Real MIB. Real Men in Black ...
MIB. The Real Men In Black = the "Third Party" mentioned in the intelligence data called ... "Decide Whether We Should Show Up".
The Real Men In Black ...
Want Proof of M.I.B ? ... Men In Black ... Real MIBs
===========================
2003, 10 January: The MoD? 'UFO desk' received a call from a woman
who said that in the small hours she and her mother had seen lights in
the sky from their home in East Dulwich, south London, and feared this
might be a terrorist attack. So she had called Peckham police who
eventually sent a car around. In it were two policemen, and two men in
space suits with dark glasses, who called themselves Mork and Mindy.
These men told her not to look at the object because of possible
radiation, and they carried a ?ransmitter?(Geiger counter?) which
kept clicking. As the woman? eyes hurt from watching the lights, they
offered to wash them out with a solution, though she declined. She was
then told ?ot to talk to anyone about this and certainly not the
press in case it caused panic.?
After they had asked the women for their birth signs, they left. When
the MoD contacted the police, they naturally denied the Mork and Mindy
story, saying that they had only sent two officers, without any
radiation equipment, that the woman thought the lights were aliens,
not terrorists, and that they themselves had been unable to see them.
Later, the mother wrote a letter of complaint stating that they had
discovered that Mork and Mindy was a TV sitcom about an alien, and
that they had been trying ?o make us look foolish? Ministry of
Defence report, quoted in David Clarke, ?ritain? X-Files? Fortean
Times 280, October 2011, p.29.
.............................................................
Men in Black reports would seem to admit of seven possible
explanations:
1 - The whole story was fiction. I suspect that this accounts for the
MIB events in Budd Hopkins?book Witnessed.
2 - The witness hallucinated the encounter. An obvious possible
example is Albert Bender? claim that three men in black with glowing
eyes materialised in his bedroom late at night.
3 - The MIB were Ufologists with peculiar agendas of their own. This
proved to be the origin of the threatening messages received by
SCUFORI members in 1980. Jim Moseley suggested that investigators from
the Washington UFO group NICAP, who liked to give the impression that
they were a government agency, would say to witnesses ?on? talk to
anyone else about this?because they wanted the exclusive.
4 - The incident was a practical joke. This probably accounts for the
?ork and Mindy?story. The Peckham police, if they were responsible
for it, would hardly have admitted to the Ministry of Defence that
they had been fooling around when they were supposed to be on duty (in
an area with a high crime rate), hence their denial; and the usual
exhortation ?ot to talk to anyone about this?may have been intended
to cover up their own misbehaviour.
5 - The MIB were from the government. It can be objected that there
have been several occasions when MIB have claimed to represent the
Ministry of Defence, or the United States Air Force, but later the
U.S.A.F. or the MoD have denied it. More than once, indeed, the Air
Force have gone so far as to state that the MIB have committed a
federal offence by impersonating military officers; whilst the MoD
have said that they never investigate UFO cases in person, though they
may interview witnesses by telephone. As against that, a careful
reading of the books of Dame Stella Rimmington (former head of MI5)
suggests that when MI5 agents have to identify themselves to the
public, they say that they are from the Home Office, and no doubt the
CIA has a parallel policy. It is possible, then, that MIB could indeed
be from the government, though not the particular agency that they say
they represent.
6 - The MIB are aliens secretly living on earth. In some instances the
MIB themselves have stated this.
7 - The MIB are Ufonauts, but they come from another dimension rather
than another planet. This was the view of John Keel.
Although the narrative about Albert Bender in Barker? They Knew Too
Much has been widely cited (e.g. by Brinsley Le Poer Trench, Secret of
the Ages, Panther, 1979, pp.145-46), Bender? own book has been little
read and discussed. I guess that Ufologists supposed, from Barker?
book, that Bender had been silenced because he had uncovered ?he
truth? and they all supposed that this truth corresponded to their
own pet theories. But his narrative about hideous monsters extracting
an element from our sea-water at a concealed Antarctic base did not
match anyone? pet theory, so that the book, if noticed at all, was
denounced as a further part of the cover-up (e.g. by Rex Dutta, Flying
Saucer Viewpoint, Pelham, 1970, p.51).
Some two-fifths of all MIB reports come from the three years 1966 to
1968, all but two of those in the United States. There must be some
reason for this statistical anomaly, but I am not sure what. If
possibilities (6) or (7), above, were correct, it could be that in
1966 a giant UFO landed secretly in North America and disgorged a
number of Men in Black, returning to collect them again in 1968, but
somehow I doubt it. More plausible is reporting bias: a major source
for MIB reports are the books of John Keel, whose UFO investigations
were mainly conducted in those years. Yet all of the instances
reported by Brad Steiger, and many of those from Timothy Beckley, also
come from the same period.
