<>#8THE LONG SHADOW OF FEAR@4 Men in black excited a great deal of attention when they began to threaten UFO witnesses in the 1950s. But the powerful symbol of the sinister black-clad figure is centuries old.@5 UFO PERCIPIENTS AND INVESTIGATORS are by no means the only people to receive visits from men in black. Researchers Kevin and Sue McClure, investigating the North Wales religious revival of 1905, found accounts that bear at least a prima facie similarity to the current MIB phenomenon: In the neighbourhood dwells an exceptionally intelligent young woman of the peasant class, whose bedroom has been visited three nights in succession at midnight by a man dressed in black. This figure has delivered a message to the girl which, however, she is forbidden to relate. The young woman in question, farmer's wife-turned-preacher Mary Jones - one of the leading figures of the revival - was well known for the mysterious lights that appeared as she pursued her mission. One one occasion when she encountered her sinister visitor at night, Mary was 'rescued' by one of her lights, which darted a white ray at the apparition. The MIB promptly vanished. It all sounds like the wildest fantasy - except that there is substantial evidence for some of the phenomena reported, many of which were seen by several independant witnesses, some of them avowedly sceptical. Does this mean that the MIBs really existed, really appeared in the bedroom of that 'intelligent young woman of the peasant class'? What we are learning about the current wave of MIBs may help us to understand similar cases reported in earlier periods. Men in black turn up, in one form or another, in the folk lore of every country, and periodically they emerge from legend into everyday life. On 2 June 1603, a young country lad confessed before a court in south- west France to several acts of werewolfery, culminating in kidnapping and eating a child. He stated that he was acting under the orders of the Lord of the Forest, to whom he was bond-slave. The Lord of the Forest he described as a tall dark man, dressed all in black, and riding a black horse. Montague Summers, who reports the case in his book 'The werewolf' (1933), has no hesitation in identifying this and all other MIBs with the Devil of Christian teaching, and this continues to be a widespread interpretation: even today there are theorists who claim that UFOs are diabolical in origin, and the MIBs consequently must be Satan's agents. In the parts of the world where the prevailing religious doctrine presupposes two warring factions of good and evil, good is equated with light and evil with darkness, the agents of good tend to be blond and dressed in white, while the agents of evil have dark hair and are dressed in black. Other connotations follow naturally. Under cover of darkness, all kinds of tricks can be carried out and crimes committed. Darkness is also associated with winter, and so with death: in almost all parts of @5the world, death rites and customs are associated with the colour black. So, whatever his specific role, the MIB is a distinctly sinister figure. He is a trickster, not working openly; he stands for lies rather than truth, death rather than life. Because of the obviously symbolic elements involved, many theorists speculate that MIBs are not flesh- and-blood creatures at all, but mental constructs projected from the imagination of the percipient, and taking on a form that blends traditional legend with contemporary imagery. But it can't be quite that simple: too many of the accounts show evidence of relating to physical creatures moving in the real, physical world. To those who report MIB encounters, there are several possible origins. At his most concrete, the MIB is supposed to be the representative of an official department; sometimes as straightforward and above board as the Air Force, sometimes a more covery organisation such as the CIA or FBI. The average American, in particular, seems far from convinced that investigative bodies such as the CIA are necessarily working in the public interest, and the same attitude of mind as has evolved the conspiracy theories about UFOs, that a gigantic cover-up is being mounted by the government, suggests that the MIBs are part of this operation, their sole object being to conceal the facts by silencing witnesses and purloining photographs and other evidence. The fact that the identities of a great many MIBs have been checked, and they have invariably been found @5not to be the persons they purport to be, lends strength to this suspicion, which can amount to virtual paranoia. Thus in 1970 an American theorist, Tony Kimery, wrote in all seriousness: The mysterious MIB and the entire collection of their thugs, henchmen, and highly trained intelligence officers, are a big part of the complex UFO phenomena which is in turn part of another big and complex phenomena (sic). It is known that projects by them are now under way for the complete control of...political, financial, religious and scientific instructions. They - the MIB - have a very long background and history that stretches back for centuries, indicating a massive build-up of concentration to where it is today. MIBS are often reported as dark skinned, as having either defective command of English, or conversely an over-precise, over meticulous way of speaking that suggests that they are not speaking a tongue natural to them. Mary Hyre, a West Virginia journalist, noted that a strange visitor picked up a ball point pen from her desk and examined it with amazement, as if he had never seen anything like it before. And UFO percipient Mrs Ralph Butler, who received a visit from a man who claimed to be an Air Force major, was astonished to find that he was so unfamiliar with American food that he had to be shown how to eat it. The implication is that they are foreigners, an attitude encouraged by American xenophobia. Curiously, though, not witness appears to have suggested that the MIBs are of @5Russian origin: where specific details are mentioned, it is always implied that they are vaguely 'oriental'. Slanting eyes are frequently reported; the deadpan faces suggest the inscrutable Asiatic; sometimes heads are totally bald. (By linking 'the