Will Smith aside, we have been getting quite a lot of inquiries about the men in black phenomenon. These mysterious strangers -- dubbed MIBs by ufologists -- do not get a great deal of coverage as far as UFO reporting goes. In fact, looking for hard information on them is a bit of a task in and of itself. The internet is not much help with the MIBs either, for few UFO sites carry much on them. That is about to change. So without further adieu, here is the first in our page on UFO Phenomenon, starting with the Men In Black. I will post more later.
Men In Black refers to a phenomenon closely related to the UFO experience wherein a man or small group of strangely dressed, strange acting men are reported to visit witnesses and ufologists either after a UFO encounter or when a ufologist gets "to close" to finding out something the MIBs do not want him or her to know.
Men In Black are so-called because of their dress, which always consists of black suits, ties, shoes, hats and occasionally white dress shirts. These suits have been reported as badly wrinkled on some occassions but more often as clean and pressed. The suits are almost always outdated styles, usually from the 1950s. Overall appearance tends to be more of a 1950s Federal Agent, or G-man, as the Feds used to be called, but exhagerrated. No cases have ever reported these characters as armed or overly violent, though the threat of violence has been brought up by many witnesses who have been visited by these men.
Most shocking about these men is their skin tone, which most witnesses have described as sickly or pale white. They most often wear dark sunglasses, but when their eyes are seen they are described as extremely oval and cat-like. Some witnesses have reported their skin is completely without any pigmentation, even the lips, which have been reported in at least one incident as being painted over with some kind of lipstick or paint. Skin also has been described as peeling, much as the sort of peeling associated with a bad sunburn, only the skin is totally without any pigmentation. Many witnesses have also reported that they could see no visible facial or body hair on the men who visited them, though a number of reports do include such MIBs having slight beards made of blond or totally white hair, but these are the minority of the reports.
Behavior of MIBs has been described in some detail and is the one element of the encounter most witnesses remember best. The men have been reported to speak with heavy accents, though exactly what accent can never be determined. Some witnesses claim the MIBs spoke in an exaggerated, gangster-like manner much like a hollywood actor of the 1940s or 50s would portray an Italian mafia hit man. Still more reports have MIBs speaking in clear, unaccented formal English like an English professor would. In no case do the MIBs seem to speak like a normal person would expect.
Conversations seem to take on weird topics with MIBs. They seem prone to asking questions with no real purpose, or are phrased in such a way that they sound odd and in many cases startlingly personal. Questions probably meaning 'what are your interests or hobbies?' are often phrased like "What do you do with time?" It seems MIBs would like to have a knack for social conversation but can't seem to get it quite right.
When the MIBs do get down to business, most witnesses report they are anything but polite about it. Most cases have the MIBs trying to find out exactly what the witnesses saw and what they thought about it. This is often followed by a thinly guised threat to the person they are speaking to or their family or friends. Such threats are usually in the form of statements one would expect to see in the movies (i.e. "If you want your wife to stay as beautiful as she is, forget about what you saw!"). Some threats are preceeded by minor magic of some kind, at least in two cases involving a coin disappearing or spontaneously combusting. These seem to be attempts by the MIBs to demonstrate some form of magical power to drive their threats home. In addition, MIBs seem to have a great deal of personal knowledge about the witnesses they visit, including who they are married to, what they do for a living, their hobbies and even what their future plans may be.
Several of the more documented incidents have shown that the MIBs know almost as much or in some cases more about, a UFO incident than the witnesses do. This information will come out as the MIBs ask the witness questions, often telling them their answers are wrong or filling in more details, as if they know what happened.
Timing is another problem MIBs seem to have. Some of the first documented reports have witnesses contacted by phone by a strange sounding man (presumably the MIB) who asks is they have time for an appointment. If the witnesses say yes, then the MIB shows up on the witnesses' doorstep within seconds of the phone call. Ordinarily, this trick could be accomplished with a cell phone, but these accounts date from the 1950s -- decades before cell phones were invented. The possibility of MIBs using advanced alien technology or hidden advanced technology developed by the government and not known to the general populace has been hypothesized in such cases.
