Men In Black
Dose alien life
exist? are we really alone, in this vast universe? What was that
strange light in the sky? and Is there really a clandestine para-
military group monitoring or even communicating with ET's here on earth?
Well chance's are if you've seen something you weren't suppose to, you just may receive a visit from The MIB....
The term Men in Black (MIB), is used in UFO conspiracy theories
to describe men dressed in all black suits, sometimes with glowing
eyes or other strange or sometimes even monstrous features, claiming to
be government agents who attempt to harass or threaten UFO witnesses
into silence. "Though all MIB are not necessarily dressed in dark
suits," writes American writer Jerome Clark. "The term is a generic
one, used to refer to any unusual, threatening or strangely behaving
individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some form or
another with a recent UFO sighting.
Though in the much more interesting real-world myth, the MIB usually are
the scum of the universe. That is, they're the bad guys, menacing
heavies from another world of shifty fixers dispatched by the
cover-up-obsessed government.
(It's somewhat interesting, and even a bit unsettling, that in Hollywood's version of the MIB
they are portrayed as the "good guys" even though they're all members
of an elite para-military style, secret police organization ....
In the more recent accounts, the MIB are usually connected in one way or another to UFO activity.
The most common
scenario has them suddenly appearing on the scene after a UFO encounter
in order to intimidate witnesses with extremely odd and often
threatening behavior. Dressed in ill fitting or out of style black
suits, the classic MIB tend to travel in two's or three's (but on some
occasions they also travel alone). Their modes of transport vary.
Though they seem to prefer to cruise around in black limousines, but
they have also been known to pilot the occasional van and, in a few
recent accounts, have traded up to that popular all purpose conspiracy
vehicle, the black helicopter. Yet despite their outré mien, the MIB
most often seem to "buy American," usually vintage 1950s Cadillac (nice
choice lol) that, oddly enough, often smell brand new......
Witnesses who report MIB
sightings often describe "foreign looking" men with exotic features;
it's as if they're "from elsewhere." They look "Oriental" or "Indian"
and have "deeply tanned" skin, although sometimes their complexions are
also extremely pale. The eyes of the MIB or usually described as
slanted or "bulging," as if from a thyroid condition. Their noses and
chins are often "point," and their cheekbones are set high on their
faces. Though some are tall and thin, with naturally long fingers,
others are short or stout. They may or may not have fingernails.
Stranger still is
their reputed behavior, which tends to be disturbingly erratic or
downright weird, In one account a MIB who seems to be suffering
overexposure to West Virginia's oxygen-rich atmosphere is offered some
Jell-O, which he attempts to drink like a beverage. Another MIB is
initially perplexed when shown the strange terrestrial implement we
know as the ballpoint pen, but then becomes gleefully spastic as he
absconds into the street with the prize.
MIBs frequently
speak tortured English with outlandish accents; in some accounts they
don't move their lips when they communicate, suggesting a telepathy
ability, while in other encounters they speak like "machines." When it
comes to the MIB, the subtext is always "We're not from around here."
Separating the
truly inexplicable MIB encounters from the sundry hoaxes and hearsay is
no mean feat. So many of the MIB tales, which first arose during the
UFO flaps of the 1950s, apparently began as pranks or visits by
officious government agents investigating the hullabaloo over "flying
saucers."
The book that introduced the world to the modern idea of MIB was a book called... They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
Penned in 1957 by theatrical booking agent and saucer buff Gray
Barker, the book was a minor masterpiece in the basement-hobbyist genre
of UFOlogy. Barker, a kind of do it yourself Fox Mulder lol,
had been investigating reports of flying saucers and backwoods monsters
in his home state of West Virginia when he met Albert K. Bender, a
somewhat....um.... eccentric Connecticut man who had recently formed a
group ambitiously called the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB).
Bender asked Barker to organize a West Virginia chapter and act as
the IFSB's "chief investigator."
But Bender's initial enthusiasm for investigating flying saucers quickly chilled after he was paid a visit by three "men in black suits." At first, Bender hinted that the men were government agents who had threatened him because "I had stumbled upon something that I was not supposed to know." Later, Bender began to insinuate that the men might have been extraterrestrial in origin. Chronicler Barker, who knew how to promotes the hell out of the horror flicks he booked in local bijous, escalated the suspense like voltage darting up a Jacob's ladder. The balance of They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers was devoted to speculating on the sinister, yet all too opaque, provenance of these dark-suited enforcers.
