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The Men-In-Black of Legend

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Summary: The Men in Black are beings who appear anywhere major UFO sightings take place. They go about threatening people who have claimed to have seen UFOs into not asking about what they witnessed. They wear sunglasses. They wear black suits. They have olive complexions. They drive black mint-condition vintage luxury cars or fly in black helicopters. Some think that they are government agents. Some think that they are alien agents.

The Men in Black are beings who appear anywhere major UFO sightings take place. They go about threatening people who have claimed to have seen UFOs into not asking about what they witnessed. They wear sunglasses. They wear black suits. They have olive complexions. They drive black mint-condition vintage luxury cars or fly in black helicopters. Some think that they are government agents. Some think that they are alien agents.

The first reported occurrence of Men in Black was traced to Albert K. Bender, the editor of a flying saucer publication called the "Space Review". In the October 1953 issue he placed an announcement stating that he had come across information that would solve the flying saucer mystery but could not print it because he was ordered not to. He ended the announcement warning others in saucer work to be very cautious. He then stopped publication. Later in an interview Bender stated that three men wearing dark suits had ordered him to stop publishing flying saucer material, and that he had complied with the order because he had been "scared to death" of them. He later published a book called Flying Saucers and the Three Men in Black.

In his book, The UFO Silencers, Timothy Beckley has attempted to provide an overview of important and representative MIB encounters. According to Beckley, MIB have been with us for many hundreds of years, speculating that such diverse characters from the history of witchcraft and folklore as the Elizabethan "Black Men", the Native American "Black Man" and late nineteenth century reports of malevolent traveling salesmen, might have been manifestations of what we now know as Men in Black.

An odd incident in the history of the Men in Black is the strange case of Mr. O. H. Krill.

Mr. Krill's writings first gained publicity some time in the late 1980's when a text file called "The O.H. Krill Papers" was placed on the ParaNet B.B.S. The file told the story of shadow governments in cooperation with gray aliens, secret underground bases, exchanges of human organs for alien technologies, and the like. He offers the following information on the Men in Black:

"All things considered, UFO research has become pretty much of a circus today, and the most intriguing and controversial sideshow skirting the edges is the question of the "silencers," or the mysterious "Men in Black." There is a strong subliminal appeal in these accounts of visits by mysterious dark-suited figures (I have been visited myself, as have others I've known) attempting to silence UFO witnesses. A typical situation would be that a witness has a UFO sighting or UFO-related experience. Shortly thereafter he is visited by one or more "odd"-looking men who relate to him the minutest details of his experience, even though he has as yet told no one for fear of ridicule or other reasons.

The men warn him about spreading the story of his experience around and sometimes even threaten him personally, sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly. Any evidence, if it exists, is confiscated in one way or another. Sometimes the visit is for some totally meaningless reason and the subject of UFOs is hardly mentioned, if at all. But again, the men all seem to look alike.

We actually seem to find ourselves in close proximity to beings who obviously must be directly connected in some way with the objects themselves or the source behind them, yet they seem to be functioning unobtrusively within the framework of our own everyday existence.

The classic conception of an MIB is a man of indefinite age, medium height and dressed completely in black. He always has a black hat and often a black turtleneck sweater. They present an appearance often described as "strange" or "odd." They speak in a dull monotone voice, "like a computer," and are dark-complected with high cheekbones, thin lips, pointed chin, and eyes that are mildly slanted.

The visitors themselves are often on absurd missions. They have reportedly posed as salesmen, telephone repairmen or representatives from official or unofficial organizations. Their mode of transportation is usually large and expensive cars -- Buicks or Lincolns, sometimes Cadillacs, all black, of course.

I might note at this point that their physical appearance also has included beings that have pale-grayish skin, and that some of them have been seen to have blond hair, yet they wear the clothing and drive the cars previously described.

Their cars often operate with the headlights off, but ghostly purple or greenish glows illuminate the interior. Unusual insignia have been seen emblazoned on the doors and the license plates are always unidentifiable or untraceable.

The fabric of their clothes has been described as strangely "shiny" or thin, but not silky -- almost as if they have been cut from a new type of fabric.

Their often mechanical behavior has caused them to be described by some as being like robots or androids.

A lot of descriptions of some of these "folks" are pretty bizarre. A businessman's family in Wildwood, New Jersey, was visited by an unusually large man whose pants legs hiked up when he sat down, revealing a green wire grafted onto his skin and running up his leg.

