The Ufo Silencers: Mystery of the Men in Black (2 page)

Certainly, Dahl and the others would have consented to this request. They felt it was a matter of national security and feeling the object was a secret weapon of the
U.S.
government, they wouldn't want a foreign power to get hold of any classified information.

Three days later, Kenneth Arnold was flying his single engine plane over the thin cloud-covered peaks of
Mt.
Rainier
when he saw something flitter in the sunlight. Looking out over the mountain tops he watched as nine gleaming objects, in perfect formation, flew just below the cloud layer. They were traveling at tremendous speed and their maneuverability indicated that they were manufactured by a superior intelligence.

After
Arnold
landed, newsmen clustered around asking for a description of what he had observed. The pilot told them that the objects closely resembled the motion of "saucers skipping over water." The term "flying saucer" was born—it has stuck to this day.

Harold Dahl, having read of Arnold's sighting felt there was no reason for him to remain silent about what he had seen only days before. Above all he was one up on
Arnold
—he had actual fragments from one of these ships.

When news of the exploding object over
Maury
Island
reached Kenneth Arnold, he decided to make a special trip to
Tacoma
to talk with Dahl and the other witnesses. He felt that together they might be able to come up with some joint conclusion as to what they had seen.

Upon arriving in
Tacoma
, the man who gave flying saucers their name, met a battered Harold Dahl.
Arnold
describes this first meeting in his book The Coming of the Saucers (Amherst Press): "For nearly two hours Harold Dahl told me of all the sad experiences he had had since the 21st of June.... He said you couldn't blame any of the experiences he had to anyone, that just by coincidence he nearly lost his job, just by coincidence he nearly lost his son, his wife had become ill, and he had lost a tremendously good boom of logs that he had salvaged from the bay when an unusual tide had somehow broken the moorings one night. This was a major loss to his finances as the boom was worth over $3,500. The engines on their boat wouldn't start in the mornings; the boat sprang leaks. All in all, he had had a horrible time in keeping from going completely broke and from losing his family and home through sickness or accident." It almost seemed as if someone, or something had placed a curse on him!

Determined not to give up his investigation of this affair,
Arnold
interviewed all of the witnesses in his hotel room. During the course of the grueling cross-examination, they were disturbed several times by phone calls from a reporter for the local
Tacoma
paper who insisted that he was receiving tips from an anonymous caller who knew exactly what was going on inside
Arnold
's suite. The voice on the other end of the phone had somehow managed to give the papers feature writer a word-by-word description of their conversation.
Arnold
knew that it was impossible for any of those present to be leaking information to the press, since no one had left the room. A careful check for concealed microphones revealed nothing. Yet someone, somewhere, knew their every move.

The saddest part of any saucer incident took place when two young Army investigators, Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank Brown, were killed as they were returning to Hamilton Field in
California
with specimens of the material believed to have been part of the UFO which disintegrated over
Maury
Island
. The plane they were piloting caught on fire and crashed. Although the other men aboard the military aircraft had parachuted out in time, Brown and Davidson were not so lucky.

Tacoma Times reporter Paul Lance wrote a story the following day with screaming headlines—"SABOTAGE HINTED IN CRASH OF ARMY BOMBER." Lance claimed that the mysterious telephone informer had once again called his office and indicated that the plane had been "sabotaged or shot down to prevent shipment of (the) flying disc fragments" to Hamilton Field. "Lending substance to the caller's story," continued Lance's account, "is the fact that 12 hours before the Army released official identification, he correctly identified the dead in the crash as Captain William Davidson, pilot, and First Lieutenant Frank M. Brown....At McChord Field an intelligence officer confirmed the mystery caller's report that the ill-fated craft had been carrying 'classified material.'" Directly or indirectly, two young officers died because of a flying saucer. They were the first, but there have been others!

The Bender Episode

In 1952, a
Bridgeport
,
Connecticut
, man named Albert K. Bender, organized a UFO research group which he called the International Flying Saucer Bureau. The
IFSB
was well received and in no time at all became a thriving organization with members in most states, and in various foreign countries.

Suddenly, one day, Bender announced that he was closing his group upon orders of a HIGHER AUTHORITY. Bender insisted that he had been visited by three men, who although otherwise very normal in appearance, had worn black suits and hats. They revealed to the
Connecticut
group leader the secret of the saucers and then warned him not to discuss anything about their visit.