yellow peril' with the 'man in black', of course, it is possible to frighten oneself with two bogeymen for the price of one!) Although witnesses rarely state openly that they believe their visitors to come from beyond Earth, this is often clearly implied. Bender's three men were clearly of alien origin. Other MIBs have displayed behaviour traits that seem to suggest that they are able to function only for a limited time- span: after a while they insist that they have to leave, or take pills, or ask for water, and sometimes shown signs of losing strength. A further possibility remains: that the MIBs are neither flesh-and-blood (even extra-terrestrial flesh-and- blood) on the one hand, nor pure hallucination/illusion on the other, but sometimes in between. The entities encountered in a recent French case seem to have existed, if existed is the word, on some alternative plane of being. The alleged abduction, in December 1979, of Franck Fontaine for seven days on board a UFO was one of the rare French cases to have attracted worldwide attention. The abduction itself was of course the central event of the case, but it was only the start of a series of incidents: one of these, involving MIBs, concerned another member of the trio, Jean Pierre Prevost, who told this @5story: 'The night of Friday the seventh to Saturday the eighth of December 1979, Franck, Salomon and I had sat up talking for a long time, and went to bed sometime around 5 to 5.30 in the morning. At 7 there was a ring at the door: Salomon and Franck didn't hear it, so I went to open the door. I found myself in the presence of three fellows. One was of average height, very well dressed in dark green, almost black, black tie, white shirt, and waistcoat to match his suit; he had a fringe of beard, black like his hair, and a moustache. His general appearance was pretty good. The others were bigger than him, taller and more heavily built. 'What follow, I haven't told the police - I reported the visit itself to them - because we've already had enough of being taken for crackpots! But these two types, with the bearded man, didn't really exist, that I'm certain of! In the first place, they had no sight. That's hard to explain: they fixed me with their eyes, but those eyes were nothing but a white mass, all over. They were terrifying! 'The bearded fellow asked me, Are you one of the three? , by which obviously he meant, was I one of the three people concerned in the Cergy- Pontoise case? I said yes, and he went on, Good, in that case, you can pass the word to your companions: you've already said too much. An accident will happen to you. And if you say any more, it will be more serious than that... @5'And with that they vanished; but how, that's something I can't begin to explain. They didn't take the lift, I'd have heard it if they did; and even more so if they'd used the stairs, the door makes a deafening row! I went to the window that overlooks the parking lot. I can tell you definitely that all night, at least until 5 a.m. or later, we'd noticed a Ford Capri in metallic green standing beneath our window, a Ford that we didn't recognise. Well, when I looked down, there was this Ford, just starting up. How had they managed to get to it without using the stairs or the lift? Complete mystery. 'I woke up Franck and Salomon and we went to the police, without giving them the unbelievable details about the two toughs. The police said, So long as they didn't actually attack or wound you, there's nothing we can do, so get back home. And that was that.' Jean Pierre told investigators that he had seen the three men on several subsequent occassions. Generally, it was simply a matter of seeing them across the street or at a market, but on one occassion he received another warning while he was in a tobacco store buying cigarettes, telling him to keep quiet about their experiences and making threats. Subsequently, under hypnosis, Jean Pierre indicated that the entities were not extra- terrestrials but intra-terrestrials, forces of evil from inside the Earth. He also added - intriguingly - that the bearded man had been real but that his two henchmen had been unreal. Cases like this are made baffling by their inconsequentiality. But one thing seems certain: just as the MIB @5visits seem to originate from some psychic or mental link between the MIBs and the witness, so the consequences of the visit depend less on the MIBs than on the attitude adopted by the witness. If he takes the MIBs at their face value, if he believes their threats, he is liable to find himself heading for a breakdown: paranoia may develop, and he may believe himself followed everywhere, harassed by paranormal happenings such as strange telephone calls and poltergeist phenomena. It is even possible that these second- stage phenomena are genuine as far as the victim himself is concerned: they are manifestations of his fears - but none the less real for that - and will not disappear until he capitulates and gives up his UFO studies, if he is an investigator, or keeps quiet about his experiences if he is a witness. If, on the other hand, he braves the matter out - if he refuses to abandon his investigation, continues to tell the world of his experiences - it seems the MIBs are powerless against him. Carlos de los Santos, stopped on his way to a television interview by a gang of tough, threatening characters, was momentarily scared; he turned his car round, went home and cancelled the interview. But a friend reassured him and persuaded him not to let himself be intimidated: a fortnight later he gave the interview - and there wasn't a squeak from the MIBs! The MIB phenomenon is clearly worth studying carefully. Whatever the nature of the MIBs - whether they are wholly illusory, or whether there is a measure of reality in them - they exert a great deal of power over the minds of their victims. The better we @5understand them, the more we may learn about how such power my be deployed. And, if for no reason, the MIB phenomenon is important because it gives the sociologist a chance to study a legend in the making. The sinister MIB masquerade provides us with contemporary phenomena that rank with the witch, the vampire and the werewolf of times past. end.