<>#8WHO ARE THE MEN IN BLACK? @7As UFO sightings increase so, allegedly, does the harassment of the witnesses - by the sinister Men In Black. HILARY EVANS discusses these frightening and bizarre encounters.@2 'I WENT INTO THE FANTASTIC and came up with the answer,' declared Albert Bender, director of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, an amateur UFO organization based in Connecticut, USA. 'I know what the saucers are.' Unfortunately, the rest of the world is still none the wiser - for Bender was prevented from passing on his discovery to the world by three sinister visitors: three men dressed in black, known as 'the silencers'. It had been Bender's intention to publish his momentous findings in his own journal, Space Review. But before committing himself finally, he felt he ought to try his ideas out on a colleague. He mailed his report - and a few days later, the men came. Bender was lying down in his bedroom, having been overtaken by a spell of dizziness, when he noticed 'three shadowy figures in the room. The figures became clearer. All of them were dressed in black clothes. They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style. The faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them. Feelings of fear left me.... The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs, and all these were focused upon me. They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable. It was then I sensed that they were conveying a message to me by telepathy.' His visitors confirmed that Bender was right in his speculations as to the true nature of UFOs - one of them was carrying Bender's report - and provided additional information. This so terrified him that he was only too willing to go along with their demand that he closed down his organization and cease publication of his journal. He was instructed not to tell the truth to anyone 'on his honour as an American citizen.' Did Bender expect anyone to believe his story? His friends and colleagues were baffled by it - one of them, Gary Barker, published a sensational book, They knew too much about flying saucers, and Bender himself supplied an even stranger account in his 'Flying saucers and the three men' some years later, in response to persistent demands for an explanation from former colleagues. He told an extraordinary story involving extra- terrestrial spaceships with bases in Antarctica that reads like the most far-fetched contactee dreamstuff; it had been suggested that the implausibility of Bender's story is designed to throw serious UFO investigators off the track. Believable or not, Bender's original account of the visit of the three strangers is of crucial interest to UFO investigators. For the story has been paralleled by many similar reports, frequently from people unlikely to have so much as heard of Bender and his experiences. UFO percipients and investigators are equally liable to be visited by men in black (MIBS); and, although the majority of reports are from the @2United States, similar claims have come from Sweden and Italy, Britain and Mexico. And like the UFO phenomenon, MIBS span three decades, and may well have had precursors in earlier centuries. Like Bender's story, most of the later reports not only contain implausible details, but are also inherently illogical; in virtually every case, there seems on the face of it more reason to disbelieve than to believe. But this does not eliminate the mystery - it simply requires us to study it in a different light. For, whether or not these things actually happened, the fact remains that they were reported; and why should so many people, independently, and often reluctantly, report these strange and sinister visitations? And why is it that these accounts are so similar, echoing and in turn helping to confirm a persistent pattern, if nothing else, is one of the most powerful folk myths of our time? The archetypal MIB report runs some thing like this: shortly after a UFO sighting, the subject - he may be a witness, he may be an investigator on the case - receives a visit. Often it occurs so soon after the incident itself that no official report or media publication has taken place: in short, the visitors should not, by any normal channels, have gained access to the information they clearly possess - names, addresses, details of the incident and about the people involved. The victim is nearly always alone at the time of the visit, usually in his own home. His visitors, usually three in number, arrive in a large black car. In America it is most often a @2prestigious Cadillac, but seldom a recent model. At the same time, though old in date, it is likely to be new and immaculate in appearance and condition, inside and out, even having that unmistakable 'new car' smell. If the subject notes the registration number and checks it, it is invariably found to be a non- existent number. The visitors themselves are almost always men: only very rarely is one a woman, and never more than one. In appearance they conform pretty closely to the stereotyped image of a CIA or secret service man. They wear dark suits, dark hats, dark ties, dark shoes and socks, but white shirts: witnesses very often remark on their clean, immaculate turn-out - all the clothes looking as though just purchased. The visitors' faces are frequently described as vaguely foreign, most often 'oriental': slant eyes have been specified in many accounts. If not dark skinned, the men are likely to be very heavily