Foil Hat Ninja

“There sit the Fates in solitude, far from the public eye. No one ever sees them smile and nothing makes them cry.” – Rik Emmett

 

So when last I left you, the nefarious Men in Black had just developed an interest in photography. They’ve taken pictures of people who saw UFOs, they’ve harassed people who have taken pictures of UFOs, but has anyone ever gotten a picture of them? It turns out that the answer is yes, it has happened a few times. One of them involved occultist and UFO researcher Allen Greenfield – a rather unusual character in his own right.

 It occurred at a UFO conference held in West Virginia back in 1969. Greenfield noticed that there was an odd character present (at a UFO conference?). In addition to his black clothing and sunglasses, he had a pasty complexion and moved about in a stiff, robotic fashion. He also spoke in a mechanical, monotone way. When Greenfield and some others adjourned to a nearby restaurant for lunch, this guy showed up as well and seemed to be hovering around their table in an obvious attempt to listen in on their conversation. Realizing that they might be in the presence of one of the infamous Men in Black, Greenfield decided not to let the opportunity to possibly confront one of them slip away. He abruptly jumped up from his seat and demanded to know why he was following them. The man responded by quickly turning and heading out the door with Greenfield right on his heels. Once outside, Greenfield again asked the man who he was, and he replied that he was a Man in Black in training. Greenfield then raised the camera that he always carried with him at the time and snapped a quick photo. The man then once again walked quickly away and rounded a corner with Greenfield still in pursuit. However, as is often the case, when Greenfield rounded the corner no more than two seconds behind him, the man was gone, seemingly vanishing into nothingness.

Of course, there is one problem with this account, namely that the man was obviously wearing a light-colored hat. Well, he did say that he was in training. Maybe they don’t issue you your black hat until after graduation. (I bet that’s a fun ceremony.) One might suspect that it was just a prankster having some fun at the expense of UFO enthusiasts, and I would tend to agree if not for his sudden disappearance, assuming that Greenfield is to be believed on this aspect of the story. I do try to be charitable when assessing the veracity of witnesses’ accounts. Besides, if it was Greenfield who was perpetrating a hoax, wouldn’t he have had his accomplice wear the more convincing, stereotypical black hat? Why go to so much trouble and then skimp on such a simple detail? Dark fedoras were much easier to come by back then. My grandfather had several.

On another occasion, the photographic evidence came from a security camera inside of a hotel in Canada, where two of our friends tried to pay a visit to an employee there who had recently seen a UFO. In this case, our MiB’s usual omniscience appears not to have been working since the witness wasn’t there that day, and so they were only able to freak him out secondhand via his coworkers, who had to deal with these pasty-faced weirdos in his stead. The witnesses described them as looking like identical twins, right down to wearing the exact same outfits like twins tend to do (or their parents make them) when they’re kids. They were extremely pale, had no eyebrows or lashes, and their hair gave one woman the impression of being wigs that were sown into their hats. Their eyes were very large, very blue and hypnotic and, according to one witness, they never blinked. Fortunately for everyone, they left without incident and never came back.

The MiB are generally thought of as having originally arrived on the scene in the mid-1950s, but they may have been around much longer than that. Some have noted a possible connection between our modern MiB and other mysterious persons who were often clad in black going back centuries. They were usually encountered by alchemists and occultists and seem to have been sent to demonstrate their impressive abilities in these disciplines. There is even a rumor that the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States was given to Jefferson by a mysterious man in a black, hooded cloak. Some even imply that this man seems to have just materialized in Jefferson’s garden one night and handed it to him. Take this for what you think it’s worth, but it is indisputable that the origin and meaning of this seal is still of great interest today, primarily to occultists and conspiracy buffs, and mostly by those obsessed with the evil doings of the infamous Illuminati in the latter case.

We won’t be going back that far in time, but the earliest case of which I am aware in semi-modern times involving what we consider to be the standard Men in Black modus operandi took place back in the 1920s. In addition to harassing and sometimes photographing UFO witnesses, they are occasionally sent on recovery missions.

