The Inhumanoids

by Barton M Nunnelly

  In response a symphony of cries and whistling noises erupted from the creatures which terrified the witnesses even more. They barely managed to escape by push-starting the car down the slope. La Malmont is french for “the evil mountain” and the town of Draguinan, literally translated, means “Dragon Town.” As one might expect, the area has a long history of unexplained phenomena.

  MIB types have also been known to harass unidentified creature witnesses and investigators. Fellow Fortean researcher and author, Loren Coleman wrote years ago of how, in November of 1974, while on a research trip to mid-western America involving various Fortean phenomena, his friend, author Jerome Clark had “...talked at length with a bright, level-headed man who had conducted an in-depth investigation of reports of an ape-like creature in the Sioux City, Iowa area.

  The investigator confided to Clark; and his testimony was confirmed by a friend; that in the course of his work he discovered that two very strange men in a red compact car seemed to be keeping him and his apartment under surveillance. On one occasion, he discovered that his apartment had been ‘expertly’ broken into; he could find no evidence of how it could have been done; but nothing had been taken. The intruders, however, had rifled through his files on the local creature sightings.”

  On October 1st, 1975, in Washington State, three young men were enjoying a hunting/camping trip in the Rimrock Lake area, none of them realizing that their relaxing trip into the woods would soon take a dramatic turn toward the surreal. That evening, as they were out hunting, they heard strange noises coming from the tangled brush nearby, as if something big was following them through the woods. Not surprisingly, they decided to head back to camp, which they reached around 9:00 pm. They built a fire and were sitting around it still clutching their rifles when they heard more noises, this time coming from across a small pond nearby.

  Eighteen-year-old Earl Thomas stood up and shined his flashlight across the pond and saw a pair of greenish-yellow eyes looking back at him. Bravely, Earl and his companions, Thomas and Tom Gerstmar, both seventeen and curious as to what animal the eyes belonged to, walked over to the edge of the pond and shined the light again. This time, however, their curiosity turned to horror when, according to them, an eight or nine-foot tall, hairy, human-like creature stood up and began moving away from the light.

  Even though it was moving away into the darkness, the sight of the monster badly frightened the boys and they fired seven times at the retreating creature before they fled back to camp and grabbed their belongings. Then the monster started to scream, a blood-curdling sound which added to their sense of dread and panic as they dashed through the darkness to the vehicle.

  Gerstmar claimed that he nearly wrecked his jeep in the trio’s hasty departure from the area. When they arrived at Trout Lodge they immediately notified the Yakima County Sheriff’s office. Deputy Larry Gamache later interviewed the three youths and was convinced of their sincerity. He felt the witnesses had “definitely seen something.”

  But that was not the end of the strangeness, at least not for Earl Thomas who later revealed to investigator Dick Grover that for two weeks after the event he had been followed by an immaculately clean, two-tone green four-wheel-drive Bronco with Oregon plates. It followed his family into town, he said, and drove by their house four or five times a day. Once it had even pulled into their driveway, although the driver, whom they described as middle-aged, 50s or 60s, medium build, short gray hair with a crew cut, was never seen to leave the vehicle.

  Grover claimed that the two-tone bronco had even driven by while he was there speaking to Thomas, giving credence to the young man’s accounts. Thomas also revealed that phone threats against his life had even been made on two separate occasions soon after the appearance of the Bronco. In one instance the caller, a male, told Thomas, “Don’t step out your door. We’ll blow your head off.”

  Strange things were also happening in Maine in 1975. David Stephens and another witness experienced the classic UFO abduction scenario while on a late night drive through Oxford one evening, after which they suffered bizarre hallucinogenic side effects and missing time. The entire ordeal came to light in early September, 1976 when Dr. Herbert Hopkins of Orchard Beach, Maine, hypnotically regressed Stephens. The other witness was so shaken by the experience that he had already packed up and fled town. After seeing strange lights above the trees that night, as it turned out, the two men had been taken aboard a “space craft” and examined by diminutive entities with lightbulb-shaped heads.