The geographical bias is blatant: there are 95 cases from the United
States, 22 from the United Kingdom, four from Canada, three from
Italy, three from Australia, two from France, and one from each of
China, Argentina, Mexico, and the Irish Republic. To some extent this
is again no doubt reporting bias, but of course it could also be
cultural bias, that is, people in English speaking countries have
often heard of MIB reports and therefore relate their own, whereas in
other places they have not and do not.
Another problem is an obvious one: witnesses have frequently been told
by MIB not to talk about what they have seen. It is a reasonable
presumption that at least some witnesses have followed this advice, in
which case there must be MIB (and UFO) incidents that have never been
reported to anyone. But I can think of no way of even guessing what
proportion of them remain unknown.
Sometimes, paranoia is incited by events that do have essentially
mundane explanations. Another quotation from John Keel is pertinent:
?n the spring of 1967, following the publicity that attended Mothman
and the UFOs, mobs of strangers descended on Point Pleasant. Cars
filled with students from neighbouring colleges would arrive
unannounced at the homes of witnesses named in newspaper accounts,
often late at night, and expect to be welcomed. Mary Hyre and all the
others were subjected to silly interviews by people who obviously
didn? have any notion of how to go about investigating anything. Some
of these investigators were tactless and impolite, as only teenagers
can be, to the point of being offensive. One by one the witnesses fell
silent, refusing to talk to any more strangers, so newcomers saw a new
mystery ?someone had obviously ordered everyone in the Ohio valley to
shut up.?
As John Rimmer observed in his review of Nick Redfern? book, there is
no standard pattern to reports of MIB, who are not always, for
instance, said to be dressed in black. There are a few common themes,
however: often they are said to be of oriental appearance, or
completely hairless, or both. There are only three WIB cases known,
and in one of these no details were given. It is interesting to note,
however, that in both of the other two she was described by the
witness as the ?ost beautiful?woman or girl that he had ever seen.
Whereas American MIB tend to drive black Cadillacs, Jenny Randles
claimed that in Britain they are nearly always said to drive black
Jaguars. Now, Jaguar cars are not common, and most of them are not
black, but I have noticed that in London, when the police stop the
traffic to make way for some VIP such as a visiting head of state,
often they are in a convoy of black Jaguars. Some time ago, indeed, I
saw the Queen go past in one, though her usual cars are a Rolls-Royce
and a Bentley.
The foregoing is not intended to reach any definite conclusions. It is
simply a concise attempt to lay out the claims that have been made,
which, even if they are all fiction, ought to be of interest at least
to students of modern folklore. Any comments would be welcome.
Works Cited
Barker, Gray, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, IllumiNet
Press, Lilburn, Georgia, 1997 (1st 1956).
Beckley, Timothy Green, The UFO Silencers, Inner Light Publications,
New Brunswick (?), New Jersey, 1990.
Bender, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, Paperback Library, New York,
1968 (1st 1962).
Bourret, Jean-Claude, The Crack in the Universe, translated with a
Foreword and Bibliography by Gordon Creighton, Neville Spearman, St.
Helier, Jersey, no date (French original 1974).
Condon, Edward U., Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,
Bantam, New York, 1969.
Evans, Hilary, ?en in Black? in The Alien World, Orbis, London,
1984.
Evans, Hilary & Dennis Stacy (eds.), UFOs 1947-1997: From Arnold to
the Abductees: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers, John Brown Publishing
London, 1997.
Haisell, David, The Missing Seven Hours, Paper Jacks, Markham,
Ontario, 1978.
Hansen, Terry, The Missing Times: News Media Complicity in the UFO
Cover-up, Xlibris Corporation, no place, 2000.
Holzer, Hans, The Ufonauts: New Facts on Extraterrestrial Landings,
Panther, 1979.
Hopkins, Budd, Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods,
Sphere, 1988.
Hopkins, Budd, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO
Abductions, Bloomsbury, 1997.
Hough, Peter and Moyshe Kalman, The Truth About Alien Abductions,
Cassell, London, 1997.
Hynek, J. Allen, The UFO Experience, Corgi, 1974.
Imbrogno, Philip J., and Marianne Horrigan, Contact of the 5th Kind,
Llewellyn, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1997.