In Braxton County, West Virginia in 1924, a farmer reported seeing a plane crash in the woods. Airplanes flying over rural West Virginia were rare at the time, but this one was particularly unusual. The witness said that it had no wings, made no sound and was as big as a battleship. A group of men that included the local sheriff and a retired newsman named John Cole began searching the area and soon found the wreckage in a small clearing.

Much to their surprise, what appeared to be a recovery team was already on the scene, and a rather strange one at that. All of them were small (about five feet tall) and looked “Oriental.” Some were dressed in black suits while others wore shiny overalls. They spoke in a rapid-fire language that none of the local men could identify, and they seemed alarmed at the arrival of the search party. One of the men in a suit then told the sheriff in English that no one had been harmed and that he would stop by later to file a full report, which of course he never did.

Since no apparent crime had been committed, the men left. But while they were there, Cole picked up a small piece of debris and stuck it in his pocket. He later said that he didn’t know why he had done this. He also later said that while most of the farmer’s description of the wingless craft was accurate, it was really only about 25 feet long – hardly the size of a battleship.

As if all of this wasn’t strange enough, around 3 am Cole was awakened by a knock on his door. When he opened it, he was confronted by another of these Asian-looking men, but this one was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. Army officer. He demanded that Cole return the object that he had taken from the crash site to him. Cole retrieved the piece of metal from his coat pocket and gave it to him, and the man took it and walked away without saying a word. He then disappeared into the night on foot, which Cole thought seemed odd.

Upon further reflection the next morning, Cole couldn’t figure out how this man had known that he had taken the object in the first place. He was certain that no one had seen him pick it up. He also couldn’t figure out how they had found him so quickly since none of the men at the scene had been asked for or volunteered their names. A few days later, he went back to the crash site. The grass and bushes were still smashed down from the impact, but there was no trace of the craft left behind.

Another retrieval mission that took place decades later involved a man named Robert Richardson, who crashed his car into an unknown object that was sitting in the road one night in Toledo, Ohio. He claims that the object vanished – as in dematerialized – on impact, but left behind a mysterious lump of metal, which Richardson took with him. Three days later, he was visited by two men who dropped by his house at 11 pm. They asked a lot of questions about the incident, but they weren’t menacing and they never threatened him. There is also no indication that they behaved or appeared abnormal in any way. One might be inclined to think that they weren’t MiB at all except for the fact that they left in a black Cadillac that was over a decade old yet appeared to be brand new. Also, Richardson did think to get their license plate number, and it later turned out to be nonexistent.

Even this fairly common element seems to be more fishy than usual since the men never stated what agency they were with and Richardson didn’t think to ask. So he was astute enough to write down a plate number but not to ask them who they were? Interesting.

A week later, two different men in black suits came to see him, and they were more typical of our enigmatic visitors. They had dark complexions and seemed somehow foreign. They started off by trying to convince him that he hadn’t hit anything, but they also demanded that he turn over the piece of metal that he had found. In the time between the two visits, Richardson had sent the object to the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization for analysis, and the men were none too pleased when he told them that he no longer had it. They said that he had better get it back and made a vague threat concerning his wife. The men then left and never came back.

As usual, their threats amounted to nothing. And since no one ever bothers to mention what the analysis of the chunk of metal revealed, I can only assume that it turned out to be composed of nothing but ordinary, terrestrial materials. Or it was alien space titanium and the CIA has covered the whole thing up.

And in the category of “Man in Black, or just a crazy person?” we have this unusual tale.

Mary Hyre was a reporter for the Athens, Ohio Messenger in Point Pleasant, West Virginia during the whole Mothman/UFO flap that took place in the region in 1966-67. She had a number of experiences involving the Men in Black during this time, but none as strange as the day that she was visited by the man who I have come to think of as the Ballpoint Pinhead.

