Men in Black

views updated

Men in Black

The mysterious and sinister visitors who are supposed to have silenced flying saucer investigator Albert K. Bender, as described in the book They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers by Gray Barker (1956). They have since become part of flying saucer mythology, with claimed visitations to other UFO investigators and contactees. Some investigators preferred to believe that they were government officials, possibly from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), determined to suppress information on the reality of UFOs. For most, the Men in Black myth became but a form in which paranoid fears could be expressed within the ufological community.

Sources:

Clark, Jerome. The Emergence of a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning through 1959. Vol. 2 of The UFO Encyclopedia. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1992.

Rojcewicz, Peter M. "The 'Men in Black' Experience and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis." Journal of American Folklore 100 (April/June 1987): 148-60.