The Best of FATE is a new series of books, under the editorship of Phylis Galde, selected from the 700+ issues of the most celebrated magazine dedicated to exploring the paranormal, the mysterious, and the unknown. As Stephen King says, "FATE is fascinating." Titles under The Best of FATE imprint include UFOs and Close Encounters, Psychic Detectives and Psychic Crimes, and Angels and Heavenly Visitations. BoF is also reissuing the magazine's classic, bestselling Library of the Paranormal and the Unexplained (2,000,000+ copies sold), beginning with The World's Strangest True Stories. Below is one of the many "fascinating" accounts found in that book.
Among
the weirdest and most controversial phenomena associated with UFOs are the "Men
in Black," sinister individuals who allegedly possess intimate knowledge
of UFO activity and an unnerving interest in UFO researchers and UFO witnesses.
Although it is tempting to dismiss such stories as paranoid fantasies, the fact
is that Men in Black have been reported all over the world and that most
persons who describe encounters with them seem wholly sane and sincere.
Ufologist John A. Keel, who has investigated a number of these cases, tells us
what he's learned and what he thinks about them.
The Sinister Men in Black
By John A. Keel
Mysterious
cameramen seem to have appeared repeatedly throughout the United States during
the summer of 1967 and, according to the testimony of widely scattered
witnesses, photographed the homes and families of persons who have reported
close experiences with unidentified flying objects. As described, all of these
photographers bore a striking physical resemblance to each other. They wore the
same kind of clothing and arrived in identical vehicles. Until now they have
not been mentioned in any newspaper or magazine. Their identity and purposes
remain unknown.
To
add to the mystery, these peripatetic cameramen managed to single out people
who had not reported their UFO experiences to any newspaper or official
agency. In some cases they had not even told their neighbors of what they had
seen. Despite their total anonymity they somehow were tracked down by the "mystery
men" shortly after their sightings.
As
a professional reporter and full-time UFO investigator I have traveled many
thousands of miles in the past two years and have uncovered many unusual cases
which otherwise might have gone unnoticed and unrecorded. During my trips I
frequently am approached by people who are afraid of publicity and hesitate to
report their outlandish stories to the local authorities or to the Air Force.
The misfortunes of former police officer Dale Spaur, one of the men who chased
a UFO through two states in April 1966, were well-publicized (he lost his job
and suffered marital troubles after his story was revealed) and few persons are
willing to risk similar ridicule and anguish. There is self-imposed censorship
on the part of many UFO witnesses, which has been the biggest barrier to my
investigations. I sometimes spend days, even weeks, winning the confidence of
such witnesses before they break down and tell me their complete story. Often
they swear me to secrecy and make me promise to keep their identity and — in
some cases — their location confidential. But I do have this full information
in my files, together with tape recordings, photographs and affidavits. When I
uncover anything in the witness' story or background which might make
his or her story even slightly suspect I file the whole case in my "Uncertain"
file and omit it from my reports.
Basically,
I am concerned with the "Big Picture" ... the overall situation. Each
new report adds a small piece to the massive puzzle. The incredible scope and
continuous activity of unidentified flying objects in many areas seems
unbelievable to newcomers to the field and overwhelms even hard-core UFO buffs
who have convinced themselves of the validity of the oversimplified
extraterrestrial explanation.
The
truth may be that "flying saucers" are merely a symptom of the
problem, a diversion to distract us from the many strange things occurring at
ground level and often encompassing entire communities. The activities of the "mystery
photographers" may be only one aspect, which has gone completely unnoticed
by UFO buffs dedicated to collecting worthless information about the altitude
and speed of foreign objects observed overhead.
In
previous newspaper and magazine articles I have examined at length the many
stories about the "Men in Black," those mysterious and unlikely
characters first introduced in Gray Barker's controversial book They Knew
Too Much About Flying Saucers. At first I was willing to dismiss the MIB as
the paranoid fantasy of UFO cultists, but in the past year I have spoken with
many persons who claimed firsthand experience with these unidentified people
(and who, incidentally, never had heard of Barker or his book).
For
example, at 9:30 P.M. on the evening of September 30, 1967, I received a
long-distance call from an anxious woman, the wife of a prominent politician,
in New York state. This woman had called a few days before, after hearing me on
a local radio program, to report a series of strange incidents involving a
low-flying metal disk around her home in an isolated, wooded area. She had told
her husband about it but he had refused to believe her. (Later I became quite
involved in this woman's case and am convinced of her truthfulness. Her husband
finally did believe her ... but that's another story.) She said that a large
black car was parked directly outside her home while she was talking to me. She
described the following action as it took place.
Two
men got out of the car and proceeded to unlimber some kind of large camera.
Both men were the same height, five feet nine inches tall, and both wore
identical black suits, black turtleneck sweaters and broad-brimmed black hats.
