Forums · The Men in Black by Brad Steiger
The Men in Black: The Early Days--Paranoia, the Paranormal, and Alien SS
By Brad Steiger
On Monday, September 1, my colleague Paul Dale Roberts sent me an email stating that he was going to interview an individual who claimed to have been a Man in Black, one of the infamous MIB, tormenters of UFO witnesses and researchers. I told Paul that I couldnt wait to read it. A few hours later, I was reading his extraordinary interview with Mr. Q, and today I was enormously pleased to see that the ever-alert Don Allis had run the piece in Alien Seeker: Reporting Anomalous News.
Pauls excellent interview--which I felt set just the proper tone for such an interview with an individual who may be lying and deliberately spreading disinformation or who may be telling the truth and providing us with another piece of the Great UFO Puzzle--got me to recalling some of the encounters with the MIB that my fellow researchers and I underwent back in the late 60s.
In the period from 1966 to 1970, dozens of UFOlogists, contactees, and chance percipients of UFO's claimed to have been visited by ominous strangers--usually three, usually dressed in black--who made it painfully clear that they would violently enforce their orders to see to it that investigators discontinued flying saucer research and surrendered all photographs or artifacts. Often the threats were punctuated with the assertion that cooperation with the men in black was essential for the good of "your family, your country, and your world." In many ways, the MIB seemed as though the spirits of the Nazi SS had been resurrected as enforcers for Alien invaders.
By June 24, 1967, a number of us UFOlogists gathered at the Commodore Hotel in New York to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the UFO sighting that brought the term "flying saucers" to our language (Kenneth Arnold spotted the saucer-shaped craft near Mount Rainier, Washington, on June 24, 1947), paranoia concerning the MIB was climbing toward an all-time high. The final match to be thrown on the psychological tinder was the announcement of the death of Frank Edwards on that same special anniversary day.
Edwards was a radio personality who for many years had made a hobby of broadcasting stories on UFO's and psychic phenomena. At the time of his death Edwards was recognized as the King of Communicators in the field of UFOlogy.
Suddenly he was dead. What were the causes?
Cerebral hemorrhage, agreed many UFOlogists in the crowded corridors of the Commodore Hotel, for that was the principal means of dealing death to UFO witness in the popular television series of the day, The Invaders, starring Roy Thinnes.
Before his death, Frank Edwards had made several comments about attempts to silence him. He had had a highly successful radio program sponsored by the American Federation of Labor. Then, according to Edwards, the show had been dropped and he had been given his walking papers for devoting too many program minutes to discussions about flying saucers. It was his contention that his constant mentions of the UFO enigma had become irritating to the Defense Department--Edwards consistently maintained that the Air Force was guilty of a gigantic cover-up on the subject--and that they had brought pressure to bear on George Meany, President of the AFL.
Had the UFO silencers eliminated Frank Edwards? A lot of UFOlogists thought so, and that we were being infiltrated by some powerful agency from another world, and that the three men in black were representatives of this group's intelligence arm.
In an issue of Saucer Scoop, a UFO newsletter published by Joan Whritenour, John A. Keel stated in an "Open Letter to All UFO Researchers" that he considered the MIB professional terrorists who included among their duties, "the harassment of UFO researchers who become involved in cases which might reveal too much of the truth." Keel commented that the victim of the MIB appeared to be subjected to "some sort of brainwashing technique that leaves him in a state of nausea, mental confusion, or even amnesia lasting for several days."
Keel went on to declare:
Contacts are being made ... then suppressed .. on a dizzying scale. Information is being gained... and lost... at an ever-increasing pace. One of the ironies of all this is that no policeman in his right mind associates black cars, kidnappers, amnesia victims, and black eyes with the UFO phenomena. Many of these cases never get beyond local police departments. Neither the FBI nor any other central government agency is engaged in collecting information on these aspects. Even local newspapers seldom take notice of these cases.
Because the official law-enforcement agencies are unwilling or unable, to cope with this growing situation, it becomes the responsibility of the private civilian investigator to collect and collate the full details on these incidents. The hazards of such investigations are obvious, but the job must be done .... We must switch our attention from the vehicles to the occupants. The menace is not in our skies. It is on the ground, and at this moment it is spreading like a disease across the country and the world.
Most of the UFO percipients and investigators reported being threatened by (most often) shortish men with dark complexions, somewhat Asian features, and heavy accents. A number claimed to have received later contact with "aliens" through their home television or radio sets. According to numerous accounts, the aliens' frequency interrupted normal programming. Robed figures instructed the saucer sighters to cooperate with them and to keep their information confidential. In exchange for this silence and cooperation, the aliens promised that the UFO percipients would be permitted to work with them on certain marvelous projects that would benefit humankind.
