The Men In Black: A History
PART ONE - A compilation of research on history's most elusive devil theory.
THE MEN IN BLACK: A HISTORY
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FEB 3 1967
Orlando Sentinel
UFO Witnesses ‘Silenced’
Mysterious men dressed in Air Force uniforms or bearing impressive credentials from government agencies have been “silencing” UFO witnesses, according to Col. George P. Freeman, Pentagon spokesman for Project Bluebook. “We have checked a number of these cases,” Freeman said in an interview this week, “and these men are not connected with the Air Force in any way.”
[…]
Another mystery man, bearing credentials from the North American Air Defense (NORAD) turned up at the home of Rex Heflin, a man who had taken a series of UFO pictures in California in 1965, and demanded the originals. Later, NORAD denied having anything to do with the incident.
Maj. Gen. M.M. Magee, NORAD’s chief of staff, later told Rep. James B. Utt, R-Calif. that, “for your information NORAD does not have the responsibility for the evaluation of UFOs and therefore would not knowingly be in the business of collecting UFO pictures for evaluation. In addition, the office of primary interest for UFO matters is the Department of the Air Force.”
Heflin’s photos were never returned and the Air Force has never been able to determine the identity of the mystery man who took them.” [1]
— JOHN KEEL, 1967 Article ______________________________________________________________________
The ‘Men in Black’ have been a subject of fascination and fear for countless UFO witnesses and researchers throughout history. Traditionally, their presence has been rumored to be a sort of omen, and they are indicative of unpleasant events soon to come for those unlucky enough to encounter them. Legend has it, a person sees the Men in Black three times throughout their life, and after the third encounter, they die. Historical reports indicate that the Men in Black have made many important appearances, from Marie Antoinette to Malcolm X. Here we will explore the enigma of the Men in Black and unravel the stories behind them.
As the late Fortean researcher John Keel explained in a 1989 lecture, “The Men in Black is a generic term. It doesn’t cover just the men in black, in black Cadillacs, who arrive at the scene of UFO incidents. As I’ll describe to you later, there are all kinds of Men in Black. They’re mystery men, and we don’t know who they are, where they come from, or who is supporting them. And some of these people apparently have a lot of logistical support and financial support that’s very mysterious…
In the Orient, for thousands of years, they’ve had a legend called the King of the World, and it’s surprising how many people believe in this. And in the 20s and the 30s, various explorers who were traveling through the Himalayas and India and Mongolia—outer Mongolia—they all heard these legends and there were a lot of books in the 20s and 30s that mention the King of the World. The King of the World supposedly lives in an underground city, and we’ve all heard about underground cities. Well, somewhere in the reaches of outer Mongolia there’s supposed to be an underground city where the King of the World resides and he sends out his agents to control the world, the surface world, and these agents are Men in Black.” [2]
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“There are countless myths about the Elder race who once populated this earth but were driven underground by some catastrophe. In the Orient there still exist beliefs in this underground race ruled over by the King of the World. It is even said that this race controls human events on the surface, and that various surface cults take orders from this hidden race, committing political assassinations and other crimes to further the Elder's mysterious ends.
A writer named Richard Shaver gave the Elders a new name in 1944 when he updated the ancient legends. He called them “DEROS,” acronym for "detrimental robots," and claimed they controlled us through the use of fiendish rays. According to the DERO believers, the flying saucers come to us from gigantic holes at the North and South poles.
