Thus, in its effort to keep the disc-sighting of Li Jing-yang a secret, this MIB succeeded only in making a spectacle of itself. - ufoevidence.org
The first encounter of the Mothman took place on November 15, 1966, by David and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette. The two couples were traveling late at night in the Scarberry car. They passed the West Virginia Ordnance Works, an old abandoned World War II TNT factory. They noticed two red lights in the shadows by an old generator plant. After stopping the car, they realized the lights were the glowing eyes of a large creature, “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back,” according to Roger Scarberry. The couples were terrified. They fled and reported what they saw to the police.
They were not the only ones who encountered this creature. On the 16th Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley and Mrs. Marcella Bennett were going to see some friends who lived near the TNT plant. When Mrs. Bennett got out of the car she realized there was a figure lurking behind them. “It seemed like it had been lying down, slowly rising up from the ground, large and gray, with glowing red eyes.” Mrs. Wamsley ran inside and phoned the police as the creature walked onto the porch and peered in at the couples through the window. The entity fled before the police arrived.
During these strange encounters, something terrible happened to the town of Point Pleasant. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge, which connected Point Pleasant to Ohio, collapsed. It plummeted to the depths of the river, killing 46 people. The event was heavily investigated, and the only consensus of the collapse was a small manufacturing flaw in the single eye-bar suspension chain. The believers in the Mothman sightings would say that the two events are connected. Witnesses and believers even claim that the Mothman appears before upcoming disasters.
Between 1966 and 1977 there were over a hundred eyewitness encounters with the creature. Jeff Wamsley was among the few people willing to discuss his personal knowledge of the events. Mr. Wamsley has lived in Point Pleasant his entire life. “I actually live in nearby Gallipolis, Ohio, now...I was born and raised in Point Pleasant West Virginia...right down the street from where those original witnesses lived back in 1966,” said Wamsley. “I grew up hearing about the Mothman sightings...I was always interested in the story because it took place literally in my hometown...I was lucky enough to launch two book projects that contained exclusive interviews with many of those original witnesses. I have collected archives for years and run the worlds only Mothman museum...I ran my own chain of record stores for about fifteen years.” Mr. Wamsley now teaches graphic design in Point Pleasant at the career center and high school.
But the Mothman was only one of the mysterious things that occurred in Point Pleasant during this time. UFO’s were often reported, including eerie encounters with the MIB (Men in Black). The Grinning Man, as many refer to him, was supposedly in Point Pleasant as well. The best known Grinning Man was Indrid Cold, who appeared during the Mothman sightings. The first encounter was on November 2nd of 1966. A man by the name of Woodrow Derenberger was driving home after work when he heard a sudden crash behind him. A strange vehicle shaped like an old furnace firing soot and embers at both ends sped by him and stopped, blocking off the road ahead. A tall thin man stepped out of the car and approached Mr. Derenberger. He approached with a broad grin on his face and said his name was Indrid Cold. The two men had a brief conversation about the Mothman sightings, and then Mr. Cold left.
There were a number of other encounters with a Mr. Indrid Cold after this night all descriptions matched, but no explanations. Jeff Wamsley briefly mentioned such strange things that he remembered during his childhood. “The UFO’s were here before the Mothman stuff started occurring…the MIB were here asking witnesses and others a lot of questions…some witnesses were too scared to talk to anyone about what they saw.” So there have been other strange occurrences in Point Pleasant? “Actually the Mothman sightings are just a small part of all that was going on here.” It seems that while Point Pleasant is known only for the story of the Mothman, there is obviously much more to uncover in this small town. - appindie.org
Let me end this narrative with this unusual report that includes UFOs, ghostly figures and MIB:"One Idaho winter night in 1952 as I was fast asleep in the west bedroom near the stairs, I was awaken by a strange pulsating hum. Sitting straight up, I turned to the left to see three ghostly figures materialize in the next room as they were approaching my bedside. Please remember that we had no electric and I had never been to a movie or heard a radio show to that point. Two of the creatures looked just like the gray aliens you see in the movies and the one in the center was much taller and looked different. As they got closer they told me to relax and go back to sleep telepathically. The floating sensation I felt helped stop my nervous shaking as I blacked out. The next morning my grandmother met me half way to the kitchen and asks if I was all right. She said that I had sunburn on the left side of my face and looked very tired. In the back seat of the new Buick on our way to the farm I felt compelled to lay down on the floor with my back to the front seat. The telepathic message was like the one I received from the three ghosts. Moments after laying down we t-boned another car on route 13 near Blackbird. Everyone except I was seriously injured and taken to the hospital."
"The year I believe was 1959 while at the park I noticed about 12 flying saucers to the west of the park. To my great surprise I had a visit the next day while at my friends home that lived around the corner from my grandparents home at 806 Brown St. John's father answered the door to find two Air Force people in uniform asking to speak with me in private. My mother stood with the Air Force officer to my left and the sergeant stood in front as another man entered the room dressed in black wearing a hat and dark sunglasses. I was asked to tell what I saw as follows: I saw bright round objects mostly in triangular groups of three flying in a manner not like any aircraft known. They were able to stop and turn on a dime and when they departed to an altitude near space they took off so fast that they appeared To vanish at about a 30 degree angle into space."
"For the next hour the Air Force guys tried to get me to change my story and I was growing tired of repeating myself. I then parroted back one of the officer's stories as a way to make them leave. I noticed the officer look up at the guy in black for approval, as I could see the guy in black shake his head left and right. Now I knew I had to convince the guy in black and realized that the officer was taking his orders from him. So I came up with a better idea that got the approval from the big boss in black. The man in black never said a word to me even after asking him direct questions. He then folded his notebook and left followed by my mother and the officer. There are many other strange stories about hard to believe events, but either you believe or not will make no difference."
"This is my recorded statement so others like me will take some comfort in knowing that they are not alone?" - MUFON CMS
