Notes For Unsolved: Men In Black

Research notes for Supernatural Season 1 Episode 1

**Research compiled for Ryan on April 13, 2016 by Leena Gundapaneni.

Men in Black

• Men in Black have been described as dressing in black suits, having no facial hair, large eyes, and robotic voices.
  
• Lecture on Men in Black by John Keel, journalist and UFOlogist
  
• Men in Black usually travel in threes.
  
• It’s a generic term that applies to all types of mystery men, not just those that appear to people who’ve seen UFOs.
  
• Men in Black seem to appear to talk to two categories of people - those who claim to have seen a UFO and those who research UFOs.
  
• They threaten people and warn them not to speak about their UFO encounters / research.
  

Maury Island Incident

• In June 1947, Harold Dahl reported seeing 6 giant donut-shaped objects in the sky, one of which was falling apart, spewing chunks of debris that looked like metal and lava rock. Some of the debris killed his dog and injured his son.
  
• Dahl said that he took photos of the debris, but that a man in dressed in black fogged over the pictures and told him not speak of the incident.
  
• Many now consider the incident to be a hoax.
  
• According to declassified FBI documents, Dahl “did not admit to (name blacked out) that his story was a hoax but only stated that if questioned by authorities he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want any further trouble in the matter.”
  
• Scott Schaeffer, director/producer of a movie about the Maury Island incident stated:
  

“I think something happened. I don’t know if it was aliens or a military test, but something did happen because it was a pretty detailed description that didn’t change. And it was unusual in that it happened at 2 p.m., so it was not a misidentified aircraft.”

“If it is a hoax, we’re dealing with some of the best storytellers of the 20th Century, because they created the mythology of the ‘man in black’ with this hoax. Until then, there had never been a ‘man in black’ associated with any kind of unusual sightings, flying discs. This is the first one. So they (Dahl and his cohorts on the boat) created one of the most fantastic antagonists in science fiction history.”

Robert Richardson

• In 1967, Robert Richardson reported that he collided with a UFO while driving at night.
  
• He came around a bend in the road and saw an object in the road. He was unable to stop in time and hit the object lightly. On impact, the object vanished. Police who arrived at the scene saw Richardson’s skid marks as he tried to stop, but found no evidence of an object. Richardson later visited the site alone and found a lump of metal that might have come from the object.
  
• 3 days after this incident, 2 men appeared at Richardson’s home and questioned him. They appeared to be in their 20s. They did not identify themselves and Richardson did not ask them to. Richardson reported that they left in a black Cadillac. He took note of the plates but states that when he checked them, he could not find a match.
  
• A week later, Richardson was visited by 2 different men, wearing black suits. He noticed that one spoke with an accent and appeared somehow foreign. They asked him to turn over the piece of metal. Richardson told him he had turned it over for testing, and this angered the men. They threatened him, stating, "If you want your wife to stay as pretty as she is, then you'd better get the metal back". As far as Richardson knew, only he, his wife, and two members of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation (APRO) knew about the piece of metal at this time. He never heard from the men again.
  

Albert Bender

• Sources: (Part 1) (Part 2) — note these have since been taken down
  
• Albert Bender, a UFOlogist, had his first Men in Black sighting in the 1953.
  
• He, along with many members of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, had determined that they would try contacting the occupants of flying saucers via mental telepathy. Each member would do so on their own, by laying down with their eyes closed in a quiet spot and think about contacting the interplanetary craft by repeating the same message over and over in their mind. They would all do so at the same times which were agreed upon in advance by the Bureau.
  
• Bender conducted the experiment as planned and reported having a strange experience. On his third attempt at contacting UFOs, he reported the following:
  
• He felt a cold chill throughout his entire body.
  
• Then he smelled a sulphur / spoiled eggs type of smell.
  
• He partly lost consciousness and saw small blue lights swimming around on his brain.
  
• Then he felt as though he were floating around in space, disconnected from his body. His temples were throbbing and his forehead felt swollen. He also felt very cold. He opened his eyes and could see that he was indeed floating about 3 feet over his own body, which was still in bed. He was surrounded by darkness.
  