There are other cases of MIB appearing on the other side of a wet, muddy field after a heavy rain, but having no mud whatever on their brightly shined shoes and in the bitter cold, out of nowhere, wearing only a thin coat. Their shoes and wallets all seem new and hardly broken in.

O. H. Krill assembled this short list of some of the more bizarre Men in Black incidents:

An ex-Air Force man is gassed and interrogated by MIB after he has learned classified NASA secrets.

Close-up photos of UFOs were seized from a teenager who is also directly threatened by MIB.

MIB sighted in the lobby of the U.S. State Department leave a mysterious artifact.

MIB pose as Air Force officers to silence witnesses.

MIB tries to buy before-hours Coke and sings to birds in trees.

MIB disintegrates a coin in a witness' hand and tells him that his heart will do the same if he talks.

O.H. Krill Exposed:

O.H. Krill's career was ended by John Lear when he made a television appearance with William Cooper.

Lear was the son of the famous aviation engineer, heir to the Learjet company. He claimed that his business connections with the military had given him access to secret Air-force documents related to U.F.O.s. He had posted to ParaNet his own U.F.O. files, which were also full of secret alien-government conspiracies.

Cooper claimed to be a high-ranking naval-intelligence officer, though records show that he was never anything more than an audio/visual technician for a Pacific fleet briefing team.

Lear heard William Cooper use the O.H Krill name, While John Lear wanted to use the show to announce that he made the "O.H. Krill" paper as a joke together with with John Grace (head of the Nevada Aerial Research Organization). William Cooper went on to claim that he first seen the Krill Papers in the early 1970's while working for the Office of Naval Intelligence.

John Lear immediately pulled William Cooper aside and quietly told him, "Bill, O.H. Krill is a joke!" Lear says that he and John Grace had used the name "Krill" from Bob Emenegger's special "UFO's: It Has Begun" In the T.V. special a woman claims to have channeled an entity named CRYLLL. They had posted the file on ParaNet as a prank.

William Cooper replied that Lear was mistaken. He said that Lear was a liar and still says so up to the present day. Cooper is now known to accuse all who disagree with him of being agents working for the Conspiracy.

So William Cooper left UFOlogy after UFO enthusiasts stopped taking him seriously. Now he spends his time ranting against the New World Order and the imminent armed take-over of the U.S. by the United Nations.

Why was this incident included in this dossier?:

Lear and Grace did not pull the Krill files entirely out of this air; it was really a satire of the most extreme and bizarre UFO stories that circulated among the circles of UFO enthusiasts.

If the descriptions of MIB are not directly from "real" stories from alleged witnesses, they at least bear a resemblance to some of the weirdest accounts.

And many people did believe in the Krill files for a long time. Copies of the files are still to be found on the Internet. These files have had an influence on the public perception of the Men in Black legend, and have almost certainly affected popular culture.

Sirius and the MIB (Twin Peaks fans pay special attention.)

According to John Keel, the MIB often state that they are representatives of the "Nation of the Third Eye."

George Hunt Williamson (an early MIB contact) in his book Other Tongues, Other Flesh, states that secret societies allied with Sirius use the Eye of Horus as an insignia. This symbol has also been seen on the MIB. The secret societies believe that there is a Great White Lodge on earth. They call it Shamballa -- and consider it to be the spiritual center of the world. Theosophists such as Alice Bailey say that the Great White Lodge is on Sirius. This is confirmed by Stephen Jenkins, author of the book The Undiscovered Country, who was told by Buddhist priests that Shamballa was located in the constellation of Orion. If the All-Seeing-Eye is a symbol of Sirius' earth-allies and the MIB wear that symbol, and if Shamballa represents the Great White Lodge on earth -- then the MIB are emissaries of Shamballa.

The entrance to Shamballa on earth is usually placed in the trans- Himalayan region. Some assert it is in the heart of the Gobi Desert (where there have been allegations of crashed disks and bases). According to the explorer Nicholas Roerich, there are caves in the Himalayan foothills that have subterranean passages. In one of the these passages, there is a stone door that has never been opened, because the time for its opening has not yet arrived. In 1930, Morris Doreal founded the Brotherhood of the White Temple. He says that the entrance to Shamballa is far underground. he goes on to say that space bends around Shamballa, and that there is a gateway which leads into another universe.

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Men in Black (MIB)