Sands next observed a strange light and his vehicle came to a complete stop. Two beings appeared, descending on a shaft of light. One of the beings stood off in the distance, while the other one approached Sands and his stalled automobile. Sands later told investigators that the beings were about 5 feet 8, were completely bald and had what appeared to be gills instead of ears.
"For the next ten minutes or so," Beckley went on, "they had a brief telepathic conversation about the lights off in the distance, what people did there. The beings produced a holographic image of the Earth, showing Sandy what appeared to be explosions taking place around the miniature globe, indicating perhaps some future global conflict. Finally, the beings got back into their ship, which then shot straight up."
About as typical as typical gets with a UFO encounter. But there was more, according to Beckley. "The tie-in with the UFO Hunters show on The Silencers," Beckley explained, "is that Sands later had a rather hair-raising incident with the Men-In-Black who took him into the desert where he was confronted literally by a small army of more MIBs and two hairy creatures that reminded him of Cousin It from the Addams Family Show. I was always fascinated with Johnny's claims especially since he passed a lie detector test and had undergone a psychological examination by a trained professional, and I thought it would make a good addition to the UFO Hunters episode that was in the early planning stages."
The producers of the program, however, were unable to track Sands down and told Beckley they believed the gentleman had died some five years ago. The news greatly saddened Beckley, but then an interesting moment of synchronicity took place. Beckley went to visit his friend, a performance artist known professionally as Zamora The Torture King, who was doing a show on Coney Island near Beckley's home in Manhattan.
"I happened to mention," Beckley recalled, "since both of them are from the Las Vegas area, that I had tried to get in touch with Johnny Sands to get him on the History Channel and they had told me he had passed away. Zamora got a big chuckle out of that. 'Well, I don't think so,' he said, 'because I just interviewed him recently for my book Weird Nevada.' So it turns out that the producers of the show did finally manage to get in touch with Johnny and booked him for the show."
Beckley said that the show would eventually include himself and Sands, as well as UFO historian Allen Greenfield and John Rhodes. Rhodes has had personal experiences with the Men-In-Black and is widely known as a leading authority on reptilian aliens and the unexplained mysteries of the Inner Earth, which is where some researchers think the Men-In-Black may call their home, the netherworlds hidden underground.
"Part of the episode was shot near the Grand Canyon," Beckley said, "and then the UFO Hunters and the crew went on to I think Salt Lake City to shoot the rest of the program. So it probably took about oh, I guess, four or five days to put this all in the can and then several weeks of editing before it is aired nationally. For me, it was a nice trip and an exciting experience, but then again most folks know I love radio, television and filmmaking."
For those unfamiliar with the program, Beckley offered some basic background. "Each episode of the program involves a different aspect of the UFO phenomenon," he said. "Recently, they've had a show on abductions; they've had a show on the grays; they've had one on undersea saucers or USOs. They've had an episode on pilots who have been buzzed. So each show is themed, and this one is on the Men-In-Black."
Beckley said his interest in the MIB mystery goes back over four decades. "One of the first books I ever read on UFOs," he recalled, "was by the late Gray Barker and called They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. In its pages, the author describes how certain UFO researchers had gotten too close to the truth about the origins of and the occupants who pilot the flying discs that were being seen all over America in the 1950s and 60s. The researchers were visited by gentlemen wearing black suits, black hats, sometimes dark sunglasses, usually traveling in black limousines or Cadillacs, who threatened the researchers that if they told what they knew about flying saucers then something tragic would happen to either them or their families.
"Probably the first person to be silenced that we know about," Beckley continued, "is Albert K. Bender, who was the head of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, an organization that reigned supreme in the early 1950s. Bender had several thousand members all over the world, and put out a very nice little newsletter called Space Review. And apparently he had printed something he should not have in the pages of his newsletter, which got back to 'them,' whoever they are! We don't know whether they're extraterrestrial. Some of them may be government officials. I have my own theory, which I discuss on the show, as to where the Men-In-Black may be originating."
Bender's tale continued. "So, these three men appeared at Albert K. Bender's door one day. They proved to him that they were not of earthly or human origin, let's say. They materialized and dematerialized in front of him, and they told him to shut down his international UFO organization, which he did. At around this time, which would have been 1953 or 1954, there were other individuals who were being harassed by these Men-In-Black. There were freaky phone calls and strange poltergeist-like phenomena that were taking place inside the houses of UFO witnesses and heads of various UFO organizations as well."
Beckley told the story of John Stewart, who ran the New Zealand branch of the International Flying Saucer Bureau and was attacked by some unknown force and was actually pushed down a flight of stairs in a large department store in front of hundreds of witnesses by some unseen hand. His girlfriend was molested by some invisible creature inside her home. The two were so terrified by what had happened that they immediately quit their UFO investigations, ceased their correspondence and retired from the field, never to be heard from again.
