With so much planet hunting and spotting going on, we are in a showdown to see whether the universe is perhaps chock-full of extraterrestrial life.

Distant starfolk is one thing. Having ET stopovers here on Earth, via UFOs, is another. And that was just the topic du jour here at the 38th Annual International UFO Symposium, subtitled An Estimate of the Situation: The ET Hypothesis, held August 10-12 and sponsored by the Denver-based Mutual UFO Network, Inc., or MUFON for short.

As a yearly affair, the symposium provides a platform for specialists and investigators that delve into UFOs, purported military cover-ups and denials, physical evidence surrounding UFOs, as well as those “high strangeness” encounters with alien visitors.

The MUFON summit brought together more than 500 people – a true gabfest for the flying saucer devotee.

Passion for the truth

James Carrion, MUFON’s International Director, said the organization is fervent about resolving the scientific enigma known as unidentified flying objects.

“To me, it’s all about the truth. I have a passion for the truth,” Carrion told SPACE.com.

Still, after decades of pursuing “the truth” behind UFOs, Carrion admitted that the quest is befuddling. “Why is it always within out of reach…kind of there, but it’s not there?”

A new MUFON initiative being implemented this year is outreach to engage mainstream scientists, Carrion said, to assist in taking a more detailed look at the data. An open letter to the professional scientific community is now being drafted, to be issued before year’s end, he said.

“We have to gain respectability here … so we’re trying to kick-start intellectual curiosity out there,” Carrion added. “We know that there are folks in academia who have an interest, but they don’t know what to do with it.”

The MUFON strategy initially centers on the hypothesis that UFOs are human-manufactured and then evaluate the data amassed to date against that premise, Carrion advised. “If this triggers your intellectual curiosity … help us out,” he said.

Carrion said that MUFON is also forming two research teams: One to dive into the history of “UFOlogy” and government archives, the other to probe into the abduction encounters.

“I’m a skeptical believer,” Carrion pointed out. “I’ve never seen a UFO. But I’ve read enough of our own evidence. There’s something real to this. To me, it’s an issue of what is it?”

Tell it like it is

For nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, there is no doubt that some UFOs are alien spacecraft. Moreover, the subject of flying saucers, in his view, represents a “Cosmic Watergate” - a colossal government cover-up.

Friedman is a globe-trotting lecturer on UFOs and is the original civilian investigator of the celebrated UFO crash case in Roswell, New Mexico. That out-of-the-blue happening supposedly occurred some 60 years ago, in 1947, involving no less than two crashed saucers, strewn debris and recovered alien bodies, he reported at the MUFON meeting.

“I come on very, very strong. I’m not an apologist UFOlogist…I tell it like it is,” Friedman told SPACE.com. He senses that a “big sea change” is taking place on several fronts.

“My overall impression is that people are more ready to accept [UFO visitation] because the world has changed…space travel being an important part of that,” Friedman noted. “What I’m saying is that the notion that most people don’t believe in UFOs isn’t true.”

Also, the media is giving UFO sightings a much fairer shake than in the past, Friedman suggested, citing not only Roswell coverage, but the reporting of UFO sightings made at O’Hare Airport late last year and more revelation concerning the Phoenix lights saga of March 1997.

“I don’t look for advocacy…I want fairness,” Friedman added. “I feel the world is ready. I’m outspoken, yes. But I try to make it a rule: Fact in hand before mouth in gear.”

Mind-bending finding?

UFOs as visitors from afar would be a simple, easy-to-grasp explanation, suggested George Knapp, an investigative reporter for KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada. But he wonders if there isn’t a mind-bending finding waiting at the bottom of the UFO barrel.

“It seems to stay one or two steps ahead of what we can do…from airships to the saucers, to giant flying triangles…almost teasing, taunting, or inspiring,” Knapp told SPACE.com. Given cutting-edge physics, talk of the multi-verse and parallel universes, along with threshold biological and computer work, there are fundamental paradigm shifts ahead, he said.

“Although we can’t figure out a way to get there…doesn’t mean they can’t figure out a way to get here,” Knapp said. Involved in UFO reporting for some two decades, Knapp said he’s committed to the journalistic credo that the public has a right to know.

“But you know what? Maybe not! It goes against everything in my professional life that I believe. What if it’s not something we should know? That the truth is so unsettling that our social institutions would, in fact, crumble,” Knapp confided.

Knapp underscored the prospect that perhaps we Earthlings live in the middle of some other kind of intelligence. Perhaps our planet is nothing more than a cosmic drive-in theater, he added, and UFOs skim in and out of our skies just to watch goofy movies.

“And if it’s something else - like they live here among us and everything we do is like being in a glass shower - people are going to go crazy. So maybe there is a reason for keeping this secret…and a need for government cover-up which I believe there is,” Knapp said.

Knapp’s on-air investigative work focuses primarily on government corruption and organized crime. But asked about the angle that his next investigative piece on the UFO phenomenon will take, he quickly responded. “Nothing I’m going to tell you about.”

FILE - This March 17, 1946 file photo shows Dr. Marcel Petiot in Paris. The doctor, a serial killer who was convicted of 26 murders and guillotined as punishment for his crimes, regularly treated refugees, businessmen and Gestapo agents, but also had a predilection for killing wealthy Jews and burning their bodies in a basement furnace. He was one of the most unusual informers used by one of America’s most secretive espionage agencies, known simply as the Pond.

Nazi-occupied Paris was a terrible place to be in the waning days of World War II, with Jews, Resistance fighters and ordinary citizens all hoping to escape. Disappearances became so common they often weren’t followed up.

And one man used the lawlessness for his own terrible purposes, killing perhaps as many as 150 people.

