True Stories of The Men in Black
And How Do They Get Their Suits So Wrinkle-Free?
Photo by Danny SwellChasers on Unsplash
You may be familiar with the movie franchise, Men In Black (I-III), but this article is not about that. If you were hoping it was, stop reading now and go and read “Five Ways I Made $350,000 While Asleep in Bali.”
This story is about real Men In Black, or at least it’s about the Men In Black that people claim are real. So it’s not about the Men In Black who openly admit they are actors such as Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.
I have to admit that there’s something about the shiny black suits that unnerves me. Maybe it’s because they are described as being skin-tight?
I don’t know. I just know that I’m not allowed to wear skin-tight shiny black suits anymore. Sheila says it’s unbecoming at my age. That’s why these MIBs with their skin-tight suits worry me: I can’t compete anymore.
No one knows who or what the Men in Black are. (I will use the acronym MIB from now on). Some say the MIB are government agents. Some say they are space aliens. Others say they are faery folk continuing their age-old game of freaking us out.
Anyhow, they are odd. As well as their skin-tight black suits, they talk like robots. This is also a feature of the voices heard in phone calls from the dead. The dead speak weirdly too, see another of my stories. But the MIBs talk in a monotone. Their skin is oddly pale.
They drive black Cadillacs or large sedans. It strikes me these vehicles look like hearses. That must mean something.
For many of them, their clothes are wrinkle-free. That must be due to advanced alien knowledge or even top-secret Government military tech because I can’t get my suits wrinkle-free even with Shake ’n’ Vac.
It’s worth noting that some MIBs have creased black suits and scuffed black shoes. Maybe this is a rank thing? Perhaps the creased MIBs are down on their luck, or at the bottom of the MIB pile?
The MIBs move in a weird gliding motion that appears wholly inhuman. Some witnesses said the MIBs (pronounced “mibbs”) moved like they were drunk. Others describe the torso and legs moving in different directions. That one is unsettling.
The MIB has one job, to stop people from poking their noses into UFO cases. They fail all the time at this.
Men In Black – A History
1966–67 saw an upsurge in UFO sightings and the number of people studying UFOs. This brought with it an increase in the number of reports of MIBs.
Professor Peter Rojcewicz, in his thoughtful paper, says that a typical MIB report will have the MIBs arriving to harass the witness before they have actually spoken to anyone, making it mysterious how the MIBs know about it at all.
Of course, this implies the MIBs have special knowledge of these events. The MIBs know things about the people they visit that no stranger could know. Astonishingly they are ignorant about fairly simple facts like whether the victim took photographs of the UFOs.
It was common in the mid-1960s for MIBs to claim they were Air Force agents. This claim got so much notice that the Pentagon sent out an order to all military intelligence units to report to the Office of Special Investigations if they heard of anybody masquerading as military officers.
Eye-witness reports describe MIBs in similar ways—similar, but not identical.
For example, some say MIB clothes are tight and shiny, wrinkle-free, but in at least one other account, the MIB’s suit was wrinkly and his shoes scuffed.
MIBs are said to wear sunglasses in many cases, but not all. They operate in threes, except when they don’t. They are dark-skinned, except when witnesses note the paleness of their complexions.
Some drive black Cadillacs, and others fly black helicopters.
1966–67 saw an upsurge in UFO sightings and the number of people studying UFOs. This brought with it an increase in the number of reports of MIBs.
It was common in the mid-1960s for MIBs to claim they were Air Force agents. This claim got so much notice that the Pentagon sent out an order to all military intelligence units to report to the Office of Special Investigations if they heard of anybody masquerading as military officers.
There was another surge in UFO and MIB sightings in the 90s that might coincide with the popularity of the TV series The X-Files.
Professor Peter Rojewicz makes the case that though MIBs seem a modern phenomenon, mainly connected with UFO research, they have striking similarities to more traditional folk tales, particularly those that detail dealings with the Devil.
Ray Muniz
Ray Muniz was a regular guy who lived in Austin, Texas. He had a car window tinting business and a life-long interest in UFOs and aliens and said he encountered aliens five times since the age of nine.