tanned. Some times there are bizarre touches; in the case of Dr Hopkins, which we shall look at more closely later, the man in black appeared to be wearing bright lipstick! The MIBS are generally unsmiling and expressionless, their movements stiff and awkward. Their general demeanour is formal, cold, sinister, even menacing: there is no warmth or friendliness shown, even if there is no outright hostility either. Witnesses often hint that they felt their visitors were not human at all. Some MIBS proffer evidence of identity; indeed, they sometimes @2appear in US Air Force or other uniforms. They may produce identity cards, but since most people would not know a genuine CIA or others 'secret' service identity card if they saw one, this proves nothing. If they give their names, and the witness subsequently checks them, they are invariably found to be false. The interview is sometimes an interrogation, sometimes simply a warning. Either way, the visitors, even though they are asking questions, are clearly very well- informed, with access to restricted information. They speak with perfect, sometimes too perfect, intonation and phrasing, and their language is apt to be reminiscent of the conventional villans of crime films - 'Again, Mr Stiff, I fear you are not being honest!', 'Mr Veich, it would be unwise of you to mail that report' - immediately suggesting the unctuous threatener beloved of Holywood writers. The visit almost invariably concludes with a warning not to tell anybody about the incident, if the subject is a UFO percipient, or to abandon the investigation, if he is an investigator. Violence is often threatened. And the MIBS depart as suddenly as they came. Most well-informed UFO enthusiasts, if asked to describe a typical MIB visit, would give some such account as the foregoing. However, a comparative examination indicates that such 'perfect' MIB visits seldom occur in practice. Study of the 32 of the more detailed and reliable cases reveals that many details diverge from the archetypal story: there were no visitors at all in four cases, @2only telephone calls and, of the remainder, only five involved three men, two involved four, five involved two, while in the rest there was only a single visitor. Although the appearance and behaviour of the visitors does seem generally to conform to the prototype, it ranges from the entirely natural to the totally bizarre. The car, despite the fact that in America it is by far the commonest means of transportation, is in fact mentioned in only one third of the reports; as for the picturesque details - the Cadillac, the antiquated model, the immaculate condition - these are in practice very much the exception. Of 22 American reports, only nine mention a car; of these only three were Cadillacs, only two were specified as black and only two as out-of-date models. On the other hand, these archetypal details tend to be more conspicuous in less reliable cases, particularly those in which investigators, rather than UFO percipients, are involved. This will be relevant when we come to consider possible explanations for the MIB phenomenon. However, although the 'ideal' MIB case is far from being universal in practice, it has value as a kind of composite picture, embodying all the various features that have been reported. Perhaps the case that comes closest to the archetype is that of Robert Richardson, of Toledo, Ohio, who in July 1967 informed the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) that he had collided with a UFO while driving at night. Coming @2round a bend, he had been confronted with a strange object blocking the road: unable to halt in time, he had hit it, though not very hard. Immediately on impact, the UFO vanished. Police who accompanied Richardson to the scene could find only his own skid marks, but on a later visit, he found a small lump of metal which he thought might have come from the UFO. Three days later, at 11 p.m., two men in their twenties appeared at Richardson's home and questioned him for about 10 minutes. They did not identify themselves, and Richardson - to his own later surprise - did not ask who they were. They were not unfriendly, gave no warnings, just asked questions. He noted that they left in a black 1953 Cadillac - that is, a 14-year-old model: the number, when checked, was found not yet to have been issued, proving that whoever his visitors were, they were undoubtedly imposters of some sort. A week later, Richardson received a second visit, from two different men, who arrived in a current model Dodge. They wore black suits and were dark complexioned: although one spoke perfect English, the second had an accent, and Richardson felt there was something vaguely foreign about them. At first they seemed to be trying to persuade him that he had not in fact hit anything at all, but then they asked for the piece of metal. When he told them it had been passed to APRO for analysis, they threatened, 'If you want your wife to stay as pretty as she is, then you'd better get the metal back.' The existence of the metal was known only to Richardson and his wife, and to two senior members of APRO; @2seemingly the only way the strangers could have learned of its existence would be by tapping either his or APRO's telephone. There was no clear connection between the two pairs of visitors: but what both had in common was access to information that was not freely and publicly available. And it may be this that is the key to the MIB mystery. end.