Yet it wasn’t until thick black smoke seeped into buildings in a fashionable part of the city that firefighters and police were called to an elegant townhouse where they found body parts scattered around — setting off a manhunt that led them, eventually, to Marcel Petiot.

The crime was very much of its time, said David King, who chronicled the hunt for Petiot in “Death in the City of Light.”

“Paris was not a good place to be. A lot of people were trying to leave Paris, a lot of people just disappearing. He had it plotted out, a very devious plan,” said King, in a telephone interview.

“Respect for the law was tarnished under the Nazis. Even if you suspected something, a lot of people were very, very reluctant to go forward, especially if they were Jewish.”

Petiot, as it turned out, was a respected physician who turned serial killer by night, preying largely on Jews desperate to leave Paris by luring them in with promises of escape. He was accused of murdering “only” some 27, but authorities suspected his real toll was far higher.

King, a former history professor, first stumbled across reference to the killings while browsing in a bookstore and picking up a World War Two memoir by a spy. At first, he couldn’t believe what he read.

But the grisly details stuck with him, and after he confirmed the story was true, he finished his other projects and came back to it.

“Here’s a guy — Marcel Petiot, who was accused of all the murders. Obviously very intelligent, charismatic, has a respected position, is into collecting antiques, interested in the arts,” he said.

“And yet, you get to the other side, when he’s accused of some of the most disturbing things you can think of: savagely dismembering bodies.”

Through years of research, including perusal of Parisian police archives closed since the crimes took place, King pieced together the story of how Petiot claimed to be a member of the resistance and lured many of his victims in by promising them safe passage to South America in return for payment.

Once in Petiot’s hands, the victims were told to write letters to their relatives, telling them that they were fine and would return once times had settled down. Then they were killed, most likely by lethal gas, and dismembered or burned.

“It’s a microcosm of the whole Nazi terror and Paris being a bad place to be. There’s got to be more than just exploiting peoples’ hopes and dreams and desperation, but that’s what he does,” King said.

Though Petiot eluded police on at least one occasion, after appearing amid the crowd that gathered after the initial grisly discovery and speaking with a patrolman before riding off on his bicycle, he was eventually captured, tried and executed.

King, the author of several other books, said this one was particularly hard to immerse himself in due to the content, however horrifically fascinating the story.

It also had an impact on him personally.

“I’m generally a pretty outgoing person, but I’m probably a little bit more reluctant about things now,” he said.

“Dr. Petiot seemed like the nicest guy — charming, intelligent, friendly. You could just strike up a conversation with somebody like this … I found myself on my guard more.”

The military deleted a passage about unidentified flying objects from a 2008 Air Force personnel manual just days after The Huffington Post asked Pentagon officials about the purpose of the UFO section.

Before the recent revisions, the document — Air Force Instruction 10-206 — advised pilots, radar operators and other Air Force personnel on what to do when they encountered any unknown airborne objects. Now in the 2011 version, the reference to UFOs — which simply means “unidentified flying objects,” not necessarily spaceships with little green men — has been eliminated.

What makes this so intriguing is that the U.S. government officially stopped investigating UFOs in 1969 with the termination of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book.

But here’s the big question: Did the Air Force really stop investigating UFOs in 1969 as they have repeatedly claimed throughout the ensuing decades? “Absolutely not! They have continued to look into UFO cases,” said Salas, co-author of “Faded Giant.” “In fact, there are NORAD records from 1975 of UFO sightings — and this was not any general aviation aircraft — objects seen over missile sites and other bases.

Queen Elizabeth I & Francis Walsingham

Since the time of Elizabeth I, British secret services have worked according to the principle of ‘the end justifies the means’. Money, bribery, blackmail – these are their recruitment methods…
– Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), October 2007

It is not really surprising that historically occultism and espionage have often been strange bedfellows. The black art of espionage is about obtaining secret information and witches, psychics and astrologers have always claimed to be able to predict the future and know about things hidden from ordinary people.

Gathering intelligence is carried out under a cloak of secrecy and occultists are adept at keeping their activities concealed from sight. Like secret agents they also use codes, symbols and cryptograms to hide information from outsiders. Occultists and intelligence officers are similar in many ways, as both inhabit a shadowy underworld of secrets, deception and disinformation. It is therefore not unusual that often these two professions have shared the same members.

The ‘father of the British Secret Service’ was the Elizabethan lawyer, politician, diplomat and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. He was a Protestant and as a young man during the bloody reign of the Catholic Queen Mary was forced to flee abroad to escape persecution. While in exile, Walsingham learnt Italian and French and became acquainted with the work of the famous Venetian Secret Service that used its spying skills for trade and commerce under the cloak of diplomacy.

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley

When Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Francis Walsingham returned to England. He was appointed as a secretary to the English ambassador to the French court in Paris and also worked as a secret agent reporting back the intelligence he gleaned to Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley. Between 1568 and 1570 Walsingham, who had become a Member of Parliament, worked in England in domestic counter-espionage exposing Catholic plots against the monarchy.

Cecil Williamson

In 1570 Walsingham was appointed as the new ambassador to France. He proceeded to set up his own network of undercover agents in France, Italy, Spain and the Low Countries. The late Cecil Williamson, who worked for British Intelligence during World War II and later ran a witchcraft museum, told this writer that Walsingham often used witches as spies.

The Mysterious Dr Dee

Dr. John Dee

One of the famous occultists he is known to have recruited was Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer and the magical architect of the British Empire, the Welsh magician Dr John Dee. Walsingham was involved in the machinations for the proposed marriage of the Duc d’Anjou and Elizabeth. At the spy master’s personal recommendation, the queen dispatched Dee to France with orders to report back on the progress of the marriage negotiations. The magus travelled to the Duchy of Lorraine and drew up the birth charts of both the Duc and his brother, who was also regarded as a possible husband for the English monarch. Dr Dee, probably influenced by Walsingham, diplomatically reported back to London that the stars suggested a political alliance would be far wiser than matrimony and the queen took his advice.