At first she thought they were priests of some kind, but there was something
about them which frightened her. Their skin was dark and their features had an
Oriental cast which seemed evil to her. When they failed to approach the house
but merely busied themselves with their camera, she decided to call me. (Her
husband was not home at the time.) As she spoke with me and described the
scene, the two men proceeded to take pictures of her house, using some kind of
pale red flashgun. (Remember, it was 9:30 P.M. and dark ... an odd time to take
pictures.) After a few minutes they closed up their camera, got into their car
and drove off.
I
had heard this scene described many times before. Three men dressed in this
same manner had turned up in West Virginia in the summer of 1967 and had been
seen by several reliable witnesses. Two such men had been observed taking
photographs of the homes of UFO witnesses in broad daylight on Long Island in
June. That same month I responded to a series of strange phone calls urging me
to go alone to an isolated spot on a back dirt road nearby. There I found a
large black Cadillac containing two dark-skinned men in dark suits apparently
waiting for me. They blinked their headlights at me and then slowly drove off.
I followed them for several miles, until they went around a bend in the road in
a heavily forested area and disappeared. I cruised around for several minutes
trying to pick up their trail when suddenly they reappeared behind me and
followed me! I stopped and started to get out of my rented car but they drove
slowly on past me and again vanished. Apparently the whole episode was staged
to convince me that the Men in Black really do exist. Their car bore no license
plates. I attempted to take pictures of it but it was night and the photos did
not come out.
Numerous
witnesses on Long Island reported seeing the MIB and their black cars
throughout the summer of 1967. In many of these cases the windows of the cars
were described as being totally opaque ... a dark charcoal color which made it
impossible for the witnesses to see the occupants. On several occasions these
cars allegedly attempted to run down witnesses walking across the street. A
large black car containing two men dressed in black also came within inches of
colliding with a car driven by Mrs. Mary Hyre, a reporter for the Athens, Ohio,
Messenger, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia., in September. Mrs. Hyre
has carefully and meticulously investigated and reported upon the many UFO
sightings in her area during the past year.
Sixty
miles north of Point Pleasant, in Parkersburg, WV, a young family man from
Belpre, Ohio, had a brief encounter with two black-garbed, Oriental-looking men
on a main street in August. He said that they appeared confused or drunk (a
common description) and seemed to have difficulty walking. When I interviewed
him and his family in November, I learned that a mysterious car had pulled up
in front of their home about two weeks before my visit and that a man in a
black suit had apparently taken photos of their house with a large camera. Two
of their neighbors also had witnessed this and corroborated their story. The
unidentified photographer did not pay any attention to any of the other houses
on the street.
In
April, another Ohio man reported being pursued by a strange flying object while
driving along Route 2 on the West Virginia side of the river. Months later,
toward the end of October, he returned home from work to find a prowler in his
apartment. The prowler was about five feet nine inches tall, dressed in black
and carrying some kind of camera. He set off a flashgun which temporarily
blinded the witness and escaped out the open door.
Individually,
these stories are worthless. But I now have collected many of them from many
different sections of the country, all containing the same remarkable details
and all coming from ordinary, honest people who never connected these peculiar
incidents with their UFO experiences. I also have made spot checks to determine
if these photographers have approached non-UFO witnesses in the same areas. The
results were negative.
Are
these mysterious Men in Black part of a large, widespread organization engaged
in obtaining information and photographs of people who have had close
encounters with the UFOs?
In
the majority of the cases I have investigated such people's claim they actually
were pursued by the objects or were in the immediate vicinity of a brief
landing or hovering operation. Since most of these people have remained
voluntarily silent, as stated earlier, it is unlikely that any government
agency could have known about their experiences. Indeed, my frequent visits to
Washington, DC, and my close liaison with numerous agencies in government have
convinced me that these "mystery men" can be in no way related to the
Air Force or the United States government.
The
Air Force has, in fact, issued an order to all commands urging Intelligence
officers to be on the watch for these strangers. The MIB are openly violating
several federal laws. Usually their cars do not bear any kind of license
plates. In two cases in my files, the witnesses did see license plates and
copied down the numbers. A police check revealed that the numbers were not in
use ... such plates never had been issued! In another case, the witness
reported seeing a black plate bearing a large gold "V" on the back of
the car. A double "XX" also has been reported.
Why
haven't the police ever spotted these cars?
I've
checked with the police departments in West Virginia, Ohio, and Long Island
where these vehicles have been seen and reported and found that no police
officer has ever seen one of them.
The
UFO mystery is filled with contradictions, coincidences and seemingly
deliberate diversions. While it may appear the MIB are keeping careful tabs on
people who have seen something special or who have been singled out by the
objects (or by their occupants) for special attention, we should not overlook
the possibility that these mystery men may serve no purpose other than to
create side issues, to produce fear and confusion among witnesses and investigators.