Ray had his own cable TV show called Project UFO in which he would call for viewers to send him their evidence of UFO sightings. In 1996 he received a video of an apparent UFO sighting from a man in Georgetown, Texas.
Only a few days after he got the video, some MIBs called at his workshop claiming they were from the Inland Revenue Service and gave him a letter telling him to report for an investigation into alleged tax evasion. The MIBs vanished as soon as they left the building, even though he looked out for them as they went.
Anxious about the tax summons, Ray duly reported the address listed on the paperwork and found another Man in Black there. This MIB never even looked at the paperwork but told Muniz he could leave. When Muniz went home, someone had been at his house rifling through his documents.
The UFO video was untouched. That was the end of the story. If it were a Netflix series, it would have been canceled at this point because nothing dramatic happened.
Is this account true? Firstly, it’s so low-key and pointless, why would you bother to make it up?
Most fabricated stories (see below) are made up to attract attention and are full of drama. This story seems to be too long an incident with too many locations to be a hallucination.
On the other hand, by 1996 The X-Files had already created a massive appetite for mysterious UFO stories. Ray was a man who was already committed to the cause, and it is a fact that our reality mirrors our expectations. If you want UFOs, you get UFOs.
For me, it’s mainly doughnuts.
Is it true then? Maybe. I’m on the fence.
MidnightSax from Reddit
I got this account from Reddit, published in 2018.
MidnightSax went camping with friends in the Joshua Tree National Park in 2004. I imagine the skies are very clear there, and he says he saw blue lights up high moving very fast. His friends saw them too, and they all believed they’d witnessed UFO activity.
On his way back home, MidnightSax became convinced that he was being followed by a black car that switched lanes whenever he did. He kept checking its position in his rear-view mirror until suddenly the car was gone. This freaked him out.
The next day a black Cadillac was parked in his driveway when he returned home after being out for errands. He felt it was the same car that followed him home from the desert. As he exited his own car, two men in black suits, black ties, black fedoras (who wears those since 1955?), and light grey, smart shirts got out of the Cadilac.
These MIBs told him they worked for the US Air Force and wanted to ask him some questions. MidnightSax asked them to produce some ID. He doesn’t say whether they were able to produce official documentation.
He describes the MIBs as expressionless and plastic-looking men who spoke in a raspy monotone voice, with clipped, precise speech. Their voices sounded synthesized. Their gaze was intense.
They asked him what he’d seen in the desert sky and whether he had taken any photographs. Were there others with him who took pictures of the lights in the sky or could have recorded it in any way? They also asked whether MidnightSax had noticed any ‘unusual debris’ in the area they were camping in.
After he answered their questions, they told him not to mention what he saw and implied they would be watching him. He never saw them again.
Is it true?
So, these are apparent non-humans who have an impressive knowledge of who MidnightSax was and where he lived. They somehow picked up that he was camping in the area.
The implication is that they would have followed up anyone who might have seen those lights, including MidnightSax’s friends (though he doesn’t mention that they too were questioned).
By this reasoning, they must have followed everyone home who had camped in the Joshua Tree National Park that night. That’s a big crew of MIBs. I wonder what the job pays and who’s funding it because it’s going to need a budget. Someone will write a response saying it’s George Soros or Bill Gates. I’m just waiting for that one.
Also, the aliens have to deploy the MIBs every time their craft fly. After every time their boys are up in the air, they have to send out MIBs to threaten anyone who might have seen them — because they clearly don’t know who had recorded the UFOs or they wouldn’t need to ask.
This is a massive job — very labor-intensive. It would be far more straightforward:
- not to fly UFOs on a clear night,
- use stealth technology like the U2, so nobody sees you,
- or come clean and say: we’ve arrived — we are all-powerful, and we will do what we want.
So, while there may have been a strange encounter, the idea that these MIBs are some kind of robotic, synthetic security force, like Agent Smith in the Matrix, makes no sense. It’s too expensive.