As with their diction, MIBs have been reported to have very strange body movements as well. Most witnesses describe the MIBs as robotic, or rigid in their movements. One report even noted that the men could only walk in a straight line and would pivot sharply in place as they negotiated a hallway or walked around a table in a room. Nearly all witnesses report the MIBs seem to have a great deal of trouble walking as a normal person would walk.
MIBs are reported to avoid giving any specific information about themselves. When asked who they are or who they work for, the answers tend to be more generalized. The MIBs have claimed to be from Military Intelligence, the FBI, or some other agency.
An almost universal phenomenon associated with MIBs is the almost dream like state they seem to create when visiting witnesses. Most, if not all, witnesses claim that they didn't remember it at the time the MIBs visited, but that they felt "weird" or "not quite right" while the MIBs were around. This almost dream-like state that the MIBs seem to induce causes people to act unlike their normal behaivior would dictate. For example, some witnesses claim the MIBs would open their closets, poke into their bedroom and other personal things, and that they simply would allow it to happen, it not donning on the witnesses that the behaivior is inappropriate in the least.
This may well be a form of mind control or hallucination brought on by aliens or even government types, depending on which view you subscribe to. The act of placing someone in a dream-like state has proven to clinically allow such individuals to be manipulated much easier. The state has been compared in one incident (one by a career military intelligence officer) to being on sodium pendathol, or old-fashioned truth serum. If this is true, then the MIBs somehow have managed to use a chemical like truth serum without the need for syringes.
No account would be complete without the mention of the transportation of the men in black. In every case where the witnesses can see their transportation, MIBs have been reported to have a simple, black sedan of considerable age. The automobile is said to be a pristine condition American car such as a Cadillac, Buick, Lincoln or Ford that has been out of production for many years. Several very recently public records from England and Canada have the MIBs driving a vintage Mercedes or Jaguar. The vehicle is either very quiet or silent altogether and leaves no tire prints. Some witnesses claim the vehicle is actually floating an inch above the road.
Some witnesses have remembered the license plates and in one case a VIN. When run, the numbers in question always route to an unassigned number or one that has yet to be assigned. Such evidence suggests to most Ufologists that there is definitely government involvement.
Nearly all witneses report that once the dream factor of the MIB visit wears off, that they are extremely shaken by what they just experienced. Memories about the MIBs become more clearer and details about the way the MIBs acted and dressed become extremely clear. Most witnesses report that this bizarre appearance and behaivior did not bother them as much while the MIB was actually with them.
Curiously, many MIB targets report having problems with their electrical appliances in their homes for weeks after a MIB visit. Light bulbs, even new ones, will burn out when turned on, radios will not receive music clearly if at all and televisions lose reception or show test patterns almost continuously.
Phone problems, such as those reported in the Hopkins family incident in 1976, also seem to be most bothersome and indeed scary. For weeks, many witnesses claim their phones would go dead, were subject to line breaks or simply would not ring. Friends trying to call the afflicated individuals often note that no one answers the phone and in a few cases a strange voice would be heard on the line telling the caller the phone number was out of order. Phone companies, when investigating these problems, can usually ascertain that the phones have indeed been tampered with.
Family pets seem to revile MIBs. In more than one account, family dogs would growl at the MIBs when they showed up, but run and hide in a remote closet or leave the house entirely when the MIB entered it, sometimes not to return for days. Cats likewise have been reported bolting at the sight of MIBs.
Nearly all witnesses report one effect of the MIBs and one only -- that they were scared to death by them. Threats, implied or otherwise, have never seem to be carried out on any witnesses. All the unnatural powers and attributes surrounding the MIBs seems to be enough to scare many witnesses into silence for years, in some cases decades. Since this seems to be their only pronounced function, they apparently have had success at it. In a startling catch 22, no witnesses that have ignored the MIB threat and talked about it have been harmed or followed up in any way by these strangers. Unfortunately, Ufologists may only be hearing of a small number of MIB incidents, and the possibility that the MIBs did indeed make good on their threats to witnesses who didn't speak to ufologists is certainly a possibility.