According to Barker, UFO investigators in Australia and New Zealand had been similarly "shushed up" by intimidating visitors in black suits. One researcher claimed to have received a call from a machinelike voice that stated, "I warn you to stop interfering in matters that do not concern you," and then apparently to make sure the other party had not missed the significance of the robotic elocution, signed off with "I am . . . from another planet." According to Barker, the strange phenomena down under soon escalated to include poltergeist activity and visitations from "invisible entities" lounging in very visible moccasin slippers.
As Barker was quick to note, Bender and his Commonwealth counterparts hadn't been the first to encounter UFO-connected MIBs. In 1947 a harbor patrolman named Harold A. Dahl had reported one of the earliest modern saucer sightings, near Maury Island, Washington. Dahl and his fifteen-year-old son saw six doughnut-shaped, metallic objects a hundred feet in diameter hovering over Puget Sound. One of the objects, which seemed to be experiencing mechanical difficulty, discharged a load of liquid, metallic slag. The hot debris fell toward Dahl's boat, injuring his son and killing his dog, after which the objects flew away.
The aftermath of the "Maury Island Affair," as it came to be known, is what interested Barker. According to Dahl, the next morning, a man in a black suit confronted him at a local restaurant, offering an exact account of the previous day'' incident. Then the man threatened Dahl, telling him that harm would befall him and his family if he told anyone about the incident. But Dahl was undeterred, and his story got out. From there, the case becomes even murkier, with Dahl later confessing that the whole scenario had been a hoax and then, naturally, recanting the mea culpa, generally escalating the confusion.
Eventually, Barker persuaded Bender to go public with the full story of his "shushing." The result was a 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men,
ostensibly authored by Bender but heavily edited by Barker.
Unfortunately, after the giddy buildup of Barker's prequel, Bender's
tell-all came as a major letdown. Reading more like fan-boy sci-fi than
the interplanetary expose it purported to be, Flying Saucers and the Three Men
was brimming with all the pulpy cliches of the day, from teleportation
to underground saucer bases to mid-atlantic alien dialogue like
"Please be advised to discontinue delving into the mysteries of the
universe."
After contacting
the saucer men telepathically from his bedroom (by mentally projecting a
message of "utmost friendship" into the cosmos), Bender eventually
meets three MIBs face-to-face. They are "dressed in black clothes…
like clergymen" but wearing "hats similar to Homburg style." Per
Bender, "The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight
bulbs…. They seemed to burn into my very soul." To make a long story
short, the MIBs announce that they are visitors from the planet "Kazik"
on a secret mission to steal earth seawater. With what can only be
the deadpan irony of an advanced extraterrestrial race, they explain
that they will confide in Bender because "one day you will write about
this, and we are certain nobody will believe you, but you will be much
wiser than anyone else on your planet."
It is, of course,
possible that a kernel of truth lies at the heart of Bender's tale: As
head of the impressive sounding International Flying Saucer Bureau,
Bender may indeed have been paid a visit by government types curious
about then ubiquitous reports of flying saucers; and from there the
impressionable Bender may have let his imagination run wild. Barker
would eventually suggest as much.
But the real
trouble with the MIB legend is that Barker himself is so acutely
tangled in its origins. Barker died in 1985, but in recent years his
friends have confirmed that he was an inveterate hoaxer.
Indeed, he may turn
out to be one of the great pranksters of the twentieth century.
According to his friend and fellow MIB chronicler John Keel (more on
Keel in a moment), Barker "left behind a rich heritage of practical
jokes and UFO hoaxes which… are now an integral part of flying saucer
literature. He paved the way for the myriad of hoaxes of the 1980s."
In the afterward of his book The Mothman Prophesies,
Keel claims that it was Barker who invented the tale of Hanger 18, the
supposedly top-secret air-force repository of crashed alien saucers
and ET corpses at Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio. And Keel maintains
that Barker also fabricated the "Edwards Air Force Base fairy tale (in
which he names several of his personal friends as witnesses, along with
President Eisenhower).
(according to Keel) " This served as the framework for the MJ-12 and Roswell, New Mexico, 'crashed saucer' hoaxes that absorbed the attention of many UFO buffs throughout the 1980s." (And well into the 1990s,) whether or not you accept the MJ-12 and Roswell as true or false is entirely up to you...
Another man named, Lonzo Dove, told conspiracy chronicler Jim Keith that Bender's three mysterious men were none other than Barker and two pals in disguise. According to Dove, it was all a just a "cruel joke" at Bender's expense.