If the aliens are powerful enough to have a force of MIBs who wear neat, though rather old-fashioned clothes, and know nearly everything (apart from whether you took any photographs), just let the MIBs off the leash and dominate the world then it’s really fuck you, humans.
Corathus59 From Reddit
Coranthus95, also from Reddit, also published in 2018, tells the tale of his brother the Army intelligence analyst.
His brother was out with his wife and his friend and the friend’s wife. All four saw a blue light up high darting about. The brother knew what modern aircraft could do and claimed the maneuvers were beyond current human capability. The light suddenly stopped, as if it had realized they were watching, and then it moved towards their car.
It was 10 p.m. at that time. In an instant, it was 4 a.m. the next morning, and our friends found themselves in the middle of a cornfield a hundred miles east of where they had seen the blue light.
The two men went back to work the next day, but while the men were at work, both wives were separately visited by MIBs. These MIBs threatened both the women that they should not talk about their weird experience or else.
Some years — note years later — the MIBs visited the brother in his Army base. They got inside a secure perimeter and threatened him never to talk about his experience. I get emails like this, late but threatening at the same time.
None of his colleagues seemed to notice the entry, presence, or exit of the MIBs. It could be argued that they took their time in delivering their warning, and he could have reasonably been expected to mention his weird experience in the intervening years.
But maybe time is different for MIBs, or they were overwhelmed with work and it took them years to get round to this case. We have already got a glimpse of how massive their workload must be.
Coranthus95 says his brother and his wife are distraught and scared still when they recount their experiences.
But didn’t the MIBs say not to talk? I would probably have kept schtum to be fair. No wonder they are worried.
I keep having the same thought: If the MIBs don’t want people to talk about these experiences, get the UFO crew to practice over the moon or in the asteroid belt. Don’t fly around in full view and teleport peoples’ cars. Problem solved.
Unless they are two agencies like the CIA and FBI and they hate each other. You can imagine the FBI complaining about the CIA’s flighty, reckless behavior that they have to step in and clear up. Maybe the MIBs are like that with the UFO force?
Is it true?
You know, I am inclined to believe that the brother and his wife had a weird shit experience. I am tempted to believe in the missing time and the teleportation a hundred miles east. It’s just the bureaucratic issues that are unconvincing. Who’s paying for this? Why were they so late with the warning? Somebody has to be pulled up by their boss for that.
Dr. Herbert Hopkins
Dr. Hopkins was involved in UFO investigations in Maine. He was a minister in the Spiritualist Church, and it seemed he just couldn’t refrain from messing with Ufology too. I’m not blaming him; I know how it is.
This was in 1976 in Old Orchard. About 8 p.m, (the month, date, and day are unspecified, but it was 8 p.m.) Dr. Hopkins received a phone call from a man claiming to be Vice President of the New Jersey UFO Research Foundation, asking whether he could come to see Hopkins to discuss a case that Dr. Hopkins had written about.
Like a fool, Hopkins agreed, and only minutes later, the man appeared at his door. This was in the days before mobile phones, so he wasn’t just phoning from outside. You had to be in a house or at least a phone box to make a telephone call in those days.
The man wore a black suit with a black tie and had no eyebrows or hair and had a pallid complexion. This would have tipped me off that something unusual was occurring, but then I did have a friend called Jeff from Swansea who looked a bit like that.
Hopkins thought the man looked like an undertaker (Jeff was a teacher). His suit was very tight and wrinkle-free. In fact, Dr. Hopkins seemed obsessed with the crease in the man’s trousers, commenting on it several times.
Hopkins saw the MIB touch his mouth, and when the MIB pulled his fingers away from his lips, they were stained red. Hopkins thought the MIB was wearing lipstick. His ears were also tiny. I don’t know how that is relevant or what it signifies. I’ve never worn lipstick, but I’d like to.
Hopkins had a dog, and this dog began barking at the visitor as soon as he entered. The Man In Black questioned Hopkins about the UFO case he was working on.
The MIB seemed to have esoteric knowledge because he told Hopkins that Hopkins had two coins in his pocket.
