The Men In Black Who are the men in black? Men in Black. Who are they? What are they? Certainly, they are not the film-friendly alien chaperones portrayed by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Instead, the truth paints a much more sinister picture. In fact, the Men in Black are mysteriously black-clothed individuals who turn up at the homes of people who have witnessed UFO activity, and strongly discourage them from discussing what they have experienced. It is believed by some that these 'people' are employees of the goverment, and by others, that they are alien in origin. Make your own mind up... First Report of Men in Black The first reported occurrence of Men in Black was made in 1953 by Albert K. Bender, founder member of the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) and the editor of a flying saucer publication called the "Space Review". In October of that year, the magazine contained an announcement he had placed, 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 by a 'higher source'. He ended the announcement warning others involved in flying saucer work to be very cautious. He then stopped publication of the "Space Review" (Co-incidentally, 'Space Review' and the IFSB were losing money quickly up until this point). Later in an interview Bender stated that three men "...wearing dark suits" had ordered him to stop publishing flying saucer material after fully briefing him on the subject, and that he had complied with the order because he had been "scared to death" of them. Apparently, they had threatened him with prison. For the best part of a decade, Bender remained tight-lipped on the subject until, in 1963, he published a book called 'Flying Saucers and the Three Men'. The book itself was completely implausible, with Bender going as far to say that he had been taken to the South Pole by aliens aboard their flying saucer. However it did go a long way to giving the Men In Black a supernatural air as he described how they suddenly materialised in his bedroom. Facts about the MIB The Men in Black have a very distinguished look which is a common factor in the 40 plus cases which have been documented so far (We can assume that there are just as many undocumented cases which have not been reported). While some MIB are decidedly more human-looking than others, they have been quite consistently described as being olive in complexion. They have thin lips. High cheekbones, and bizarrely slanted eyes. There have been cases where the witness has described the eyes as 'glowing'. A good trick for a human being. Their height varies from short to tall and they often wear makeup and wigs in an attempt to look more "normal." As you can imagine, this adds even more intrigue into this phenomenon. What need would a human man have for makeup? We're not talking about a touch of foundation here. In some instances it is as if their entire face is painted on, like a mask and their faces are remarkably inanimate throughout their questioning. As a result of their 'disguise', it is understandably difficult to estimate their age. They're movements have been described as being almost robotic or mechanical and their voice has a machine/metallic-like mono-tone quality devoid of emotion. They frequently appear to have respiratory difficulties and seem to be drained of energy over short periods of time and they sometimes experience great difficulty in simple things such as sitting down or standing up. They are of course dressed in black and most often in out of date suits that appear to be brand new and cut from some strange type of fabric. It is usual for the MIB to appear in groups of three, although cases with twos and even singles are popular. MIB Transport The preffered method of transport for the MIB's tend to be large black and (often American cars) estimated to be usually at least twenty to thirty years old, yet strangely in mint condition. Often, these cars display strange, unidentifiable markings. A glow is often seen to be illuminating the interior of the vehicle. On the occassions when the cars do have license plate numbers (and sometimes they don't), they are usually obscured or missing altogether, but in some instances plate numbers have been recorded and checked out only to show that they had never been issued. Visitations A typical MIB encounter may go something like this; Having witnessed a UFO, you would be visited by one or more strange men. These men often flash badges, give names, and claim to be from one government agency or another. After investigation however, you would find that the names given are invariably absent from the mentioned agency's records and often the agency itself is found not to exist. The "agents" usually display not only an uncanny knowledge of exactly what the witness has seen, but intimate personal knowledge of the witness as well. They collect any physical evidence of the encounter that the witness may have, such as photographs or residue from a landing site. They may threaten you outright not to speak of your experience, or they may merely make it transparently clear that doing so would be to your detriment. Other times, however, the MIB claim to be insurance salesmen, portrait photographers, or something equally unconnected with the subject of UFOs and never mention the UFO event in question, yet somehow leave the impression that they are associated with it none the less. The MIB display incompetence and bizarre behaviour during their visitation. Seemingly mystified by human ways, they are extremely poor taskmasters in the area of imitation. For instance, they often express amazement at the most mundane objects, and have been known to ask inappropriate and downright rude questions. MIB encounters, as one might expect, are actually quite rare. The majority of reports on the MIB are made by people who had never even heard of the MIB phenomenon.... Instanes of the MIB Yangguan, China 1963 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 