We
also should consider the close resemblance of the descriptions given of these
men to the descriptions given of ufonauts by those who claim to have seen some.
Witnesses such as John Reeves of Brooksville, Florida. Woodrow Derenberger of
Mineral Wells, WV, and many others who have reported seeing the pilots of the "flying
saucers" have described them as dark-skinned with Oriental features. In
other words, do the people (?) said to be riding around in UFOs share the
physical characteristics of the men riding around in black Cadillacs?
Perhaps
it is time for us to reconsider the popular speculations about "flying
saucers" and reexamine the somewhat baseless conclusion that they are of
extraterrestrial origin. A much bigger game may be afoot here. Perhaps we have
been deliberately misled into assuming they are not of this planet. There never
has been any evidence, either physical or observational, to indicate that they
come from elsewhere.
Actually
all of the available evidence suggests that the objects are made of earthly
materials and piloted by humanoid types not too dissimilar from ourselves. We
may, in fact, be dealing with a subversive group who, like the Gypsies, are
able to live among us unnoticed and isolated from our general society. The UFOs
may be used only to transfer these unknown people from one surface point to
another. The machines themselves, if they are machines, could have been
manufactured centuries ago and might emanate from hidden bases located in
isolated regions scattered around this planet. Certainly the massive number of
historical sightings, going back thousands of years, indicates the UFOs always
have been a natural part of our environment.
If
the Men in Black do not represent our government — and I believe that they do
not — then they must come from some other secretive group or organization
directly related to the UFOs. And they are successfully infiltrating our cities
and villages on a large scale. When an innocent citizen accidentally learns of
their presence their representatives zero in on him or her, perhaps to prepare
the way to silence the witness at some point in the future. They photograph the
person's home and family. In many cases, they also tap the witness's telephone
and, inexplicably, even tamper with his mail.
If
these many witnesses were to relate their experiences to psychiatrists they
probably would put them down as schizoid paranoiacs. It is only in the matching
of the corresponding details from many such stories that we are forced to
realize that we well may be dealing with something beyond an ordinary mental
aberration. The late Captain Edward Ruppelt, one-time head of the Air Force's
Project Blue Book, admitted that all such stories were automatically shoved
into a massive "C.P." ("crackpot") file. Apparently it
never occurred to the Air Force to study its "C.P." file for
corroborating details.
Recently
the heavy-handed F.B.I. moved in on three cases I had been investigating. I
know they rejected one of these outright, classifying the witness — a
distinguished man in his community — as a "nut."
The
sober truth is that the United States government does not have any kind of law
enforcement agency equipped with sufficient funds and trained personnel to
investigate these matters properly. Air Force Intelligence operates on a very
limited scale within the United States and it just hasn't got enough men — or
enough authority — to investigate these cases. The C.I.A. has no authority at
all within the continental United States ... it is devoted primarily to the
collection of information. Further handicapping possible governmental
investigation is the sad fact that very few of these witnesses are willing to
report their experiences directly to an official agency. In most cases they do
not even talk to their local police about it.
Early
in the "saucer era" (following 1947), such witnesses were exposed to
so much ridicule (with their sincere letters ending up in the Air Force's "crackpot"
file) that succeeding witnesses became cautious and secretive.
Adding
to the dilemma, the early UFO buffs who claimed to experience telephone
interference and mail tampering hurled unfounded accusations at "the
government" and an anti-government attitude blossomed in UFO research
circles. Gradually this attitude rubbed off on the public at large and was
further increased by the Air Force's stubborn and absurd "explanations"
of many outstanding UFO sightings. Today the government has been completely cut
off from its chief source of UFO information — the American public.
I
am sure that for every case I have uncovered there must be hundreds more that
have gone unreported to anybody. The Men in Black ... whoever they are,
wherever they're from ... have been able to operate with impunity, without
interference, secure in the knowledge that their victims never would talk for
fear of being labeled "insane," or even if they did talk, that no one
would believe them.
All
of the witnesses I have interviewed have told me they felt there was something
inherently "evil" about these Men in Black — something alien and
dangerous. In a number of cases, people apparently have been drugged or
hypnotized by the MIB and several have suffered amnesia and memory lapses after
alleged face-to-face confrontations.
Perhaps
all of this sounds like a bad plot from The Invaders TV series, but it
seems to be very real. Experience and many in-depth interviews with bewildered
people all over this country have convinced me that this is part of the elusive
"secret" behind the "flying saucers." And perhaps only a
small part at that. It has been kept from you not by the Air Force or
government, but by the entities behind the UFO phenomenon itself
(copyright FATE Publications, all rights reserved)
