From 'The Unexplained' No. 39.
Rarely - if ever - do the threats of the mysterious Men In
Black, following a close encounter, come to anything. So what
could be the purpose behind their visits?

In September 1976, Dr Herbert Hopkins, a 58 year-old doctor
and hypnotist, was acting as consultant on an alleged UFO
teleportation case in Maine, USA. One evening, when his wife and
children had gone out leaving him alone, the telephone rang and a
man identifying himself as vice-president of the New Jersey UFO
Research Organisation asked if he might visit Dr Hopkins that
evening to discuss certain details of the case. Dr Hopkins
agreed; at the time, it seemed the natural thing to do. He went
to the back door to switch on the light so that his visitor would
be able to find his way from the parking lot, but while he was
there, he noticed the man already climbing the porch steps. "I
saw no car, and even if he did have a car, he could not have
possibly gotten to my house that quickly from any phone," Hopkins
later commented in delayed astonishment.
At the time, Dr Hopkins felt no particular surprise as he
admitted his visitor, The man was dressed in a black suit, with
black hat, tie and shoes, and a white shirt, "I thought, he
looks like an undertaker," Hopkins later said. His clothes were
immaculate - suit unwrinkled, trousers sharply creased. When he
took off his hat, he revealed himself as completely hairless, not
only bald but without eyebrows or eyelashes. His skin was dead
white, his lips bright red. In the course of their conversation,
he happened to brush his lips with his grey suede gloves, and the
doctor was astonished to see that his lips were smeared and that
the gloves were stained with lipstick!
It was only afterwards, however, that Dr Hopkins reflected
further on the strangeness of his visitor's appearance and
behaviour. Particularly odd was the fact that his visitor stated
that his host had two coins in his pocket. It was indeed the
case. He then asked the doctor to put one of the coins in his
hand and to watch the coin, not himself. As Hopkins watched, the
coin seemed to go out of focus, and then gradually vanished.
"Neither you nor anyone else on this plane will ever see that
coin again," the visitor told him. After talking a little while
longer on general UFO topics, Dr Hopkins suddenly noticed that
the visitor's speech was slowing down. The man then rose
unsteadily to his feet and said, very slowly; "My energy is
running low - must go now - goodbye." He walked falteringly to
the door and descended the outside steps uncertainly, one at a
time. Dr Hopkins saw a bright light shining in the driveway,
bluish-white and distinctly brighter than a normal car lamp. At
the time, however, he assumed it must be the stranger's car,
although he neither saw nor heard it.

MYSTERIOUS MARKS

Later, when Dr Hopkins family had returned, they examined the
driveway and found marks that could not have been made by a car
because they were in the centre of the driveway, where the wheels
could not have been. But the next day, although the driveway had
not been used in the meantime, the marks had vanished.
Dr Hopkins was very much shaken by the visit, particularly
when he reflected on the extraordinary character of the
stranger's conduct. Not surprisingly, he was so scared that he
willingly complied wdith his visitor's instruction, which was to
erase the tapes of the hypnotic sessions he was conductiog with
regard to his current case, and to have nothing further to do
with the investigation.
Subsequently, curious incidents continued to occur both in Dr
Hopkin's household and in that of his eldest son. He presumed
that there was some link with the extraordinary visit, but he
never heard from his visitor again. As for the New Jersey UFO
Dr Hopkins' account is probably the most detailed we have of
a MIB (Man in Black) visit, and confronts us with the problem at
its most bizarre. First we must ask ourselves if a trained and
respected doctor whould invent so strange a tale, and if so, with
what conceivable motive? Alternatively, could the entire episode
have been a delusion, despite the tracks seen by other members of
his family? Could the truth lie somewhere between reality and
imagination? Could a real visitor, albeit an impostor making a
false identity claim, have visited the doctor for some unknown
reason of his own, somehow acting as a trigger for the doctor to
invent a whole set of weird features?
In fact, what seems the LEAST likely explanation is that the
whole incident took place in the doctor's imagination. When his
wife and children came home, they found him severely shaken, with
the house lights blazing, and seated at a table on which lay a
gun. They confirmed the marks on the driveway and a series of
disturbances to the telepnone that seemed to commence immediately
after the visit. So it would seem that some real event occurred,
although its nature remains mystifying.
The concrete nature of the phenomenon was accepted by the
United States Air Force, who were concerned that persons passing
themselves off as USAF personnel should be visiting UFO
witnesses. In February 1967, Colonel George P. Freeman,
Pentagon spokesman for the USAF's Project Blue Book, told UFO
investigator John Keel in the course of an interview:
"Mysterious men dressed in Air Force uniforms or bearing
impressive credentials from government agencies have been
silencing UFO witnesses. We have checked a number of these
cases, and these men are not connected with the Air Force in any
way. We haven't been able to find out anything about these men.
By posing as Air Force officers and government agents, they are
committing a federal offence. We would sure like to catch one.
Unfortunately the trail is always too cold by the time we hear
about these cases. But we are still trying."
But were the impostors referred to by Colonel Freeman, and Dr
Hopkin's strange visitor similar in kind? UFO sightings, like
sensational crimes, attract a number of mentally unstable
persons, who are quie capable of posing as authorised officials
in order to gain access to witnesses; and it could be that some
supposed MIBs are simply psuedo-investigators of this sort.
One particularly curious recurrent feature of MIB reports is
the ineptitude of the visitors. Time and again, they are
described as incompetent; and if they are impersonating human
beings, they certainly do not do it very well, arousing their
victims' suspicions by improbable behaviour, by the way they
look or talk, and by their ignorance as much as their knowledge.
But, of course, it could be that the only ones who are spotted
as impostors are those who are no good at their job, and so
there may be many more MIB cases that we never learn about
simply because the visitors successfully convince their victims
that there is nothing to be suspicious about, or that they should
keep quiet about the visit.