"So little by little," Beckley said, "other researchers started being frightened by these Men-In-Black. This went on for quite a number of years. My work, UFO Silencers: Mystery of the Men In Black, detailed many dozens of cases involving these MIBs. And this of course was long before Will Smith and the movie version came out, which was jazzed up for public consumption. There were some pretty strange cases that I wrote about, including one or two incidents where UFO witnesses were savagely attacked and the possible murder of a sixteen-year-old boy found within feet of where a flying saucer had landed on the banks of the New York State Barge Canal in Scotia, on New York's Mohawk River."
But Beckley has done more than simply research the subject of MIBs. He has also had a personal firsthand encounter. "While I was not the person being stalked or harassed," he said, "I was directly involved in this bizarre incident. There had been a huge flap of sightings up and down the East Coast that lasted from 1965 to 1968. One of the individuals I was associated with, John J. Robinson, had collected a lot of this data. Not just of strange phenomena in the sky, but also of creature sightings, different flying beings, as well as Bigfoot-type apparitions. He was also a researcher into strange events that were taking place underground known as the Shaver Mystery, the Inner Earth mysteries and so forth. He strongly believed that some UFOs might be originating from under our very feet.
"Now Jack, as his friends called him of course, was an associate editor of Jim Moseley's "Saucer News." At that time, "Saucer News" was the largest UFO publication in the world, with around 12,000 subscribers. Jack wrote articles for Jim's magazine as well as a newsletter I was putting out. Jack lived over in Jersey City but commuted to his day job, which was working at a bank in Manhattan.
"His wife Mary," Beckley went on, "would do the chores and the shopping. Every morning she'd go out around nine o'clock to go to the local supermarket or the deli." On more than one occasion, Mary reported to Beckley and Moseley, who worked out of an office on Fifth Avenue that served as the "Saucer News" headquarters, that whenever she left home she would notice that there was "this strange fellow, almost very, very wooden looking with a very pale face, kind of standing recessed back in a doorway across the street and dressed all in black with a black hat and a bla
ck suit on."
The strange interloper appeared to be watching Mary leaving the building as well as watching the activities of other people around her apartment house. Jack and Mary had also been receiving strange phone calls, people calling in the middle of the night and hanging up. Some of their files were broken into and some UFO casebook material disappeared completely.
"So Mary was very, very concerned about this," Beckley said, "and she would call us repeatedly. Well, Jim and I didn't know whether she was just trying to get our attention or whether it was her imagination running wild or whether there really was this individual there stalking the Robinsons. So we decided one morning to take a ride over to Jersey City without letting Mary or Jack know we were coming. We would pay them a surprise visit and see if indeed there was somebody watching their apartment as Mary had insisted."
When Beckley and Moseley arrived, they discreetly passed down the block where the Robinsons lived. "And sure enough," Beckley recounted, "there was a fellow, just as described, standing in the doorway and peering just off into the distance and dressed in black with a black overcoat, black shoes and black pants. Out in the street, parked right in front of where he was standing, was a black car of some type or another.
"Well, it was fairly early in the morning and it was during rush hour, with very narrow streets, so you couldn't double park or anything. So Jim and I decided to circle the block in Jim's car and see if we couldn't have a conversation with this individual and find out what he was doing standing there on a regular repeat basis. Before pulling away, Jim hands me his camera and I stick it out the window and click the shutter and capture one photo of this 'person' and one of his black vehicle."
After circling the block, which took a full five minutes, the pair returned to find that the stranger and his car were both gone. Beckley feels that the simple act of taking the photo may have scared off the Man-In-Black and the Robinsons never saw or heard from the interloper again.
"So I do believe," Beckley concluded, "that, as far as I know, this is the only authentic photo of what purports to be a true Man-In-Black." Beckley still defends the authenticity of his photo more than forty years later. He told Bill Birnes, Kevin Cook and Patrick Uskert, the three primary characters of the UFO Hunters program, that there is no "earthly" reason for the figure to have been standing there at the time or at any other time.
"Several people have suggested, though, that it looked kind of like a pall bearer from a funeral," Beckley said. "Well, I guess you could say it did. Even more peculiar or strange is the fact that once we had confronted this individual by taking a photograph of him, he just sort of slinked into this other realm or other dimension, which is where I believe that the Men-In-Black originate."
And just who or what are the Men-In-Black? Beckley offered more than one theory. "Some of these individuals may be extraterrestrial," Beckley explained, "because they don't act like humans. They seem to be possessed by a very peculiar behavior pattern. I describe some of the details of these behavior patterns in my book The UFO Silencers. Others may be government officials. Still others may be Earth people pulling pranks."
There have been numerous further reports of injuries suffered by witnesses to the Men-In-Black. Beckley recounted the story of a man named Carl Wayne Watts, who had been on his way to meet with the pioneering UFO researcher, the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
"Now Mr. Watts had taken several photographs of UFOs," Beckley said, "including a cigar-shaped object hovering in the sky. There was also a picture I used in my book of an alien being who the witness claimed was the occupant of the ship. It looked to me to be some sort of robot with a hard outer shell, or maybe he had a space helmet on. Sort of like the robot in The Day The Earth Stood Still. Anyway, on the way to be interviewed by Dr. Hynek, he claimed his automobile was forced off the road and that he was hit over the head by one of these MIBs. After that, course, he refused to talk to anybody, including Dr. Hynek, about his experiences."
