The Ufo Silencers: Mystery of the Men in Black (23 page)

"Do we have the 'Men in Black' in the
Pittsburgh
area? Are people here being intimidated because of knowledge of experiences with UFOs? What is the local picture regarding this mystery?" Major Jenkins writes that such questions have been cropping up in the minds of the UFO Research Institute's investigators since a few experiences occurred to force them to take a serious look at the MIB.

A sighting over
Pittsburgh
on
June 7, 1968
, was photographed by two youths using a Polaroid camera. "Under the circumstances," Major Jenkins writes, "the pictures were rather good."

On July 5th, a "Captain Munroe" called one of the young men and identified himself as a representative of the UFO Research Institute. Captain Munroe told the lad that the pictures had been faked. The boy was told to keep his mouth shut or something unpleasant would happen to him. This call was followed up by another threatening telephone conversation.

"Needless to say," Major Jenkins says, "the calls were not authorized, not were they made, by anyone from the Institute...it could all be dismissed as the work of a prankster, but whom? The persons had told no one except their parents after reporting to us. We at the Institute had told no one, including other members, until after this particular incident had passed. (Primarily, the delay in passing the information or to anyone else was necessitated by time required to study the pictures, make sufficient enlargements, etc.)"

Major Jenkins goes on to detail the experience of an active UFO investigator, whom he calls Frank. Frank, a UFO group chairman from a neighboring city, was in the middle of studying a large flap when he began receiving telephone calls warning him to "forget the UFO thing." Frank ignored the calls, except to report them. Later, some radio equipment was stolen from his automobile, and Frank was warned by telephone, "The next time it won't be your tangible assets."

"Later," according to Major Jenkins he [Frank] had a visit by three men dressed in black suits that reminded him of the quilted uniforms used in the Korean War. The men spoke in a strange manner, seemingly out of breath, and never directly mentioned the UFO subject, but they made intimidating remarks. Frank had the foresight to copy down the license number of their car, but in checking it out, found the number did not exist in the state's files. He had probably made a mistake in copying it, or it could have been altered. The men had represented themselves as members of a NICAP sub-committee from a city that has no such organization."

When Frank sighed over the telephone that he was ready to "drop this whole UFO business," he later received an anonymous call saying that they were glad that he was finally wising up.

In January, 1968, Major Jenkins said, a man sighted a UFO in the middle of the afternoon and got a very good look at it. He discussed it briefly with a few of his co-workers, but, finding his observation elicited only ridicule, he dropped the subject. Later, he began to notice a black car following him about. It appeared too often to be coincidence—the same black car, the same two men inside.

"He didn't connect this with the UFO sighting at first," Major Jenkins writes, "but he did mention it to his wife, and he also mentioned that it was worrying him....Then one morning on his way to work, he spotted the same car with the same two men. This time it was coming toward him, straight toward, him. He cut his wheels and ran off the road to avoid a collision, and although badly shaken, was unhurt. Was there any connection between this incident and his sighting of a UFO?"

Major Jenkins also tells of a man who had eleven minutes of color film of a UFO over
Viet Nam
. He promised to give the Institute a showing of the film, but a visit by three men from the "Department of Internal Security" nearly prevented any member of the UFO investigative group from ever seeing the film. These men had requested that the film be turned over to him. The owner refused to do so unless the men produced a search warrant, which they were unable to do. As the three men left, he was able to see that their car did at least have
Washington
,
D.C.
license plates. An attempt to follow up on the strange visitors met with no success.

Letters containing reports of men and women having received mysterious visitors after witnessing UFO activity continue to reach my desk. In-field investigation of UFO flap areas invariably uncovers bizarre, frightening encounters with UFO silencers. Whether the MIB are crude, thoughtless pranksters, a secret branch of a government intelligence group or allies or automatons of the UFO occupants, the enigma of the men-in-black continues to offer a challenge to the UFOlogist, and, perhaps, "to our families, our country, and our world."

Postscript: MIB: A Global Phenomenon

By Diane Tessman

Strange entities usually dressed in black and always evil and cold in intent, have appeared to those who have seen UFOs in
Europe
,
Australia
, and
Africa
, as well as to American UFO witnesses. Thus the group or agency which sends these enigmatic beings does not answer to one government alone, but is planet-wide in nature...or perhaps galaxy-wide. In my years of researching UFOs, I have interviewed many people about the "Men in Black" aspect of the UFO phenomena. I have even had a few "close calls" with these entities myself.

Thus, I have concluded that the Men in Black are bound to "enter the picture" at some point when an individual takes up a UFO interest; whether that interest is spurred on by a recent sighting or simply from the fascination of knowing more about this unsolved mystery.

There have been several Men in Black incidents in
Europe
during the continent-wide UFO flap of 1990, tying in with accounts of mysterious crop swirl activity. Crop swirls are thought by many to be evidence of UFO landings and by others to be evidence of Earth's ley line energy rising to the surface. It is believed that this ley energy is to Mother Earth what psychic energy is to an individual.