In 1573 Sir Francis returned to London and became a privy councillor. This placed him at the heart of government and he proceeded to set up what amounted to the first organised foreign espionage service to operate from England. In 1566 he had put in place a pan-European network of spies extending as far to the east as Turkey and Russia, where Dr Dee reported on the goings-on at the Tsar’s court. This network mostly gathered intelligence on the military activities of the Spanish, who were England’s primary enemies at this time. Walsingham was also responsible for foiling the Catholic plot whose exposure led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Using Dr Dee’s psychic powers, he was apparently able to discover that the plotters were passing secret messages to the imprisoned Scottish queen hidden in bottles of wine.

While travelling in Europe in 1562, Dr Dee had come across a book written by Abbot Trimethus of Spanhiem (1462-1516). This was a guide to writing ciphers and secret codes for magical purposes and Dee informed Sir William Cecil about his discovery. On his return to England Dr Dee adapted the abbot’s cryptography and gave it to Sir Francis Walsingham for use by his secret agents. He also passed on the political and military intelligence he had acquired during his travels across Europe. It has been alleged that Dee used the famous Enochian magical alphabet as a code to disguise this information. If he had been arrested his captors would not have understood it and dismissed it as nonsense.

In 1587 Dee even claimed he had received a spirit message from one of his angelic contacts concerning a threat to the English Fleet. The message said that a group of disguised Frenchmen working for the Spaniards was secretly visiting the Forest of Dean. The forest was the centre for English ship-building and the French agents planned to bribe disloyal foresters to burn it down. Dr Dee sent his supernatural intelligence to Walsingham and the saboteurs, who were masquerading as squatters, were arrested.


Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor & Stephen Báthory of Poland
Information supplied to Sir Francis Walsingham from his European spy network convinced him that a Spanish armada would be launched against England in 1588. He asked Dee to use his knowledge of astrology to calculate the weather prospects for an invasion. The magus told him there would an impending disaster in Europe caused by a devastating storm. When news of this prophecy was leaked and reached Spain, naval recruitment fell and there were desertions of sailors from the Spanish Fleet. In Lisbon an astrologer who repeated the prediction was charged with spreading false information. In an act of psychological warfare, Dr Dee also informed Emperor Rudolf of Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic) and King Stephen of Poland that the predicted storm would “cause the fall of a mighty empire.” Rudolf, who was an occultist and Dee’s patron when he stayed in Bohemia, passed on the warning to the Spanish ambassador.

Francis Drake

It is a fact that in 1588 a great storm did scatter the ships of the Spanish Armada in the English Channel and aided the English victory. This metrological event was popularly credited to a magical ritual performed by the buccaneer Sir Francis Drake on the cliffs at Plymouth. Superstitious people believed Drake was a wizard and sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for success over the Spanish. It is claimed that he also organised several covens of witches to work magically to raise the storm and prevent the invasion. Meanwhile, as a result of scrying in his shewstone or crystal, Dr Dee saw a symbolic vision of a castle with its drawbridge drawn up (England) and the image of the elemental king of fire. As a result he urged the Navy to employ fire-ships against the Armada and they did so with good results.

After Sir Francis Walsingham’s death in 1590, and the ascension to the English throne of the Scottish king James, Dr John Dee fell into royal disfavour. The new king had an unhealthy obsession with witchcraft and his early reign was dominated by this preoccupation. It led him to employ the Secret Service in his own personal vendetta against suspected witches. James I ordered its agents to hunt down alleged practitioners of witchcraft and expose their alleged plots against the monarchy. One of those involved was the Earl of Bothwell, accused of high treason for organising a coven of Scottish witches to work magic against the king in an attempt to seize the throne. To assist his secret agents in their new witch-hunting activities, King James persuaded Parliament in 1604 to pass a new and stronger Witchcraft Act to deal with the problem. The Bill was rushed through and it was made law within three months.

Dashwood & the Hellfire Club

Sir Francis Dashwood

In the 18th century the Secret Service became concerned at the activities of the so-called ‘Hellfire Club’ founded by Sir Francis Dashwood, later the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a close friend and political adviser of King George III. As a young man Dashwood went on the Grand Tour of Europe that was compulsory for aristocrats and he was initiated into a Masonic lodge in France. While visiting Italy he developed anti-Catholic views, violently broke up a celebration of the Mass and insulted the Pope. Even though he was an aristocrat, Dashwood was disgusted at the vast wealth of the Roman Church compared with the poverty of its devoted worshippers. He also became fascinated by classical mythology and decorated his country house at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire with murals, paintings and statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.

Sir Francis Dashwood founded a secret society called the Order of the Friars of St Francis of Medmenham (more popularly known as the Hellfire Club) named after the abbey he had purchased on the banks of the River Thames where its meetings were held. Rumours circulated in the coffee houses of London that the Friars practised sexual orgies featuring aristocratic ladies and prostitutes dressed up as nuns. There were also satanic rites such as Black Masses where the naked body of a noblewoman acted as an altar. However, according to one senior member of the Hellfire Club, this occult mummery was just an amusing diversion for the dandies. The inner circle of the Order was actually dedicated to the serious revival of the pagan Eleusian Mysteries and the worship of the Bona Dea or Great Mother Goddess. Dashwood’s present-day descendant, also called Sir Francis, confirmed this fact in a BBC radio interview some years ago,

It has been claimed secret agents infiltrated the Hellfire Club because of its many famous members. They included the Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Paymaster General Thomas Potter, several members of Parliament, the Lord Mayor of London, a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Bute, who was the prime minister, and it has been claimed even the Prince of Wales. At least four members of the group were known to be actively involved in espionage. They was a radical MP called John Wilkes, a transvestite French diplomat, Chevalier D’Eon de Beaumont, the American statesman and philosopher Benjamin Franklin, and Sir Francis Dashwood himself. Wilkes had allegedly recruited the chevalier into the British Secret Service.