This was correct. The MIB asked Hopkins to take one out. He did so: a shiny new penny. The MIB told him to focus on the penny, and as Hopkins watched, the penny became metallic blue, blurred, and vanished.
The MIB then asked Hopkins if he knew of Barney Hill, a man who claimed a UFO had abducted him. Hopkins said he knew of Barney but thought he was dead.
The MIB reportedly then said, “Barney didn’t have a heart, just like you no longer have a coin.”
What does this even mean? This is part of the problem with MIBs — if they spoke plainly, we’d have a better chance of understanding what the hell they are going on about. That’s probably why no one does what they say.
The MIB then told Hopkins to destroy all the research he had gathered on his UFO case.
Barney Hill died of a stroke in fact, but it did appear that the MIB was implying that something terrible would happen to Hopkins if he didn’t desist in his UFO work.
Hopkins actually did comply with this: a rare success for the MIBs. I hope the one involved got a commendation.
Is it true? Dr. Hopkins seems like a nice guy, so yes.
Cary M.
This is another MIB encounter from the Internet. (There is some debate about whether we should capitalize Internet, but I prefer to. I think of it as a place, like France.)
In July 2005, Cary was sitting on the porch in West Kentucky with her daughter. There was no sound of any vehicle, but she suddenly noticed two men wearing black silk suits, white shirts (remember some wear grey dress shirts. The color difference is possibly to do with rank?), black ties (some wear Texan string ties, maybe personal preference, perhaps those ones like Westerns?) and wearing fedora hats (a throwback to a better time — think Philip Marlowe).
The men were pale-faced. Each had a briefcase. They both walked stiffly (arthritis? Perhaps you can’t get new hip joints in space?).
A lovely feature was their eyes which were vivid lavender. The MIB who spoke had a low pitched, but clear voice. They asked whether Cary and her family had experienced any ‘unusual activity’. They were immediately satisfied with a simple ‘no’ and left.
The MIBs seem easily satisfied, but maybe the MIBs had a busy schedule going round all the houses, or perhaps they were just paying lip-service to their job.
I know some people make sales calls to numbers they know won’t get answered just to make up their quota while minimizing actual work. Who knows how forward-thinking MIB management is? I bet it’s no Google working for the UFO command. There won’t be a creche and pool tables and fridges full of beer. We don’t even know if MIBs like beer.
Is this story true? You tell me. I think Cary thinks it’s true.
Alfred K Bender
Dr. Albert K Bender was the founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau. In 1955, he told people he had got evidence to show the US Government had covered up clear proof of the existence of UFOs. In a letter to his girlfriend, Bender said he had learned about where aliens came from and what they wanted.
It should be pointed out that Bender was a fan of horror and science fiction and had adorned his apartment with rubber bats, spiders, rats, and some shrunken heads. Pictures of vampires and werewolves adorned the walls of the place he shared with his stepfather. He was keen on black magic and the occult.
I mention this because Bender, as an enthusiast, might be more susceptible to enlarging on the MIB facts than someone who wasn’t as committed to this fabulous world view.
At this point, three MIBs visited Bender unannounced. They came to his home and told him to stop with his research into UFOs. Bender did what he was told and closed the Bureau. This story was published in 1956.
Later on, in 1963, Bender published his own version of the story in which he elaborated on it by suggested that grizzly monster UFO space travelers abducted him to the South Pole. They came from the planet Kazik. I don’t know where that is. It seems most likely that Bender made up the whole story.
Bender suffered from anxiety after that and claimed to be plagued with mysterious phone calls until he died in 2002. It may be true that he suffered from some kind of delusional disorder, or was purely a fantasist.
Is it true? Probably not.
Professor Max Radar (Pseudonym)
Max Radar was an associate professor at the University of Denver, and he claimed that MIBs harassed him over months, even going so far as to stop his kids on the street and tell them their dad better stop investigating UFOs.
Is it true? Too sketchy to comment on.