  Dr. Hopkins was no UFO expert. What little he knew about the subject he had just learned from the Stephens case. He had no idea how to interpret such information, and was only too happy to cooperate when a man phoned him on the evening of September 11th claiming to be from the New Jersey UFO Research Organization. After asking if Hopkins was alone, and being assured that he was, the man asked to come and have a chat with him about the Stephens case (most of which was already well-known and thought highly of by this time).

  Hopkins agreed. The ‘ufologist’ was in luck, Hopkins told him. This was the first night in quite some time that he’d chanced to be home. Hopkins hung up the phone and walked into the living room to set things up for the interview. Strangely, no sooner had he turned on the light when he glanced out the window and saw the man walking up his sidewalk. There was no way that he could’ve made it from the nearest phone booth, or even from the main street, in such a short amount of time.

  He opened the door and was immediately struck by the ufologist’s peculiar appearance. He was dressed all in black with a black hat, looking like an undertaker. In addition, his visitor had chalky white skin, extremely red lips and no eyebrows or eyelashes. Despite his unusual appearance, Hopkins ushered him right into his home. The doctor later remarked how out of character that had been for him but, as we’ve seen, the MIB have you from hello.

  The strange man stepped inside and removed his hat, revealing a bald white head, then sat down. His clothes looked so new that they might’ve been taken only minutes before from a department store mannequin. Hopkins suspected right away that the man was wearing lipstick, as was proven later when he’d wiped his mouth on the back of his gloved hand, smearing the lipstick on his face and glove. The lips had been drawn on. He had no real lips at all, Hopkins realized; he looked like some oversized china doll.

  He spoke in perfect English in a flat monotone voice, bidding the doctor to relate to him all the details of the Stephens sighting and his investigation into it. When Hopkins was done the stranger, in a burst of oddness, announced that the doctor had two coins in his pocket. Indeed he had. He was then asked to take one out and hold it between his fingers. Hopkins did as he was bid and took one out. A penny. “Watch the coin,” the stranger said, as if he was about to perform some magic trick or sleight of hand.

  To Hopkins complete astonishment, the penny “...suddenly began to develop a silvery color; and the silver became blue. And then I had trouble focusing. I could focus on my hand perfectly well; that was my reference point; but the coin was simply gone. Not abruptly. It simply slowly dematerialized. It just wasn’t there anymore. I noticed the weight of the coin gradually vanish. I didn’t smell anything. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t hear anything.”

  He was sure it was not sleight of hand. The coin had literally vanished into thin air. The stranger then made a remark to the effect that “nobody in this plane” would ever see it again. Then he asked the doctor if he’d ever heard of a famous UFO witness who had lived nearby but had recently died. The doctor said that he had heard the name before but had never met the man and knew nothing of his passing. Then the man in black said, “Just as you no longer have a coin, so he no longer has a heart.” The threat was obvious and, quite understandably, Herbert Hopkins was spooked. The man was definitely not a UFOlogist. The ‘man’ then requested politely that Hopkins destroy all the tapes he’d made during the sessions with David Stephens. The doctor did so, not only demagnetizing all the tapes but also
throwing away all documents pertaining to the case.

  At the conclusion of the visit the entity began to talk strangely, like he was running on a battery that was quickly running down and needed to recharge. “My...energy...is...running...low...” he said, “Must...go...now...goodbye.” The doctor watched him walk out. The man seemed to have trouble with the front steps and negotiated them very carefully. When he got to the corner of the house he clung to the wall, as if steadying himself to keep from falling, for a long time before he rounded it.

  Moments later a brilliant blue/white light, much too bright to be a car, sped across the front of the house. Not surprisingly, there was no such group as the “New Jersey UFO Research Organization.” The doctor was later adamant that what he’d witnessed was no human working for the government. “There are other dimensions,” he said. “I think this man was undoubtedly from such a place.” The coin had to go somewhere, right?