During his stay in Russia on the Grand Tour Dashwood had spied on the court of the Tsar through his close friendship with the Grand Duchess Catherine. In Italy he gathered intelligence on the exiled Stuart dynasty and their supporters, although the head of the British Secret Service in Rome believed Dashwood was a Jacobite agent. In fact he was only pretending to support the Stuart cause and was passing on information about their activities directly back to London. In later years Sir Francis and Benjamin Franklin were involved in a clandestine plan to reconcile the American colonists and the British government to prevent the War of Independence.

Rudolf Hess & the British Occult Connection
During World War II British Intelligence invited many occultists into its ranks because it needed their specialist knowledge and skills. The assistant director of Naval Intelligence during the war was Lt. Commander Ian Fleming RN, best known later as a thriller writer and the creator of the famous fictional spy James Bond 007. Fleming was also interested in astrology and numerology and he was a friend of the notorious magician Aleister Crowley, who had worked for MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) during World War I and in the 1920s and 1930s spying on Germans with occult interests (see ‘The Magus Was A Spy’ by Dr Richard Spence in New Dawn No. 105, November-December 2007).

Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming conceived an audacious plan to lure a high-ranking member of the German government into defecting to Britain so as to provide a morale-boosting propaganda coup. This idea had been inspired by a novel written by Fleming’s brother, Peter, called Flying Visit (Jonathan Cape 1940). Peter Fleming was a journalist and also worked for both MI5 (the Security Service) and the propaganda section of the clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE). The novel imagined that Hitler’s plane crash-landed in England and he was captured. The Reichminister and deputy fuehrer himself, Rudolf Hess, was chosen as a suitable candidate for the actual plot. This was because he was a supporter of peace with Britain and was also under the influence of astrologers and occultists. It was believed this could be used against him.

Commander Fleming recreated The Link, a defunct Anglo-German friendship society of the 1930s that had a wealthy membership of Nazi sympathisers drawn from the British Establishment. Ironically, or perhaps coincidentally, The Link had been founded by Admiral Sir Barry Domville, an ex-director of the Naval Intelligence Department (NID), after he retired in 1930. Domville was arrested and interned in May 1940 because MI5 believed he was plotting a fascist coup d’etat supported by aristocratic peacemongers. The admiral was a friend of Major-General J.F.C. ‘Boney’ Fuller CBE, a famous military analyst who designed the tactics for the first tank battle in World War I. Fuller also invented the concept of blitzkrieg used so successfully in World War II by the German Panzers. Fuller was an open admirer of Hitler (he attended the fuehrer’s 50th birthday party in 1939), a leading member of Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), a friend of Ian Fleming and a leading disciple of Aleister Crowley. In the 1930s Fuller formed the extreme-right wing Nordic League (aka the White Knights of Britain), allegedly established by Nazi agents. However in the 1950s he was a member of a MI6 supported group of Russian émigrés engaged in anti-communist propaganda. It has been suggested that Fuller was not interned during the war with other leading fascists such as Mosley and Domville because he was a MI6 double-agent.


Sir Oswald Moseley & J.F.C. Fuller
Ian Fleming’s idea was to persuade the German High Command in Berlin, and especially Rudolf Hess, that when war broke out The Link had not disbanded but had gone underground. It had allegedly regrouped and recruited even more prominent pro-Nazi members in the British Establishment including aristocrats and royalty. These were represented by the NID as influential people with the political muscle to overthrow prime minister Winston Churchill’s national wartime government, call a ceasefire and agree to a peace treaty with Germany. Under its terms Britain would keep control of its Empire and Germany would have free reign in occupied Europe. The Nazis also hoped that British troops would be sent to fight alongside the German Wehrmacht and the SS against the Soviet Union in a joint anti-communist crusade.

Hitler did not want to invade and occupy Britain. Instead he would have preferred to negotiate a treaty with a sympathetic new government in London. It has been suggested that the only reason the fuehrer abandoned Operation Sea Lion – the proposed invasion of Southern England – and instead invaded the Soviet Union was to force Churchill to accept peace terms. If the Red Army had been defeated Britain would truly have been standing alone, as Hitler did not believe the Americans had the political will to enter the war. Unfortunately he underestimated the ability and resolve of the Soviets to defend their motherland and also the clandestine support that the US was already offering Great Britain.

The NID plot to ensnare Rudolf Hess used bogus astrological predictions combined with political intelligence. Hess was persuaded that a Scottish aristocrat, the Duke of Hamilton, was willing to negotiate peace terms on behalf of the influential people at the top of British society who wanted to end the war. The duke had met Hess at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and the deputy fuehrer for some reason thought he was a member of the surviving Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Ian Fleming commissioned an astrologer to produce a faked astrological forecast indicating that 10 May 1941 would be a propitious date for Rudolf Hess to fly to Scotland and meet secretly with the Duke of Hamilton and other members of the so-called British ‘peace party’. Hess’ occult advisors had also told him there would be an unusual planetary conjunction on 10 May. On that day six planets would be aligned in the zodiac sign of Taurus and conjoined to the full moon. At the same time Hitler’s chart showed ‘malefic’ astrological aspects. Hess saw himself in the role of a messianic hero saving Germany from possible future defeat by making peace with the British. All the (false) reports reaching the deputy fuehrer about the political situation in England and the astrological aspects convinced him that his mission would be a success.