******
Now I have no doubt that there was/is a physical aspect to the MIB phenomenon. I have no doubt that in many cases the mysterious interrogators may have been associated with the military, some black branch of the government--and in certain instances over-eager and possessive UFO researchers from civilian groups attempting to claim certain cases as their private property.
But I am also convinced that this phenomenon--like so many associated with the UFO enigma--also has a paranormal aspect that may very often become extremely powerful, perhaps overwhelmingly so, to the investigator who has not prepared himself carefully for the remarkably complex interlocking realities of the UFO mystery.
In the spring of 1968, a magazine writer asked me to come along as an expert observer on an interview with a contactee who claimed a particularly vivid experience aboard a flying saucer. We left on a Friday, planning to spend the weekend in a motel, and since the contactee lived in a large city with numerous motels, we did not make any reservations.
At the same time, since I had been hearing rather eerie reports about the harassment of UFO researchers, I had decided to pick a motel at random and not even tell our wives where we were staying. To check with our respective homes and be certain all was well, we agreed to call from pay telephones, rather than the telephone in the room.
We met the contactee, recorded his most interesting (and greatly convincing) story, and returned to our homes three days later.
Shortly after I had returned home (I had 200 miles farther to travel than the magazine writer), I received a telephone call from him. In very disturbed tones he told me he had received a call from a rather unctuous (if anonymous) individual who had detailed our every action of the past few days, including the name of the motel we had stayed in and the food we had ordered for our meals. The writer concluded that all the time that we thought we had been carefully covering our tracks, we had been under close surveillance.
A few days later, after midnight, the writer telephoned me again, obviously distraught. Books had been jumping off the shelves in his office, he told me. He was aware of mysterious presences. On two nights he had been awakened by a smallish man cloaked in shimmering light, who, like some intergalactic traveling evangelist, attempted to sell him on the idea of working with them in their cause. "Become one of our workers in the vineyard of Earth," my friend claimed to have been proselytized. "Join us. Work with us."
******
It was about that time that crucial data that fellow UFO researchers had sent to me in the mail either never arrived or came on the scene days later than the postmark would indicate that it should. All sorts of mail began to arrive taped shut with Opened by Mistake either stamped or written on the envelopes. On the other hand, some pieces arrived overnight from great distances--without a postmark.
Once while speaking to a fellow researcher on the telephone, our conversation was interrupted by a metallic-sounding voice chanting: "Ho, ho, UFO!"
Strangely enough, my friends seemed to endure the most peculiar telephone nonsense. An officer in the Navy Reserves, who had expressed an interest in the UFO enigma, finally asked me please not to discuss UFO's with him on the telephone ever again. Both at the office and at home, he found he was "sharing" his private line with some undetermined other parties. On two occasions when I had been speaking with him, a voice had broken in, mumbled a few words, then apologized for the intrusion. His wife absolutely refused to permit me to discuss the subject in her presence because of the bad dreams she had been suffering in connection with UFO's.
In another city a businessman who had been doing a great deal of research on my behalf told of the time when he was anticipating a visit from me. He picked up the telephone to make a call on his private line, only to hear the following bit of conversation:
"Has he arrived in town yet?"
"Not yet."
"What motel will he be staying in'"
"The [correct name of the motel in which I had made reservations].
Don't worry. Everything is set.
At this point my friend broke in and asked who the hell was on his private line. There was a stunned silence, a click, then the steady buzzing that indicated a clear line.
******
One may build a case, I suppose, that any or all of the above was simply a series of rather remarkable coincidences.
The following incident is a bit more difficult to explain away, however.
A friend of mine was traveling in England before continuing on to Vietnam to visit his son in the armed forces. He was walking near a railway station in London when he noticed three men dressed completely in black staring at him.
When my friend returned their collective stare, they approached him and asked him which train they should take for such-and-such a city. My friend calmly pointed out that he was a tourist, and it made a good deal more sense for them to ask at the information booth just a few feet away.
My friend turned on his heel and walked away from the odd trio, but a glance over his shoulder told him that they were still standing there staring at him, disregarding his advice to check with the information booth. Suddenly ill at ease, my friend hailed a taxi and went directly to his hotel.
When he got to his room, an uncomfortable sensation prickled the back of his neck and he glanced out his window.
On the street corner, looking up at his room, were the three men. Baffled, he tried to push the incident from his mind.
A day or so later, though, he was confronted by one of the men as he walked to his hotel who told him straight out: "You are a friend of Brad Steiger. Tell him we shall visit him by Christmas."