UNFULFILLED THREATS
A common feature of a great many MIB visits is indeed the
instruction to a witness not to say anything about the visit,
and to cease all activity concerning the case. (Clearly, we know
of these cases only because such instructions have been
disobeyed.) One Canadian UFO witness was told by a mysterious
visitor in 1976 to stop repeating his story and not to go
further into his case, or he would be visited by three men in
black. "I said, 'What's that supposed to mean?' 'Well,' he said,
' I could make it hot for you... it might cost you certain
injury." A year earlier, Mexican witness Carlos de los Santos
had been stopped on his way to a television interview by two
large black limousines. One of the occupants - dressed in a
black suit and 'Scandanavian' in appearance - told him: "Look,
boy, if you value your life and your family's too, don't talk
any more about this sighting of yours."
However, ther is no reliable instance of such threats ever
having been carried out, though a good many witnesses have gome
ahead and defied their warnings. Indeed, sinister though the
MIBs may be, they are notable for their lack of actual violence.
The worst that can be said of them is that they frequently
harass witnesses with untimely visits and telephone calls, or
simply disturb them with their very presence.
While, for the victim, it is just as well that the threats
of violence are not followed through, this is for the
investigator one more disconcerting aspect of the pnenomenon -
for violence, if it resulted in physical action, would at least
help in establishing the reality of the phenomenon. Instead, it
remains a fact that most of the evidence is purely hearsay in
character and often not of the highest quality; cases as
well-attested as that of Dr. Herbert Hopkins are unfortunately
in the minority.
Another problem area is the dismaying lack of precision
about many of the reports. Popular American writer Brad Steiger
alleged that hundreds of ufologists, contactees and chance
percipients of UFOs claim to have been visited by ominous
strangers - usually three, and usually dressed in black; but he
cites only a few actual instances. Similarly, John Keel, an
expert on unexplained phenomena, claimed that, on a number of
occasions, he actually saw phantom Cadillacs, complete with
rather sinister Oriental-looking passengers in black suits; but
for a trained reporter, he showed a curious reluctance to persue
these sightings or to give chapter and verse in such an important
matter. Such loose assertions are valueless as evidence; all
they do is contribute to the myth.
And so we come back once again to the possibility that there
is nothing more to the phenomenon than myth. Should we perhaps
write off the whole business as delusion, the creation of
imaginative folk whose personal obsessions take on this
particular shape because it reflects one or other of the
prevalent cultural preoccupations of out time? At one end of the
scale, we find contactee Woodrow Derenberger insisting that the
"two men dressed entirely in black" who tried to silence him
were emissaries of the Mafia; while at the other, there is
theorist David Tansley, who suggested that they are psychic
entities, representatives of the dark forces, seeking to prevent
the spread of true knowledge. More matter-of-factly, Dominick
Lucchesi claimed that they emanated from some unknown
civilisation, possibly underground, in a remote area of Earth -
the Amazon, the Gobi Desert or the Himalayas.
But there is one feature that is common to virtually all MIB
reports, and that perhaps contains the key to the problem. This
is the possession, by the MIBs, of information that they should
not have been able to come by - information that was restricted,
not released to the press, known perhaps to a few investigators
and officials but not to the public, and sometimes not even to
them. The one person who does possess that knowledge is always
the person visited, In other words, the MIBs and their victims
share knowledge that perhaps nobody else possesses. Add to this
the fact that, in almost every case, the MIBs appear to the
witness when he or she is alone - in Dr Hopkin's case, for
example, the visitor took care to call when his wife and
children were away from home, and established this fact by
telephone beforehand - and the implication has to be that some
kind of paranormal link connects the MIBs and the persons they
visit.