Jim Templeton
Jim Templeton was out on a picnic with his family not far from where I’m writing this. It was a lovely sunny day, and he took a few photographs of his daughter. When he got the film developed (that’s what you did in those days) he was astonished to see a figure wearing a white suit and helmet standing behind his daughter who had definitely not been present when the photograph was taken, at least to Templeton’s eyes.
The film company Kodak verified the film had not been tampered with.
Templeton spoke to the press and afterward received a visit from two “government agents” who referred to themselves as Number 9 and Number 10. These two agents wanted to see the photograph and apparently got angry and stormed out after Templeton told them he’d never seen the man.
I am struck that this was about the time the Prisoner series was out where everyone in the mysterious Village is called by their number.
Is it true? Of course, a Cumbrian would never lie.
Paul Miller
Paul Miller worked for the US Air Force. He also liked hunting. One day in November 1961, when returning from a hunting trip with friends back home to Minot, North Dakota, Miller saw a luminous disc in the sky. it landed in a field and Miller went to investigate. When two figures got out, he shot at them. He wounded one of the UFO crew.
This is perhaps normal in the USA but would be a pretty extreme action in most other places. I’m not being political, just putting it into context for non-US readers who may find immediately trying to kill strangers shocking.
Miller reports a time-loss of three hours.
When he went to work the next day, he was visited straight away by three men in black suits. Miller hadn’t told anyone about the disc, but these three claimed they knew and that he had better forget everything he’d seen and not talk about it.
Is it true? Is it true you can just pull out a gun and take a pop at a stranger in a field? Both seem improbable.
Jack & Mary Robinson
Jack and Mary Robinson were UFO researchers. As their work progressed over months and years, strange things kept happening. It appeared that someone was getting into their house, though there were no signs of break-ins, and going through their research papers, leaving enough evidence to show they had been tampered with. This seemed like deliberate intimidation.
The Robinsons also started to see a man in a black suit hanging around their neighborhood watching the apartment from a doorway over the street. A friend even photographed this MIB, who indeed is a man in black. He looks like one of the Blues Brothers.
Is it true? I like the Blues Brothers, so maybe.
Harold Dahl
Harold Dahl and his son were on a fishing boat when they saw six doughnut-shaped UFOS flying over the lake. These craft dropped ‘molten waste’ into the lake, killing Dahl’s dog and injuring his son.
Dahl inevitably told friends and workmates about this incident, and only a few days after it happened he was visited by a single MIB. This MIB told Dahl to stop talking about what he’d seen. Later Dahl says that ‘several Air Force agents’ called by to quiz him about what he’d seen.
At one point Dahl said he’d made it all up, but later claimed he only said it was a hoax because he was being threatened.
Is it true? Doubt it.
Li Jing-yang
Li lived in Yangguan, Shansi province in China and this story was unearthed by a Chinese UFOlogist called Shi Bo. It happened in 1963.
It seems that Li was only six, and therefore his testimony is suspect as we all know kids will say anything for a can of coke.
Li saw “a shining, silvery disc” up in the sky, and shortly afterward a tall man dressed in lack confronted young Li asking him if he’d seen anything odd.
Li said he’d seen this silvery disk. At which point the MIB told him to keep it to himself and disappeared round the corner. Li said others saw the MIB and marveled at his odd, mechanical movements and his strange mechanical voice.
Once again, the MIBs failed to shut the witness up. Their threats are empty. As Mao would say, they are paper tigers.
Is it true? Well, I don’t know, but probably not.
Michael Elliot
In mid-November 1982, Michael Elliot (pseudonym — how annoying!) was twenty-seven. He was researching UFOs and had been reading in the University library. It was 4:30 p.m. and getting dark. A man dressed in black, with worn leather shoes approached from behind. He walked in a mechanical way. He was dark-skinned with black hair that looked greasy. He had a black suit that needed ironing with a black string tie. His suit was too big for him.
When he spoke to Elliot, the man had a slight accent and he talked about UFOs. Elliot thought he was European. Of course, I realize it’s all about familiarity, but a Moldavian doesn’t speak like a Portuguese and neither speak like a Norwegian or someone from Lancashire. He could have been more specific.