My friend had only a peripheral knowledge of the UFO can of worms, but he returned to his hotel room and wrote me a long letter with the above details. How could three odd little guys in London know that he was a friend of mine?
******
Not long after I had received his letter, I visited an associate in another city and told him about the bizarre experience that my friend had encountered in London.
"Humph!" Jim snorted over the lunch we were sharing. "If those monkeys come to see you this Christmas, send 'em down to talk to me. I'd love to get one of those characters in my hands. I would solve this man-in-black mystery you've been telling me about!"
I warned him that he had better be careful or he might get his wish.
Later, Jim told me that I had no sooner started my homeward journey than he was told that a gentleman wished to see him. A secretary ushered a man of average height into Jim's office--a man, my friend said, who was the thinnest human being he had ever seen.
"He was cadaverous, Brad," Jim told me. "But he seemed alert enough, and so involved in his mission that he ignored my offered hand of greeting. In fact, I tried to push shaking his hand, but he refused to touch me.
"'I hear you want to be the head of UFO's in Iowa,' he said quickly.
He took out a wallet, flipped it open, then shut, before I could see any identification. I can't really recall anything else he said, because it was all so damned nonsensical. Soon he was gone, and I was still sitting there dumbfounded.
"I jumped to my feet, though, when I heard his car starting. I got a good look at his automobile, and I wrote down its license number. I can't tel1 you what make of car it was. It looked like a combination of three or four different makes and models, but it didn't real1y look like anything I had ever seen before. And the license number didn't check. The Highway Patrol said there was no such Iowa plate registered. A friend in another branch of state government, who owed me a favor, said the plate wasn't registered to any government agent, either."
******
Steve, a UFO investigator, had an experience with unidentified and mysterious interrogators in September, 1966. He was working the night shift in a large pulp-and-paper plant in northern Michigan when he was paid an enigmatic visit by two dark-complexioned men dressed completely in black.
''The first thing to come to my mind was the odd hour of the visit--three o'clock in the morning--and the rather puzzling appearance of the intruders," Steve told me.
The two men asked him about the UFO case that he was investigating, but Steve played it cautiously and told them he had given up flying saucer research.
"The two evidently seemed satisfied with my replies, for they suddenly turned and walked out of the room. By this time I had an inkling of who they were--or rather, who they were not. (My first impression was that they were from the government.) I jumped up from my chair and hurried out the door in pursuit--not more than twenty seconds behind them.
"Upon reaching the doorway, I paused and looked down the corridor. They could only have gone in one direction--but they were not in sight. They had vanished.
"I moved forward slowly. About ten feet from the door I experienced an odd feeling--a sense of dissipated energy, or a residual electrical current, somewhat akin to the sensation one experiences when standing in a very powerful magnetic field. I rechecked the spot every few minutes, and noticed it ebb and fade) until it was completely unnoticeable in half an hour.
"I talked with fellow workers in and around the building in which I was working, and they reported seeing no one. Checks with the plant guard substantiated my belief--no one had signed in at the industrial complex that night."
******
Although I didn't become as deeply embroiled in MIB activities as certain of my fellow researchers, I did tread on the periphery of their vortex of swirling, nightmarish games. And from time to time I did slip into the court where the contest was being played. I endured the "smellies"--vile, odorous attacks of some invisible entity not in the least concerned about personal hygiene. And closely associated with the disagreeable odors were regular poltergeistic plunderings of my office.
But then I stumbled on a clue that may just solve the puzzle of who at least some of the MIB might really be.
The revelation occurred one night as I sat in my office, desperately working over Lucretia, my faithful 1923 Underwood typewriter. I heard the heavy sound of footsteps at the top of the stairs. A quick glance told me that no one was there.
A favorite painting of Edgar Allan Poe fell to the floor. I became irritated. I had to work to meet a deadline on a magazine article. I had no time to play.
Papers began to rustle off to my side. A single sheet became airborne.
I had had enough. I looked up from my typewriter, rolled my eyes upward in disgust, and shouted: "Just cut it the hell out!"
Everything stopped. There was literally the sound of silence. I experienced the same kind of sensation one has when he walks into a crowded, noisy room, and everyone suddenly stops talking. The very air seemed less crowded and oppressive. I went back to my writing without taking any further notice of anything other than the work at hand.
Every kind of intelligence, regardless of how high or how low, wishes to be recognized. Nothing shuts up any thinking entity faster than to ignore it.
But I hadn't ignored it. Rather, I had commanded this poltergeistlike force. I had refused to go along with its framework of reality, and my own change of attitude----from passive fear to rage----had apparently done the trick.