He wasn’t actually dressed in black when he walked into her office in January of ’67. He was only about four and a half feet tall and wore only a short-sleeved blue shirt and blue slacks despite the fact that it was a bitterly cold day. His strange, dark eyes were covered by glasses with thick lenses, and he was sporting a shaggy bowl haircut. he also wore thick-soled shoes, which is another common MiB fashion statement.

He claimed that his truck had broken down in Detroit and that he had hitchhiked there and needed directions, all the while inching closer to her and staring at her in a way that made Mary nervous. She decided to go to the back room to get her circulation manager to join them. As they spoke to him about where it was that he wanted to go, it became obvious to them that he knew more about the geography of West Virginia than they did. When Mary paused the conversation to answer the phone, the little man picked up a ballpoint pen and examined it with wonder, as if he had never seen such a thing before. When she told him that he could have it if he wanted, he responded with a loud, unnerving laugh and then abruptly turned and walked out the door. As far as she could later determine, he was not seen by anyone in the area following this incident.

One might easily dismiss this as a simple case of an odd character spooking a woman who had been up to her ears in weird events for months – if not for the fact that collecting mundane souvenirs is a frequently recurring theme in encounters with UFO related beings, as well as in the folklore of European fairies, who have sometimes been reported to take everyday objects for which they would seem to have no possible use.

(How was that for a really long sentence?)

And finally, in the grand tradition of saving the best for last…

In the town of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England in 1968, a sixteen-year-old girl named Adele (not her real name, and definitely not that singer who seems to be having trouble getting over her ex) was home by herself when she answered a knock at the door and found herself face-to-face with the world’s weirdest insurance salesman. He was tall, dark complected, and wearing the requisite black suit and hat. After staring down at the girl for an uncomfortably long time with a goofy smile on his face, he launched into his “can’t miss” sales pitch.

“Are you insured? Is it now?” he inquired in a mechanical-sounding voice, like some animatronic character out of Disney’s Hall of Presidents. When she suggested that he come back later when her parents were home, he suddenly began to sweat profusely and removed his hat, revealing his pale, bald head which made it obvious that he was wearing makeup in order to make his normally pasty face appear more lifelike.

“Can I see a glass of water?” he asked and, doubtless fearing that the man was having a stroke, she invited him in to sit down. When she brought him some water, he did exactly as he had requested and just looked at it for a moment before becoming distracted by a clock which was sitting on the mantel. Adele noticed this and told him that the clock was a retirement gift for her farther, and this seems to have caused a very important spring in the “man’s” brain to suddenly come unraveled.

“Is it your father’s time? Is it here and now?” he babbled, then began repeating “Your father. His time,” over and over, like a malfunctioning android. He then limped to the door using his hands to help move one of his legs. Before hobbling off and disappearing into the night, he told Adele to “watch the lights” as he went out the door. She had no idea what he meant by this, but soon after he left, the living room was filled with small lights that danced around the room before leaving through an open window. And poor Adele hadn’t even seen a UFO. Why were they picking on her?

Most of you will have noticed that the majority of these stories from this and my previous offering are fairly old. The MiB do seem to have scaled down their operation somewhat since the 1970s. Or maybe they just decided to stick to the basic script and limit the scope of their work to the typical “intimidate the witnesses” missions and not put in any more of the stranger appearances that I’ve covered in these last two articles. As I said last time, there is no shortage of sources for learning about these cases, so I just wanted to cover some of the more unusual ones.

However, some insist that the MiB phenomenon continues unabated to this day and that they are as active as ever, but I’m not sure what they’re basing that on. The 1960s were clearly the era of the Men in Black at their sinister best. In fact, the most recent encounter that I know of was the one at that hotel in Canada, which happened in 2008 and actually was a typical intimidation attempt. I only included it here because they were caught on film, which does make it unusual.