But perhaps we should take a new look at the old legends. It does seem to be a fact that a god-like race of superior beings existed alongside early man. Who were they? Where were they from? Where did they go? Did they go underground into the volcanic interior of the earth leaving only a dim racial memory behind? Are they still there, breathing sulfuric fumes, rising from their dark dominion from time to time to stagger down our streets on unsure feet, eyes rolling, bodies tortured with aeroembolism?” [3]
— Disneyland of the Gods
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Similar to the UFO phenomenon, it appears that these MIB have been commingling with human beings for a rather long time, shuffling their appearance and tactics every so often in an effort to maintain a cultural frame of reference. Nowadays, our men in black seem mainly interested in retrieving evidence that points to terrestrial origin of the UFOs. Their secondary interests are to enhance the extraterrestrial belief and to create suspicion — even acute paranoia — among the UFO believers. [4] Many modern witnesses have mistakenly thought they were paid spooks, blaming the government for their harassment. The truth behind these creepy characters is shrouded in mystery. Both the US Air Force and the FBI have made efforts to track down these Men in Black without success. It should be an easy task for an experienced lawmen. Many witnesses have managed to get the license numbers of their phantom vehicles, but when a check is run, the numbers are always found to be unissued. [4] These strange figures often travel in threes and have a pale, robotic, or even sinister quality to them.
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“Witnesses described these “men” as behaving in a disoriented and robot-like manner. It seems that some, if not all, of these entities are either androids or are human beings tightly controlled from a distance by unknown operators.
In every case, these entitles spoke with difficulty, misusing common slang. Often they were unable to articulate their thoughts and were difficult to understand.
They also display an inability to understand spoken communication except when the witness looks directly into their faces.
When the witnesses spoke to them while turned away, the MIB did not appear to hear what was said.
As In entity cases of all kinds, the MIB speak and behave on a level which indicates very low intelligence.
They are childlike in response, betraying no emotion except anger.
They become visibly angry instantly when their remarks are questioned or their requests refused.
Most witnesses use the term "spoiled children" when trying to describe this behavioral trait.
Their physical movements are stiff and erratic, as if they were drunk, drugged or hypnotized.
Their legs swivel awkwardly fros the hips and they appear to have some trouble making simple movements, such as stepping down from curbstones.” Usually they are described as being from 5’7” to 5’9” tall, with frail, small boned bodies and extraordinarily long fingers. Their skin is dark, usually a deep olive, and their facial features are most often "like an Oriental, a Korean or a Thai". Their eyes are a deep black and tend to be glazed and unseeing. Often they have a "cast" in one eye.”
— MEN IN BLACK: BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS [5]
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When interviewing Men in Black witnesses, John Keel found that they would often point out that MIB bore a striking physical resemblance to one particular regional phenotype. Apparently, Laplanders (an out-of-date phrase), nowadays known as the Sápmi, who occupy large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia (the region of Saomi was formerly known as Lapland), resembled the Men in Black more closely than other groups. As Keel explained:
“There was one photograph everybody jumped on. They would stop and say, “that looks just like the guy that I saw.” And believe it or not, it was a photo of a Laplander, from northern Sweden. Now, they have kind of an Oriental look to them, they’re small in stature, and they have a distinctive look. I’m not saying that the Men in Black are all Laplanders. But they certainly look like them, and they seem to be related to them.” [2]
An occurrence or phenomenon believed to indicate a future event, or omen, arguably falls into the category of our Men in Black. One of the earliest examples of a MIB encounter is found in the Bible. Genesis ch. 18-19 places us at the beginning of the tale of the destruction of the two famous biblical cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. [6] The story tells of three ‘angels’ who warn the innocents of their towns’ coming destruction from God. The angels demonstrated impressive wisdom and power, confusing some of the townspeople with blinding light and foretelling their annihilation— sounds eerily similar to many modern day UFOnaut encounters. They warned of the imminent destruction, and eventually got Lot and a few others to leave. The next day, as promised, Sodom and Gomorrah were annihilated.
The Men in Black trio concerned with the Sodom and Gomorrah tale appeared to have been presenting themselves using a frame of reference people of the time would understand— three angels. Angels in the Bible are described in all sorts of ways. From the lustful ‘Sons of God’ mentioned in Genesis, to the ‘wheel within a wheel’ encountered by Ezekiel, we are given a wide spectrum of what is called an angel. It appears angels can be rather tricky and mysterious. In fact, Satan was originally an angel that rebelled against God after a dispute. But with regards to Sodom and Gomorrah…is there anything traditionally angelic about the destruction and death of two towns? This author argues no. For reasons we can only speculate, the components of prophecy or fear appear to be key elements of encounters with the Men in Black.
