Who are the Men in Black?

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Having an encounter with the UFO is one of the most bizarre and overwhelming events a person might experience, but in a large percentage of these cases, the sighting itself is just the beginning.

Over the years, hundreds of witnesses have reported being visited by strange, unearthly men in the days and weeks following their sightings.

Are they government agents of suppression, extraterrestrial visitors in disguise, or something else entirely?

Who are the men in black, and what can we learn from the recent videos that claim to finally prove their existence?

Back in 1968, when the Condon Committee was sampling public attitudes towards UFOs, they gave the following statement to a cross-section of the American public.

A government agency maintains a top-secret file on UFO reports that are deliberately withheld from the public.

The respondents were then asked to answer, true or false.

A substantial majority, almost two-thirds of all people surveyed, agreed with this assumption.

Amongst teenagers, the gap was even wider, with almost 75% of them believing the statement to be true.

If that same survey was carried out today, it is believed that the percentage of those in agreement would be even higher.

This is hardly surprising, considering that we now live in an age of free-flowing information or disinformation, depending on who you ask.

Especially since the advent of the internet, it has become almost a normality to question and make accusations against those in power.

But little over half a century ago, this lack of trust in government was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today.

And one could argue that it all started back in the late 1940s, in the wake of what is now known as the Roswell Incident.

This one event, whether there is any truth to it, brought into the mainstream the very notion of government conspiracies and cover-ups.

In early June 1947, a rancher named W.W.

Brazel discovered a strange debris field on his property.

During a visit to the nearby town of Corona, A relative suggested that what he'd found might be the wreckage of a flying saucer, especially given the recent wave of UFO sightings in the area.

Intrigued, Brazel contacted local authorities, prompting the Roswell Army Airfield to dispatch a recovery team.

Leading the operation was Major Jesse Marcel, who would soon find himself at the heart of what became America's first major UFO conspiracy.

Soon after the recovery began, Several military officials reported that the wreckage resembled that of a flying disc, and Marcel himself claimed the materials he handled were not of this Earth.

In the years that followed, Marcel and numerous military and civilian witnesses gave interviews describing the strange artifacts, and how they were threatened and silenced by unidentified government figures.

To quell the growing speculation, the US military initially announced that the debris came from a weather balloon.

but later acknowledged it was part of a top-secret program designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests.

Still, several men who were present insisted to their dying day that they had seen unbreakable metals, bizarre hieroglyphic-like markings, and according to some, even alien bodies.

As the world moved into the 1950s, the shadowy government entities described by Major Jesse Marcel began to take on a more defined and unsettling shape.

Reports started to surface, case after case, of UFO witnesses and investigators being followed, threatened or coerced into silence by mysterious men.

These figures were almost always described the same way, clad in black suits and dark hats, often arriving in sleek black vintage cars.

It wasn't long before they became known simply as the Men in Black.

At the time, many believed these individuals were part of a secret government agency, assigned to suppress any public discussion of UFOs or extraterrestrial contact.

But over the decades, that theory has evolved.

Today, some researchers and experiencers speculate that these so-called agents may not be human at all, but something far stranger.

The 1997 film Men in Black famously satirized the conspiracy, using humor to diffuse its darker implications.

But for those who claim to have encountered these beings, the experiences are no laughing matter.

Witnesses frequently describe feeling deeply unsettled by their presence, though they struggle to articulate exactly why.

Some report episodes of missing time or even brief blackouts during the encounters.

Others describe a disturbing sense that the men in black could read or even manipulate their thoughts.

Physical descriptions vary, but most accounts agree on one thing.

Their appearance is deeply unnatural.

They're often said to be tall, pale and expressionless, speaking in flat, emotionless voices and moving with mechanical, almost puppet-like precision.

Some witnesses claim their eyes emit a faint glow.

Others insist their skin looks artificial, like a flawless mask stretched over something not quite human.

But if there's one constant in reports of the men in black, it's their purpose.

To silence.

Regardless of how the encounter unfolds, witnesses are warned not to speak of what they've seen.

Sometimes the threats are direct and unmistakable.

Other times the intimidation is more subtle and psychological, but the message is always the same.

Forget what you saw or else.

For decades, the men in black have been dismissed as little more than a product of conspiracy law.

But in today's world, where cameras are everywhere and even the most elusive figures can be caught on film, that narrative is beginning to shift.

Now, video evidence is surfacing, and as seems to be the case with a lot of things lately, Many are now asking whether the so-called conspiracy theorists might be right.

Though Roswell certainly involved a government cover-up, many of the people who were party to that incident were members of the military themselves.

Therefore, it was their superiors demanding their silence rather than government agents.