And I didn’t even have time to get into the supernatural/occult connection to the Men in Black. Maybe I’ll do a first-time-ever three-part series to wrap this up. That does sound like it would make a good Halloween edition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What passes for sanity on your planet is sending shivers down the spine of the rest of the galaxy.”—anonymous alien

 

If you mention Men in Black, most people automatically think that you’re referring to those ridiculous movies with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. What most of them don’t realize is that these movies were based on a real phenomenon that has been experienced by hundreds of UFO witnesses and investigators – maybe even thousands since we have no way of knowing how many of them chose to keep their story to themselves.

The general scenario goes like this: Someone sees a UFO or has some UFO related encounter. A day or two later, they are visited by anywhere from one to three men dressed in black suits, ties and hats. Sometimes they even wear black sunglasses and/or gloves. They usually claim to be government agents and their obvious intent is to threaten and intimidate the witnesses into keeping their mouths shut about what they have seen. This sounds reasonable enough on the surface, but here’s one of the biggest kinks in that theory: Sometimes the witness hadn’t reported their sighting to anyone. There have been a few cases where the person didn’t even tell their own spouse what they had seen. How would government agents know what someone had witnessed if they didn’t tell anyone?

There are some variations on this theme. Sometimes they dress in military uniforms and claim to be Air Force officers. This sounds plausible as well, but there are also some problems with this story. In one case, the witness said that the man’s hair was too long for him to be in the military. Another time, the man being visited was himself a former Air Force officer and he was able to immediately recognize that their uniforms weren’t authentic. He admitted that they were good enough to fool most people, but not someone who had worn the genuine article for years.

In some cases, they aren’t threatening at all. In these instances they just seem to be interested in gathering information about what the witness saw. Sometimes they don’t even mention UFOs at all and invent some pretext for visiting the witness in an apparent attempt to gather personal information about them. They have also harassed some paranormal investigators whose area of interest isn’t UFO related at all…or so it would seem. There have even been people who have never seen or had an interest in anything out of the ordinary who have just encountered these men in their daily lives. Nevertheless, even when they’re not trying to be intimidating, they still tend to creep people out with their unusual appearance and bizarre mannerisms and behavior. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at examples of most of the above, with the exception of the most common scenario. There’s plenty of information about those available from a multitude of sources. This is about the ones that fall outside of the typical “intimidating the UFO witness” category. Sometimes these sinister entities can even be somewhat amusing and (dare I say it?) even a little endearing…in a creepy, inhuman sort of way.

Obviously, it goes without saying that they have failed miserably in their mission if their true goal is to silence people about their UFO sightings. All that they’ve actually accomplished is to make themselves yet another infamous aspect of UFO phenomena, hence the movies bearing their name. Sometimes their visits even have the opposite effect of their stated purpose. There have been UFO witnesses who had no intention of talking to anyone about their sighting until they were so angered by the MiB’s threats that they went on record out of spite. Others have done the same out of fear. They believed that these men really were government agents and that by going public with their story they could protect themselves. If they were to mysteriously disappear or suffer an “unfortunate accident,” everyone would know what really happened. A third group who have decided to tell their stories are the witnesses who didn’t think that their UFO sightings were all that spectacular and therefore not worth making a fuss over. What changed their minds was the visit from the MiB. Their sighting may not have been all that interesting, but their subsequent encounter with weird, creepy men dressed all in black who sound like robots when they talk definitely was.

The MiB usually fall into one of two categories as far as their physical appearance is concerned. They are most often described as being small and generically Asian with dark complexions, slanted eyes and pointed features, or pale and abnormally thin to the point of sometimes being likened to walking corpses. The latter type is also sometimes reported as being completely devoid of hair on their heads. That is, they aren’t just bald and clean shaven; they also have no eyebrows or lashes. One witness even reported that his mysterious visitor was wearing red lipstick in an attempt to hide the fact that his mouth was actually just a lipless slit. Their speech is often described as being monotone or robotic. They are frequently seen arriving and/or departing in black cars, usually Cadillacs and often with tinted windows, even when these were fairly rare. If witnesses get a license plate number, it turns out to be nonexistent.