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“The American Indians had experiences with a devil type, too. They called him ‘the trickster’ because he was always doing foul things to them. During the long Dark Ages, we gave the devil a prominent role in human affairs. We even credited him with all that was rotten in our world and came to believe that he and God were constantly battling, that human history itself was a record of that battle. When human events took a turn for the worse, we blamed the devil. Since so much of human history was shameful, we developed a series of ‘devil theories’ to explain the rottenness. Eventually, the devil theorists became as important as historians. Indeed, many were historians.”
[…]
“Modern theologians, even those with the most conservative churches, have rejected the concept of the devil. Satan is not mentioned in the original biblical texts in the modern context. The word Satan originally meant ‘adversary’. Like so many other things in the Bible, it was eventually twisted until it took on a whole new meaning. Men observed horrible, red-eyed monsters surrounded by an awful stench and regarded them as devils. Religious zealots found a place for the devil in their cosmos and gave him a home in hell. Hell was a translation of sheol, which meant ‘invisible world’ or ‘the land of the dead’. We turned it into a place of fire and brimstone presided over by the Master of Evil himself. Once we had constructed the place in our minds, people began seeing the devil and, like modern UFO contactees who are whisked off to other planets, people were taken on hallucinatory trips to die underworld to confirm its existence.” [4]
— The Eighth Tower
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A devil theory can take many shapes. Dr. Carl Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ was one example, a supermind composed of the unconscious minds of all humanity, having a will and reality all its own. Ivan Sanderson went a step further, and postulated that the Earth itself is a living organism, made up of many independent pieces which rely on each other. In Sanderson’s world, “The earth needs us because each one of us is a cell in its massive brain. Just as the human brain controls each cell and organ in its body, the supermind has the power to control each of us and can direct our individual and collective destinies. In short, the earth itself is God.” [4] Similar to how our immune systems use uniquely-evolved chemical responses to fight pathogens, it could be argued that the Earth’s response to humans drilling, plowing down forests, and detonating nuclear bombs is uniquely-evolved and tailored to us. Could it be our devil theories of Detrimental Robots and the King of the World are attempts at communicating a more complicated truth? As Keel explains above, the ideas we use to explain our complicated world can become twisted until they take on a whole new meaning. As it turns out, we created Hell. Originally called sheol, this word simply meant ‘invisible world’ or ‘land of the dead’ and has warped over time because of religious zealots. Similarly, Satan began as a word meaning ‘adversary’ and has slowly morphed into the red, pitchfork-bearing, prince of darkness ruling over the Hell we know today.
Many different groups have gotten the devil theory treatment over time. Whether it is because of race or religion, you can likely name a few groups of people who have been blamed for our problems historically. Many conspiracy theorists are convinced the Freemasons really run things behind closed doors. Other groups swear the Vatican is the organization pulling the important strings in our society. The classic Nine Unknown Men and Illuminati. All devil theories. Today’s Men in Black suits and black cadillacs seem to have shifted to a new frame of reference that has captured the public imagination— the international bankers — “a loathesome cartel of munitions makers, money manipulators, and archfiends. Like the Illuminati and other phantom orders before them, they were accused of running the world from behind the scenes. The mischievous men in black suits were tagged as agents for the International Bankers in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.”[4] It makes sense that our modern frame of reference is a powerful fellow in a suit belonging to a shadowy group, because it appears that is what people often blame their large scale, modern misfortunes on. Our devil.