Rudolf Hess & Plane wreck after flight to scotland
Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland on 10 May 1941 in the firm belief that on landing he would be met by the Duke of Hamilton and the Duke of Kent and whisked off to London for a private audience with King George VI. He had been convinced by the misinformation fed to him by British Intelligence that these three men represented a genuine peace movement capable of removing the warmonger Churchill and agreeing to German terms. Hess had also previously met the Duke of Windsor when he had visited Berlin before the war. As a result Hess was persuaded that some members of the German-descended royal family were sympathetic to Nazism. Certainly the Duke of Saxo-Coburg, formerly Prince Charles Edward, a grandson of Queen Victoria and a close friend of the Duke of Windsor, had willingly embraced Nazism. In fact Hitler had appointed him as the head of the German branch of the Red Cross that was responsible for exterminating the mentally sick and physically disabled.

Unfortunately instead of meeting pro-Nazi aristocrats and royals when he landed, Hess was captured by a local farmer and a Home Guard unit. They handed him over to the police and he was transferred to London to be interrogated by MI5. Unfortunately the British government completely mishandled the capture of Hess. It has been suggested that Churchill believed the subterfuge by the NID and SIS suggesting leading members of the British Establishment might be pro-German may have been based on fact. For that reason the government did not capitalise on Hess’ ‘peace mission’. The German High Command had also disowned him and said that his flight had been unauthorised. They also suggested that Hess might be insane so his value for propaganda purposes was undermined and diminished.

Rudolf Hess’ apparent defection caused widespread panic in Berlin concerning the influence of occultism on the Nazi Party. The Gestapo immediately launched Operation Aktion Hess. On the direct orders of Hitler, they rounded up hundreds of occultists, psychics and astrologers, including Hess’s leading occult advisor Ernst Schulte-Strathaus. In June 1941 a decree was issued banning all public performances of clairvoyance, astrology, fortune-telling or telepathy. Anybody associated with Hess and his esoteric interests was thrown into concentration camps and occult secret societies were closed down. Because of staff shortages in the Gestapo, officers from the Naval Intelligence Service were drafted in to interrogate some of the arrested psychics. It has been claimed that they recruited some of them for secret operations using dowsing on maps with pendulums to hunt down British submarines.

It has also been claimed that Ian Fleming and the NID was involved in a plot to silence the Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan, the penultimate person to be charged under the old Witchcraft Act of 1736. She was arrested in 1944 after holding a séance during which allegedly the spirit of a dead sailor from the sinking of the HMS Bolham physically manifested. As the news of the loss had not been publicly released, and the Admiralty was keeping it secret for morale purposes, Duncan became a target for the security services. She and other psychics were regarded as a serious threat to national security and they became the object of a MI5/NID dirty tricks operation to silence leaks. This suggests that the Intelligence Services actually believed these mediums had genuine powers. Duncan’s arrest and subsequent trial, which in fact was condemned by Winston Churchill as a waste of public funds, was allegedly meant to deter other mediums. The War Office was paranoid that military secrets about the forthcoming D-Day landings in Normandy would be revealed at séances and become public knowledge or passed to the Germans.

This case has had probably the most attention of any other case in the history of UFOLOGY. However, the case remained buried for nearly 30 years before, slowly the code of silence was broken which allowed researchers to start uncovering the truth.

Obviously I can only give a fraction of the account, on this Web Site but I hope it will contain enough info for both the experienced and the beginner. People interested in this case should read some of the many great books, particularly the ones by Kevin Randle.

The data will be presented in timeline form:



Tuesday, July 1st 1947 
A strange object is detected on the radar scopes at Roswell, White Sands and Alamogordo. Its tremendous speed and erratic motion indicated that it is neither a plane or a meteorite.


Wednesday, July 2, 1947 
An oval object is spotted by Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot as it passes over their house in Roswell.


Thursday, July 3, 1947 
Radar operator Steve MacKenzie is sent to White Sands to track the object 24 hours a day.


Friday, July 4, 1947 
Warrant Officer Robert Thomas and a team of men arrive from Washington to co-ordinate to operation of tracking and possible retrieval.

Mac Brazel as well as others report hearing a tremendous explosion.

William Woody and his father observe a flaming object fall to earth north of Roswell.

Jim Ragsdale and Trudy Truelove observe a bright light crash near to their campsite.

The object which has been tracked on radar for 3 days suddenly disappears. The retrieval team assemble and start heading for the calculated crash site.


Saturday, July 5, 1947 
A sheepherder finds the remains of a crashed saucer but does not report this until many years later.

A group of Archaeologists also find the crashed object. The phone Sheriff George Wilcox thinking it is some from of crashed aircraft. Wilcox then inform the local fire department who arrive at the scene shortly afterwards.

The special retrieval team locates the crashed craft, takes the names of all the civilians on site and the escorts them away. The site is cleaned and secured within 6 hours and 5 bodies are removed.

Mac Brazil finds strange debris in his field. The debris consists of strange foil like substance, balsawood like beams and a strange sort of ‘string’. None of Brazels sheep will go anywhere near the debris.

Lydia Sleppy a reporter for KSWS tries to send the first ‘unconfirmed’ reports of the crash over the teletype. The message is intercepted by the FBI who order her to cease transmission.

Melvin Brown who was one of the guards in the truck transporting the bodies claims that they were small with large heads and that their skin was an orange/yellow colour.

Glenn Dennis is called by the Roswell mortuary officer and is asked several questions relating to preserving bodies, making small caskets, and how to treat bodies that had been exposed to the sun.
Dennis is later summoned to the base to treat an injured pilot, while he is there is sees several ambulances and some wreckage. Dennis is then threatened by two officers who warn him not to report anything he has witnessed.

Mac Brazel returns to the debris site and picks up some the stuff and takes it to his neighbours, Floyd and Loretta Proctor. They suggest that he informs the Sheriff.