Keel, John, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Abacus, 1973.
Keel, John, Our Haunted Planet, Futura, London, 1975.
Keel, John, Visitors from Space (original title: The Mothman
Prophecies), Panther, 1976.
Keel, John, The Cosmic Question (original title: The Eighth Tower),
Panther, London, 1978.
Keel, John, Disneyland of the Gods, Amok Press, New York, 1988.
Keith, Jim, Casebook on the Men in Black, Adventures Unlimited Press,
Kempton, Illinois, 2011 (1st 1997).
O?rien, Christopher, The Mysterious Valley, St. Martin? Paperbacks,
New York, 1996.
Pilkington, Mark, Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia
and UFOs, Constable, London, 2010.
Price, Robert. UFOs over Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Ensign
Publications, Shirley, Southampton, 1990.
Randles, Jenny, MIB: Investigating the Truth behind the Men In Black
Phenomenon, Piatkus, London, 1997.
Redfern, Nick. Keep Out!: Top Secret Places Governments Don? Want You
To Know About, New Page, Pompton Plains, New Jersey, 2012.
Sanderson, Ivan T., Uninvited Visitors, Tandem, London, 1974 (1st
1969).
Schnabel, Jim, Dark White: Aliens, Abductions, and the UFO Obsession,
Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994.
Science and Mechanics, The Official Guide to UFOs, Ace Books, New
York, 1968.
Sheaffer, Robert, UFO Sightings: The Evidence (original title: The UFO
Verdict), Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 1998.
Smith, Warren, UFO Trek, Sphere, 1977.
Steiger, Brad, Mysteries of Time and Space, Sphere, 1977.
Steiger, Brad, and Joan Whritenour, New UFO Breakthrough, Award, New
York, 1968.
Stringfield, Leonard H. Situation Red: The UFO Siege, Sphere, London,
1978.
Sutherly, Curt. UFO Mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth, Llewellyn,
St. Paul, Minnesota, 2001.
Taylor, Frank, The Uninvited 2: The Visitation, Star Books, 1984.
Taylor, Frank, The Uninvited 3: The Abduction, Star Books, 1985.
Vallee, Jacques, UFOs: The Psychic Solution (original title: The
Invisible College), Panther, 1977.
Wilkins, Harold T., Flying Saucers on the Attack, Ace Books, New York,
1967 (1st 1954).
Williamson, George Hunt. The Saucers Speak, Neville Spearman, London,
1967.
who said that in the small hours she and her mother had seen lights in
the sky from their home in East Dulwich, south London, and feared this
might be a terrorist attack. So she had called Peckham police who
eventually sent a car around. In it were two policemen, and two men in
space suits with dark glasses, who called themselves Mork and Mindy.
These men told her not to look at the object because of possible
radiation, and they carried a ?ransmitter?(Geiger counter?) which
kept clicking. As the woman? eyes hurt from watching the lights, they
offered to wash them out with a solution, though she declined. She was
then told ?ot to talk to anyone about this and certainly not the
press in case it caused panic.?
After they had asked the women for their birth signs, they left. When
the MoD contacted the police, they naturally denied the Mork and Mindy
story, saying that they had only sent two officers, without any
radiation equipment, that the woman thought the lights were aliens,
not terrorists, and that they themselves had been unable to see them.
Later, the mother wrote a letter of complaint stating that they had
discovered that Mork and Mindy was a TV sitcom about an alien, and
that they had been trying ?o make us look foolish? Ministry of
Defence report, quoted in David Clarke, ?ritain? X-Files? Fortean
Times 280, October 2011, p.29.
.............................................................
Men in Black reports would seem to admit of seven possible
explanations:
1 - The whole story was fiction. I suspect that this accounts for the
MIB events in Budd Hopkins?book Witnessed.
2 - The witness hallucinated the encounter. An obvious possible
example is Albert Bender? claim that three men in black with glowing
eyes materialised in his bedroom late at night.
3 - The MIB were Ufologists with peculiar agendas of their own. This
proved to be the origin of the threatening messages received by
SCUFORI members in 1980. Jim Moseley suggested that investigators from
the Washington UFO group NICAP, who liked to give the impression that
they were a government agency, would say to witnesses ?on? talk to
anyone else about this?because they wanted the exclusive.
4 - The incident was a practical joke. This probably accounts for the
?ork and Mindy?story. The Peckham police, if they were responsible
for it, would hardly have admitted to the Ministry of Defence that
they had been fooling around when they were supposed to be on duty (in
an area with a high crime rate), hence their denial; and the usual
exhortation ?ot to talk to anyone about this?may have been intended
to cover up their own misbehaviour.