• At this point, he heard a voice which stated, “We have been watching you and your activities. Please be advised to discontinue delving into the mysteries of the universe. We will make an appearance if you disobey."
  
• Albert asked,"Why aren't you friendly to us, as we do not mean to do any harm to you?" "We have a special assignment and must not be disturbed by your people," was the reply. The voice continued, “We are among you and know your every move, so please be advised we are here on your Earth."
  
• The voice stopped speaking, but Albert sensed a presence in the room, watching him. Albert felt himself return to his body, and then he saw a shadow that looked like a man. The room was filled with yellow mist. The shadow disappeared as Albert tried to rise from his bed.
  
• He looked at his clock and noticed that 5 minutes had passed. His head was still throbbing and his eyes still felt puffy. When he got out bed, he noticed that the radio was on, but he did not turn it on before entering the room. He had noticed that the radio had been strangely on a few times previously as well.
  
• The room smelled of sulphur for the next two days.
  
• Albert did not immediately tell the other Bureau members about for fear of being called a crackpot or a fraud, but after some time, he decided to write about the incident for Space Review. He spoke with two Bureau members about it, and they thought he had invented the story and told him not to write about it.
  
• Albert wrote up his experience anyway, intending to preserve it and submit it to someone in Washington DC. He locked the report in a box for a few days while deciding whether or not to mail it, but when he decided to mail it, he found that the report had vanished…. And that it smelled like sulphur.
  
• Later, Albert went on vacation for two weeks. When he returned, he noticed the sulphur smell in his room again, though everything appeared to be untouched. The radio was on again, with the dial set to a part where no stations come in (this was always the case when he found the radio on). His stepfather told him that nobody had been in the room. As he was going to bed, he started to feel dizzy and his temples and eyes began throbbing again. He saw blue lights swirling around the room. His body became ice cold.
  
• He saw three shadowy figured floating about a foot off the floor. Albert stated he had the “feeling of being washed clean.” The men were dressed in black clothes and wore Homburg-style hats. The mens’ eyes “lit up like flash bulbs” as they looked at him. Albert stated that it seemed they were burning into his soul, sending a message via telepathy. The message as something like:
  

"You have dedicated yourself to the solution of the strange problem of unidentified objects in your atmosphere. Your interest is deep and sincere and you have devoted many hours to it. We also know that such interest and determination might lead to something that could bring you harm. We feel that you are a very good contact for us on your planet of Earth. You are an average person, and we know that what we tell you and show you will not be believed by anyone you might tell.”

"You are not a person of great renown on your planet; therefore we have nothing to fear at present. We have a purpose for being here, and we will be here for some time yet. We must not be disturbed in our ultimate goal. As you see us here, we are not in our natural form. We have found it necessary to take on the look of your people while we are here. This is mainly used as a means of returning here without being detected by anyone. We have made numerous contacts with Earth by means of craft from our own base and at present we have craft hidden at a remote spot on your planet. We have found it necessary to go to great extremes at times to frighten off your Earth people, and it has resulted in their deaths. We have also found it necessary to carry off Earth people to use their bodies to disguise our own.“

"We wish to keep in touch with you and tell you many things because one day you will write about this, and we are certain that nobody will believe you, but you will be much wiser than anyone else on your planet. You will know what is out there in space, and you will know what the future holds for your mankind. You will see all three of us again, but we shall not reveal our names as they would mean nothing to you. Refer to us as Numbers 1, 2 and 3. We will answer according to number. We will leave with you a small piece of metal similar to your coins. It is to be kept in a secret place of your own. We wish to have you come with us at a time to be announced to you soon."

• Albert wrote —
  

“I was to keep the piece of metal and when I wished to make contact with them I should hold it tightly in my palm and close my eyes, at the same time repeating "Kazik", and turn on my radio. I should contact them in two days, at this same time. As they gave me this information, one of them went to my radio, turned it on and switched the dial. I asked him mentally why he was doing it, and he replied only that it was a method of getting back to their base.”

• A very light, very hard piece of metal was in Albert’s hand when he found himself back on the bed. He said that it was very shiny, almost like a light. He locked it away in a box and went back to sleep. The next day, he went to the box to retrieve the metal, but it was gone.
  