But there was an event that took place around the same time that did involve the men in black.

and it occurred alongside another of the most infamous accounts in UFO history.

June 1947 was a wild year for extraterrestrial sightings.

Several weeks after W.W.

Brizell found strange debris on his ranch, Harold Dahl, a harbour patrolman, was making routine rounds off the coast of Maury Island in Washington's Puget Sound.

Accompanying him were two crewmen, his teenage son and the family dog.

The day began like any other.

Whilst his son played with the dog, Dahl and the other two crew members carried out their usual patrol near the island's shore, scanning the area as part of their daily routine.

Then, without warning, one of the deckhands shouted and pointed towards the sky above.

To Dahl's astonishment, six large doughnut-shaped objects were hovering overhead.

The crew was gripped with fear as the strange craft simply hovered there, unmoving.

Dahl watched in disbelief as the hatch opened on one of the objects, releasing a stream of thin, paper-like material into the air.

Some of it drifted down onto the deck, revealing itself to be oddly lightweight pieces of metal.

Then everything changed.

The light fluttering material gave way to a hail of dark, rock-like debris.

It rained down hard on the boat, injuring one of the crew and tragically killing the dog.

Dahl hurried back to shore and reported the incident to his superior Fred Crisman, who later claimed that he too had seen something strange in the skies near Maury Island.

But it wasn't the sighting that would define the story, it was what happened afterwards.

The next morning, Dahl said he was approached by a man in a dark suit.

who invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner.

Over coffee, the stranger calmly recounted Dahl's experience in eerie, almost impossible detail.

According to Dahl, the man knew everything, down to facts he hadn't even shared with anyone else.

Before leaving, the man in black warned him that if he continued to speak of the sighting, there would be consequences.

Dahl, his son and the crew members began to downplay their story, but on the 24th of June, a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine silver disks flying in formation near Mount Rainier, Washington, just 75 miles from Maury Island.

The incident drew national attention, and Arnold soon heard about Dahl's encounter.

Believing he might be onto something significant, Arnold asked two military intelligence officers to investigate.

Despite earlier warnings from the mysterious stranger, Dahl agreed to speak with the officers and even handed over samples of the strange material that had fallen onto his boat.

Tragically, however, and some say rather conveniently, on the 1st of August, the B-25 carrying the two intelligence officers and the evidence they'd collected crashed outside Kelso, Washington with no survivors.

In the aftermath, the FBI launched its own inquiry.

According to their findings, Dahl admitted that if questioned officially, he would say he'd made the entire thing up out of fear for his life.

Though Arnold went on to have a relatively successful career, he too never fully recovered from being associated with the so-called Washington UFO hoax.

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In 1952, a former U.S.

Air Force serviceman turned author and amateur ufologist by the name of Albert K.

Bender set up an organization called the International Flying Sources Bureau to investigate and report upon the strange UFO activity being witnessed all over the world at that time.

The organization was initially a success, publishing a weekly newsletter which was distributed to its small but dedicated audience of around 2,000 people worldwide.

However, in early 1953, Bender suddenly and mysteriously shut down his operation and ceased all publication, leaving in the newsletter's final issue a rather ominous message.

We advise those engaged in sorcer work to please be very cautious.

Colleagues reported his odd demeanor at the time, stating that he seemed agitated and nervous as if someone or something had scared him out of his wits.

Bender did not eat or sleep properly for weeks after he closed the bureau and was said to have suffered with unbearable headaches during that time.

When questioned about his sudden and inexplicable decision, he refused to elaborate and maintain this silence for many years afterwards.

Almost a decade later, in 1962, Bender finally explained his actions, saying that he had been visited by three men dressed in black suits who had appeared out of thin air and warned him not to continue his work on UFOs.

And he wasn't the only ufologist to have such an experience.

Some years later, in 1976, a well-known and highly respected family physician, Dr.

Herbert Hopkins, reported a very chilling encounter.

Hopkins was home alone at his residence in Old Orchard Beach, Maine on the night of the 11th of September.

He was studying a UFO incident which had occurred some months prior when the phone rang.

Hopkins answered and a man's voice was heard on the other end, identifying himself as a representative of the New Jersey UFO organisation, something which later turned out to be fictitious.

The caller asked if Hopkins was alone and whether he could visit him to talk about the UFO case he was investigating.

Hopkins agreed and the man hung up after telling him that he would be there shortly.

The moment he put the phone down, the good doctor went to the front door to turn on his porch light and noticed that the man was already coming up the steps in front of his house.

He recalled feeling a little unnerved by this because even if the man had called from his neighbour's house, there was no way he could have reached the front door in the time it had taken Hopkins to walk from the phone over to the light switch.