Beckley's publishing company, Global Communications, recently released a book calledThe Secret Life of Paul Villa, which also deals in part with harassment by the Men-In-Black.
"Paul Villa was a gentleman of Mexican-American heritage," Beckley said, "who lived in the American Southwest, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a good part of his life, which is where he took a series of quite phenomenal UFO photographs from 1962 to around 1973. He says the UFO beings posed their ships especially for him. They can be seen close by in the sky, hovering above his truck, over his house, between trees. Some of them are just within a few feet from the ground. One very remarkable photograph shows an object with tripod landing gear about to land.
"Mr. Villa's story gets pretty wild as he claimed to have had contact with beings from another solar system. He also claims he was harassed by the Men-In-Black as well as by his neighbors. His trailer was set on fire and his truck was overturned. He had to move on several occasions because he felt that his life was in danger and eventually he just kind of disappeared from sight because of this harassment by some unknown force."
Having provided that additional historical background on some of the encounters with the MIB that Beckley has collected over the years, the conversation returned to the recent filming of UFO Hunters. Beckley said that over the past forty years he has made several movies himself in addition to working with various motion picture and television production companies, and he can honestly declare that the cast and crew of UFO Hunters are a topnotch outfit.
"These fellows had it all together," Beckley said. "A lot of times things were chaotic and hectic and didn't go very smoothly, but the crew there from UFO Hunters was very professional and we got the whole thing done on time. Although during the final little segment that I was in, we just caught the last rays of the sun. Another two or three minutes and we would have had to re-shoot the next day. So everything went according to plan. The weather was great and of course the locations out there in Arizona around the Grand Canyon were really fantastic.
"And I must say," he continued, "that of all the crews I've worked with over the years, these guys are really polished and I wouldn't mind working with them again. And of course Bill Birnes is the best. He knows the subject, as did everyone else that was involved with the episode."
There are some critics of the program who fail to give it much in the way of credibility, but Beckley quickly dismissed those negative voices. "Some people have asked me, well, is everything on UFO Hunters for real? Or is it just a lot of hokum and sensationalism? I have to say, regarding the episode that I shot, called The Silencers, that everything seemed to be on the up and up. Everyone on the program seemed to be remarkably sure of what they were saying. True, to some, the statements made may be a little more farfetched than people who are into the hardcore science of Ufology, what we call the nuts-and-bolts people, may be comfortable with. They might say, 'Well, there isn't enough evidence.' But these three guys are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. Nothing is made up on the set; everything is legitimate as far as that goes.
"And I think the UFO Hunters do a very good job in getting the information over to the public-a very large percentage of the public who are really not that familiar with the subject whatsoever. You know, it is television, and it has to appeal to a large audience. It's not just what we call 'talking heads.' In order to make a show like this successful, there has to be the appearance of some kind of action. Not just people standing around looking at the sky. For those who find fault with UFO Hunters, I strongly recommend they try their hand at producing a UFO-oriented show and see just how easy it is.
"There is room out there for several programs on the subject, but it takes more than talk to produce a series for television. That's 13 shows a season. It's a humpbusting process and one that requires time, dedication, money and of course the ability to sell it to a network.
"But the end result of my involvement with this process," Beckley said, "is that I believe that UFO Hunters works within the accepted creative process t
o present the subject in a fair and balanced manner, without being overly sensationalistic, and represents the best interests of the field. I hope there are future seasons to look forward to."
More About Tim Beckley : Involved with the paranormal from an early age, author Timothy Green Beckley has had three UFO sightings. As a teenager, he created one of the first UFO periodicals, which he collated together with mimeographed sheets. Later, he merged his publication with Jim Moseley's "Saucer News." As a journalist, he interviewed John Lennon's girlfriend May Pang, who described Lennon's UFO sighting off his Manhattan terrace of a large circular craft that shot off a beam of light.
Beckley was invited by his late friend, the Earl of Clancarty, Brinsley Le Poer Trench, to speak before a private UFO group formed inside Britain's House of Lords. In addition to his book The UFO Silencers, Beckley has authored more than 30 works, including MJ-12 and the Riddle of Hangar 18, Subterranean Worlds Inside Earth, and Strange Encounters. For eleven years he edited the nationally distributed UFO Universe magazine. Today he writes regularly for Bill and Nancy Birnes at UFO Magazine as well as his editorial duties atwww.ConspiracyJournal.com
This article was originally posted to www.UFODigest.com
Another Strange Case
Collected by Robert Goreman On January 23, 1976, at 5:30 PM, 17-year-old Shirley Greenfield (a 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.
Curse Of The Men In Black: Return Of The UFO Terrorists Page 2