• 2 days later, he looked in the box again, and the piece of metal was there. Albert writes that he used the metal as instructed to contact the men, by holding it in his hand, switching on the radio, and repeating the word Kazik. Again, his body became cold and he lay down on his bed.
  
• Albert found himself seated on a chair in a glass dome with no doors and a glass ceiling, through which he could see the sky and stars. A person joined him in the dome who showed him a 3-D image of a place far away, and explained the history of earth. The person said that they take a chemical from Earth’s seas to help them survive. He stated that some of his people were in the Pentagon.
  
• (This goes on and on, check the original source for more).
  

Jim Templeton and the Solway Spaceman

• In 1964, Jim Templeton, his wife, and his daughter were on a daytime outing in Burgh Marsh (in the UK). Jim took a photograph of his Elizabeth, his daughter. When the photograph was later developed, it looked as though a mysterious figure was standing behind Elizabeth. Jim claimed that he did not see a person standing behind her when the photo was taken, and that his family was the only one there that day, other than two pensioners who were sitting in a car.
  
• The photograph caused a media frenzy, with many becoming convinced that the figure was a man in a white spacesuit with a dark visor. People from all over the world wrote letters to Jim, providing their explanations for the figure in the photograph.
  
• Eventually, two men came to visit Him. He states that they asked to be taken to the location where the photograph was taken. They referred to each other only as “Number 9” and “Number 11.”
  
• Jim states that they arrived at the fire station (where he worked) in a brand new black Jaguar. They asked to see where the photo was taken and when Jim asked them for proof of identity, he claims he was shown a white card with an official crest and the word “Security” written on it. Jim recalls that they said they were from “the Ministry” and that he didn’t need to know their names. They referred to each other by numbers 9 and 11. Jim stated that they did not seem familiar with the area as they did not know how to get around or how to pronounce the names of local places. Once they reached the location, the men asked, “This is where you saw the large man, the alien?” Jim said that no, he hadn’t seen anyone. The men then drove off in their Jaguar, leaving Jim stranded there. He reported that he had to walk to the nearest garage and call for a taxi.
  
• Dr. David Clarke met with Jim before he died in 2011, and was not convinced that these “Men in Black” were from the government, as Jim may have thought. One theory is that the two men were civilians who were curious about alien phenomena who attempted to pose as officials in hopes of getting more information.
  
• He also thinks the figure behind Elizabeth was actually Jim’s wife. Overexposure in the shot made her light blue dress look white, like a NASA astronaut’s suit.
  
• (There is another tangent to this story about how similar astronaut figures appeared at the location of an upcoming rocket test in Woomera, Australia at around the same time Jim’s photo was taken. No Men in Black tie-in with that tangent though.)
  

Jack and Mary Robinson / Timothy Green Beckley

This photo was purportedly taken by Timothy Green Beckley, a friend of the Robinsons.

Jack Robinson was a UFO researcher in the 1960s. In 1968, he and his wife Mary began experiencing some strange activity. They would come home from a night out to an apartment that appeared to have been rummaged through. Mary started noticing a man standing across the street from their building. Mary reported that he seemed unemotional and zombie-like. After she had seen him there for three days in a row, Tim decided to go see for himself, and managed to snap this picture.

Herbert Hopkins

• Dr. Herbert Hopkins was studying UFOs on September 11, 1976. He got a phone call from a man who said he represented a New Jersey UFO organization. The man asked if Herbert was alone and said he wanted to talk to Hopkins about his research. Hopkins agreed to do so.
  
• After hanging up the phone, Hopkins went to turn the lights on outside, and the man was already coming up the stairs to Hopkins’s door. “If he was even as close as across the street or next door telephoning, he could not possibly have gotten here as soon as I did to turn on the light for him,” said Hopkins.
  
• “He wore a neatly tailored black suit, black shoes, black socks, a white shirt with black tie, and he wore a black derby. You don’t see derbies very often, and I thought to myself, ‘This guy looks just like an undertaker.’ When he sat down, he removed his derby.
  
• “This character was as bald as an egg. He didn’t even have eyebrows or eyelashes. It looked like he had smooth, plastic skin — like a doll except that it was a dead-white color,” Hopkins said.
  
