The Ufo Silencers: Mystery of the Men in Black (13 page)

An Alien In Our Midst

Throughout the years there have been widely-circulated rumors indicating that extraterrestrials have already infiltrated into our society and are at this very moment walking unhindered and defiant amongst us.

Exponents of this ever-growing theory maintain the reason they are not easily detected is because—like chameleons, with the ability to blend in perfectly with their surroundings—these alien beings have the power to literally hypnotize human beings into believing they are as normal-looking as you and I. Others who postulate on this are of the firm opinion that any abnormality that may show is simply chalked up to some mental disturbance.

Society is filled with individuals who just don't "fit in." There are the vagrants who inhabit the streets day and night, the "shopping bag" ladies who call the city's subways their home, and the "crazies" who we try to avoid every day. We simply shake our heads at these unfortunate ones and continue on about our business, often closing our eyes totally to that which we live side-by-side with—shut away from our world— but part of it nevertheless.

"You've just got to talk to this fellow. He's no crackpot!" I had been a guest on the Larry Ford talk show several times. A veteran of
Pittsburgh
radio, Larry has a keen interest in the offbeat, and he's not afraid to air the views of experts in a wide range of controversial fields. As usual, Larry was right in his character analysis.

Pittsburgh
musician Tony V. recently came face-to-face with a "man" whose unusual behavior and strange abilities rate him as being "mighty peculiar" in anybody's book. For anyone who can vanish with out walking away, who can materialize behind locked hospital doors in the middle of the night, and who is the possessor of "highly unusual" body characteristics, is certainly "strange," as you are likely to agree as you read further along in this amazing incident.

"Being a musician, I get to play in some pretty unusual places," the talented drummer points out. Tony has done the circuit of bars, concert halls and after-hours clubs. It's simply a part of his job—what he does in order to make a living.

Tony remarks that a lot of the bars he performs in are packed to the rafters on weekends. "They're the types of places where the girls come to dance and the guys come to pick up chicks."

One evening, Tony was standing near the bar in one of these places when he was suddenly engaged in conversation by a stranger. "He said his name was Robert and that he was interested in astronomy and UFOs. Someone, he said, had told him that I was interested in the same subjects and he felt we might have something in common."

Tony brought out that the man said he lived around
Arnold
,
Pennsylvania
, and had read lots of books about flying saucers. At that point, Tony didn't feel anything was out of place. Then the man began discussing Frank Edwards, author of several best sellers on UFOs. "My new companion then made a rather strong statement: ‘You know he's dead.’ And when I told him I hadn't realized the fact, he continued, saying, 'You wouldn't want to know what happened to him.'" Tony said the man's voice was rather ominous as though his words were meant to be a warning or some type of threat.

From Tony's description, we can determine that the individual who called himself Robert was very cold—calculating. He was also quite peculiar in that he was abnormally thin compared to the woman he almost always came into the bar with, who was exceedingly fat. The woman was supposedly Robert's wife.

As a further description, Tony says the man was Caucasian, but with yellowish skin, as though he were suffering from Jaundice, a disease due to excretion of bile pigments in the blood, characterized by yellowness of the skin. His eyes were slanted, but he wasn't Oriental. He was about 5'7" and his hairline came to a widow's peak. I never saw him dress in anything but black. His manner of speech was low and sort of stiff. He did not have a good command of English, although he seemed to have knowledge of science.

Tony explained: "The three of us were seated at one of the tables one night when Robert suddenly passed out. It was as though he'd had a seizure—that is he just keeled over. He was out cold. I tried to revive him, but there was no sign of a heartbeat."

Tony says that he and another customer picked up the man and took him to Tony's van, which was parked outside. "I was going to drive him to the hospital, even though it appeared that he was dead." This was when Tony noticed that the man had some very strange physical characteristics. "I unbuttoned his shirt, and I saw that he had absolutely no body hair. In addition, he had no belly button, nor nipples."

Apparently, the man came to, and apologized for being trouble. "The really strange thing was that his wife seemed to be unconcerned about her husband's condition. She didn't try to help us and went about her business as though nothing had happened which was out of the ordinary."

As peculiar as that night might have been, Tony tried to push Robert out of his mind. "I had dislocated my shoulder and was in extreme pain." He checked into a private room in one of the area hospitals and completely forgot about the incident involving the strange man at the bar.

"While I was in the hospital, Robert came to visit me a few times to see how I was getting along. I really didn't have much to say to him, but I figured it was nice to have a visitor in my condition." It wasn't until Robert showed up at the hospital in the wee hours that Tony began to put two and two together.

"I really don't know how he got into the hospital or past the security desk at that hour, but I awoke at about
3:00 A.M.
, and there he was, standing right beside my bed." Having been under sedation at the time, Tony was extremely tired and couldn't talk to the man. "I just sort of told him to come back later, at another time. It was as though he had materialized in the hospital room and just as suddenly vanished into thin air."

