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You are here: Home / Archives for men in black

men in black

The Black Diary – Paranormal Podcast 538

June 5, 2018 By Jim Harold

Men In Black, Women In Black and Black Eyed Children are the terrifying subjects of this edition of The Paranormal Podcast with our guest, Nick Redfern.

You can find his new book on these subjects at Amazon.com: The Black Diary: M.I.B, Women in Black, Black-Eyed Children, and Dangerous Books

Thanks Nick!

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Get your first month for only 99 cents at gaia.com/jim

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Filed Under: Slider, The Paranormal Podcast Tagged With: Black Eyed Children, Black eyed kids, Jim Harold, men in black, Nick Redfern, The Paranormal Podcast, Women In Black

The Women In Black – Paranormal Podcast 442

August 2, 2016 By Jim Harold

You’ve heard of Men In Black but have you heard of their female counterparts? Nick Redfern joins us to talk about the mysterious Women In Black.

You can find his new book on the subject at Amazon.com: Women In Black: The Creepy Companions of the Mysterious M.I.B.

On part two, Joshua Shapiro joins us to talk about all things involving crystal skulls.

Thanks Nick & Joshua!

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Filed Under: Slider, The Paranormal Podcast Tagged With: Crystal Skulls, Jim Harold, Joshua Shapiro, men in black, Nick Redfern, Women In Black

Albert Bender and the Men in Black: Enduring Influences on Sci-Fi Entertainment – Nick Redfern

April 20, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Nick Redfern
Nick Redfern

On March 29, 2016, Albert Bender died at the age of 94. Most people with an interest in UFOs will know of Bender’s name. He was the man who thrust the Men in Black – and the mystery surrounding them – into the public domain in the 1950s.

Bender was not the first person to encounter one of the creepy MIB, but there’s no denying it was thanks to him that the enigmatic issue became known widely. When the “modern era” of Ufology kicked off in June 1947 – thanks to the famous encounter of Kenneth Arnold at Mt. Rainier on the 24th of the month – it prompted numerous people to get involved in the study of the phenomenon. One of those was Albert Bender

A resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bender was not just a devotee of all-things ufological. He was also heavily involved in – and interested in – all manner of paranormal, supernatural, and occult phenomena. He even converted his attic-based abode into what he termed his “Chamber of Horrors.” It was a dark and foreboding place filled with paintings of demons, witches, ghosts, and more – even an “altar,” one that was designed to summon up who knows what from who knows where.

As Bender’s interest in UFOs expanded, he established his own journal – Space Review – which attracted a sizeable, worldwide audience. And he created his own group too, the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB). It wasn’t long, however, before things began to go wrong for Bender. As in very wrong. Quite out of the blue, in 1953, Bender quit Ufology. He closed down the IFSB, stopped producing Space Review, and walked away from UFOs. It might be more accurate to say he fled Ufology.

Gray Barker – an author and publisher on matters relative to UFOs – was an acquaintance of Bender and ultimately became a friend. When he learned that Bender’s exit from Ufology was prompted by a series of chilling, intimidating visits from a trio of ghoulish men dressed in black – and with nothing less than glowing eyes and sporting fedoras – Barker knew this was a story that had to be told. And it was: in Barker’s 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. It should be noted, however, that Barker omitted most of the really weird material, preferring instead to imply that the MIB were from nothing stranger than “the government.” Then, six years later, Bender came briefly out of “retirement” to pen his own book on the eerie affair, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. After which, Bender left Ufology for good.

The purpose of this article is not to delve into all of the intricacies of the Bender controversy, but to demonstrate the incredible extent to which Bender’s account influenced the world of entertainment. Five years after Flying Saucers and the Three Men was published, ABC aired a short-lived, but well-remembered show called The Invaders. Running for just two seasons, The Invaders told the story of a man named David Vincent (actor Roy Thinnes) who finds himself caught up in a nightmarish battle against hostile aliens. In the show, the ETs are able to take on human form. The only things that give them away are their mutated little fingers. The show is filled with MIB imagery: the aliens on The Invaders often drive black cars (as do the real MIB), they wear dark suits and fedoras, they are very good at dishing out threats and intimidation, and they can control the human mind – something which has been reported in many MIB encounters. In other words, there’s very little doubt that the Bender saga had a major influence on how the brains behind The Invaders chose to present the alien menace. Not as bug-eyed little critters or as tentacle-waving monsters, but as emotionless men in suits.

The Invaders is hardly a solitary example of how the Men in Black have infected the world of on-screen entertainment. Indeed, there are many. Of course, the most visible and obvious example is the incredibly successful trilogy of Men in Black movies starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. In the movies, the primary characters are “J” and “K” (who were named after MIB pursuer and author John Keel, of The Mothman Prophecies fame). Whereas Bender’s MIB were clearly supernatural in nature, in the movies the Men in Black work for a super-secret agency. Nevertheless there’s no doubt that the Hollywood movies – based on Lowell Cunningham’s The Men in Black comic-book series of the 1990s – was, to some degree, inspired by Bender’s experiences.