The incident involving both crop swirls and a Man in Black comes from a farmer in Co. Tipperary,
Republic
of
Ireland
, who was "questioned" by one of these MIB, after crop swirls appeared on his land (he has had no UFO encounter or sighting that he remembers). In June, 1990, perfectly circular swirls started showing up in James McCleary's fields. There were two which showed up in an oat field overnight, and one which manifested exactly a week later in a meadow which had long grass that had not been walked in or tilled for months. Finally, an oval-shaped swirl manifested three weeks after the first swirls appeared, this time in a small field of potatoes. Mr. McCleary noted the swirls because they damaged the crops, but the damage was not significant and so he hadn't paid much attention to the phenomenon, embracing the Irish country attitude that the supernatural is in fact just a part of the natural world.

However, the morning after the final oval swirl occurred—when Mr. McCleary went for a quiet Sunday morning walk around his property—a thin, gaunt man dressed in black stepped out from behind a shed, which is out of sight from his house. Mr. McCleary was alone on his walk, and he felt an intuitive shiver of fear come over him as he focused on this stranger. Mr. McCleary had not seen him in the vicinity before, but it was not the fact that he was a stranger which frightened him. "There was something, well, DEAD about him," he stated."

"I don't know how else to put it!"

The stranger was dressed in a "proper suit," but looked as though he'd been "pulled out of a trunk which had been locked for at least 50 years." Mr. McCleary continues, "The first thing he mumbled to me was something about it being a nice day. It was a common enough thing to say, but he had the words slightly 'wrong.' Now, I am used to Americans and other visitors, but this problem he had with the language was peculiar somehow."

Mr. McCleary explains that the stranger then mumbled abruptly, "Tell us about those designs in your crops you've been having."

"I thought to myself," laughs Mr. McCleary, "that he had some nerve using the word 'us' when there was almost not one of him, he was that skinny and sickly looking. 'Us,' who?"

Mr. McCleary refused to answer the question, not because he thought the crop swirls were a secretive thing, but because the man's attitude was annoying and frightening. "I told him I had to be getting

on my way and that he had better get onto the main road again. I meant to insinuate that he should get off my property, but I didn't want to be overly rude."

"But you didn't tell us about the designs. "Why did the second and third bunch come up when the first bunch already had?" asked the MIB. "It is in your best interest to tell us...or else!"

"His question made little sense to me," noted Mr. McCleary. "First, I hadn't thought of them as 'designs' and certainly not as 'bunches.' And how the hell would I know 'why they showed up? He acted as if I was their master or their maker. He talked as if they were trained animals who had found their owner. It was all so illogical that his threat bounced off me."

Moving on, as we view the MIB from a global perspective, is the account from a friend in
South Africa
. Due to the political situation in
South Africa
, my friend wishes to remain anonymous as he is not totally convinced that the men who intimidated him were not simply South African agents. He is considered "colored" in
South Africa
—his father being from
India
and his mother being from a South African mixture. Bob is very interested in New Age subjects and feels he had several UFO encounters as a child. He has always felt these encounters were with friendly, loving beings and he is not afraid of the unknowns. In fact, he feels more at ease with UFO and related "spacey" subjects than he does in frightening daily life in
Johannesburg
.

Bob's encounter with the MIB was a traumatic and scary incident which occurred two nights after he had a dramatic UFO sighting and possible encounter. He was just going to bed when very bright lights appeared outside his window. Since his window overlooks a wide ditch (I suspect we would call it a "ravine" in the
U.S.
), he was surprised to see lights. There is some fear of teenagers coming to this area to drink, or criminal activity going on, but it is inaccessible to some degree and never lighted. Bob jumped out of bed to see a brilliantly-lighted glowing silver disc, about the size of a Volkswagen.

The disc spun around as if on an axis, and Bob guesses that it hovered, not moving an inch upward or downward, for at least five minutes. It was approximately 20 feet off the ground. He saw a small door as it turned, and also three round windows. He remembers seeing movement inside the windows.

Two nights later, just as he was going to bed, he heard voices down in the ravine. The thought crossed his mind that two nights earlier there had been a beautiful silver ship, now there were thugs or drunkards in the ditch. But, he soon realized one voice was calling his name, and he opened his window slightly, keeping a hand ready to slam it shut. He could tell from the voice that people were not right outside his window, but down in the bottom of the ravine. Or so he thought! The minute he opened the window a notch, an unusually strong hand forced it out of his grasp and opened it wide! There, staring him in the face, was a "very ugly, smelly man with a greenish and unhealthy swarthy complexion."

Next morning, Bob could find nothing unusual in the ditch which would indicate his visitors had been there. His UFO encounter and subsequent MIB experience took place in November, 1989. Since then he has not encountered the Men in Black, though they did indicate to him they'd be back. His family's phone rings often and no one is there, something which was not happening until the MIB encounter. The phone annoyance started two days after his frightening night.

In
Australia
, an amazingly similar MIB visit happened to Penny Carlton of
Melbourne
. She and her friend Susan Nelson saw a brilliant UFO while on a biking trip. Five days later, three MIB knocked at Penny's door to "have a little chat." It seems Men in Black always talk in clichés as if having viewed too many "B" films. They pushed their way in, they threatened her, they warned her to talk to no one else. As with the garda's well-timed appearance in Co. Tipperary, Ireland, Penny's ordeal of interrogation was cut short when her husband returned from work a half hour early, not feeling well.