From the vault
Men in Black Exist
High Strangeness Visits You
Men in Black
What do these words mean to you?
Aircel Comics published the debut issue of The Men in Black in January 1990. Creator and writer Lowell Cunningham had the inspiration for the graphic novel when a friend of his, Dennis Matheson, related Men in Black or MIB legends surrounding the enigma of flying saucers. Matheson told fascinating stories about how mysterious men dressed in black menaced UFO witnesses and terrified UFO researchers. Playing “what if,” Cunningham downplayed flying saucers and used selective mythology as a jumping-off point to create an MIB organization that existed to suppress anything that could upset the normal flow of society.
“I thought UFOs every issue might get boring after a while,” Cunningham confessed in an interview.
Perhaps the most insightful and telling fictional exploration of altered states and our perception of reality, particularly during Men in Black incidents and UFO events, occurred in the third season of The X-Files, which aired on broadcast television. Hinting that truth is subjective, Jose Chung’s From Outer Space first aired on April 12, 1996.
One year later, director Barry Sonnenfield made Men in Black household words with his science fiction comedy starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as MIB agents protecting Earth from the scum of the universe. Loosely based on the Lowell Cunningham comic book series, these MIB represented an ultra-secret organization established to monitor and police extraterrestrial immigrants. Jones and Smith found themselves battling an alien terrorist on a one-bug mission to spark intergalactic war. Movie audiences found themselves battling sight gags and one-liners, entertaining special effects, and plenty of action with constant references to popular alien and conspiracy theories. The film spawned sequels and animated series, not to mention a universe of movie-related merchandise.
In 1998, The Shadow Men featured the talent of Eric Roberts, Sherilyn Fenn, and Dean Stockwell. In this tale, the Wilsons are stalked by deadly nonhumans dressed in black intent on silencing the family and confiscating videotaped evidence of their alien abduction.
Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, authentic Men in Black episodes are no laughing matter.
Genuine visits by enigmatic strangers are among the rarest episodes of our extraordinary encounter continuum. The term “Men in Black” has evolved to include any individuals that harass accidental eyewitnesses to so-called “UFO” and “paranormal” events, that serve to seemingly intimidate investigative researchers of these unexplained occurrences, or that appear in active areas of high strangeness. MIB cases worldwide range from curious to bizarre to incredible.
One bizarre Pennsylvania case began on the night of January 20, 1967, when Mrs Walter Kushner and her two daughters, Susan (17) and Tanya (14) and a close friend of the girls, Marianne Williamson (16), witnessed a brilliant UFO drop below the cloud cover and maneuver at high speed while the four were returning to the Kushner’s Pittsfield residence. Hours later, as the three girls enjoyed a ritual teenage slumber party, they spotted a peculiar light shimmering through the closed curtains of Susan’s bedroom.
Without warning, the drapes parted of their own volition and a small triangular object hovering a few feet from the house began beaming brilliant light into the bedroom. When the triangle moved to another window, the curtains repeated their opening act and the intensity of light emanating from the object increased. At this point, the girls became quite frightened and decided to retreat.
“It” had different ideas.
All three girls found themselves unable to move or cry out. Sheer terror escalated to fervent prayers for help. After what seemed like an eternity, the siege ended. The girls experienced a strange dizzy sensation for an hour, even though their freedom of movement had returned.
The girls awoke Mrs Kushner and tearfully described the party crasher and their fear that “it” might return. Mother eventually got the trio settled down and, after much discussion, decided that it would be for the best if everyone simply forgot an incident that nobody would believe anyway.
All agreed.
Things were back to normal when shortly after the dinner hour on Saturday (exactly one week following the horrific pajama party), two men arrived at the Kushner household. They identified themselves as military investigators and flashed what appeared to be United States Air Force identification.
Both men wore tan trench coats, which they kept buttoned from knee to collar. The taller of the two, who, according to the family’s testimony, did all the talking, was described as having blond hair, green eyes, and being thin and deeply tanned. The other gentleman was heavyset with dark hair and piercing blue eyes and was also deeply tanned.