In weeks to come I wondered about the other less fortunate victims of both poltergeists and the MIB. Had they had simply gone along with the "game," refusing to see themselves as the equals of their otherworldly adversaries? The cessation of odd activity in my office had been so abrupt that it was almost like some kind of lesson was terminated. Could it be that some intelligence was trying to teach me something all along--and satisfied that I had learned it, departed to seek out other pupils? If so, what was the lesson exactly? What had I done right?
******
Not long after my lesson, I sat one evening reminiscing with a farm family who had endured the entire gamut of the flying saucer mystery.
UFO's had become a part of this family's life several years before when one of its male members became a "channel" for an entity who claimed to be from another world. The invisible telepathic being had begun communicating with the entire family because they had been "selected before they had been born" to assist him in doing "His" work and in protecting Earth from another group of intelligences who sought to enslave humankind.
The communicating entity led the various members of the family circle on a number of "assignments" designed to save the Earth and to serve the benign entity and his kind. But always, the entity warned them, there was the enemy group with its men in black, seeking whom they might devour.
The family, who became "flying saucer missionaries," saw mysterious fellow passengers board airplanes with them--then disappear somewhere in mid-flight. Automobiles appeared out of nowhere to follow and harass them.
A man claiming to be from a state educational division arrived at the high school and talked for over an hour with one of the teenaged girl members of the family. The only questions he asked had to do with whether or not she would be able to recognize a spy. When suspicious adult members of the beleaguered family checked with school administrators, they were informed that they had no knowledge of such a man nor of such a division within the state educational system.
The girl who had been interrogated by the unidentified man also developed into a "channel" for the communicating entity, and soon several members of the family were practicing automatic writing.
UFO's swooped low overhead at night. Eerie lights were seen to dance about in the fields. Invisible entities snatched keys from their resting places and jangled them about the room, terrifying the children. Unseen hands lifted a mattress on which one couple lay sleeping, under which were some "secret" papers that the principal communicating entity had dictated.
Their farm work was being ignored. Their lives had become a living nightmare in which every stranger was suspect, every sound in the night that of an invader, every strange coincidence imbued with desperate and weighty significance.
At last the full realization that they had been deceived--that they had been led into a silly game--jolted them into determined action. They too said collectively, in essence: "Cut it the hell out!" And they resumed meaningful living.
******
I have advised many beginning ghost hunters or UFO researchers that when one feels himself set upon by marauding entities and begins to cross himself, recite prayers, sing hymns, or bellows out his favorite rock song, he "jams" the frequency in his brain on which the entities have been trying to establish contact and control. It may well be that a determined demand to "Knock it off!" might have the same frequency-jamming effect and permit the percipient of the phenomenon to regain control of his own cerebral equipment.
Whenever I review those days of UFO yesteryear when there seemed to be men in black lurking in every shadow, I am also led to think of the mythological figure common to all cultures and known generically to ethnologists as the Trickster. The Trickster plays pranks upon humankind, but often at the same time he is instructing them or transforming aspects of the world for the benefit of his human charges.
Most cultures view the Trickster as a primordial being who came into existence soon after the creation of the world. A number of Amerindian tribes referred to their Trickster figure as "Old Man," because they saw him as someone who was ageless, as old as time.
The Trickster is usually viewed as a supernatural being with the ability to change his shape at will. Although basically wily, he may behave in a very stupid, childish manner at times, and may often end up as the one who is tricked. The Trickster lies, cheats, and steals without compunction. He seems often to be the very essence of amoral animalism.
The Trickster figure is often credited with bringing death and pain into the world; yet, in some recitations, his own son was the first to die as a result.
Because of his introduction of death to the world and because of his animalistic and amoral attributes, the Trickster is sometimes identified with the Devil as a personification of evil. Carl Jung saw the Trickster as a mythological shadow figure who provides the reverse image of the saint, the angel. The animalistic Trickster serves as the impish, dark opposite of the bright conscious mind and establishes a balance without which psychic wholeness may not be achieved. Sounds like the poltergeist or MIB, certainly. And yet, most cultures do not cast the Trickster in the role of the Evil One. He is often seen as a once high god cast down from the heights of pure divinity.
In an article on the Trickster figure in Man, Myth and Magic, Douglas Hill writes that the many tales of the Trickster blend and fuse. "Trickster is comic relief; he is psychic catharsis on a deep and vital level; he is a hero whose own evolution perhaps mirrors that of humankind toward a higher consciousness and social maturity. And, embodying all these essentials, he is deathless--no ethnological museum piece but just as alive and flourishing today as in the primeval past."