Sunday, July 6, 1947 
Brazel drives 75 miles into Roswell and shows some of the debris to Sheriff Wilcox who in turn informs the Military. Wilcox then also send two of his deputies to the ranch.

William Woody and his father try to get close to the site where they saw the strange object crash. However they are stopped by a heavy military presence who refuse them entry.

Colonel William Blanchard commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Group sends Jesse A. Marcel out to the Sheriffs office to investigate the reported debris. Marcel meets with Brazel and after seeing the debris decides to go out to the debris field. He is accompanied by Captain Sheridan Cavitt and Mac Brazel. Blanchard then orders that all debris at the Sheriffs office be sealed and flown to Fort Worth Army Air field where it is given to Colonel Thomas DuBose.

Marcel and Cavitt arrive too late at night to see the debris field so they spend the night with Brazel and his family. They also get a chance to observe some of the debris that Brazel had brought back with them. Neither of them had seen anything like it. It would not burn or scratch, yet when held in the hand it felt weightless. Several pieces of the foil like substance when crumpled in a ball would return to its original shape when released.


Monday, July 7, 1947 
Some of the debris and bodies from the main crash site are sent to Andrews AAF.

Brazel, Marcel and Cavitt arrive at the debris field. It is three-quarters of a mile long and three hundred feet wide. They spend the day loading as much of the debris as possible into Marcel’s car and then drive back to Roswell.

General Nathan Twining, Air Material Command commander suddenly changes his current engagements and flies out to Alamogordo.

Rumours start spreading around the Roswell base that a flying saucer has been retrieved.


Tuesday, July 8, 1947 
Marcel decides to show his family some of the debris that he has recovered before the debris becomes classified. He tells his son that it is parts of a flying saucer.

Marcel and Cavitt meet with Colonel Blanchard to report what they have seen. As a result Blanchard orders that guards be placed around the debris field and to stop anyone trying to obtain access.

Brazel who spent the previous night at Walt Whitmore’s (KGFL radio) house, is interviewed by him and wire-recorded. Whitmore is then informed from Washington not to air the interview with Brazel.

Brigadier General Roger Ramey orders Blanchard to send Marcel to Fort Worth.

Mac Brazel is interviewed by military personnel. This interview is to last several days.

Lieutenant Walter Haut finishes the Press Release that Colonel Blanchard had authorised. He gives copies to both radio and newspapers. The story is released, and claims that “The Army Air Forces here today announced that a flying disc had been found”. Within a couple of hours the base is flooded with calls from around the world.

Marcel arrives at Fort Worth and meets with General Ramey. Marcel shows Ramey the debris, who then takes Marcel into the Map room so that he can show him the location of the debris site. When Marcel returns the debris that he had brought in was gone, it had been replaced by bits of an old weather balloon.

Ramey then orders that the real wreckage be sent to Wright Field, Dayton.

The military clean the debris site back on Brazels ranch and transport all the debris to Wright Field.

A press conference is held in which Warrant Officer Irving Newton identifies the debris as that of a balloon. Marcel is ordered not to say anything and Ramey confirms that the men at Roswell had simply made a mistake. Marcel is then ordered to be photographed with the balloon debris.

Interest in the story dies down due to the fact the debris has been identified as that of a weather balloon.


Wednesday, July 9, 1947 
Brazel’s field is completely cleaned of debris. The remaining debris is sent to Los Alamos via Kirtland AFB.

Brazel is seen by friends as he is escorted from the Air Force base into town. They report that he looked very shocked and stressed. Brazel remarks to a friend, Frank Joyce, that he has had to change his story to protect his family.

Haut’s press release is confiscated by military personnel.

Many ground personnel at Wright Field claim to of seen strange debris being unloaded from unmarked planes. Others report seeing bodies at the Andrews AFB.

Marcel meets up with Sheridan Cavitt, who now claims that he never went with Marcel to the debris field on Brazel’s ranch.


Thursday, July 10, 1947 
Sheriff Wilcox calls on Glenn Dennis’s father and informs him that his son is in trouble with the military and advises him to talk to Glenn to make sure he remains silent.

Further balloon explanations are reported in the local papers.


Friday, July 11, 1947 
Glenn Dennis tries to contact a nurse who had told him that she had helped in one of the autopsies of the bodies. However, when he phones the base he is informed that no-one knows where she is.

All military personnel involved in the retrieval and cleanup operation are debriefed and told to forgot that it ever happened.

Military Police start visiting the civilians who were on the site of the main crash, they are warned not to say anything or they and there families would go missing.


Saturday, July 12, 1947 
Mac Brazel’s son Bill turns up at the ranch to help out while Mac Brazel is still being held under military guard.


Tuesday, July 15, 1947 
Mac Brazel is finally released. All he says is that the military kept asking the same questions over and over again. Brazel revealed that he had to take an oath never to saw what he saw.


Novemeber 1947 
Arthur Exon, a pilot stationed at Wright Field claims that he flew over the crash site and he could still make out the impact site.


Decemeber 1947 
Dr W. Curry Holden and Dr C. Bertrand Schultz attend a meeting in Albuquerque. They discuss the events in Roswell and Holden tells Schultz that he had seen a ‘heel-shaped’ craft and the bodies of the alien flight crew.


The Roswell incident remained buried for another 30 years until Jesse Marcel, allowed himself to be interviewed by several researchers including Leonard Stringfield and Stanton Friedman.

Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore release the book ‘The Roswell Incident’ in 1980 after interviewing more than 70 witnesses. Since the release of this book many other researcher have investigated the case and many other books have been written.

There have been many hoaxes associated with this case such as the Majestic-12 documents and the now already infamous ‘Alien Autopsy Video’. None of these hoaxes helps the serious study of the Roswell case.