Also bear in mind that this was before the advent of mobile phones.

Nevertheless, he was still keen to hear what this man had to say, and upon inviting him in, Hopkins was struck by the stranger's appearance.

He was a tall, skinny man who wore a dark, ill-fitting suit and had a black derby on his head.

His skin was smooth and deathly pale, and when he sat down and removed his hat, Hopkins noticed that he was completely bald.

He had no hair whatsoever.

He was devoid of any stubble, eyebrows, or eyelashes.

His lips were a vibrant ruby red, and he spoke in an expressionless voice.

There was no intonation or inflection in his delivery, and all his words were evenly spaced.

Throughout their conversation, he sat motionless, his mouth being the only thing that moved.

As if that wasn't disturbing enough, On one of the few occasions that the stranger did move another part of his body besides his lips, he happened to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, which left a red smear across his cheeks.

It was at this point that Hopkins realised the stranger was wearing lipstick, and then further noticed that his mouth was a perfectly straight slit.

He did not even have a pair of lips.

The doctor became very frightened at this point, and when the visitor asked him to remove the copper coin that sat in his pocket, he complied immediately.

How this strange man even knew that Hopkins had a copper coin in his pocket is a mystery, but throughout the conversation, the doctor had a distinct feeling that the visitor was somehow reading his mind.

Hopkins held the coin in the palm of his hand as instructed, and the visitor simply told him to observe.

As he watched, it slowly began to change colour from copper to silver, then became blurry.

almost as if it was going out of focus before disappearing right in front of his eyes.

The man in black told the utterly bewildered doctor in no uncertain terms that if he did not destroy all the information he had collected on the UFO case, he himself would suffer the same fate as the coin.

As the visitor spoke these last words, Hopkins noticed how his speech seemed to slow down, like a vinyl record playing at slow speed, and that his words had become slurred.

The strange man suddenly told him that his energy was running low low and that he needed to leave.

The doctor then showed him to the door and watched as he walked down the steps, holding onto the railing as if he was crippled.

He proceeded to hobble around the corner and out of sight, at which point there was a huge bright flash, and then

silence.

Hopkins was deeply disturbed by this experience.

His family came home later that evening to find him sitting in the living room staring into space, with every light in the house turned on.

There have been many accounts over the last 60 or 70 years regarding men in black, and many, especially those as fantastical as the Herbert Hopkins encounter, have been met with cynicism and sometimes even outright derision from the wider community.

Their existence is extremely difficult to prove, and more often than not, belief boils down to the credibility of the witness.

And that is just not enough for most sceptics.

However, in 2012, some very interesting footage surfaced on the internet.

The video was recorded four years earlier in 2008 and was taken from a CCTV camera situated in the lobby of a hotel near Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada.

Two weeks prior to its recording, one of the employees at the hotel had witnessed strange UFO activity over the Niagara River in the early hours of the morning and had mentioned the incident to friends and colleagues.

This resulted in an unexpected visit from two strange men dressed in black.

The camera captured these two individuals entering the hotel reception walking in exactly the same way as each other as in step for step, wearing exactly the same clothes and even appearing to look exactly the same in both facial structure and build.

Witnesses reported that they were very tall and thin and that they looked like identical twins.

Hotel guests and employees alike were profoundly disturbed by their presence, not just because of their threatening behaviour but because of their appearance in general.

The descriptions given were very similar to the stranger who visited Hopkins, tall, thin, utterly devoid of hair and failing to exhibit any kind of emotion or facial expression.

They both had identical icy blue eyes which were described as being almost hypnotic.

They never blinked once.

They were said to have a determined inquisitive nature and once again the people who encountered them reported that they felt exposed as if their innermost thoughts were somehow being read.

These strangers kept asking to speak to the young man who had witnessed the UFO activity two weeks earlier but fortunately for him he was not at work that day.

When they failed in their attempts to locate him, the strange men apparently began asking staff members about other UFO sightings and conspiracy theories.

They appeared neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with any of the answers given to them.

They simply logged the information and moved on, leaving as abruptly as they had arrived, never to be seen or heard from again.

This encounter is very similar in description to many other accounts, and it would seem to suggest that the men in black are not quite of this world.

Other accounts have been much less fanciful, with witnesses of those encounters reporting no such odd appearance or behaviour from the men who visited them.

Still, others seem to focus less on the origins of the men in black and more on their mysterious abilities.

In 2018, another disturbing video surfaced showing what appears to be a man in black interacting with a clerk at a lawyer's office.

The footage, which was recorded by CCTV cameras in Anchorage, Alaska, is not only much clearer than the Niagara Falls video, but it gives some possible insight into how these persons or entities interact with their victims.