######
By Brad Steiger
On Monday, September 1, my colleague Paul Dale Roberts sent me an email stating that he was going to interview an individual who claimed to have been a Man in Black, one of the infamous MIB, tormenters of UFO witnesses and researchers. I told Paul that I couldnt wait to read it. A few hours later, I was reading his extraordinary interview with Mr. Q, and today I was enormously pleased to see that the ever-alert Don Allis had run the piece in Alien Seeker: Reporting Anomalous News.
Pauls excellent interview--which I felt set just the proper tone for such an interview with an individual who may be lying and deliberately spreading disinformation or who may be telling the truth and providing us with another piece of the Great UFO Puzzle--got me to recalling some of the encounters with the MIB that my fellow researchers and I underwent back in the late 60s.
In the period from 1966 to 1970, dozens of UFOlogists, contactees, and chance percipients of UFO's claimed to have been visited by ominous strangers--usually three, usually dressed in black--who made it painfully clear that they would violently enforce their orders to see to it that investigators discontinued flying saucer research and surrendered all photographs or artifacts. Often the threats were punctuated with the assertion that cooperation with the men in black was essential for the good of "your family, your country, and your world." In many ways, the MIB seemed as though the spirits of the Nazi SS had been resurrected as enforcers for Alien invaders.
By June 24, 1967, a number of us UFOlogists gathered at the Commodore Hotel in New York to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the UFO sighting that brought the term "flying saucers" to our language (Kenneth Arnold spotted the saucer-shaped craft near Mount Rainier, Washington, on June 24, 1947), paranoia concerning the MIB was climbing toward an all-time high. The final match to be thrown on the psychological tinder was the announcement of the death of Frank Edwards on that same special anniversary day.
Edwards was a radio personality who for many years had made a hobby of broadcasting stories on UFO's and psychic phenomena. At the time of his death Edwards was recognized as the King of Communicators in the field of UFOlogy.
Suddenly he was dead. What were the causes?
Cerebral hemorrhage, agreed many UFOlogists in the crowded corridors of the Commodore Hotel, for that was the principal means of dealing death to UFO witness in the popular television series of the day, The Invaders, starring Roy Thinnes.
Before his death, Frank Edwards had made several comments about attempts to silence him. He had had a highly successful radio program sponsored by the American Federation of Labor. Then, according to Edwards, the show had been dropped and he had been given his walking papers for devoting too many program minutes to discussions about flying saucers. It was his contention that his constant mentions of the UFO enigma had become irritating to the Defense Department--Edwards consistently maintained that the Air Force was guilty of a gigantic cover-up on the subject--and that they had brought pressure to bear on George Meany, President of the AFL.
Had the UFO silencers eliminated Frank Edwards? A lot of UFOlogists thought so, and that we were being infiltrated by some powerful agency from another world, and that the three men in black were representatives of this group's intelligence arm.
In an issue of Saucer Scoop, a UFO newsletter published by Joan Whritenour, John A. Keel stated in an "Open Letter to All UFO Researchers" that he considered the MIB professional terrorists who included among their duties, "the harassment of UFO researchers who become involved in cases which might reveal too much of the truth." Keel commented that the victim of the MIB appeared to be subjected to "some sort of brainwashing technique that leaves him in a state of nausea, mental confusion, or even amnesia lasting for several days."
Keel went on to declare:
Contacts are being made ... then suppressed .. on a dizzying scale. Information is being gained... and lost... at an ever-increasing pace. One of the ironies of all this is that no policeman in his right mind associates black cars, kidnappers, amnesia victims, and black eyes with the UFO phenomena. Many of these cases never get beyond local police departments. Neither the FBI nor any other central government agency is engaged in collecting information on these aspects. Even local newspapers seldom take notice of these cases.
Because the official law-enforcement agencies are unwilling or unable, to cope with this growing situation, it becomes the responsibility of the private civilian investigator to collect and collate the full details on these incidents. The hazards of such investigations are obvious, but the job must be done .... We must switch our attention from the vehicles to the occupants. The menace is not in our skies. It is on the ground, and at this moment it is spreading like a disease across the country and the world.
Most of the UFO percipients and investigators reported being threatened by (most often) shortish men with dark complexions, somewhat Asian features, and heavy accents. A number claimed to have received later contact with "aliens" through their home television or radio sets. According to numerous accounts, the aliens' frequency interrupted normal programming. Robed figures instructed the saucer sighters to cooperate with them and to keep their information confidential. In exchange for this silence and cooperation, the aliens promised that the UFO percipients would be permitted to work with them on certain marvelous projects that would benefit humankind.