They also often know a lot about their victims – intimate details about their lives that even a government agency wouldn’t know. On the other hand, they sometimes get simple things wrong, like mispronouncing names or mentioning someone’s four children when the person only has three. And they have a habit of disappearing around corners. If they are being pursued, they tend to turn a corner where they are momentarily lost from sight. When their pursuer rounds the same corner, they find that their quarry has simply vanished. If there happen to be other people there, they invariably say that they didn’t see anyone come around the corner matching that description.

One of the more unusual and seemingly harmless MiB encounters took place in January of 1967 and involved the Christiansen family of Wildwood, New Jersey. In November, they had seen a UFO. Two months later, they received a visit from the strangest man that any of them had ever seen.

At 5:30 on the evening of January 9, a man came to their door claiming to be from the Missing Heirs Bureau and said that Mr. Christiansen might have inherited a large sum of money. Mr. Christiansen said that he doubted that, but they let him in anyway and agreed to answer some questions.

Unlike most MiB, this one was huge. He was about six and a half feet tall and weighed around three hundred pounds. Like many MiB, he was pale to the point that the family thought that he must be sick. He wore a black hat and a long, black coat over a white shirt and black pants, socks and shoes. His pants were too short for his size and rose halfway up his calves when he sat down. Both Mrs. Christiansen and their teenage daughter noticed that there was a green wire running up one of his legs from his sock up into the bottom of his pants. His eyes were large and bulged out from his head, and he spoke in a high, tinny, monotone voice that didn’t match his large frame. He speech came in short, efficient clips that made him sound as if he were reciting his lines from memory. His hair was black and very short and there was a round bald spot on the back of his head. When they offered him something to eat, he declined but said that he would like some water in about ten minutes.

He introduced himself, but none of them could later recall his name. What they remembered was that he said that his friends called him “Tiny.” He then proceeded to ask them numerous questions about their family, some of which sounded like nothing that would be relevant to tracking down a missing heir, but none of which had anything to do with UFOs. As the interview continued, the man’s face became redder and redder until he said that he was ready for that glass of water. Once he got it, he used it to take a yellow pill, after which his face returned to its pasty normal.

When he was leaving, Mrs. Christiansen watched him go. She had noticed when she answered the door that there was no car outside and thought that this was odd. She wanted to see how he was getting around. When he got to the street, he motioned to someone and a black Cadillac with tinted windows pulled up with its lights out despite the darkness of their relatively remote neighborhood. Tiny got in and the car pulled away with the lights still out.

The next day, Mr. Christiansen got a call from a woman who told him that the actual heir had been found, and they promptly forgot the whole matter until they were interviewed about their UFO sighting by John Keel the following month. When he asked if they’d had any unusual visitors since their sighting, the stunned looks on their faces told him that they had. He quickly separated them so that he could hear each of their accounts of the event as they remembered it. He concluded that this was one of the more bizarre but least unnerving Man in Black encounters that he had heard.

Another weird but harmless MiB tale from Keel’s files includes the poor, hapless Man in Black who just wanted to get a bite to eat. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t seem to any idea how to do that, at least if he was trying to be inconspicuous.

He ambled into a popular Manhattan restaurant one day and sat down in a booth. He was tall and clumsy with a dark complexion, sharp features and bulging eyes. He wore a black hat and an ill-fitting suit that was out of style: two common features in MiB encounters. When a waitress asked what she could get for him, he replied “Something to eat.” She handed him a menu and he stared at it as if he had no idea what it was. “Food,” he reiterated. The waitress suggested a steak, and he agreed. When she brought it to him, he just looked at it for a moment, then looked around at the other diners and figured out that he was supposed to eat it using a knife and fork. He obviously had no idea how to do this, so the waitress, who was a bit confused herself at this point, showed him how they worked. She then asked him where he was from, which seems like a perfectly reasonable question under the circumstances. “Another world,” was the reply. A group of employees then gathered and watched from across the room as the man awkwardly hacked and slashed his way through the meal. How he paid and whether or not he was a generous tipper isn’t given.