• “His lips were a brilliant ruby red, and he spoke in an expressionless, monotone, scanning speech. He constructed no phrases and sentences — just a sequence of words evenly spaced. His voice was completely passive with no inflection or intonation, as if you were hearing it from a machine that could talk.”
  
• The man told Hopkins to take a coin out of his pocket. “He said, ‘Watch the coin,’ and it started to develop a silver color instead of copper, and then the silver became bluish and the penny was getting quite fuzzy, out of focus, blurred, and then it simply was gone — it slowly dematerialized.”
  
• After this, the man ordered Hopkins to destroy his UFO research.
  
• “As he spoke his last words, I noticed his speech was slowing down. His words became slower and farther spaced. He slowly got to his feet, unsteadily, and he said very slowly, ‘My — energy — is — running — low — must — go — now — goodbye.’ Just like that.”
  
• Hopkins was scared and proceed to destroy his UFO research after the man left.
  
• Hopkins’s nephew, Howard Hopkins, states that his uncle was an avid sci-fi reader, a “fantasy-prone individual,” and craved being the center of attention, sometimes making things up.
  
• Howard also writes —
  

“And for much of the ‘70s and 80s, he was an alcoholic. Every night was spent alone with a magnum of wine (he made his own wine, too, in a still in the basement). He would stumble up the stairs at about 5am, tripping over the “invisible dog”. How did I know about the invisible dog? Well, a handful of times when I was sleeping over I would be awake and hear that tripping and the inevitable curse, “goddamn dog!” The real dog, incidentally, was next to me on the bed, staring out at the hall, wondering what the hell the thud had been. The bottom line for this particular Man in Black tale is unfortunately pretty mundane. This mysterious being in black, inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol, probably less of malicious intent and more from some sad need for attention, was, alas, a simple lie, one that needs to be corrected for those into serious research in this area.”

Peter Rojcewicz

(this guy is in LA and has written academically about MIBs)

Dr. Rojcewicz, who has studied Men in Black along with UFOs and folklore, reported being visited by a Man in Black while reading in a library. Dr. Rojcewicz describes him as appearing very suddenly, almost “like he had dropped from the ceiling,” and then he began talking about UFOs. He was tall, pale, thin, and dressed in a black suit, according to Dr. Rojcewicz. He tried to talk to Dr. Rojceswicz about flying saucers, but the Dr. said he wasn’t interested. This pissed off the MIB, and though the Dr. tried to calm him down, the MIB vanished as quickly as he arrived.

Dan Aykroyd

• Dan Aykroyd has been interested in UFOs since childhood.
  
• He sold a television show called Out There to the Sci-Fi channel and had completed interviews on a wide range of topics including crop circles, cattle mutilations, UFOs, and alien abductions.
  
• While conducting further interviews, Dan stepped outside for a break. He states that he was on the phone with Britney Spears speaking about an upcoming SNL guest appearance.
  
• While speaking on the phone and smoking a cigarette, Dan says he saw a black Ford sedan appear suddenly across the street. Dan thought it was “definitely a police car.” He says two men got out of the car. The man who got out of the back seat was quite large. This man looked right at him, giving him a dirty look. Dan says he looked away for a brief second while speaking on the phone to Britney, and when he turned back, the car was gone. He never saw the car go past him or make a U-turn. He says the car “vanished” and was “a cloaked vehicle of some type.”
  
• Shortly after this occurrence, the TV series was cancelled.
  

Niagara Falls hotel video

Shane Sovar reported seeing a UFO while working at a hotel in Niagara Falls. “It seemed to be 50 to 75 feet over the hotel," he stated.

Video circulated in YouTube purported to be of two Men in Black entering the hotel lobby (I could not find any reliable source tying the video to this hotel)

John Keel

• John Keel was a journalist and UFOlogist who maintained an interest in chronicling Men in Black stories.
• He has noted the following about reported Men in Black encounters:
  

The Men threaten the person they contact, and may make deliberately unsuccessful threats on their lives. The Men may kidnap and hypnotize their subjects, often leaving them with a black eye.

Experts you could try contacting

[redacted]