******
Now I have no doubt that there was/is a physical aspect to the MIB phenomenon. I have no doubt that in many cases the mysterious interrogators may have been associated with the military, some black branch of the government--and in certain instances over-eager and possessive UFO researchers from civilian groups attempting to claim certain cases as their private property.
But I am also convinced that this phenomenon--like so many associated with the UFO enigma--also has a paranormal aspect that may very often become extremely powerful, perhaps overwhelmingly so, to the investigator who has not prepared himself carefully for the remarkably complex interlocking realities of the UFO mystery.
In the spring of 1968, a magazine writer asked me to come along as an expert observer on an interview with a contactee who claimed a particularly vivid experience aboard a flying saucer. We left on a Friday, planning to spend the weekend in a motel, and since the contactee lived in a large city with numerous motels, we did not make any reservations.
At the same time, since I had been hearing rather eerie reports about the harassment of UFO researchers, I had decided to pick a motel at random and not even tell our wives where we were staying. To check with our respective homes and be certain all was well, we agreed to call from pay telephones, rather than the telephone in the room.
We met the contactee, recorded his most interesting (and greatly convincing) story, and returned to our homes three days later.
Shortly after I had returned home (I had 200 miles farther to travel than the magazine writer), I received a telephone call from him. In very disturbed tones he told me he had received a call from a rather unctuous (if anonymous) individual who had detailed our every action of the past few days, including the name of the motel we had stayed in and the food we had ordered for our meals. The writer concluded that all the time that we thought we had been carefully covering our tracks, we had been under close surveillance.
A few days later, after midnight, the writer telephoned me again, obviously distraught. Books had been jumping off the shelves in his office, he told me. He was aware of mysterious presences. On two nights he had been awakened by a smallish man cloaked in shimmering light, who, like some intergalactic traveling evangelist, attempted to sell him on the idea of working with them in their cause. "Become one of our workers in the vineyard of Earth," my friend claimed to have been proselytized. "Join us. Work with us."
******
It was about that time that crucial data that fellow UFO researchers had sent to me in the mail either never arrived or came on the scene days later than the postmark would indicate that it should. All sorts of mail began to arrive taped shut with Opened by Mistake either stamped or written on the envelopes. On the other hand, some pieces arrived overnight from great distances--without a postmark.
Once while speaking to a fellow researcher on the telephone, our conversation was interrupted by a metallic-sounding voice chanting: "Ho, ho, UFO!"
Strangely enough, my friends seemed to endure the most peculiar telephone nonsense. An officer in the Navy Reserves, who had expressed an interest in the UFO enigma, finally asked me please not to discuss UFO's with him on the telephone ever again. Both at the office and at home, he found he was "sharing" his private line with some undetermined other parties. On two occasions when I had been speaking with him, a voice had broken in, mumbled a few words, then apologized for the intrusion. His wife absolutely refused to permit me to discuss the subject in her presence because of the bad dreams she had been suffering in connection with UFO's.
In another city a businessman who had been doing a great deal of research on my behalf told of the time when he was anticipating a visit from me. He picked up the telephone to make a call on his private line, only to hear the following bit of conversation:
"Has he arrived in town yet?"
"Not yet."
"What motel will he be staying in'"
"The [correct name of the motel in which I had made reservations].
Don't worry. Everything is set.
At this point my friend broke in and asked who the hell was on his private line. There was a stunned silence, a click, then the steady buzzing that indicated a clear line.
******
One may build a case, I suppose, that any or all of the above was simply a series of rather remarkable coincidences.
The following incident is a bit more difficult to explain away, however.
A friend of mine was traveling in England before continuing on to Vietnam to visit his son in the armed forces. He was walking near a railway station in London when he noticed three men dressed completely in black staring at him.
When my friend returned their collective stare, they approached him and asked him which train they should take for such-and-such a city. My friend calmly pointed out that he was a tourist, and it made a good deal more sense for them to ask at the information booth just a few feet away.
My friend turned on his heel and walked away from the odd trio, but a glance over his shoulder told him that they were still standing there staring at him, disregarding his advice to check with the information booth. Suddenly ill at ease, my friend hailed a taxi and went directly to his hotel.
When he got to his room, an uncomfortable sensation prickled the back of his neck and he glanced out his window.
On the street corner, looking up at his room, were the three men. Baffled, he tried to push the incident from his mind.
A day or so later, though, he was confronted by one of the men as he walked to his hotel who told him straight out: "You are a friend of Brad Steiger. Tell him we shall visit him by Christmas."