5 - The MIB were from the government. It can be objected that there
have been several occasions when MIB have claimed to represent the
Ministry of Defence, or the United States Air Force, but later the
U.S.A.F. or the MoD have denied it. More than once, indeed, the Air
Force have gone so far as to state that the MIB have committed a
federal offence by impersonating military officers; whilst the MoD
have said that they never investigate UFO cases in person, though they
may interview witnesses by telephone. As against that, a careful
reading of the books of Dame Stella Rimmington (former head of MI5)
suggests that when MI5 agents have to identify themselves to the
public, they say that they are from the Home Office, and no doubt the
CIA has a parallel policy. It is possible, then, that MIB could indeed
be from the government, though not the particular agency that they say
they represent.
6 - The MIB are aliens secretly living on earth. In some instances the
MIB themselves have stated this.
7 - The MIB are Ufonauts, but they come from another dimension rather
than another planet. This was the view of John Keel.
Although the narrative about Albert Bender in Barker? They Knew Too
Much has been widely cited (e.g. by Brinsley Le Poer Trench, Secret of
the Ages, Panther, 1979, pp.145-46), Bender? own book has been little
read and discussed. I guess that Ufologists supposed, from Barker?
book, that Bender had been silenced because he had uncovered ?he
truth? and they all supposed that this truth corresponded to their
own pet theories. But his narrative about hideous monsters extracting
an element from our sea-water at a concealed Antarctic base did not
match anyone? pet theory, so that the book, if noticed at all, was
denounced as a further part of the cover-up (e.g. by Rex Dutta, Flying
Saucer Viewpoint, Pelham, 1970, p.51).
Some two-fifths of all MIB reports come from the three years 1966 to
1968, all but two of those in the United States. There must be some
reason for this statistical anomaly, but I am not sure what. If
possibilities (6) or (7), above, were correct, it could be that in
1966 a giant UFO landed secretly in North America and disgorged a
number of Men in Black, returning to collect them again in 1968, but
somehow I doubt it. More plausible is reporting bias: a major source
for MIB reports are the books of John Keel, whose UFO investigations
were mainly conducted in those years. Yet all of the instances
reported by Brad Steiger, and many of those from Timothy Beckley, also
come from the same period.
The geographical bias is blatant: there are 95 cases from the United
States, 22 from the United Kingdom, four from Canada, three from
Italy, three from Australia, two from France, and one from each of
China, Argentina, Mexico, and the Irish Republic. To some extent this
is again no doubt reporting bias, but of course it could also be
cultural bias, that is, people in English speaking countries have
often heard of MIB reports and therefore relate their own, whereas in
other places they have not and do not.
Another problem is an obvious one: witnesses have frequently been told
by MIB not to talk about what they have seen. It is a reasonable
presumption that at least some witnesses have followed this advice, in
which case there must be MIB (and UFO) incidents that have never been
reported to anyone. But I can think of no way of even guessing what
proportion of them remain unknown.
Sometimes, paranoia is incited by events that do have essentially
mundane explanations. Another quotation from John Keel is pertinent:
?n the spring of 1967, following the publicity that attended Mothman
and the UFOs, mobs of strangers descended on Point Pleasant. Cars
filled with students from neighbouring colleges would arrive
unannounced at the homes of witnesses named in newspaper accounts,
often late at night, and expect to be welcomed. Mary Hyre and all the
others were subjected to silly interviews by people who obviously
didn? have any notion of how to go about investigating anything. Some
of these investigators were tactless and impolite, as only teenagers
can be, to the point of being offensive. One by one the witnesses fell
silent, refusing to talk to any more strangers, so newcomers saw a new
mystery ?someone had obviously ordered everyone in the Ohio valley to
shut up.?
As John Rimmer observed in his review of Nick Redfern? book, there is
no standard pattern to reports of MIB, who are not always, for
instance, said to be dressed in black. There are a few common themes,
however: often they are said to be of oriental appearance, or
completely hairless, or both. There are only three WIB cases known,
and in one of these no details were given. It is interesting to note,
however, that in both of the other two she was described by the
witness as the ?ost beautiful?woman or girl that he had ever seen.