Another friend of Barker's, UFO researcher Jim Moseley, told Keith that Barker "did take Bender seriously, at the beginning. Then, when he realized the Bender was either not sane or not truthful… when he lost faith in Bender, which was within the first couple of years, in '55 or '56, after that [Barker] was just enjoying himself and making money."
Which brings me to the next major wave in MIB encounters. Over the course of a year in 1966 and 1967, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was plagued by a series of extremely bizarre and often frighting paranormal events centering around sightings of a large humanoid, winged creature that would later be known as "the Mothman." Interestingly, West Virginian Gray Barker would surface more than once on the periphery of events in Point Pleasant that year, which gives us ample reason to suspect the hand of a merry hoaxer at work. But the sheer scope of the weirdness suggests the involvement of other agencies as well, paranormal or otherwise.
John Keel chronicles that hysteria in his book The Mothman Prophecies. Hapless citizens who came face to face with the red-eyed birdman or who witnessed odd glowing aerial lights that haunted Point Pleasant that year were often paid visits by the MIB.
In November 1966, not far from where the Mothman would soon make its first appearances, appliance salesman Woodrow Derenberger encountered a UFO "shaped like an old-fashioned kerosene lamp chimney, flaring at both ends." The unlikely craft landed on the highway in front of Derenberger, forcing him to hit the brakes. A five-foot-ten-inch-tall man with dark skin exited the strange vehicle and approached Derenberger's car. Grinning, the visitor addressed Derenberger without moving his lips, ostensibly through telepathy. His name was "Indrid Cold," and he said he hailed from "a country much less powerful" than the United States.
After a brief
exchange, Cold returned to his craft, which took off into the night
sky. Soon Derenberger began receiving threatening phone calls, warning
him to keep quiet about the encounter, plus calls featuring spooky
electronic whoops and lulus (another staple of MIB harassment).
According to Derenberger, the spaceman continued to contact him
telepathically and in person. Cold came from the planet Lanulos "in
the galaxy of Ganymede." Derenberger became a bit of a local
celebrity, and his story fleshed itself out as time went on: The
appliance salesman was eventually whisked to Brazil and then to planet
Lanulos.
At about the same
time, Derenberger was having his first confabs with Indrid Cold and
others in the Point Pleasant region were running into mysterious,
foreign men in suits. There were MIBs and black sedans around every
corner.
After witnessing a UFO fly over her backyard, Mary Hyre, a newspaper reporter in Point Pleasant, had a succession of oddball visitors in thick-soled shoes. A large black car often followed her, peeling away when she noticed it and once screeching to a halt and disgorging a man with a flash camera. At one point, two short men wearing black overcoats called on Hyre at the newspaper office. According to Hyre, they looked almost like twins, with dark complexions and "Oriental" features. One of them blurted out, "What would you do if someone did order you to stop writing about flying saucers?" Later that same day, another small, Asian-looking man in black visited her office. He had abnormally long fingers and an unfamiliar accent. He introduced himself as "Jack Brown," a UFO researcher, and then stuttered, "What - would - what would you do - if someone ordered - ordered you to stop? To stop printing UFO stories." He denied knowing the other two men but claimed to be a friend of Gray Barker's.
Apparently, it was the same Jack Brown who visited several other Point Pleasant residents that day, including a woman who had seen the Mothman. Again, he mentioned Gray Barker and added that he also was a friend of Mary Hyre and John Keel. He fumbled with a large reel-to-reel tape recorder that he apparently did not know how to operate.
After observing a spherical UFO with four landing gears and a bottom-mounted propeller, Tad Jones reported the incident to the police. The next morning, someone had slipped a note, hand-printed in block letters, under his door. It read: "We know what you have seen, and we know that you have talked. You'd better keep your mouth shut." Several days later, a second note arrived via the same means. It was printed on a piece of cardboard that had been singed around the edges, and read: "…there want [sic] be another warning."
A week later, Jones saw a man standing at the site of the earlier UFO encounter. "He was very tanned," Jones said, "or his face was very flushed. He looked normal and was wearing a blue coat and a blue cap with a visor… something like a uniform, I guess. I noted he was holding a box in his hand. Some kind of instrument. It had a large dial on it, like a clock, and a wire ran from it to his other hand."
Other UFO and Mothman witnesses received the peculiar phone calls with either electronic noises on the other end or voices described as "metallic" or "machine like," often speaking in a foreign language.