My friend had only a peripheral knowledge of the UFO can of worms, but he returned to his hotel room and wrote me a long letter with the above details. How could three odd little guys in London know that he was a friend of mine?
******
Not long after I had received his letter, I visited an associate in another city and told him about the bizarre experience that my friend had encountered in London.
"Humph!" Jim snorted over the lunch we were sharing. "If those monkeys come to see you this Christmas, send 'em down to talk to me. I'd love to get one of those characters in my hands. I would solve this man-in-black mystery you've been telling me about!"
I warned him that he had better be careful or he might get his wish.
Later, Jim told me that I had no sooner started my homeward journey than he was told that a gentleman wished to see him. A secretary ushered a man of average height into Jim's office--a man, my friend said, who was the thinnest human being he had ever seen.
"He was cadaverous, Brad," Jim told me. "But he seemed alert enough, and so involved in his mission that he ignored my offered hand of greeting. In fact, I tried to push shaking his hand, but he refused to touch me.
"'I hear you want to be the head of UFO's in Iowa,' he said quickly.
He took out a wallet, flipped it open, then shut, before I could see any identification. I can't really recall anything else he said, because it was all so damned nonsensical. Soon he was gone, and I was still sitting there dumbfounded.
"I jumped to my feet, though, when I heard his car starting. I got a good look at his automobile, and I wrote down its license number. I can't tel1 you what make of car it was. It looked like a combination of three or four different makes and models, but it didn't real1y look like anything I had ever seen before. And the license number didn't check. The Highway Patrol said there was no such Iowa plate registered. A friend in another branch of state government, who owed me a favor, said the plate wasn't registered to any government agent, either."
******
Steve, a UFO investigator, had an experience with unidentified and mysterious interrogators in September, 1966. He was working the night shift in a large pulp-and-paper plant in northern Michigan when he was paid an enigmatic visit by two dark-complexioned men dressed completely in black.
''The first thing to come to my mind was the odd hour of the visit--three o'clock in the morning--and the rather puzzling appearance of the intruders," Steve told me.
The two men asked him about the UFO case that he was investigating, but Steve played it cautiously and told them he had given up flying saucer research.
"The two evidently seemed satisfied with my replies, for they suddenly turned and walked out of the room. By this time I had an inkling of who they were--or rather, who they were not. (My first impression was that they were from the government.) I jumped up from my chair and hurried out the door in pursuit--not more than twenty seconds behind them.
"Upon reaching the doorway, I paused and looked down the corridor. They could only have gone in one direction--but they were not in sight. They had vanished.
"I moved forward slowly. About ten feet from the door I experienced an odd feeling--a sense of dissipated energy, or a residual electrical current, somewhat akin to the sensation one experiences when standing in a very powerful magnetic field. I rechecked the spot every few minutes, and noticed it ebb and fade) until it was completely unnoticeable in half an hour.
"I talked with fellow workers in and around the building in which I was working, and they reported seeing no one. Checks with the plant guard substantiated my belief--no one had signed in at the industrial complex that night."
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Although I didn't become as deeply embroiled in MIB activities as certain of my fellow researchers, I did tread on the periphery of their vortex of swirling, nightmarish games. And from time to time I did slip into the court where the contest was being played. I endured the "smellies"--vile, odorous attacks of some invisible entity not in the least concerned about personal hygiene. And closely associated with the disagreeable odors were regular poltergeistic plunderings of my office.
But then I stumbled on a clue that may just solve the puzzle of who at least some of the MIB might really be.
The revelation occurred one night as I sat in my office, desperately working over Lucretia, my faithful 1923 Underwood typewriter. I heard the heavy sound of footsteps at the top of the stairs. A quick glance told me that no one was there.
A favorite painting of Edgar Allan Poe fell to the floor. I became irritated. I had to work to meet a deadline on a magazine article. I had no time to play.
Papers began to rustle off to my side. A single sheet became airborne.
I had had enough. I looked up from my typewriter, rolled my eyes upward in disgust, and shouted: "Just cut it the hell out!"
Everything stopped. There was literally the sound of silence. I experienced the same kind of sensation one has when he walks into a crowded, noisy room, and everyone suddenly stops talking. The very air seemed less crowded and oppressive. I went back to my writing without taking any further notice of anything other than the work at hand.
Every kind of intelligence, regardless of how high or how low, wishes to be recognized. Nothing shuts up any thinking entity faster than to ignore it.
But I hadn't ignored it. Rather, I had commanded this poltergeistlike force. I had refused to go along with its framework of reality, and my own change of attitude----from passive fear to rage----had apparently done the trick.