We shall probably never know the complete circumstances surrounding the visitation, but from the little Bender revealed at the time, we can state the following with a reasonable amount of certainty: Bender had been thinking of a UFO theory, which he eventually sent to a certain other person. Shortly thereafter the three men came, and one of them was carrying in hand the same sheet of paper that Bender had mailed. The visitors were very threatening in their manner, hinting at dire consequences if Bender printed his theory, as he had originally intended to do. For several hours two of the men drilled the researcher

on the explanation for the UFO mystery, while the third merely sat and carefully observed Bender. The story they gave was "fantastic" and extremely frightening, Bender later said, and it portended great changes in all fields of human endeavor, particularly in science. Before leaving, one of the MIB turned toward Bender and said, "If I hear another word from your office, you're in trouble."

Later Bender made a telephone call to a friend in which he casually mentioned his theory and subsequent visitation of the three men. Immediately after hanging up, the phone rang. A voice uttered that he knew of Bender's conversation and that he had made a "bad slip" and warned him to be more attentive in the future.

From this moment on Bender refused to discuss anything else concerning his visitation or theory.

In 1953 several other researchers had similar visits from enigmatic entities who bestowed the disks upon them after they had been very close to printing the truth, unknowingly, in their publications. One of those visited was Edgar Jarrold, head of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau, and a regular correspondent of Bender's. In fact, many researchers suspect that Jarrold is the one to whom Bender first imparted his "secret."

Jarrold seems to have undergone the eerie spectrum of visitations, weird phone calls and poltergeist activity. Jarrold was also puzzled by a mysterious black car which hung around his office at night. The auto contained two persons who evidently had him under surveillance.

Although no one knows what became of the Australian investigator, apparently the ultimate climax came when he was in a large department store in
Sydney
. Jarrold was at the top of a flight of stairs leading from the ground floor when he received a violent push from the back, which sent him flying downstairs. This took place in broad daylight and from all accounts nobody was standing near him. Whatever pushed him was invisible, yet retained its physical bulk in order to carry out the attack.

This ties in with poltergeist activity reported in connection with UFO sightings in many areas including
Point Pleasant
,
West Virginia
, home of the "Mothman." In
Canada
, recently, an entire household was besieged by invisible entities soon after the occupants had close UFO sightings. At about the same time, in
Toledo
,
Oregon
, the residents of this small community were puzzled with the frequent visitations made by strange crawling lights which seemed to move up the very walls of their homes. A UFO flap was in the process during this period and sightings included reports of stump-like creatures and pulsating UFOs which brightened up the neighborhood at night.

Kenneth Arnold himself seems to have been visited by these invisible entities: "At my home I have been visited by unseen entities whom I believe to be pilots of these weird disks. They were invisible to me and made no attempt to communicate. I was aware of their presence because I could see my rugs and furniture sink down under their weight as they walked about the room or sat on various objects."

In many cases, these poltergeists are the forerunners of the Men in Black who frequently turn up anywhere from 24 to 48 hours after these invisible pranksters first show themselves. In some cases the silencers seem to bring about these occurrences which follow shortly after their visits.

Since the beginning in 1967 the activities of these MIB have been on the rise. Important investigators across the country have reported a weird series of events which include strange phone calls, visits by invisible beings and harassment by various persons claiming to be from the government. They have continually photographed the homes of persons having close encounters with UFOs and have disguised themselves as government officials, salesmen, poll takers and termite exterminators, in order to gain access to saucer information.

Because the Air Force has been accused of sending these individuals, on
March 1, 1967
, a memo entitled "Impersonations of Air Force Officers" signed Lieutenant General Hewitt Wheless, Air Force Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, was sent to all commands. It read: "Information, not verifiable, has reached Hq USAF that persons claiming to represent the Air Force or other Defense establishments have contacted citizens who have sighted unidentified flying objects. In one reported case an individual in civilian clothes, who represented himself as a member of NORAD, demanded and received photos belonging to a private citizen. In another, a person in an Air Force uniform approached local police and other citizens who had sighted a UFO, assembled them in a school room and told them that they did not see what they thought they saw and that they should not talk to anyone about the sighting. All military and civilian personnel and particularly Information Officers and UFO Investigating Officers and UFO Investigating Officers who hear of such reports should immediately notify their local
OSI
officers."

Some More Men in Black Cases

According to Saucer News, Mr. Tad Jones, who witnessed a hovering sphere on a major highway in January, 1967, received two threatening notes warning him not to tell anyone what he had seen. The printing of these "prank" warnings was identical to the printing of a note placed under the door of Connie Carpenter in
Middleport
,
Ohio
. Respected researcher John Keel, author of numerous articles and books, has written extensively about would-be "kidnappers" who have come after UFO witnesses and UFOnaut sighters.

On
Long Island
, two men in Air Force uniforms harassed UFO witnesses. One of these men identified himself as Lieutenant Frank Davis and threatened two different people with a revolver, warning them to "watch out who you talk to." It almost seems as if this MIB had stolen his identity by combining the names of the two Army investigators who died in the airplane crash in the
Maury
Island
case. If so it was a sick disguise.