The Real Men in Black

by Nick Redfern

  Colin Bennett, who had an encounter with a Man in Black in London in the early 1980s (as described in Chapter 10), shares Boeche’s suspicion that the Men in Black have occult origins. He uses our old friend Albert Bender as an example: “...before [his] marriage, [Bender] was a rather typical back-bedroom young person of his time: His room was decorated with symbols of all kinds of occult weirdness, and it resembled a kind of metaphysical temple. He did not take notice of warnings of all classical occultists—Paracelsus, Levi, and Crowley—that mystical occultism is not to be taken lightly. History gives plenty of examples of forms which can be summoned up to tell all kinds of tales to gullible human beings, always anxious to have the secrets to life, the universe, and everything.”

  Expanding on this line of thinking, Bennett says, “The celebrated warnings from MIB and ‘extraterrestrial’ aliens are the direct equivalents to the Christian warnings about tampering with Christian mysteries too deeply lest one might meet the Devil or one of his minions. Christian thinkers also gave warning about the dangers of independent and somewhat cavalier occult interpretations of the Incarnation, Transfiguration, and the character of the Holy Ghost. The warnings here were not so much about dangers of finding secret knowledge, but the risk of annihilation, long before any portals of such supposed knowledge were reached.”

  In other words, Bennett believes that when one goes looking for paranormal entities, or goes so far as to attempt to invoke them, they very often do appear. But, as he also notes, both the nature of these myriad beings and the stories they relate need to be viewed and analyzed via careful, guarded filters. To do otherwise is to risk such creatures getting their paranormal claws into us to a potentially disastrous degree—which appears to be precisely what happened to Bender, unfortunately for him.

  Timothy Green Beckley has a disturbing Man in Black account to relate that may also be in line with Ray Boeche’s views. It is a case that appears to involve full-blown paranormal possession: “There was one case where I might have been threatened by a Man in Black,” Beckley reveals. “There was a publication I wrote for in the 1970s called Official UFO. They published their address in the magazine, so they did get a few crank visitors to the offices. One of these was a gentleman who claimed he was being stalked by the Men in Black.”

  In time, Beckley met the man, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s, became the unwelcome recipient of a series of very threatening calls from him. Beckley decided to call the police, and the man was soon traced: It transpired he was a homeless person staying in Grand Central Station. Beckley adds that the man “must have called 50 times and left crazy, threatening messages that would go on and on. I spoke with his parents, who were in Florida, and they said that although he wasn’t always like this, something came over him now and again.”

  Beckley suggests that,

  With cases like this guy where something came over him, and with the MIB, it’s like a possession, where a paranormal force takes possession of the person and they then become the Man in Black, doing what the force wants them to do, but without their knowledge. Afterward, they might not even remember any of it. These people are living on the fringe of society; they are simple-minded people who can easily be controlled and influenced. Someone, say, who might be living in some rundown apartment, is taken over in a kind of trance, and then he becomes one of the Men in Black. He threatens someone, and then he goes back to his normal life after the possession ends, and he doesn’t remember it. But while he is under the control of whatever is doing this, he’s not quite right. And like a zombie, is the best way I can describe it.

  Particularly relevant to Boeche’s views of MIB being more occult than extraterrestrial is the usage of Ouija boards by people who have seen a Man in Black. In 1954, George Hunt Williamson, a man who claimed repeated contacts with extraterrestrials in the 1950s, published a book called The Saucers Speak, which focused upon his well-publicized attempts to contact extraterrestrials via short-wave radio and Ouija boards. (Actar of Mercury, Adu of Hatonn in Andromeda, Agfa Affa of Uranus, Ankar-22 of Jupiter, and Artok of Pluto were just some of the many purported extraterrestrials with whom Williamson claimed interaction, but which others might conclude were deceptive demons.) Then, in the latter part of the 1950s, Williamson changed his name, drafted a fictitious academic and familial background to accompany his new identity, and essentially disappeared. He died in 1986, largely forgotten by the UFO research community that had briefly welcomed him into the fold in the 1950s.

  Albert Bender, without whom there would simply not be an MIB phenomenon as we have come to understand it, was also a dabbler with Ouija boards. As well, Mary Robertson, whose Man in Black was photographed in 1968 by Timothy Green Beckley and Jim Moseley, was a big fan of the boards. And Claudia Cunningham’s friend Linda, who had a Man in Black encounter at the Albany Rural Cemetery in May 2009, was also “into the Ouija boards.” Could it only be chance and coincidence that several people who were attracted to Ouija boards were subsequently targeted for visitation by the MIB?

  Conclusion

  And now, dear reader, our complex journey into the multifaceted twilight realm of the Men in Black is at its end. What a wild and unsettling journey it has been. We’ve seen that what, for many, has long been perceived as a phenomenon having its roots solely in the realm of hoaxing, mistaken identity, government espionage, secret agents, and visitors from the Pentagon, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, is actually nothing of the sort.

  Yes, in some cases we are dealing with certain characters who lurk in positions of power, and who wish to keep us in the dark about what is really known about the UFO conundrum at a governmental level. And, yes, there have been cases of mistaken identity and hoaxing. But for the most part, when it comes to the Men in Black we are dealing with phenomena that are far, far stranger and much more terrifying than any government agent come to silence witnesses.

  As we have seen, there may very well be several points of origin for the Men in Black. Some MIB, such as those experienced by Albert Bender, may have been borne out of nothing stranger than repeated misfiring of the man’s brain, coupled with a fertile, overactive, alien-dominated imagination that spent far too much time cooped up alone in a creepy, cobwebbed attic. But out of the sheer potency of this MIB imagery a horrific birth was given to Tulpas of three shadowy men that quickly found they very much enjoyed their newfound freedom and existence, and have ever since embarked upon a reign of terror as a means to continue their precarious existence in our world.

  Given the close links that the Men in Black appear to have with psychic possession of the individual, Ouija boards, and poltergeist activity, it seems safe to conclude that their link with the occult is also a valid area of research that may unlock the secrets to yet another aspect of the MIB phenomenon, or perhaps even to a related aspect that we have yet to fully comprehend. As well, if the unique theories of Joshua P. Warren are correct—that some of the Men in Black may originate from a point far in our very own future—such startling revelations provoke, and even demand major revisions to our scientific beliefs and teachings. That the past, present, and future may not be cast in stone, that all three might be in constant, dizzying states of flux, and that the MIB could be intimately involved in secretly protecting and manipulating countless time lines on a nearly infinite basis, is almost as weird as the black-suited visitors themselves!

  Before you go, remember my careful advice in the Introduction: If you do decide to pursue the MIB, and you one day receive that dreaded slow knocking on your front door, for your sake and that of everyone you hold dear to your heart, let it remain firmly locked and unopened. If you fail to heed that advice, at the very least take careful and respectful notice of the following cautionary words of Brad Steiger, for they are the words of one who knows of what he speaks:

  “The Men in black are real, and if you truly devote yourself to pursuing this, then one can become in great danger. We’re up against something that none of us can fully comprehen
d.”

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