str anger'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. Maine, US 1976 Surely one of the most bizarre MIB encounters ever was experienced by Dr. Herbert Hopkins of Orchard Beach, Maine. Hopkins was a psychiatrist with no real interest in UFOs who had been working, by referral, on an alleged alien abduction case. He had been performing hypnosis on a young man named David Stephens who claimed to have had numerous encounters with extra-terrestrials. Hopkins had accumulated several hours of taped sessions with Stephens, but to Hopkins it was just another case. On the evening of Saturday, September 11, 1976, Hopkins was at home alone (a favorite time for MIB visitations) when he received a phone call from someone claiming to be the vice president of the New Jersey UFO Research Organization (a group that was later found not to exist) and asking if he could drop by to speak with Hopkins about the Stephens case. Hopkins, for reasons he was later unable to identify, agreed. He hung up the phone, went into the hallway to turn on the light, and was startled to see that his visitor was already climbing the back steps and was nearly at the door. There was no way, not if the man had called from across the street, not if he had called from next door, that he could have possibly made it to Hopkins' door so quickly. Though extremely puzzled, Hopkins opened the door and asked the gentleman to come in. The stranger briefly outlined, in a mechanical voice completely devoid of intonation or inflection, his understanding of the Stephens case and Hopkins confirmed it as accurate. They then discussed the case in general with Hopkins doing most of the talking. It appeared that the MIB was far more interested in finding out what Hopkins knew about the case than he was in learning anything about it for himself. Things grew gradually more bizarre with each passing minute. At one point the MIB, who was wearing what appeared to be gray suede gloves, brushed his lips with the back of his hand. When he put his hand down, the MIB's face and glove were smeared with red. Hopkins examined the MIB's mouth more closely and quickly realized that the thing had no lips, just a slit mouth doctored with lipstick to give the most general impression of lips. When the MIB spoke Hopkins could discern no teeth in its mouth. Apparently satisfied with the information gathered from Hopkins, the MIB changed the subject. He informed Hopkins that there were two coins in Hopkins' pocket (which was correct) and asked him to remove one. Hopkins complied and held the coin, a shiny new penny, in the palm of his hand. The MIB told Hopkins to watch the coin closely. After a few moments the coin took on a "silvery" appearance and then appeared to be going out of focus. It then began to fade and, eventually, disappeared altogether. The MIB informed Hopkins that the coin would never be seen "on this plane" again. He then inquired as to whether Hopkins was familiar with alleged UFO abductee Barney Hill. Hopkins replied that he had heard of Hill, but was under the impression that he had died in the not too distant past. The MIB informed Hopkins that was correct. "Barney didn't have a heart," said the MIB, "just like you no longer have a coin." (It should be noted that Barney Hill actually died of a cerebral hemorrhage.) The MIB then gently suggested that Hopkins destroy any material he had related to the Stephens case. Hopkins noticed that the MIB's speech was slowing down considerably. The MIB admitted that his "energy [was] running low" and rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. Hopkins saw him to the door and watched him slowly descend the stairs, placing both feet on each step before attempting to negotiate the next one. He finally made it to the bottom and disappeared around the corner of the house, from which a bright light emanated. Hopkins initially took the light to be from the stranger's vehicle, but he later realized that the light was far too bright and bluish to have come from ordinary car headlights. Hopkins went back inside, badly shaken and confused. His dog, a normally fearless German shepherd/collie mix, had run into the closet with its tail between its legs when the MIB first arrived and was still there, refusing resolutely to come out. Hopkins sat down at the kitchen table to digest what he had just experienced, but before doing so he pulled his revolver out of a drawer, just to be on the safe side. It didn't take him long to decide what he had to do. He went into the other room, gathered all the material from the Stephens case, demagnetized the tapes, cut them up into thousands of pieces and then, for good measure, burned them along with some other documents related to the case. When Hopkins' family returned home they could see that he was obviously quite upset. Hopkins related his incredible story which prompted his teenaged son to grab a flashlight and go out to the driveway to look for any evidence of the presence of a vehicle. Sure enough he found caterpillar tractor-type markings in the sand that had blown onto the driveway during a recent storm. The markings were very deep and distinct, but were only about four inches wide and a foot and a half long. What is more, they were directly in the center of the narrow driveway where no conventional vehicle would leave a trace. Mysteriously, while the sand was still in the driveway the following morning and the driveway had not been used, the marks were gone. As is common following MIB visitations, Hopkins began to have trouble with his telephone. He often picked it up to find the line dead, and his patients began to complain that when they called he either didn't answer his phone or that they would get a voice falsely claiming that his number was out of service. On those occasions when a connection was successfully made, it was often mysteriously broken in the middle of a conversation. The phone company determined that