  On January 23, 1976, seventeen-year old Shirley Greenfield (not her real name) was walking home from work in the town of Bolton, Lancashire, Britain, when she spotted two orange, glowing lights cavorting over a reservoir about a half mile away. She paid little attention to them at first.

  It was 5:20 pm and the streets were very quiet and it was only a ten minute walk to her home. The lights moved through the air, as if bumping into each other, then suddenly and inexplicably swooped towards the frightened girl. As they neared she saw that the lights were coming from an object which resembled an upturned “pudding basi.” It was 20 to 30 feet across, she later claimed, and rotating like a spinning top.

  It hovered above Greenfield at rooftop height, emitting a powerful physical force which pressed the witness firmly to the ground and held her there. She felt pain in her shoulders, and the metal fillings in her teeth began to “vibrate,” filling her mouth with a tangy taste. After about ten minutes the object began to move away, and the pressure on her subsided. Shirley took the opportunity to regain her feet, though shakily, and stumble away.

  Everything seemed like it was in slow motion, she said, and it took her ages to make her legs move. She tried to scream then but no sound came out of her mouth. Shirley’s next memory was of bursting into her house, in shock and unable to speak, and grabbing her mother, whom she dragged back outside, pointing to the sky. Mrs. Greenfield knew immediately that “something dreadful must have happened” to her daughter, but the last thing she expected was that she had seen a UFO.

  Thinking that she’d been attacked by someone, perhaps even raped, Mrs. Greenfield immediately called the police. The time was 6:10 p.m. While they waited for the police to arrive Shirley was able to regain her composure and the two realized that, if the UFO was seen for ten minutes at about 5:30, and accounting for the ten-minute walk, it should now be only around 5:40. Shirley had somehow lost all memory of a full 30 minutes of her experience.

  When the officer arrived Shirley recounted her ordeal, or what she could remember of it. It was obvious from the officers apparent disinterest that this was not a matter which called for police investigation. In any event, the police did pass the story on to the local paper, which did a write-up of her encounter without speaking to her.

  Three other girls had seen strange lights in the sky that week, and all of them had spoken to the papers about their sightings. But not Shirley. She wanted no part of the publicity that would result from her ‘going public’ with her disturbing ordeal. When the story was picked up by local television stations who offered money for a filmed interview, she again turned them down. The money was very tempting to a 17-year-old,” she told Randles “...But these people from TV were clowns. They were not taking the story seriously at all...all I wanted to do by then was forget about it. I told the paper and TV (people) to go away.”

  But there were other reasons Shirley didn’t want to talk. Her health had taken a downward turn. Her mouth had become extremely sore, her eyes red and watering. She felt nauseous and vomited. Her muscles ached all over. She had found small burn marks on her arm and side the next day as she bathed. She could not explain them but pointed them out to her parents. Moreover, an equally inexplicable purple rash had formed on her neck and shoulders over the weekend. Her mouth continued to worsen and, when she was seen by her dentist, it was found that her metal fillings in the upper teeth had crumbled into powder and fallen out. Some in her lower jaw had become embedded in her gums and extensive care was needed to fix the problems.

  Both the police and her doctors had steadfastly refused to cooperate with the many UFO research organizations whose interest the case had drawn. In fact, it wasn’t until the year 1986 that all the facts about the case were known. “There are things I have not talked about to anyone,” she told Randles after reading one of her books about UFO activity in the area where she had lived. “I just have to get them off my chest. For years I have been living with them gnawing at me inside.”

  Over the course of the next two years Randles met with Shirley. She also had various sessions with doctors and psychiatrists during which regressive hypnosis was utilized as a means of recovering the missing 30 minutes of that night. Using this method, the woman’s missing time was recovered and it was learned that she had been taken aboard the craft and examined by a tall, blond-haired woman wearing a long gown. The entity told her not to be afraid and proceeded to put ‘images’ into Shirley’s head which would elicit a certain response at an unspecified time. The truth will later be revealed, the being told her.