Mrs Kushner explained that both men wanted every shred of information regarding the UFO that the girls claimed had intimidated them.
Neither parent can explain to this day why they allowed their children to be so intensely grilled by these “government agents.”
These characters moved about the house with apparently total knowledge of the whereabouts of rooms, furniture, objects, et cetera.
When asked how the Air Force learned of the UFO sightings, the taller one responded with, “We know a lot of things, a lot of things.”
Although compelled to accept the situation, the family felt that something seemed off-center, something that, for whatever reason, they couldn’t quite put their finger on until after the officers departed.
Sue noted that their clothes looked as if they had been purchased from a clothing store ten minutes before, and even the bottom of their shoes seemed unwalked on in appearance. The cigarette pack held by the taller one was unopened (and stayed that way), and even his wallet was brand new.
While the taller of the two showed his captive audience a loose-leaf notebook with professionally printed schematic diagrams and photos of both the exterior and interior views of various types of UFO-type craft, Sue watched the shorter officer secretly write in an elongated notebook not unlike those used by stenographers. Catching him off guard, she was amazed to see him writing strange symbols in vertical columns, starting from the left, going down one column, up the next, down the third, up the fourth, et cetera. Being accustomed to standard shorthand, Sue had no idea of the graphic’s origin.
Meanwhile, the talkative officer continued to mystify his audience, telling them that UFOs were nothing more than secret U.S. experimental devices that have never harmed anyone or property and that public disclosure of seeing one up close could result in criminal prosecution.
When Tanya asked how the family could get in touch with them should there be another sighting, the officer replied, “I can find you anywhere, any time.”
When these military men finally left, they backed their vehicle out onto the roadway, extinguished the headlights and zoomed off into the night. It is against Pennsylvania Commonwealth traffic laws and all common sense and safety to drive after sunset without suitable lighting.
These gentlemen probably had no connection with the United States Air Force.
1967 — Year of the MIB
In January of 1967, Colonel George P. Freeman, Pentagon spokesman for Project Blue Book, the Air Force investigation into reports of Unidentified Flying Objects, revealed that our government was concerned over increasing reports that persons unknown passing themselves off as USAF personnel or bearing credentials from various official agencies were visiting and coercing UFO witnesses into silence, sometimes even confiscating UFO photographs and every trace of physical evidence.
“We haven’t been able to find out anything about them,” Colonel Freeman admitted. “By posing as Air Force officers and government agents, they are committing a federal offense. We would sure like to catch one.”
On March 1, 1967, Lieutenant General Hewitt T. Wheless, USAF, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, sent a confidential letter to all commands concerning impersonations of Air Force officers that read:
“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 officers.”
In his address to the 1967 Congress of Scientific UFOlogists (during which he was chosen as “UFOlogist of the Year”), noted author John A. Keel told of his personal mission to track down the Men in Black. He said that these mystery men often silenced saucer sighters even before the witnesses had time to report their experience. On occasion, Keel said, he arrived on the scene within moments after the mysterious silencers had departed. His “Open Letter to All UFO Researchers” summarized the situation:
“All of this has been brought upon us because we have wasted twenty years chasing lights in the sky and fussing with the Air Force. We have allowed a serious and volatile situation to develop under our noses while we played with aimless speculations about the origin and nature of those rather insignificant vehicles overhead. We must switch our attention from the vehicles to the occupants. The menace is not in our skies. It is on the ground and at this moment it is spreading like a disease across the country and the world.”
Even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day.
Men in Black encounters often involve people totally unaware of this phenomenon. In 1967, sketchy MIB tales were published in paltry mimeographed newsletters and read by a handful of hardcore UFO enthusiasts. Obvious patterns would not find their way into books until years later. The situation has not improved. Even today, with the vast resources of the Internet at our disposal, these MIB incidents continue, and many people have little knowledge of the relatively obscure Men in Black modus operandi.