Nick's Book On Men In Black
Nick’s Book On Men In Black

Then, there’s the equally popular and successful Matrix movies, starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishbourne. Those films, too, have their very own Men in Black. They’re known as “The Agents,” computer programs whose job it is to prevent anyone from getting close to the truth of the simulated world of the Matrix of the movies’ titles. The Agents are the Men in Black in all but name. They are emotionless and threatening, and they wear black suits and black sunglasses.

There are also “The Observers” from Fringe, a sci-fi-themed show that ran on Fox from 2008 to 2013. In the show, the Observers dress in dark suits, wear equally dark fedoras and skinny black ties, and have pale skin and emotionless faces and characters. Would they have even existed without Albert Bender’s widely publicized run-ins with the MIB? Probably not. At the very least, not in the form they appeared in the show.

Finally, we come to a 1998 movie that doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. Its title: Dark City. Not unlike The Matrix in many respects, Dark City – which was released in 1998, one year before The Matrix surfaced – is an intriguing production. It stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connolly, Richard O’Brien, and William Hurt. As the title suggests, Dark City revolves around a city which exists in perpetual night. We get to meet the people who inhabit it, and we soon learn that the city is not what it appears to be. In fact, reality itself is not what it appears to be. Dark City, too, has its equivalents of Albert Bender’s threatening thugs from beyond. They’re called “The Strangers.” Long black coats and dark hats are their uniforms.

In my view, and based upon my lengthy studies of the MIB phenomenon, the Strangers of Dark City are the closest fictional things to the real Men in Black. Pale-faced, they surface only at night. Threatening and dangerous, they are mind-controllers and manipulators who exude menace. Indeed, Richard O’Brien’s portrayal of one of the anemic-looking Strangers is masterful. Again, the Albert Bender imagery and story are present for all to see.

Dark City, Men in Black, The Matrix, The Invaders, and Fringe – and more – all owe a debt of gratitude to Albert Bender. Had it not been for that strange and sinister series of encounters in Bender’s “Chamber of Horrors” in the early 1950s, it’s highly unlikely any of those shows and movies would have turned out the way they did.

MORE PARANORMAL BRAINTRUST ARTICLES BY NICK REDFERN

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One of the most prolific Fortean writers on the planet, Nick Redfern is the author of many books, including Men in Black, Chupacabra Road Trip, and The Bigfoot Book. He can be contacted at his blog, “World of Whatever,” at nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com

Filed Under: If Its Weird Its Here, Nick Redfern, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Albert Bender, If It's Weird It's Here, Jim Harold, men in black, Nick Redfern

The Men In Black: Not Smith and Jones – Nick Redfern’s “If It’s Weird It’s Here”

October 15, 2015 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Nick RedfernOn the night of September 28, I was interviewed for 3-hours on Art Bell’s show, Midnight in the Desert. The subject of the Q&A was my new book, Men in Black: Personal Stories & Eerie Encounters. It was an interview which provoked a great deal of feedback and a number of previously unheard of encounters and confrontations with the MIB.

What I found particularly notable, however, was the fact that four of the people who contacted me after the show ended took issue with one particular matter I brought up time and again. As one of them worded it, “You stubbornly tell your readers the Men in Black are not Black-Ops.” He continued: “When you promote the Men in Black being paranormal you’re so far away from it.” “It” meaning “the truth,” I assume.

Well, no, actually, I’m not. At all. His words, however, did get me thinking about the way in which so many people interpret the MIB phenomenon. There can be absolutely no doubt that the three, phenomenally successful, Men in Black movies starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones – as agents J and K – have had a major bearing on the acceptance and ongoing development of the “secret agent” aspect of the MIB puzzle.

But, the reality of the situation is that – as entertaining as the movie-versions are – the real MIB are most assuredly not agents of any official body, whether of the government, the military, the intelligence community, or even of some rogue, “shadow” group. How can I be so sure? Because that’s what the vast majority of the witnesses are telling us! And it’s the witnesses who are so important when it comes to trying to unravel the truth of the MIB.

Take, for example, the guy who kicked things off in the early 1950s: Albert Bender, a Bridgeport, Connecticut UFO researcher who established the International Flying Saucer Bureau, only to quickly close it down when he was visited by three menacing men in dark suits. But, the terrible trio were not G-Men or James Bond-types. No. They were pale-faced, grim-looking things that had brightly shining eyes, and materialized (as in literally) in Bender’s bedroom and amid an overpowering odor of sulfur.

The MIB that turned up at Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 1960s, and when the Mothman phenomenon was at its height, were equally eerie: often short in stature and painfully thin, they were clearly unaccustomed to our ways and mannerisms. Most bizarre of all is the fact that some of them wore wigs and make-up – as if they were trying, but miserably failing, to appear more human than they really were.