As far as his interest in UFOs went, Tony says the individual who called himself Robert had a technical fascination with the subject. "He

was interested in the mechanics of how these interstellar craft operate. One night, after I'd been out of the hospital for some time, he called me up and said to meet him in a rather isolated wooded area about 40 miles north of
Pittsburgh
. He said that he wanted to show me something. Being that it was such a desolated spot and that I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable around him, I decided to ask a friend of mine to come along for the ride."

Then, together, Tony and his friend drove to a spot very near the river. "We sat in the car waiting for him. It was a cold day and so we were anxious for him to show up. We never did hear or see a vehicle approach, but from out of nowhere he was standing in front of our automobile."

Tony maintains that the man seemed unduly upset because the musician had not come alone. "My friend was almost laughing at this guy, that's how strange he looked. It was kind of comical. I couldn't hear him speak—his mouth didn't move—but I had the distinct impression that he was in a bad mood. He repeated several times the phrase "You must get out of here. It's dangerous."

One minute Robert was beside the car and the next he was inside in the back seat. "If he opened the door I didn't see him." Tony can't swear that it was a case of walking through a solid car door or of teleportation, but doesn't rule these possibilities out completely.

Tony never did find out why he was asked to come to this particular area. "There has been any number of UFO sightings and landings in
Pennsylvania
over the years, but none that I know of in this vicinity."

Because of what had transpired, Tony didn't want anything more to do with the man as he thought he was quite dangerous. "One of the girls, who hung out at the bar where Robert usually showed up, said he scared the hell out of her just by being around. She wanted to know why I associated with characters like this.

"Anyway, he telephoned me again one night and said he had to see me once more and I told him in no uncertain terms to get lost, that I really had no time for this kind of stuff. It was just so weird how he always wore the same clothes—the same black pants, the same black shirt, and the same, very cheap-looking black sports-coat. He would give the creeps to a ghost."

At around this time, Tony's arm started acting up again, and he wasn't able to play for a while. "About five months later, I went back to drumming in the same after-hours bar and I just happened to ask the owner if he's seen my peculiar-looking friend. I was told he hadn't been in the place since I'd stopped playing."

I asked Tony if he'd noticed anything else particularly unusual about the "man in black." Tony thought about the question for a few minutes before answering. "He would never drink. He didn't smoke, and for the life of me I never saw him eat anything."

As far as UFOs are concerned, Tony feels this person knew quite a bit about the subject. "I'm pretty well read on the topic and know more than the average person. However, he knew a whole lot more. He would talk a great deal about how UFOs actually ran and he went into this big spiel about radio waves, and concentrated radio beams which I couldn't make heads nor tails of. At times he sounded like a physics professor while on other occasions he said some really stupid things."

Several times the man talked about how he wanted to actually capture an alien. "He had this device which he said told him when UFOs would appear at certain times of the year. He said this contraption would make a huge beacon, like a homing device would. It was really off the wall."

Tony doesn't' know what to make of the incident. He isn't one hundred per cent positive—not having any concrete proof—that Robert was a genuine alien, but then again so many strange things happened in connection with this man that he isn't willing to rule out this possibility. Tony would like to know the truth, but he isn't about to spend the rest of his life searching for it by tracing down this man.

If he should show up again, he's quite ready to ask him all kinds of questions. But in the meanwhile, he's more concerned with his musical career. Tony's group has been getting quite a bit of attention and their music has begun to get airplay on some radio stations. Maybe fortune will be good and he'll make it too—right to the top. Then he'll be among a select group of celebrities whose talents may be known about in some pretty distant places.

The MD & MIB

Doctor Herbert Hopkins of
Orchard Beach
,
Maine
, is no kook or crackpot. In fact, up until he became involved in using hypnosis on a young man who claims to have undergone a series of UFO-related experiences, the reputable physician hadn't paid that much attention to flying saucers, although he admits that he read an occasional magazine article on the subject. Usually, though, he refused to take the matter seriously, feeling that the reality of UFOs could not be proven or disproved.

It was not until he received a telephone call from a woman friend who was interested in probing the subconscious of a youth named David Stephens, that Dr. Hopkins ever had any first-hand dealings with this field. A bright and intelligent person, he isn't by any stretch of the imagination an overzealous investigator of such unexplained phenomena. And while he was convinced that young Stephens had no reason to lie when he said he was sitting in a car one night and a large mother ship appeared in the sky and took him and a friend onboard, Dr. Hopkins does not normally involve himself with aliens and other dimensions. However, what transpired later, after his investigation was completed, convinced him in no uncertain terms that strange beings are quite capable of wandering into our reality and out again.

Many of the Men In Black cases can no doubt he attributed to paranoia on the part of those who have been shocked into a state of fright by face-to-face confrontations with the unknown. The same cannot be said for Dr. Hopkins, who has been trained in the workings of the human mind. Though he was not anxious to talk about his meeting with an obvious MIB, he did agree to speak with investigator Lee Spiegel, since Spiegel had traveled all the way from his
New York City
home just to meet with the doctor. The following is an accurate transcription of the investigators interview, conducted in Dr. Hopkins' home.