Curious cases
How are UFO witnesses located before they tell anyone else about their sighting? Curious MIB cases include those where the visitors offer a false identity or display an uncanny knowledge of exactly what the witness saw.
That case where “an individual in civilian clothes, who represented himself as a member of NORAD, demanded and received photos belonging to a private citizen” concerned California highway inspector Rex Heflin.
On August 3, 1965, Heflin snapped a series of daylight Polaroid photos of a UFO while parked in his truck near the Santa Ana freeway. These pictures received a great deal of publicity, and there was always the possibility that the photos had been faked, but this was difficult to prove or disprove without the original prints. Polaroid cameras produced no negatives for evaluation.
Heflin said that he was approached by a representative of the North American Air Defense Command who requested and received the original prints for “official study.” NORAD denied any involvement.
In April 1966, two Norwalk, Connecticut, schoolboys were pursued by a low-flying UFO. The next day, a man appeared at the school and introduced himself to the principal as a representative of a “government agency so secret that he couldn’t give the name.” This mysterious agent interrogated the boys for nearly three hours.
In July of 1967, Robert Richardson, of Toledo, Ohio, informed the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization that he had a “collision” with a UFO while driving at night. Coming around a bend, he was startled to find a strange object blocking the road and hit it, though not very hard. Immediately on impact, the UFO vanished. Police accompanied Richardson to the scene and found only his skid marks as evidence. Richardson made a later visit and discovered a small lump of metal that he believed might have come from the UFO.
Three days later, at 11:00 PM, two men in their twenties visited Richardson and questioned him briefly. They never identified themselves, and Richardson, to his own subsequent surprise, did not ask who they were. He noted that they left in a black 1953 Cadillac. The license number, when checked, had not yet been issued. What are the chances of making up a number and having this happen?
Richardson then received a visit from two different men. Both wore black suits and were dark-complexioned. Richardson felt there was something vaguely foreign about them. They first tried to persuade him that he had not hit anything at all. Failing at that, they demanded 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.”
On June 21, 1993, Peter Gregory of Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, England filmed several seconds of video footage of a huge flattened triangular UFO with red and yellow lights that left a “trail of light” during departure. Three days later, two smartly dressed men arrived at his home and promised full analysis and computer enhancement of the video. They put the subject at ease by claiming to belong to a UFO research organization from his hometown of Grimsby. He surrendered the video for professional examination only to eventually discover that this UFO group did not exist. His video was never returned.
Bizarre cases
The Kushner case has a counterpart among the Pennine ridges in England.
On January 23, 1976, at 5:30 PM, 17-year-old Shirley Greenfield (pseudonym) was returning home from work and noticed lights cavorting over a reservoir. In seconds, the lights swooped down on her to become a metallic disc directly overhead, possibly thirty feet across and spinning like a top. An invisible force pressed her hard to the ground. Metal fillings in her teeth “vibrated”, and a tangy taste filled her mouth. Shirley feared that this unseen “force” would crush her. One half hour of “missing time” was noted when she arrived home, terror-stricken and unable to speak from the shock of the experience.
The event was reported to the police, who refused to investigate and turned the story over to the media. Not seeking publicity, Shirley refused to cooperate with the local press and turned down a lucrative offer for a filmed television interview. Her health had deteriorated, and she took to her bed for several days with muscle aches and nausea and vomiting. Her eyes hurt and watered and were quite red. She had unexplained burn marks on her arm and side, as well as a strange purple rash on her neck and shoulders. In her mouth, top dental fillings crumbled into powder and fell out, while some bottom fillings became embedded into the gums.
On Monday, February 2nd, Shirley’s mother intercepted a telephone call from a man who would only identify himself as “someone who investigates these things” that asked about her daughter’s health and whether any marks had been left on the girl’s body as a result of her ordeal. The mother put the caller off.