Then there’s the matter of supernatural activity. I have more than a few reports on record where the MIB encounter had absolutely no UFO component to it whatsoever. Instead, the manifestation of the Men in Black was provoked by the witnesses dabbling in the worlds of Ouija boards, the occult, and Faustian pacts. In some of these cases, the witnesses experienced violent poltergeist activity in their homes after the milk-white ghouls visited them late at night.

Consider, too, the following from my Men in Black book, which comes from just one of many eyewitnesses to the MIB: “I haven’t told a lot of people about it. When I first saw the person I was about 1 or 2 years old. I have a very long memory. It was like the typical thing that you hear: it was this man who would stand in the doorway of my bedroom. I remember standing up in my crib and holding onto the bars and he wore a fedora and a tan raincoat and black trousers, shiny shoes and black leather gloves. His face wasn’t like someone who had been burned, but he just stood there and would grin. There was nothing friendly about the way he was grinning. It was horrible. Emotionless, didn’t blink. And he came off and on for a few years.

“Even as I got older and slept in my own bed I would wake up sometimes, like at 3 o’clock in the morning, and that went on. That still happens: all of a sudden I’ll be wide awake at 3 o’clock in the morning, for no apparent reason. But as a kid I’d wake up at 3 o’clock and he’d be there. I didn’t have any frame of reference for it. Of course, my mom didn’t believe me; she just thought I was dreaming.”

Even more bizarre – and certainly disturbing – are those cases in which people confronted by the MIB sometimes feel as if the dark-suited things are draining them of their self-will, and of nothing less than their life-force. We’re talking about vampires of the energy-sucking kind. And, of course, the pale skin and cadaverous appearances of the MIB are very apt when it comes to the issue of vampires. More than a few eyewitnesses to the Men in Black have told me they felt dizzy, very weak, clammy, and light-headed in their presence. Not unlike the situation that can occur when the blood-sugar of a diabetic plummets.

Then there’s the matter of not just the MIB but of their cars, too. Typically, they are of an old 1950s style, very often a black Cadillac. But the apparent age of the cars is not the strangest thing about them. I have many cases on file where the cars of the Men in Black vanished into oblivion. We’re talking about fading away, dematerializing, or becoming invisible: take your pick. In these particular cases, it’s almost as if the unfortunate souls confronted by the MIB have been plunged into some weird, altered state. Something akin to The Matrix scenario, in which reality as we perceive it is not actually as it is. In that sense, the cars may never really have existed – at least, not in the way we interpret the word “existed.”

Finally, we come to the most important issue of all. Although the Men in Black are most famous for issuing veiled – and, sometimes, not so veiled – threats, they rarely ever follow through on those threats. In fact, there are good indications that the entire experience is an ingenious and intricate ruse or game. It’s something akin to a stage-play, a bizarre piece of theater played out for the “benefit” of the witness. For some odd and unclear reason, the MIB are carefully following a precise script, one they rarely deviate from. Weirder still, the performers in this odd charade – the Men in Black, of course – barely seem self-aware. Maybe that’s because they’re not.

Whether supernatural and manipulative “Tricksters,” something of a near-unfathomable paranormal nature, alien-human hybrids, versions of the “Agents” from The Matrix, or something else, I don’t know. All I know for sure is one thing: Smith and Jones’ J and K they’re not.

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One of the most prolific Fortean writers on the planet, Nick Redfern is the author of many books, including Men in Black, Chupacabra Road Trip, and The Bigfoot Book. He can be contacted at his blog, “World of Whatever,” at nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com

Filed Under: If Its Weird Its Here, Nick Redfern, Slider, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Jim Harold, men in black, mib, Nick Redfern, Paranormal Braintrust

Weirdest Campfire Story Ever – Campfire 202

November 6, 2014 By Jim Harold

A police detective drops by to tell maybe the weirdest Campfire story we’ve ever heard, plus haunted houses and happening on this edition of the show!

–PROGRAMS 90 DAYS OR OLDER ARE AVAILABLE AT JIM’S PARANORMAL PLUS CLUB–

Filed Under: Jim Harold's Campfire, Slider Tagged With: campfire, ghost stories, Haunted Houses, Jim Harold's Campfire, men in black

Men In Black with Nick Redfern – Paranormal Podcast 201

August 1, 2011 By Jim Harold

Men In Black aren’t just the topic of a series of popular motion pictures, they are real.  Nick Redfern tells us about these mysterious “men” and their connection to the UFO phenomena.

You can find the book at Amazon.com:

The Real Men In Black: Evidence, Famous Cases, and True Stories of These Mysterious Men and their Connection to UFO Phenomena

Thanks Nick!

–PROGRAMS 90 DAYS OR OLDER ARE AVAILABLE AT JIM’S PARANORMAL PLUS CLUB–

Filed Under: The Paranormal Podcast Tagged With: Jim Harold, Jim Harold's Campfire, men in black, Nick Redfern, Paranormal Talk, Paranormal Talk Radio

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