The US Government after 40 plus years admitted that the ‘weather balloon’ story had indeed been a cover story. However it was not a cover story for a crashed alien spacecraft but that of Project Mogul a secret project the Air Force were undertaking and that the bodies were those of rhesus monkey’s. This theory also has proved to be wrong and for a full explanation of this and other possible causes I strongly recommend the book ‘The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell’ by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt.

Was there a government cover-up?

In 1947, the day after the crash was reported in Roswell, the government put out a headline that said that they had recovered a crashed UFO and that they were sending the debris to Texas for evaluation. That very night the base in Texas stated that what was found was none other than that of a weather balloon. Weather balloons were not made of foil and wood and the other countless materials that were found at the site.

Right after the Roswell incident, a UFO craze swamped the United States. Rumors then began that there was a secret group that was going around and intimidating witnesses that had seen the phoneme. The government has denied to this day that this secret group does not exist. As the claim that there is no such area that is called area 51. Yet there are pictures that are circulating from a secret government satellite that shows the existence of this base. Many believe that this is where the crashed UFO that was found in the Roswell area is being kept.

Now the government then came out with a different story to explain the debris. Project Mogul as it was called was a “TOP SECRET” project that was to be used to spy on the Soviet nuclear testing. While this was recently released, after the many things that the government has seemed to do to keep this about Roswell a secret, now they are telling us the truth. I THINK NOT!

Now the government claims that Roswell had no crash because it was all a joke that the government had done for publicity. The government also released documents that took nearly 20 years to de classify and the reason that this took so long according to the government is due to the fact that the base in Roswell was the only nuclear strike force in the U.S. at the time.

Maybe the passengers of the UFO at Roswell

Men in Black (MIB), in popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men or aliens dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as to various branches of government allegedly designed to protect secrets or perform other strange activities. The term is a generic one, used to refer to any unusual, threatening or strangely behaved individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some fashion with a UFO sighting. 

Appearance

Early reports of Men in Black often described them as men of short stature with swarthy complexions, as if they were deeply tanned. Some reported them as Gypsies. Sunglasses, black suits and black cars have been a feature for the entire period since modern sightings began in 1947, but according to UFO historian Jerome Clark, “All MIB are not necessarily garbed in dark suits.”

Behavior

According to the accounts of those reporting encountering them, Men in Black always seem to have detailed information on the persons they contact, as if the individual had been under surveillance for a long period of time. They have been described as seeming confused by the nature of everyday items such as pens, eating utensils or food, as well as using outdated slang, though accounts on the behavior of Men in Black vary widely. Accounts indicate that they often claim to be from an agency collecting information on the unexplained phenomenon their subject has encountered. In other accounts, they seem to be trying to suppress information by, for instance, trying to convince their subject the phenomenon never existed. They have been described as behaving in either an exceedingly furtive manner or a completely outgoing one, with wide grins and disconcerting giggles. In the UFO research community the Men in Black often claim to be from the U.S. Air Force or the CIA. Those who have encountered them say they produce identification, but when verification is later sought, the people described either do not exist, have been dead for some time, or do exist but have a different rank.

Possible explanations

Alien explanation

Some ufologistsbelieve that Men in Black are in fact either aliens or androids controlled by aliens. According to this theory, they are sent out in order to cover up alien activity on Earth. All oddities in their appearance and/or behavior may be explained by the Men in Black’s extraterrestrial origin and their unfamiliarity with norms of the human society.

Folkloric explanations

Although the phenomenon was initially and most frequently reported in the 1950s and 1960s, some researchers—John Keel and others—have suggested similarities between Men in Black reports and earlier demonic accounts. Keel suggests that MiBs are a modern-day manifestation of the same phenomena that were earlier interpreted as the devil or encounters with fairies. Similarly, folklorist Peter Rojcewicz noted that many Men in Black accounts parallel tales of people encountering the devil: Neither Men in Black nor the devil are quite human, and witnesses often discover this fact midway through an encounter. The meaning of this parallel, however, has been the subject of debate. Even so, the term “the black man” was used for centuries in reference to the Devil, up until contemporary times when “black man” was used to replace the term “Negro” and the satanic sense was lost. In witchcraft trials “The Black Man” was often reported as meeting with the accused and having sexual intercourse with them. In Washington Irving’s story “The Devil and Tom Walker” set in 1727, Irving tells how Tom asks “the black man” who he is. The man says he goes by many names and is called the black miner sometimes or the black woodsman. He says that since the Indians are gone, he presides over the persecutions of various religious sects, supports slave-dealers and is the master of the Salem witches. Tom replies that he must be “Old Scratch”, which is another name for the devil, and the black man acknowledges that he is Old Scratch. In 1932, H. P. Lovecraft also used the figure of The Black Man in his tale “The Dreams in the Witch-House” as a synonym for the Devil, but also uses the term and description for Nyarlathotep, a malevolent entity of his own creation. In the Middle Ages The Black Man was not a man with African features, but rather a man colored black and dressed in black.

Military/CIA explanations

More prosaically, Clark cites Bill Moore, who asserts that “the Men in Black are really government agents in disguise … members of a rather bizarre unit of Air Force Intelligence known currently as the Air Force Special Activities Center (AFSAC) … As of 1991, the AFSAC, headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia,” and “under the operational authority of Air Force Intelligence Command centered at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas.” (Clark, 321–22) Curiously, Moore also reports that AFSAC was inspired by the tales of Men in Black from the 1950s, and had nothing to do with those early accounts. Similarly, Clark notes that Dr. Michael D. Swords has speculated that the Barker/Bender Men in Black case (occurring shortly after the CIA-directed Robertson Panel issued its recommendations to spy on civilian UFO groups) might have been a psychological warfare experiment.