At 7:00 PM on the following evening, two men arrived at the Greenfield home and demanded “to interrogate” the girl. Both men appeared about 40 and wore crisp black suits and denied being either UFOlogists or journalists. The father initially refused to let them in. One man, tall and fair, almost blond, did all the talking and sternly responded with, “If you do not let us in now, we will come back later and make Shirley speak to us.”
Neither man used names. Both had an air of authority and conducted themselves as if they had every right to do and say whatever they chose. The silent partner sat on a chair and held a square black box with no visible moving parts. It was said to be a high-tech recording device. Although this intense grilling session lasted three hours, at no time was any recording tape changed.
The tall one was rude to the point of aggression.
This visit ended with a threat to be silent.
“You must not talk about this matter. It is in your interests not to do so. Nobody will believe you, in any case. In particular, you must not talk to UFO investigators.”
The pair left in a large black car.
Mr Greenfield still wonders, “You know, I have never been able to understand why I did not throw them out. Why I let them hound Shirley for hour after hour? I would normally not tolerate something like this. Why did I let them do this thing?”
The mother was creeped out by the man who had not spoken all night. He continually stared intently at her daughter the entire evening.
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These mystery men telephoned the very next day and again a week later. They were still concerned about whether or not the girl had any unusual marks on her body following her ordeal. Shirley finally admitted that, yes, there were marks, but they were gone now. This seemed to satisfy the visitors. They did not contact the family again.
Under the auspices of Dr. Albert Kellar in Manchester, Shirley was hypnotized and asked to relive both the UFO sighting and the visit by the two Men in Black. She reacted in absolute terror to the visit by the MIB, and the doctor was forced to abandon the experiment because her vital signs rose to dangerous levels. Even so, Shirley offered a possible clue:
“I don’t understand… He’s talking to me twice.”
This MIB had supposedly interrogated her on two different levels. During the visit, messages had acted upon her subconscious mind in a form of subliminal communication. This advances notions of mental hypnotic suggestion and those Experiments in Distant Influence documented by Leonid L. Vasiliev.
On January 9, 1967, Mr Edward and Mrs Arline Christiansen and family returned home after a trip to Florida to their new house in Wildwood, New Jersey. A UFO sighting made the previous November was the last thing on their minds.
At 5:30 PM, there was a knock at the door.
A representative of the “Missing Heirs Bureau” said that he was looking for an Edward Christiansen who had inherited a great deal of money. This investigator dressed in black and stood at least six-foot-six with an enormous frame, with thyroid eyes, dead white skin, and pipe-stem limbs. His shoes featured unusually thick rubber soles. Despite his size, the visitor spoke in a high “tinny” voice that issued in an emotionless monotone, in clipped phrases, “like a computer.” When he removed his jacket, he disclosed an official-looking gold badge on his shirt pocket, which he instantly covered with his hand and removed.
As he sought personal information to determine if he had located the missing heir, this investigator wheezed with labored breathing, and his face got redder by the minute. He asked for a glass of water and swallowed a large yellow pill. He returned to normal after taking it.
Arline and her seventeen-year-old daughter Connie both noticed that the inquisitor’s too-short trousers had ridden up his skinny leg and saw a thick green wire that came out of his sock and disappeared under his pants. The wire seemed to be indented into his leg at one point and was covered by a large brown spot.
Although UFOs were never mentioned, this case is pure MIB.
When the visitor left the house and reached the road, he gave a hand signal, and a 1963 black Cadillac pulled alongside with its headlights out. The stranger climbed into the car, and it drove off, its headlights still off.
On May 3, 1975, Carlos de los Santos Montiel was flying his Piper light aircraft on approach to Mexico City when two small gray discs appeared off his wingtips and took “control” of his airplane. A third disc came at him head-on and flew beneath him so close that it bumped the bottom of the plane. Mexico City airport allegedly tracked the “bogeys” on radar. Carlos was treated for shock following his ordeal.