The video begins with an unseen man in an office who claims to be a security guard at a law firm.

As they focus on their computer screen, which shows a CCTV feed, they whisper about something weird which had taken place the day before on the 14th of June.

He then explains that he is not allowed to export files from the surveillance cameras, so he is instead recording the footage directly onto his phone.

He explains that the woman in the video, Nicole, is the front office secretary.

and she has not been heard from since the encounter he is about to show.

After pressing play, a co-worker appears and briefly interacts with Nicole before walking out the front door, leaving the young woman alone.

Several moments later, a dark shape passes by the front window and stands there for about 30 seconds.

The shape then moves around to the front door and enters the law office.

Upon walking in, we can see the man is tall, thin and completely bald.

He is also wearing a dark suit with a dark tie.

Nicole immediately turns to address the man who places his hands flat on the counter as the two interact.

Several seconds later, Nicole makes a pointing gesture and it's unclear if she's providing the man with directions or telling him to leave.

At this point she pulls out a gun that they keep in the office for safety.

However, the man remains calm and begins gesturing with his hands.

Instantly, Nicole's demeanor changes.

She turns, places the gun on the counter and grabs an unseen object that the security guard claims is a camera.

As if in a trance, she walks around the counter and exits the office with the man, leaving her purse and identification behind.

Though nobody associated with this video has claimed to have had any UFO experiences, Anchorage is considered something of an extraterrestrial hotspot, with major sightings in 1986, 2024, and strangely, 1947.

Taking all of this into consideration, what are we to believe?

Are the men in black human or non-human?

Are they a combination of the two, humans and extraterrestrials working together towards the same goal?

Do they even exist at all?

Neither the Ontario and Anchorage CCTV footage can be substantiated beyond their superficial existence.

In the case of the former, it was coincidentally released on the internet at around the same time that the third Men in Black film was being heavily promoted, which has led many sceptics to believe it was nothing more than a viral marketing campaign.

But this doesn't explain the 2008 timestamp, or the numerous witness accounts.

If they are shadowy government agents, they are either skilled in hypnosis or have some other way of enhancing their powers of suggestion.

Bender reported headaches after interacting with his men in black, and the video from Anchorage shows Nicole submitting immediately to little more than a gesture and a few words.

In general, skeptics have pointed out that the Men in Black phenomenon is largely limited to North America, that it has become an ingrained facet of American folklore and is above all relatively recent.

They state that the height of its notoriety occurred during the 1950s, at a time when paranoia over unidentified flying objects was at its peak.

Finally, they argue that it all began with one man, Albert Bender, and that every other account since then is the result of copycats and opportunists wishing to further inflate the legend.

However, this is not strictly accurate.

Reports of men in black are not just limited to the United States.

Many encounters have occurred in Europe, Australia, and elsewhere around the globe.

And whilst the modern descriptions of these individuals can mostly be traced back to Bender's account, the Maury Island and Mount Rainier sightings predate Bender's encounter by half a decade.

As for the concept of mysterious men dressed in black, that goes back hundreds of years.

During the Middle Ages, people would often report encountering men dressed in black robes, wearing dark hats, malevolent entities who possessed inhuman capabilities and were odd in both appearance and behaviour.

Descriptions of these strange men were nearly always the same, leading many to believe that they were all manifestations of just one man, the devil.

Could these individuals be paranormal as opposed to supernatural?

It has been suggested by some that the men in black are in fact demonic in nature and links to supposed shadow people have been made.

particularly the ominous character known as the Hat Man for obvious reasons.

Relationships with the black-eyed children have also been reported, with some witnesses seeing both men in black and black-eyed children travelling around in the same vehicles.

Regardless of these theories, it is largely assumed and accepted by the fringe community that MIBs are fundamentally linked to extraterrestrials.

It is difficult to dispute the correlation between UFO sightings and the subsequent appearances of these entities.

Some even believe that the reason the men in black look so odd is either because they are extraterrestrials disguised as humans or are, rather chillingly, reanimated corpses controlled remotely by these higher intelligences.

Their motives are believed to be the infiltration and subversion of various governments around the world.

Worse still, some believe that those governments are aware of their presence and are in fact complicit in their schemes.

To what end is anyone's guess?

Whoever the men in black are, it is clear that they are rather sinister and that no good ever comes of their presence.

Witnesses often feel intimidated, threatened and disturbed after encountering them.

Whether they are government agents, extraterrestrial beings, paranormal entities or nothing more than a figment of the imagination, the thought of coming face to face with them is no less terrifying.

If you are ever lucky enough to see a UFO or witness some other supernatural event, only to hear a gentle knocking at your door in the dead of night, we advise you not to answer it.