Hopkins' phone line was definitely being tampered with, but were at a loss to explain how or by whom. On September 24, 1976, less than two weeks after Herbert Hopkins' strange encounter, his daughter-in-law, Maureen, received a phone call from a man claiming to be an acquaintance of her husband, John. The man asked if he and a friend could drop by the house, ostensibly for a social call. John, unable to place the man but curious, agreed to meet him at a nearby restaurant. At the restaurant John was confronted with a very strange-looking man and his even stranger-looking female companion, both attired in odd-looking, old-fashioned clothes. Despite the fact that John had certainly never met the man before and that there was something inherently weird about the pair, he inexplicably invited them to return with him to his home. Both individuals appeared to experience great difficulty in simply walking, taking rapid short steps while leaning impossibly forward. The woman's legs, judging from her particularly odd locomotion, appeared to be joined to her hips in a most peculiar manner. Once back at Hopkins' home, the two put on a bizarre display. While continuously groping and fondling his companion (occasionally asking John if he was "doing it right"), the man proceeded to ask John and Maureen rather personal questions, such as what they read, talked about, and watched on television. At one point John left the room and the man took the opportunity to invite Maureen to sit next to him on the couch. When Maureen declined, her extremely forward guest inquired as to "how [she was] made," and whether she had any nude photographs of herself available. When John returned to the room the woman suddenly (albeit awkwardly) stood up and announced that it was time to go. The man also rose, but moved no further. The woman, after waiting several moments and making no attempt whatsoever to go around her partner, turned to John and said, "Please move him. I can't move him myself." Suddenly the man became reanimated and the two lurched out the door together, one behind the other. Their graceless exit thankfully marked the conclusion to the Hopkins Family MIB Affair. Philadelphia, US 1980 The following case beautifully illustrates the generally inconsistent nature of the MIB phenomenon. Not only is the MIB in this case disheveled, he also encourages his apathetic host to take a more active interest in UFOs! Peter Rojcewicz is a professor of humanities and folklore at Julliard School in New York who also teaches at the C.J. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology. One day in 1980 he found himself in a library on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania browsing through a book on UFOs. The book had been recommended to him by a colleague who erroneously assumed that Rojcewicz, as a folklorist, would be interested in it. At some point Rojcewicz became aware of a wrinkled black pant leg and a scuffed black shoe out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to find a man well over six feet tall and weighing no more than 140 pounds standing before him. The figure was dressed in a black suit which "looked as though [it had been] slept in for three days." The man's shirt was bright white, nearly matching his deathly pallor. Completely uninvited, the man flopped down in a chair next to Rojcewicz and asked what he was doing. Rojcewicz replied that he was looking at a book about UFOs. The man asked if Rojcewicz had ever seen a UFO, to which the professor replied in the negative. The man then asked Rojcewicz if he believed that UFOs were real. Rojcewicz responded that he really didn't have an opinion one way or another and that, after studying the book in front of him, he realized that he didn't have much of an interest in the subject. The man suddenly screamed, "Flying saucers are the most important fact of the century and you are not interested?" He then suddenly rose as awkwardly as he had sat down and appeared to regain his composure. He put his hand on Rojcewicz's shoulder, said quietly, "Go well on your purpose," and with that took his leave. Within ten seconds of the strange man's departure, Rojcewicz was engulfed by fear. He believed that he had had a genuinely paranormal experience, and the idea terrified him. He took a walk around the library in an attempt to collect his thoughts. Strangely, he could not find another living soul in the building. He returned to where he had been sitting, absolutely befuddled. An hour or so later he got up to walk the library again. This time everything seemed back to normal. It was not until later that Rojcewicz heard of MIB. He has since become one of the leading authorities on the subject. Government Interest The Position of the US Government on MIB of all the interesting aspects of MIB, perhaps most intriguing is the fact that the existence of MIB has been all but officially recognized by the United States government. On March 1, 1967, Lt. General Hewitt T. Wheless, the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force sent the following memorandum to a number of defense agencies, including Strategic Air Command (SAC): "Information, not verifiable, has reached Hq USAF that persons claiming to represent the Air Force or other Defense establishments have contacted citizens who have sighted unidentified flying objects. In one reported case an individual in civilian clothes, who represented himself as a member of NORAD, demanded and received photos belonging to a private citizen. In another, a person in an Air Force uniform approached local police and other citizens who had sighted a UFO, assembled them in a school room and told them that they did not see what they thought they saw and that they should not talk to anyone about the sighting. All military and civilian personnel and particularly Information Officers and UFO Investigating Officers who hear of such reports should immediately notify their local OSI offices."