Driving en route to the Mexico City TV studio to be interviewed by Pedro Ferriz for television, Montiel was intercepted by two black limousines “like a diplomat’s car”, hemming him in front and back and forcing his automobile to the side of the road before he had time to react. Both vehicles looked as though they were on the road for the very first time. Four tall men with very pale skin and wearing dark suits got out. One of the MIB prevented Carlos from leaving his vehicle, and another threatened the pilot’s life in a robotic voice.
“Look, boy, if you value your life and your family’s too, don’t talk any more about this sighting of yours.”
Two things really struck Carlos about his dark-garbed antagonists: they were so very absolutely pale, and at no time did they seem to blink but only stared straight ahead. Our witness abandoned all television interview plans.
Farmer James McCleary of County Tipperary in Ireland had little regard for the flattened circles in his oats and potato fields during June and July of 1990.
One Sunday that fateful summer, as McCleary took his customary walk around the property, a man jumped out from behind a shed and blocked his route. Dressed in a dark suit some fifty years out of fashion, the stranger was tall and so thin and pale that he looked as if he had died and been dug up.
“Tell us about those designs in your crops,” the man demanded. The voice was educated and without accent, although the interloper had trouble fitting the proper words into place. He finally threatened the farmer to remain silent and to talk to him alone, as it was “in your best interest” to do so “ — or else!”
Having never heard of the fearsome Men in Black, McCleary circumnavigated this stranger and went about his business, more perplexed than terrified.
Incredible cases
58-year-old Dr. Herbert Hopkins of Orchard Beach, Maine, experienced one of the best-documented MIB encounters. Hopkins had no particular interest in UFOs but had been working, by referral, on the alleged alien abduction of David Stephens. He had performed extensive hypnotic regression and accumulated several hours of taped sessions and other written documentation.
At about 8:00 PM on the evening of Saturday, September 11, 1976, after his wife and children had gone out, leaving him alone, his telephone rang. A man who identified himself as the vice-president of the New Jersey UFO Research Organisation asked Hopkins if he could drop by and discuss certain details of this UFO case. The man asked if he was alone, and the doctor admitted that he was. Despite concerns about drug-related robbery, Hopkins, for reasons that he was later unable to fathom, agreed. He hung up the phone and walked to the back hallway to switch on the outside light so that his visitor would be able to find his way from the parking lot. When he got to the door, he was startled to see a stranger climbing the back 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,” Doctor Hopkins puzzled later. Still, he opened the door and invited the gentleman in without asking him his name or what he wanted.
The five-foot-eight visitor was dressed in a black suit, with a matching derby hat, tie, and shoes, and a white shirt. His clothes were “brand new” and unwrinkled, sharply creased.
“I thought he looked like an undertaker,” Hopkins later told investigators.
When he took off his derby, he revealed himself as completely hairless. No hair on his head. No eyebrows or eyelashes. The man’s skin was dead white except for a pair of fiery red lips.
During the course of the conversation, the MIB happened to brush his mouth with the back of the suede gloves that he wore. The good doctor was astonished to see the glove stained with lipstick and that there were no real lips at all.
The stranger spoke in a mechanical monotone and appeared to be far more interested in finding out what Hopkins knew or suspected about UFOs and abductions.
Apparently satisfied, the MIB changed the subject. He correctly stated that Hopkins had two coins in his pocket and asked him to remove one. Hopkins complied and produced a shiny new penny. The MIB told Hopkins to stare at the coin. After a few moments, the penny took on a “silvery” appearance and then seemed to go out of focus, and then it just slowly dematerialized. It just was not there any longer.
“Neither you nor anyone else on this plane will ever see that coin again.” The visitor then asked Hopkins what he knew about the death of famed UFO abductee Barney Hill.
“Barney didn’t have a heart; just like you no longer have a coin.” Although the MIB inferred that Hill died because he knew too much, it should be noted here that death was due to a cerebral hemorrhage. It was suggested that Hopkins destroy all his notes and tapes related to the Stephens case.