TRUTH - OR PARANOIA?
To this must be added other features of the phenomenon that
are not easily reconciled with everday reality. Where are the
notorious black cars, for instance, when they are not visiting
witnesses? Where are they garaged or serviced? Do they never get
involved in breakdowns or accidents? Can it be that they
materialise from some other plane of existence when they are
needed?
These are only a few of the questions raised by the MIB
phenomenon. What complicates the matter is that MIB cases lie
to the totally incredible. At one extreme are visits during
which nothing really bizarre occurs, the only anomalous feature
being, perhaps, that the visitor makes a false identity claim,
or has unaccountable access to private information. At the other
extreme are cases in which the only explanation would seem to be
that the witness has succumbed to paranoia. In "The Truth
About the Men In Black", UFO investigator Ramona Clark tells of
an unnamed investigator who was confronted by three MIBs on 3
July 1969. "On the window of the car in which they were riding
was the symbol connected with them and their visitations. This
symbol had a profound psychological impact upon this man. I have
never encountered such absolute fear in a human being."
The first meeting was followed by continual harassment.
There were mysterious telephone calls, and the man's house was
searched. He began to hear voices and to see strange shapes.
"Black Cadillacs roamed the street in front of his home, and
followed him everwhere he went. Once he and his family were
almost forced into an accident by an oncoming Cadillac.
Nightmares concerning MIBs plagued his sleep. It became
impossible for him to rest, his work suffered and he was scared
of losing his job."
Was it all in his mind? One is tempted to think so. But a
friend confirmed that, while they talked, there was a
strange-looking man walking back and forth in front of the
house. The man was tall, seemed about 55 years old - and was
dressed entirely in black.

CASEBOOK
The Odd Couple.
On 24 September 1976 - only a few days after Dr. Herbert
Hopkin's terrifying visit from a MIB - his daughter-in-law
Maureen received a telephone call from a man who claimed to know
her husband John, and who asked if he and a companion could come
and visit them.
John met the man at a local fast-food restaurant, and
brought him home with his companion, a woman. Both appeared to
be in their mid-thirties, and wore couriously old-fashioned
clothes. The woman looked particularly odd; when she stood up,
it seemed that there was something wrong with the way that her
legs joined her hips. Both strangers walked with very short
steps, leaning forward as though frightened of falling.
They sat awkwardly together on a sofa while the man asked a
number of detailed personal questions. Did John and Maureen
watch television much? What did they read? And what did they
talk about? All the while, the man was pawing and fondling his
female companion, asking John if this was all right and whether
he was doing it correctly.
John left the room for a moment, and the man tried to
persuade Maureen to sit next to him. He also asked her "how she
was made", and whether she had any nude photographs.
Shortly afterwards, the woman stood up and announced that
she wanted to leave. The man also stood, but made no move to go.
He was between the woman and the door, and it seemed that the
only way she could get to the door was by walking in a straight
line, directly through him. Finally the woman turned to John and
asked: "Please move him; I can't move him myself." Then,
suddenly, the man left, followed by the woman, both walking in
straight lines. They did not even say goodbye.

***End***


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