The MIB began harassing eighteen-year-old Connie Carpenter soon after she crossed paths with the Mothman when she was driving home from church. "Jack Brown" showed up at her house, doing his usual shtick, including the Bray Barker and Mary Hyre references. While Connie was walking to school, a black 1949 Buick sidled up alongside her. The driver, a young, well-dressed man in his twenties reached out and grabbed her, trying to pull her into the car. Connie escaped, but the next morning someone slipped a penciled not under her door: "Be careful girl," it read. "I can get you yet."
A Long Island woman named "Jane" received from the MIBs a
forewarning of that disaster. After a close encounter with a piercing
beam of light during a drive through the woods, Jane received a phone
call from a machine like voice that instructed her to locate a specific
book at the local library. As Keel tells it, Jane found the book and
read page 42, as instructed. As she looked at the page, "the print
became smaller and smaller, then larger and larger." Then it "changed
into a message" informing her she would be given a series of
predictions.
The forecasts were
delivered in the person of a grinning "Hawaiian" with Asian eyes who
wore a gray suit and rode in the passenger section of a shiny new black
Cadillac. He called himself Apol. Keel, whom Jane had contacted, was
kept informed about each new prediction. Per Keel, many of Apol's
predictions of plane crashed took place on schedule. But Apol's augury
that "the Pope would be knifed to death in a bloody manner" and that
"the Antichrist will rise up out of Israel" were among the misses. When
Keel hypnotized Jane, she allegedly remembered several more boffo
predictions that Apol had made, including Robert F. Kennedy's
assassination and a December 15 disaster in Point Pleasant. On that
day, the town's seven-hundred-foot Silver Bridge collapsed, killing
forty-six people.
Whatever was really
going on in Point Pleasant, it sure made for a damn good read. (A
major Hollywood studio currently has plans to adapt the story into a
feature film.) That Gray Barker was on the scene, ostensibly
chronicling the events but perhaps tweaking them along, is the kind of
thing that sets our paranoid antennae twitching . attention peeked
In an interview
with Jum Keith, Keel admitted that Barker was behind some of the Point
Pleasant incidents, "He did a lot of the phone nonsense, and I tracked
him down on it." Keith points out: "Was it simply an accident that the
Mothman encounters, the most incredible of paranoid flaps, took place
in Gray Barker's home state of West Virginia?"
It's possible that
Barker may have had a hand in some form or another in the paranormal
activity But the sheer scope of the supernatural events and sightings
suggests that there were other agendas at play. In his thoroughgoing
volume Casebook on the Men in Black, author Jim Keith
hypothesizes that Point Pleasant may have been a testing ground for a
government experiment in mass hysteria. After all, the CIA
illegally conducted mind-control tests on unsuspecting U.S. citizens as
part of its notorious MK-ULTRA project, and thanks to the Agency's
subsequent disposal of most MK-ULTRA records, we'll never know the full
scope of those events. Perhaps the government did use Point Pleasant
residents as guinea pigs in a psychological-warfare experiment. who
knows?? But it's definitely possible!
Though it's just as
impossible to dismiss all of the Mothman sightings as practical jokes,
or psywar operations, so, too, is it impossible to dismiss all MIB
accounts as hoaxes. The UFO literature is rich with
inexplicable encounters with MIBs. In fact, UFOlogists have found
similar accounts of preternatural, prankish, and often menacing beings
in black throughout folklore. Jacques Vallee and others have
painstakingly cataloged the cosmology that behave uncannily like modern
UFO pilots. Whether those MIB motifs are merely images stored
in human-kind's collective unconscious or evidence of something more
literal is open to debate.
On extreme vanguard of literal patrol, conspiracy author William Bramley posits in his book The Gods of Eden that
extraterrestrial MIBs were behind the plague. He cites a summary
written in 1682: "In Brandenburg there appeared in 1559 horrible men, of
whom at first fifteen and later on twelve were seen. The foremost had
beside their posteriors little heads, the others fearful faces and
long scythes, with which they cut at the oats, so that the swish could
be heard at a great distance…." Immediately after the MIBish visit to
the oat fields, the plague broke out in Brandenburg, leading Bramley to
wonder: "What were the long scythe-like instruments they held that
emitted a loud swishing sound? It appears that the 'scythes' may have
been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden gas."
Weather or not you
actually believe in UFO's or MIB's , the fact that the universe is
constantly expanding and there are literally hundreds of trillions of
stars and planets, it's just absurd to believe that we are the only
intelligent life in this vast universe!!!!!!!!!!
and lets not forget the governments official policy of Deny Everything!!!!!
They want to to forget what you've seen... Or to be exact what the Government doesn't want you to see!!!
and if you don't you may just drop off the map, never to be heard from again.....
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