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (b. 1780), a French poet, described the devil as a Red Man dressed in scarlet. This devil was also reported to have various characteristics, such as being humped-back and one-eyed. There were also reports that he had a hooked nose, misshapen mouth, and cloven feet. Another person reported the following about the Red Man: [10]
“He is described as small man, clothed from top to toe in scarlet, whose eye is so piercing and unearthly that it terrifies the most courageous. He never speaks, nor are his visits of much length; he vanishes soon after his presence is discovered.” [7]
Marie Antoinette (b. 1755) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was married to King Louis XVI, and they both died after being sentenced to execution. Before King Louis XVI died in 1793, the red man supposedly appeared wearing the red Phrygian cap or cap of liberty and a tri-colored cockade. Marie Antoinette’s assistants received a visit from the Red Man a few days before the 1792 storming of the Tuileries, known as 10 August, and in this version it was reported:
“Marie Antoinette’s women were sitting in the Salle des Gardes, when they became suddenly aware of the presence of a small man clothed from crown to heel in scarlet, who looked at them with such unearthly eyes that they were frozen with terror. They rushed to the apartments of the Madame la Dauphine and related their adventure.”[8]
One account says that the Red Man warned the French Emperor Napoleon (b. 1769) about invading Russia and that it occurred in the winter preceding the Russian campaign. At that time, the Red Man appeared to one of the sentinels requesting a visit with Napoleon. The sentinel told him, “No.”
“[T]he demon brushed him aside, and ran quickly up the steps. He said to the chamberlain, ‘Tell the Emperor that a little Red Man whom he saw in Egypt wishes to see him again.’ Napoleon admitted the petit homme; a long conversation followed in the private cabinet; from a few words that were overhead Napoleon seemed to be pleading for something which was refused. Finally the door was opened, the Red Man came out, passed quickly through the corridors, and disappeared on the grand staircase which nobody saw him descend.”[9]
Hundreds of thousands of troops would be killed in the proceeding clashes between Russia and France. The legend of the Red Man in France, another devil theory, had captured the people of France’s imagination, yet these visits were not simply in their imaginations. Folks physically saw the Red Man, wearing distinctive garments, such as the red Phrygian cap mentioned earlier, and his appearance before executions or horrific battle losses also fit the omen label. Their descriptions of him were compatible with people of the respective cultures’ (in this case French) frame of reference.
To add to our list of interesting anecdotal evidence, civil rights leader Malcolm X (b. 1925) reportedly had his own strange encounter with a Man in Black while laying in his prison bed. In his Auto-Biography, he explained:
"As I lay on my bed, I suddenly became aware of a man sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit, I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn't black, and he wasn't white. He light-brown skinned, an asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily black hair. I looked right into his face.
I didn't get frightened. I knew I wasn't dreaming. I couldn't move, I didn't speak, and he didn't. I couldn't place him racially-other than that I knew he was a non-European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat there. Then, suddenly as he had come, he was gone. ” [11]
In February of 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated. Could it be that the red man had traded in his silly French cap for a fedora and new suit and tie? A new frame of reference, perhaps? Also interesting to note that once again, we have an example of tragic death coming to the individuals who encounter these mysterious emissaries.
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“When I first got into the UFO thing in the 1960s in a big way, it was a popular belief that men in Air Force uniforms were silencing witnesses, and this belief was spread by APRO and NICAP because they would keep getting reports that a man in an Air Force uniform would arrive at the home of the witness, and tell them to shut up and keep quiet, and appeal to their patriotism.
Well, we had a rash of these things on Long Island, and I had strong connections in the Pentagon at that time— an old Army buddy of mine was assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force. And these ‘Air Force officers’ would give a name, sometimes they would show credentials — they would always be in a black Cadillac, which, as I say, is not standard procedure for a military officer. Usually somebody else would be driving the Cadillac. And these men would be in military uniform, but there would be something just a little bit wrong. The insignia would be in the wrong place on the jacket. Or they would be wearing the wrong type of shoes. To see a military officer dressed in a dress uniform and wearing sneakers is kind of strange. And there was always something that the witness would remember, and say, “Hey, that was funny!” One woman in Wisconsin told me that she invited the officer in and offered him some Jell-O, and he tried to drink the Jell-O. And so, it didn’t take me long to figure out that maybe these guys really weren’t Air Force officers, and my contacts in the Pentagon could not locate these people — the names that they were being given. In the few cases that we had the license numbers of the cars, and we checked those out, which is very easy to do, and we’d find out the license had never been issued to anybody. So now, how in the world? If you were going to make up a phony license plate, what kind of luck would it take for you to come up with a number that nobody else had? So I started antagonizing the UFO buffs by saying, “these guys are not from the Air Force.” And they said, “that Keel is obviously working for the CIA!””