  Nine days after her encounter with the ‘flying saucer,’ on Monday February 2nd, Shirley’s mother received a call from a man who would only identify himself as “someone who investigates these things,” and posed questions concerning her daughters state of health. Specifically, he wanted to know if there had been any marks left on her body after the sighting. Thinking he was someone from a local research network, Mrs. Greenfield brushed him off.

  By this time Shirley was feeling somewhat better and had even returned to work. The funny thing was she knew that her daughter had spoken to no one, except her husband and herself, about her health problems since the encounter, and wondered how this man could’ve found out about the marks on her daughter’s body. The man refused to say how he got his information, or even how he had acquired their address and phone number. The very next evening at 7:00 p.m., during a violent downpour, there came a knock at the door.

  Mr. Greenfield got up and opened the door. There were two men standing outside. They said that they had come to “interrogate” Shirley. Mr. Greenfield, as Randles would later put it in, ‘The Truth Behind Men In Black,’ ‘suffered no fools gladly.’ They denied that they were journalists, and neither were they from any UFO group, whom they looked upon with obvious disdain, calling them “meddlers.” They would not say where they were from, however, or on whose authority the visit was being made and Greenfield was determined not to let the two men inside.

  There was something odd about them. Only one of the men did all the talking while the other man, the shorter one, just stood there quietly holding a black box. Greenfield stated flatly that his daughter was not interested in discussing the matter further with anyone, to which the man sternly replied, “If you do not let us in now, we will return later and make Shirley speak with us.”

  The threat seemed very believable. Shirley had, by this time, overheard the conversation from the top of the stairs and, against her better judgement, shouted down to her father that she would speak to them. She later told Randles that she was unsure why she did this, and her father was even more baffled, telling Randles that he “couldn’t understand why I let these men into my house given their attitude of intimidation toward my daughter.” In any event, things would get a lot stranger.

  Randles writes; “Both men were aged about 40 and wore smart black suits. They had a definite air of power and authority about them, clearly convinced that they had a right to do and say whatever they chose. But they were also rather eccentric in behavior and appearance. The one who did all
the talking was tall and fair, almost blond. He never referred to either himself or his colleague by name.”

  Instead he introduced himself only as “commander,” giving the Greenfields the impression that he was from the RAF, even though ‘commander’ is a naval term. Curiously, Shirley and her parents later disagreed about one aspect of this man’s appearance. Shirley remembered that he had only one arm, and that he told her he had lost the appendage during an earlier aircraft accident. Her parents had noted no such deformity and didn’t recall any statements he’d made regarding it. Surely, they, too, would’ve noticed such a thing. The incongruity later troubled them greatly.

  In any event, they all recalled how he had admired a picture of Sir Winston Churchill they kept in the living room, and went out of his way to relate that he had attended the former Prime Minister’s funeral ten years before. During all this the other, shorter man sat quietly on a chair clutching the square-shaped black box and never taking his eyes off Shirley.

  Just like in the Bender case, this ‘man’ never spoke a single word during the visit, and there was something peculiar in the way that he stared intently at the girl. The box, the ‘commander’ informed them, was a sophisticated tape recording device, but it had no visible moving parts and, even though the interrogation lasted until after 10:00 p.m., at no point was the box ever opened to change the tape.

  For over three hours ‘Commander’ grilled Shirley mercilessly. He had her recount the ordeal, in absolute detail repeatedly, in precise fashion, refusing to accept any hint of vagueness or uncertainty in her replies. Several times he jumped on minor changes in the words she used, as if they were evidence of a hoax, and accused her of fraud, being rude to the point of aggression. And all the while her father let this go on unquestioned, never speaking a single word of protest.