The visitor’s speech slowed. He rose unsteadily to his feet and, little by little, said, “My energy is running low… Must go now… Goodbye.” Hopkins saw him to the door and watched him falteringly descend the stairs, placing both feet on each step before attempting to negotiate the next one.
Hopkins initially took the bright bluish-white light in the driveway to be car headlights, but his visitor walked in the opposite direction. Hopkins ran to a window to see where the man was going, but he was not there. He ran back to the door and looked out, but both the strange man and weird light were gone. Doctor Hopkins never saw nor heard an automobile depart.
He immediately gathered all the material from the Stephens case and thoroughly destroyed the audiotapes of the hypnotic sessions and all notes and records as instructed.
When his wife and children came home, they found this respected professional severely shaken, with every light in the house blazing, and seated at the kitchen table with a pistol.
As for the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, it never existed.
Now consider the next case.
On Monday, January 19, 1997, four days after his UFO sighting in Essex, William Shearer had returned from working the night shift and gone to bed as usual. His wife and daughter had stepped out, and he had the house to himself. Unable to sleep, he went downstairs and thought that he heard a faint knock at the door.
Shearer opened the door and faced a strange sight. One visitor was tall, about six-foot-four, and dressed in an immaculate dark gray suit and full-length coat. He wore a brilliant white shirt and a red tie and was holding a brimmed hat. A shorter but identically dressed man stood aloof and appeared to be looking up and down the road, as if to see if anyone was coming. The tall man said, “Can I speak to you, please?” His deep voice seemed to be coming from his chest rather than his mouth. At this point, the visitor’s gaze was lowered to the ground, and Shearer could not see his face. Shearer assumed the men were Jehovah’s Witnesses and replied, “No, I’m not dressed.” The man persisted. Shearer declined and asked him to come back later.
Then the man lifted his head and looked straight at Shearer. The first impression was that the man was terminally ill, as he looked deathly pale. In contrast, the stranger’s lips seemed to be tinged red with lipstick. Again the man asked to come in. Shearer stood his ground. After looking at the second man, the first finally relented and said they would return.
Shearer stated that it was “almost as if the two men were talking to each other, but I couldn’t hear them.” The shorter man kept looking at his tall friend and nodding and gesturing. They left in a black car “like something straight out of a gangster movie, yet it looked brand new.” Both men walked awkwardly, as if suffering from arthritis.
Despite the unusual aspects of this encounter, Shearer was convinced that he was dealing with religious types.
On February 12th, at 1:15 AM, Shearer received his second visit while he was at work. He immediately recognized this individual as the one looking up and down the road on the previous occasion, who was again dressed in the dark suit and coat and wore a hat. Shearer managed a closer look at the face. That countenance sported no eyebrows or eyelashes, no signs of stubble. The caller acknowledged Shearer by name and specified that they wanted to discuss his UFO sighting, giving the exact date and time. Shearer was perplexed as to how they had gotten this information but refused to let him in. Shearer asked to see some identification, but the visitor ignored him and repeatedly asked to come in. It was almost as if this character could only utter a limited selection of set phrases. This verbal fencing lasted for about two minutes before the office phone rang. Shearer turned to pick up the phone and turned back. The MIB was gone.
It is also interesting to note here that both Hopkins and Shearer found themselves suddenly plagued by telephone problems (annoying clicking sounds and static, connections mysteriously broken in the middle of a conversation, strangers sharing their private phone line, or finding the line dead) for some time following their encounters. This telephone harassment is common among UFO percipients and investigators.
In still another British case, one East Midlands UFO witness told investigative researcher Derek James that his house was being stalked by a black Jaguar automobile following a visit by two men in dark suits who claimed to be from the Ministry of Defense. Two men parked outside his home at night, and he became convinced that they were watching him. According to noted UFO author Jenny Randles, “I had sufficient association with this case to confirm that this story is genuine.”