One might wonder if such a ridiculous series of events wasn’t staged. But if so, to what end? If Patrick Harpur is right, the Men in Black phenomenon, like the whole multifaceted UFO experience in all of its inscrutable guises, might fall into the realm of the daimonic (not to be confused with demonic), and daimons are all ultimately tricksters at heart. Maybe he was just there to screw with the reality of the staff and clientele of an upscale restaurant that was popular with successful, artsy types like Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg. That sounds like something that a Trickster would do to snooty, avant-garde types who are maybe a little too full of themselves. Or maybe he was just a guy from another planet who was looking for something to eat.

Naturally, the MiB have harassed those who have photographed UFOs, but a man in England may have done even more than that. In May of 1964, a fireman named James Templeton was taking photos of his young daughter in a park near Solway Firth, but soon discovered that he had gotten more than he bargained for. When he had the film developed, one of the pictures clearly showed a man in the background in what looks like some kind of space suit. Templeton was certain that this person hadn’t been there when he took the photo, and you would definitely think that this would be something that you would remember. Both the lab that had developed the film and police experts examined the photograph and the negative and concluded that it was genuine. Some maintain that the figure is merely the back of Templeton’s wife along with some fortuitous tricks of light and shadow. That does seem like the most logical explanation, but it doesn’t explain what happened shortly after the photo went public.

After it was published worldwide, Templeton said that he was visited by two men who claimed to be government agents but refused to show him any identification and who only referred to each other as “Number 9” and “Number 14.” Despite this, he agreed to get in their car and take them to the exact spot where the picture was taken. During their time together, Templeton said that they not only asked him questions about the photo, but also seemingly irrelevant ones about such things as his knowledge of UFOs and whether he had seen any unusual birds in the area that day. Their time together concluded with the two men suddenly becoming argumentative and trying to get him to admit that the photo was a fake. When he refused, they got in their car and drove away, leaving Templeton to make his way home from the park on foot.

If that really was just Templeton’s wife in the background and not something out of the ordinary, is it possible that beings who know when someone has seen a UFO (even when they didn’t report it) could not know the difference between a legitimate unexplained photograph and a simple case of mistaken identity? Maybe.

Sometimes the camera is on the other foot. The Men in Black have turned out to be prolific shutterbugs themselves, and many witnesses have seen them snapping photos, including the occasional neighbor or bystander who has no knowledge of or connection to any UFO event. More often than not, they seem to be more interested in taking pictures of the houses of UFO witnesses and investigators rather than the actual people themselves. No one has any particularly good theories as to why this might be.

There have many instances of this, and they’re all pretty much the same – so much so that there’s no single case that I’m aware of that stands out to the point of being worth going into detail about. The standard scenario is pretty straightforward. A strange looking man (or men) dressed entirely in black and driving a black car, usually a Cadillac, pulls up to a house, gets out with a large camera and snaps one or two pictures of the home, then gets back in the car and drives away without saying a word to anyone. When this happens at night, witnesses have said on many occasions that the flash used by the mysterious photographer is unusually bright. For some, this is the only MiB contact that they have, and they almost never consider it to be related to their UFO sighting until some savvy investigator asks them if they’ve had any encounters with unusual men dressed in black. There’s obviously no way of knowing how many people that this has happened to who either spoke to an investigator who was not so savvy or never bothered to report their sighting to anyone at all.

And since this is taking much longer than I thought, this seems like as good a place as any to stop. We’ll pick it up again next week with cases in which it was the MiB who ended up being caught on film, as well as the story which is possibly the best combination of amusing and interesting of any Man in Black encounter…although maybe not so much for the teenage girl who was home alone when it happened. Her concept of reality definitely took a beating that day.