In weeks to come I wondered about the other less fortunate victims of both poltergeists and the MIB. Had they had simply gone along with the "game," refusing to see themselves as the equals of their otherworldly adversaries? The cessation of odd activity in my office had been so abrupt that it was almost like some kind of lesson was terminated. Could it be that some intelligence was trying to teach me something all along--and satisfied that I had learned it, departed to seek out other pupils? If so, what was the lesson exactly? What had I done right?
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Not long after my lesson, I sat one evening reminiscing with a farm family who had endured the entire gamut of the flying saucer mystery.
UFO's had become a part of this family's life several years before when one of its male members became a "channel" for an entity who claimed to be from another world. The invisible telepathic being had begun communicating with the entire family because they had been "selected before they had been born" to assist him in doing "His" work and in protecting Earth from another group of intelligences who sought to enslave humankind.
The communicating entity led the various members of the family circle on a number of "assignments" designed to save the Earth and to serve the benign entity and his kind. But always, the entity warned them, there was the enemy group with its men in black, seeking whom they might devour.
The family, who became "flying saucer missionaries," saw mysterious fellow passengers board airplanes with them--then disappear somewhere in mid-flight. Automobiles appeared out of nowhere to follow and harass them.
A man claiming to be from a state educational division arrived at the high school and talked for over an hour with one of the teenaged girl members of the family. The only questions he asked had to do with whether or not she would be able to recognize a spy. When suspicious adult members of the beleaguered family checked with school administrators, they were informed that they had no knowledge of such a man nor of such a division within the state educational system.
The girl who had been interrogated by the unidentified man also developed into a "channel" for the communicating entity, and soon several members of the family were practicing automatic writing.
UFO's swooped low overhead at night. Eerie lights were seen to dance about in the fields. Invisible entities snatched keys from their resting places and jangled them about the room, terrifying the children. Unseen hands lifted a mattress on which one couple lay sleeping, under which were some "secret" papers that the principal communicating entity had dictated.
Their farm work was being ignored. Their lives had become a living nightmare in which every stranger was suspect, every sound in the night that of an invader, every strange coincidence imbued with desperate and weighty significance.
At last the full realization that they had been deceived--that they had been led into a silly game--jolted them into determined action. They too said collectively, in essence: "Cut it the hell out!" And they resumed meaningful living.
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I have advised many beginning ghost hunters or UFO researchers that when one feels himself set upon by marauding entities and begins to cross himself, recite prayers, sing hymns, or bellows out his favorite rock song, he "jams" the frequency in his brain on which the entities have been trying to establish contact and control. It may well be that a determined demand to "Knock it off!" might have the same frequency-jamming effect and permit the percipient of the phenomenon to regain control of his own cerebral equipment.
Whenever I review those days of UFO yesteryear when there seemed to be men in black lurking in every shadow, I am also led to think of the mythological figure common to all cultures and known generically to ethnologists as the Trickster. The Trickster plays pranks upon humankind, but often at the same time he is instructing them or transforming aspects of the world for the benefit of his human charges.
Most cultures view the Trickster as a primordial being who came into existence soon after the creation of the world. A number of Amerindian tribes referred to their Trickster figure as "Old Man," because they saw him as someone who was ageless, as old as time.
The Trickster is usually viewed as a supernatural being with the ability to change his shape at will. Although basically wily, he may behave in a very stupid, childish manner at times, and may often end up as the one who is tricked. The Trickster lies, cheats, and steals without compunction. He seems often to be the very essence of amoral animalism.
The Trickster figure is often credited with bringing death and pain into the world; yet, in some recitations, his own son was the first to die as a result.
Because of his introduction of death to the world and because of his animalistic and amoral attributes, the Trickster is sometimes identified with the Devil as a personification of evil. Carl Jung saw the Trickster as a mythological shadow figure who provides the reverse image of the saint, the angel. The animalistic Trickster serves as the impish, dark opposite of the bright conscious mind and establishes a balance without which psychic wholeness may not be achieved. Sounds like the poltergeist or MIB, certainly. And yet, most cultures do not cast the Trickster in the role of the Evil One. He is often seen as a once high god cast down from the heights of pure divinity.
In an article on the Trickster figure in Man, Myth and Magic, Douglas Hill writes that the many tales of the Trickster blend and fuse. "Trickster is comic relief; he is psychic catharsis on a deep and vital level; he is a hero whose own evolution perhaps mirrors that of humankind toward a higher consciousness and social maturity. And, embodying all these essentials, he is deathless--no ethnological museum piece but just as alive and flourishing today as in the primeval past."
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