It was decided not to directly ask local law enforcement to investigate Men in Black. However, this witness lived quite near a major toy manufacturing company. What if the men in the Jaguar were “casing the joint” to pull off a robbery? The police took the bait.
At 9:05 PM, on October 21, 1971, after the vehicle registration and other details were recorded and all subsequent checks revealed that the Jaguar did not exist, the police officers on patrol were ordered to bring in the occupants of the Jaguar for questioning by the CID. The patrol car parked out of sight so as not to alert these potential perpetrators.
According to Randles, “Following standard procedure the two bobbies walked toward it — one on either side of the vehicle — and got to within a few inches. They were just about to knock on the window and question the driver and his passenger. Although they could see little in the dark, the two men inside were smartly dressed.
“Suddenly, the car disappeared. It literally just melted away into nothingness in front of the two terrified police officers.”
Don Worley, a patriarch among investigators, tells us that on a warm day in April of 1973, two “men” entered Reed Thompson’s auto parts store in Milan, Indiana. The shepherd dog on duty cowered in the corner.
These grotesque-looking characters were thin and longhaired and wore tan jumpsuits and heavy gloves. A local newsman later coined the term “Plastic-Facers” to describe their rather unsettling appearance. Speaking in a mechanical monotone, one of them referenced a close-up photo of a “monitor-type” UFO that Thompson had taken as the object slowly moved through trees thirty feet from his home. They demanded the photo and negative.
Thompson stubbornly replied that the picture was in a bank vault.
“Plastic-Face” said that did not matter; they would get it anyway.
Meanwhile, a friend hurried outside to check out the bright yellow Buick LeSabre the weird twosome had arrived in. Peering through the dark glass, he was stunned by the absence of seats or a steering wheel. As the visitors returned to their car, Thompson brushed one of them with his elbow, and this seemed to disturb it.
Later that evening, as Thompson was en route to a welding shop at Versailles, his nemesis appeared inches from his bumper, and a wild twilight chase ensued. The “Plastic-Facers” parked right behind him at the welding shop and shadowed him up to the door.
As he opened the door and whirled to confront his antagonists, Thompson discovered that the unwelcome pair and their phantom car were nowhere to be found.
In his 1983 book, China and Extraterrestrials, Shi Bo relates an encounter from May of 1963. UFOs have until only recently been a taboo subject in mainland China.
The day after six-year-old Li Jing-Yang from Shanxi Province had seen “a shining, silvery disc” hanging in the sky while playing with his friends, he was accosted 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, asked the boy whether he had seen anything unusual in the sky recently. Jing-Yang nodded. The stranger then seized the youngster by the arm and refused to release him until a vow was made never to tell anyone else what he had seen. The terrified boy promised. The man vanished into thin air as he turned toward a corner.
Li Jing-Yang claims to this day that this encounter was witnessed by several passers-by who observed the stranger’s robotic gait and mechanical movements, his automated-sounding voice, and lips that never moved when he spoke.
Most MIB encounters are neither hallucinations nor hoaxes. But what do these visitations represent? Role-playing covert government operatives? Nonhumans acting human? Maybe a little of both. Maybe something beyond our comprehension.
Odd appearance and bizarre behavior do not certify the existence of nonhumans among us. However, dissolving coins and cars vanishing in plain sight raise interesting questions.
Our failure to understand these events in no way negates their validity.
MIB visitations represent entity contact at its most accessible in that entire families have endured grueling visits by these mystery men and many witnesses are harassed more than once.
These visitations represent entity contact at its most elusive. Parents wonder why they allowed their children to be so intensely grilled by these strangers. Victims speak of being unable to think or react normally until after the mysterious visitors leave. To some, this suggests altered states of consciousness or subliminal hypnotic techniques.
What if the MIB visits you? Will you be witty and clever and insist they pose for a snapshot? Or will you be a deer in headlights and spend your tomorrows wondering why?