When Eliot said he wasn’t so interested in UFOs, the man became agitated to the extent that Eliott got scared and tried to calm him down. The man got up “as if he were mechanically lifted”. The man put his hand on Eliott’s shoulder saying “Go well in your purpose.” Elliott got the idea that this man was unnatural and became very scared, although “Go well in your purpose” sounds like something Star Trek scriptwriters would have Vulcans say.
Is it true? Anyone who researches in a university library is very honest, so yes.
John Keel
John Keel wrote the Mothman Prophecies. He was either a liar, psychic, or insane. I can’t say which, but it served him well financially.
Keel says that he got odd messages “from the space people”. He said he was followed by black Cadillacs and when he tried to follow them back they would get ahead of him and then apparently disappear. Luminous objects in the sky followed him, and when he went to motels, someone would have made a reservation in his name already. Why was he going to motels? And with whom? This is probably none of my business.
Even his friends were plagued with poltergeists and foul smells.
To me, he sounds typically psychotic with ideas of reference and delusional thinking, but I don’t want to sound judgemental.
Another explanation is that he was creatively making this stuff up. Keel was a reader of the Amazing Stories magazine and he wrote a column in the local paper as early as 1947 about things in the sky that he explained as alien spaceships.
During the war, he worked in American Forces radio and in 1952 made a radio program about “Things in The Sky.” Two years later he saw a UFO for the first time.
By a later part of his career, Keel began to see UFOs as psychological processes that were similar to fairy lore and occult belief systems that did not refer directly to aliens or space.
Is it true? Keel hinted it was made up before he died. So, nice as it would be to believe him, I don’t.
Robert Richardson
Robert Richardson, lived in Toledo, Ohio. He was out one night in July 1967, when he came round a bend and smacked into a UFO which was negligently parked in the middle of the road.
The UFO immediately vanished. It probably didn’t have valid insurance or wanted to keep its no-claims bonus. Richardson went and told the police and when they came back saw skid marks and Richardson found a lump of alien metal that he put in his pocket.
Three days after the accident, Richardson was visited by two young MIBs. They were in their twenties. Usually, you would think you’d send out an apprentice MIB with an older colleague to teach him the ropes, but they were both young. Or were they? Maybe they just have good skincare and keep out of the sun.
The MIBs didn’t say who they were and Richardson didn’t think to ask who these men were, the men he’d invited into his house. They didn’t warn him, thus showing they were novice MIBs and not really up to the job. They didn’t warn him, just asked questions about the accident.
They left in a 1953 Cadillac. Richardson knew his cars. This was presumably the Series 62 El Dorado model, though the series 62 luxury model was the Coup de Ville. Richardson doesn’t say which it was and if he knew his cars, he would have specified if it were the Coup de Ville, so I presume it was the El Dorado. Now, this was a nice car in 1953, but by 1967 it was old. It was like our work computers: fourteen years out of date.
The whole MIB organization is showing a lack of investment. They send a couple of twenty-somethings who fail to do their job and drive an ancient car. I don’t think we have much to worry about.
A week later two different MIBs turned up. The first two maybe got fired. These drove a current Dodge. They had dark complexions. One spoke perfect English, but the second had an accent—foreign (maybe Venusian?).
These two, much more on the ball, knew Richardson had pocketed the metal from the UFO. When he pretended he hadn’t got the metal they said, “If you want your wife to stay as pretty as she is, then you’d better get the metal back”.
The MIBs have expertise in aesthetics, maybe botox and fillers: ahead of the game in 1967. Even if they branched out in a minor way, the beauty industry could help fund the UFO work. Just an idea.
Is it true? I don’t know. Sending the second team after the first messed up has a ring of truth to it. But why did the UFO just park on the road? On balance, I believe it.
Conclusion: How Can You Avoid Being Visited By The Men In Black?
Well, firstly, if I get visited by MIBs after publishing this article, I’ll let you know, because they never succeed in shutting people up. And if you don’t hear from me again, or I start writing about gardening, draw your own conclusions.
