Men in Black
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 📖 Term
Contents 7
| Type | Term |
|---|---|
| On the Timeline | 3 events, 1954–2009 |
Men in black (MIB) are figures in UFO folklore described as men in dark suits who visit witnesses after a sighting and question, intimidate or threaten them into silence. They are variously interpreted as government agents, supernatural beings or the product of hoaxes and folklore, and inspired the Men in Black comics and films.[1][2]
Origins
One of the earliest accounts comes from Harold Dahl, who claimed that in 1947, after his alleged Maury Island sighting near Tacoma, Washington, a man in a dark suit warned him not to talk about it; the Maury Island case is generally considered a hoax. In the 1950s, Albert K. Bender, who ran an amateur group called the International Flying Saucer Bureau in Connecticut, abruptly closed it in 1953, saying three men in dark suits had visited him and told him to stop investigating. He believed they were government agents.[1]
Gray Barker and John Keel
Bender's story was popularised by writer Gray Barker in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956), whose cover showed shadowy figures. Barker later published Bender's own book. John Sherwood later said that as a teenager in the late 1960s he helped Barker create a hoax about mysterious "blackmen", which Barker then published as fact.[1][3]
Writer John Keel described many MIB encounters in connection with the 1966–67 Mothman sightings in West Virginia, portraying the visitors as strange, almost supernatural beings with odd skin, stilted speech and unfamiliar behaviour. Keel himself recounted being mistaken for an MIB when he knocked on a door at night to use the telephone, an example of how ordinary events could feed the legend.[1][4]
Official records
In March 1967, Air Force assistant vice chief of staff Lt. Gen. Hewitt Wheless sent a memo to commanders warning that people claiming to be Air Force officers had visited UFO witnesses, in one case taking a photograph, and asking units to report such impostors. It is often cited as official acknowledgement that such visits were being reported.[5]
Interpretations
Folklorist James R. Lewis compared MIB stories to traditional tales of encounters with the devil, and historian Aaron Gulyas has traced how they became woven into wider conspiracy theories from the 1970s to the 1990s. Others suggest some visitors were real intelligence officers or hoaxers.[1][6]
In popular culture
Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers created The Men in Black comic, which inspired the 1997 film Men in Black and its sequels; the 1997 TV film The Shadow Men treated the idea more seriously.[1]
On the UAP Timeline
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- 4602d AISS crashed-object claim (1954) (14 October 1954) — A Marine aviator says he was told an Air Force intelligence squadron ran a crashed-object program.
- Wheless memo on UFO impostors (1967) (1 March 1967) — An Air Force memo warns of men in uniform telling UAP witnesses to stay silent.
- Georgia witness visited by agents (2009) (8 May 2009) — A Georgia UAP witness says government agents visited him twice.
References
- Men in black — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "The legacy of 'men' in black", CNN (24 May 2012) · cnn.com · archived copy
- John C. Sherwood, "Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker", Skeptical Inquirer · web.archive.org · archived copy
- The Mothman Prophecies — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Hewitt T. Wheless — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Aaron Gulyas, Conspiracy Theories (2016) — Google Books · books.google.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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