— JOHN KEEL, 1989 Lecture [2]
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French Astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, a world-renowned UFO researcher, shared a fascinating story of another bizarre Man in Black in his 1990 book, Confrontations. Vallee had been investigating an American town that had reported all sorts of reports of strange events:
“Coming from an isolated town that does not even have a movie house, this concentration of cases is remarkable. But it would not be complete without its own Man in Black episode.
Thus I was almost relieved to learn how, early in 1976, a stranger who had never been seen in town happened to stroll into Lois's Cafe. Helen and Pat were there, quietly having dinner at different tables.
All conversation stopped when the man came in. He ordered a steak dinner but proved unable to use a knife and fork, and eventually left without paying, a sure way to be remembered by the local people. Pat told me that he had pale skin and "oriental" eyes.
He wore a bizarre sort of shirt and no coat, although it was the middle of winter. He smiled constantly at people in a strange, forced grimace. Among the peculiar things he did during his extraordinary dinner was a brave attempt to drink Jell-O out of his glass.” [12]
This story, while unique, is not uncommon. As of lately, stories like these are beginning to pile up. Betty Hill reported being followed by strange mystery men in suits (she told a funny story of one particular man whose fake mustache fell into his soup on accident), and this behavior seems like some attempt to further assimilate into our everyday life, a task they seem ill-equipped for. Add to that the growing trend of phantom photographers. Many concerned people have reported black cars parking outside their house, an individual stepping out of the car with a tripod and camera, taking a few pictures, immediately putting their equipment away, and leaving. Occasionally, there are stories of photographers knocking on doors and asking to do photo shoots. Oftentimes, photo shoots for children. After taking standard photos, the phantom photographers suddenly leave without offering any explanation or way to purchase the photos. [2] The popular 2022 film NOPE alludes to these phantom photographers with the shadowy motorcyclist character and their camera.
It appears the Men in Black have been with us for a long time, and depending on where you live, there are many different devil theories available to cling to that offer tempting explanations for their bizarre behavior. Once angels, next the red man, then our beloved deros, now a suit and tie. There’s much more to cover regarding this phenomenon, and will be discussed in a future article. Similar to the famous Mothman of West Virginia, the Men in Black seem to be a symbol of impending doom or disaster. Whether it's the biblical story of Sodom and Gommorah or the downfall of historical figures like Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, and Malcolm X, the presence of Men in Black seems to foreshadow a negative outcome. As Keel himself noted, these mysterious figures often appear before significant events occur, from UFO sightings to natural disasters. Thus, the idea of Men in Black serves as a warning of sorts, urging us to pay attention to our surroundings and be vigilant in the face of potential danger.
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References:
[1] FEB 3 1967 Orlando Sentinel. THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH— UFO Witnesses ‘Silenced’ — by John Keel
[2] John Keel. Youtube — 1989 Men in Black Lecture.
[3] John Keel. Disneyland of the Gods.
[4] John Keel. The Eighth Tower.
[5] ‘Men in Black: Behavioral Patterns’ — johnkeel.com
[6] The Holy Bible. King James Version. Genesis Ch. 18-19.
[7] Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, Volume 43, 1889, p. 759.
[8] “The Red Spectre of the Tuileries,” in Aberdeen Journal, 19 January 1883, p. 6.
[9] “The Red Spectre of the Tuileries,” p. 6.
[10] Geri Walton. Red Man: The Tuileries Palace Ghost.
[11] Malcolm X. The Auto-Biography of Malcolm X.
[12] Jacques Vallee. Confrontations.