Hoax explanation

In his article, “Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker,” John C. Sherwood claims that at age 18, he cooperated when Gray Barker urged him in the late 1960s to develop a hoax - which Barker subsequently published - about what Barker called “blackmen,” three mysterious UFO inhabitants who silenced Sherwood’s pseudonymous identity, “Dr. Richard H. Pratt.”

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 Research Organisation, no such institution exists.

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, there 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 along a continuous spectrum ranging from the easily believable 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.

Excerpts from “Alien Intelligence” by Stuart Holroyd.
Everest House, 1979, ISBN 0-89696-040-4.

Since the start of the modern era of reported UFO activity, which is generally considered as dating from the 1947 sighting by American businessman and amateur pilot, Kenneth Arnold, many people who have claimed sightings of UFOs or contact experiences with their occupants have reported subsequent visits from rather sinister gentlemen whose behavior has been distinctly odd. These reports have emanated from different countries and from individuals quite unaware that their experiences were not unique, and they have details in common that add up to a rather convincing case for the reality of the visitors. The men are generally described as dark or olive-skinned, rather oriental-looking, of short stature, and frail build, and are usually dressed in black, sometimes in ill-fitting or out-of-fashion clothes. There are generally two or three of them and they seem to travel in large black cars. Some people who have been visited by ‘men in black’ have noted the numbers on the cars’ license plates, but when poice have checked these they invariably found that they are non-existant as registered license numbers. Other people have reported that the visitors have appeared and vanished with unaccountable abruptness. They have used a variety of ruses to command a hearing, masquerading as government agents, journalists, military or air force personnel, or representatives of insurance companies, for example. Sometimes they simply ask a lot of questions, many of them puzzlingly irrelevant, and then go away, but sometimes they communicate quite unequivocal warnings of dire consequences if a person does not keep quiet about his UFO experience. More than one investigator has been effectively silenced or intimidated by the sinister visitors. UFO cultists who believe that the world’s governments are in cahots to suppress information on the subject, have spread the idea that the ‘men in black’ are CIA agents, but this hypothesis is difficult to maintain in view of the evidence for their world-wide appearances, the uniformity and peculiarity of their looks, and the strangeness of their conduct.

OK, here’s a bit of stuff for UFO-L — on MIB’s. From Brad Steiger’s disorganized opus “Mysteries of Time & Space” Prenntice-Hall, 1974, ISBN 0-113-609040-0 (some of the book first appeared in “Saga” and “Male” magazine — that should give you some context of the ‘hardness’ of this info, but it is grist for the mill). In September, 1953 Albert K. Bender had figured out parts of the origin of flying saucers, and sent his theory off to a “trusted friend”. Soon thereafter three men dressed in black appeared, with his letter in hand. They told him ‘the real story’, and he became ill. Bender, apparently to “save mankind”, kept the details to himself and gave up UFO research. Parts of this story were retold in Gray Barker’s “They knew too much about flying saucers” (1956) [without the part of ‘revealed truth’], and said that several other people (in Australia and New Zealand) had also been visited. Bender decided to tell all in his 1962 “Flying Saucers and the Three Men”, which (Steiger says) was disappointing, in that it didn’t tell much (that anyone wanted to know, anyway). Alien bases in Antartica (which Bender saw by Astral Projection), and so on. However, others continued to stick to the MIB story, saying that Bender had in fact been silenced. “Bender was a changed man after the MIB visited him. It was as if he had been lobotomized.” He suffered headaches that he said were caused by ‘them’.

Steiger says that “large numbers” of UFO-ologists have been harassed by *somebody*. A number of them (none named, unfortunately) had had photographs and negatives of UFO’s confiscated by people claiming “government affiliation” (curious term, that) - “usually three, usually dressed in black”. [BTW, if you ever get a visit from MIB, what they’re asking you to do is a violation of search and seizure laws.] In an issue of “Saucer Scoop” (as usual, Steiger doesn’t give an issue number) John Keel is quoted as saying that MIB are professional terrorists who go from place to place making sure that too much isn’t found out about the UFO phenominon. Keel says that MIB victims appear 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 goes on to charge that local police/FBI/etc. must be in on it, because they refuse to investigate MIB.

Despite the fact that the United States Air Force continues to claim that they have had nothing to do with unidentified flying objects since 1969, when Project Blue Book was shut down, several US veterans recently spoke at a press conference (for the National Press Club) in Washington, DC. During the press conference, the seven ex-military recounted their encounters with UFOs, including incidences of sightings and possible disablement of nuclear missiles that took place in the 60’s and 70’s. Beyond the claims that the USAF makes about having nothing to do with UFOs, it also states that of the over 12,000 UFO sightings it has studied, none of them were either found to be threatening or technologically remarkable.
However, even before this whole press conference went down, Capstan Edward Ruppelt (a member of the United States Air Force) said that there was a cover up going on and misinformation was being spread. He went on to say that writing off the sightings of UFOs by claiming the things seen were weather balloons or hallucinations is a convenient and quick way to move along past the sighting, but it is no more a valid way of dealing with the sighting as resetting a clock to try and change the time.
Captain Ruppelt also points out that many of these sightings are clustered around objects or areas that tend to have somewhat more advanced or complicated technology (including atomic energy installations, harbors, and critical manufacturing areas). This, he says, may well indicate some interest in the technologies available to us on the part of those piloting potential extraterrestrial crafts, though intentions are not so easily guessed. His theory is supported, he says, by the fact that military air defense outposts, A-bomb storage, and large military depots don’t produce many sightings, nor do areas with large populations which lack an abundance of interesting technology. Capitan Ruppelt points out that, statistically, if there was no intelligence manipulating the flight paths of these UFOs, these clusters around technologically advanced and complex areas would be few and far between, if they existed at all. Instead, the sighting pattern should look much more like the population distribution.