Whereas American MIB tend to drive black Cadillacs, Jenny Randles
claimed that in Britain they are nearly always said to drive black
Jaguars. Now, Jaguar cars are not common, and most of them are not
black, but I have noticed that in London, when the police stop the
traffic to make way for some VIP such as a visiting head of state,
often they are in a convoy of black Jaguars. Some time ago, indeed, I
saw the Queen go past in one, though her usual cars are a Rolls-Royce
and a Bentley.
The foregoing is not intended to reach any definite conclusions. It is
simply a concise attempt to lay out the claims that have been made,
which, even if they are all fiction, ought to be of interest at least
to students of modern folklore. Any comments would be welcome.
Works Cited
Barker, Gray, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, IllumiNet
Press, Lilburn, Georgia, 1997 (1st 1956).
Beckley, Timothy Green, The UFO Silencers, Inner Light Publications,
New Brunswick (?), New Jersey, 1990.
Bender, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, Paperback Library, New York,
1968 (1st 1962).
Bourret, Jean-Claude, The Crack in the Universe, translated with a
Foreword and Bibliography by Gordon Creighton, Neville Spearman, St.
Helier, Jersey, no date (French original 1974).
Condon, Edward U., Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,
Bantam, New York, 1969.
Evans, Hilary, ?en in Black? in The Alien World, Orbis, London,
1984.
Evans, Hilary & Dennis Stacy (eds.), UFOs 1947-1997: From Arnold to
the Abductees: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers, John Brown Publishing
London, 1997.
Haisell, David, The Missing Seven Hours, Paper Jacks, Markham,
Ontario, 1978.
Hansen, Terry, The Missing Times: News Media Complicity in the UFO
Cover-up, Xlibris Corporation, no place, 2000.
Holzer, Hans, The Ufonauts: New Facts on Extraterrestrial Landings,
Panther, 1979.
Hopkins, Budd, Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods,
Sphere, 1988.
Hopkins, Budd, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO
Abductions, Bloomsbury, 1997.
Hough, Peter and Moyshe Kalman, The Truth About Alien Abductions,
Cassell, London, 1997.
Hynek, J. Allen, The UFO Experience, Corgi, 1974.
Imbrogno, Philip J., and Marianne Horrigan, Contact of the 5th Kind,
Llewellyn, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1997.
Keel, John, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Abacus, 1973.
Keel, John, Our Haunted Planet, Futura, London, 1975.
Keel, John, Visitors from Space (original title: The Mothman
Prophecies), Panther, 1976.
Keel, John, The Cosmic Question (original title: The Eighth Tower),
Panther, London, 1978.
Keel, John, Disneyland of the Gods, Amok Press, New York, 1988.
Keith, Jim, Casebook on the Men in Black, Adventures Unlimited Press,
Kempton, Illinois, 2011 (1st 1997).
O?rien, Christopher, The Mysterious Valley, St. Martin? Paperbacks,
New York, 1996.
Pilkington, Mark, Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia
and UFOs, Constable, London, 2010.
Price, Robert. UFOs over Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Ensign
Publications, Shirley, Southampton, 1990.
Randles, Jenny, MIB: Investigating the Truth behind the Men In Black
Phenomenon, Piatkus, London, 1997.
Redfern, Nick. Keep Out!: Top Secret Places Governments Don? Want You
To Know About, New Page, Pompton Plains, New Jersey, 2012.
Sanderson, Ivan T., Uninvited Visitors, Tandem, London, 1974 (1st
1969).
Schnabel, Jim, Dark White: Aliens, Abductions, and the UFO Obsession,
Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994.
Science and Mechanics, The Official Guide to UFOs, Ace Books, New
York, 1968.
Sheaffer, Robert, UFO Sightings: The Evidence (original title: The UFO
Verdict), Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 1998.
Smith, Warren, UFO Trek, Sphere, 1977.
Steiger, Brad, Mysteries of Time and Space, Sphere, 1977.
Steiger, Brad, and Joan Whritenour, New UFO Breakthrough, Award, New
York, 1968.
Stringfield, Leonard H. Situation Red: The UFO Siege, Sphere, London,
1978.
Sutherly, Curt. UFO Mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth, Llewellyn,
St. Paul, Minnesota, 2001.
Taylor, Frank, The Uninvited 2: The Visitation, Star Books, 1984.
Taylor, Frank, The Uninvited 3: The Abduction, Star Books, 1985.
Vallee, Jacques, UFOs: The Psychic Solution (original title: The
Invisible College), Panther, 1977.
Wilkins, Harold T., Flying Saucers on the Attack, Ace Books, New York,
1967 (1st 1954).
Williamson, George Hunt. The Saucers Speak, Neville Spearman, London,
1967.
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