UFO in medieval art

You¡¯re currently reading ¡°UFO in medieval art,¡± an entry on World¡¯s Aenigma

                                                

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April 30, 2009 / 8:27 am

                   

                     
                      Men in Black
The first reported encounter with ¡®Men in Black¡¯ happened in 1947. Harold A. Dahl and Fred L. Crisman – two US harbour patrolmen – had spotted a UFO over the water of Puget Sound, Washington. Dahl claimed that a man dressed in black visited him shortly after the sighting and forcefully advised him not to further discuss the incident.

Another similar encounter happened 1952, 25th of July, in the morning, near San Pietro a Vico in Italy. A man named Carlo Rossi was fishing in the River Serchio when he witnessed a strange circular craft hovering over the river. Rossi hid, watching the craft as it passed over him, and then sped away. In the following weeks he told no-one about what he had seen, but on 15th September he found a stranger dressed in a dark blue suit waiting for him by the river. The stranger spoke Italian, but with an odd Scandinavian accent, and had very strange facial features. The man forcefully asked Rossi about what he had seen, but Rossi denied everything. Ever since organized flying saucer research began in the early 1950s, a number of UFO investigators have claimed that many of them have suffered personal harassment, unusual accidents, and even mysterious deaths due to the visitations of three mysterious men in black. In some cases, according to UFO researchers, sinister voices whispered threats over the telephone and warned them to terminate specific investigations. Official disclaimers by the U.S. Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have served only to intensify the mystery of the bizarre incidents that have instilled fear among those who witnessed flying saucer phenomena and have prompted accusations of government cover-ups by members of civilian research groups for over 50 years.

The legend of the three Men in Black, the MIB, began in September 1953 when Albert K. Bender, who had organized the International Flying Saucer Bureau, received certain data that he felt provided the missing pieces concerning the origin of flying saucers. Bender wrote down his theory and sent it off to a friend he felt he could trust. When the three men appeared at Bender¡¯s door, one of them held that letter in his hand. The three Men in Black told Bender that among the many researchers he had been the one to stumble upon the correct answer to the flying-saucer enigma. Then they filled him in on the details. Bender became ill. He was unable to eat for three days. Bender went on to say that when people found out the truth about flying saucers there would be dramatic changes in all things. Science, especially, would suffer a major blow. Political structures would topple. Mass confusion would reign.

A bizarre Men in Black case happened on 18th May 1968, when UFO witnesses started contacting researchers. George Smyth was one of those who had seen a strange object in the skies above Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA. He began to receive visits from strange men, and received phone calls warning him not to attend upcoming UFO conventions or speak to independent investigators. A bizarre aspect of this case was that the three visitors Smyth described were apparently the men he had been told to avoid – the UFO enthusiasts John Keel, Gray Barker and James Moseley. What made this even more odd was that these three men were actually miles away from Smyth¡¯s house at the time of the visits. Other UFO investigators in the area, John Robinson and his wife Mary, also noticed strange things happening to them. A large dark car seemed to be parked outside their house in New Jersey City, with a strange man inside constantly watching them.

On 15th January 1997 William Shearer experienced a UFO encounter in Essex, southern England. Four days later he had a knock at the door and outside stood two strange men, dressed in dark grey suits and long coats. One man stood on guard by a large imposing saloon car, the other stood at Shearer¡¯s threshold. This man was said to be very tall, deathly pale but with bright red lips, and spoke in a very unusual, almost automated, way. He repeatedly asked to come in but Shearer refused and the men finally said they would come back later. A month later, Shearer was at work when two men appeared. One was the visitor who had stood by the car at the housecall, the other was a different man. They were both dressed in suits with hats, and they told him they wanted to talk about his UFO experience. They gave him exact details of the incident, details that Shearer felt only he should know, and were forceful in their requests. Shearer asked to see their ID, but the men just kept repeating a formulaic set of questions. In the end, Shearer refused to let them into his place of work and the two men disappeared. However, since then, he has reported blatant tapping activity when using his telephone.

John H. Stuart, a New Zealander, picked up a piece of metal that had fallen from a UFO during a close sighting in February 1955. The next night he received a visit from a man dressed in black who announced that he had more right than Stuart did to the piece of grey-white metal. The man in black told Stuart a lot about flying saucers and left him feeling frightened. ¡°I have a feeling that some day there will come a slow knocking at my own door,¡± Gray Barker (1925– ) wrote in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956). ¡°They will be at your door, too, unless we all get wise and find out who the three men really are.¡±

UFO and paranormal investigator John A. Keel¡¯s (1930– ) pursuit of the flying saucer silencers in the late 1960s led him to uncover some extreme cases of personal abuse in which certain contactees or investigators had been kidnapped by three men in a black car. Keel noted that it was nearly always three men who subjected the victims to some sort of brainwashing technique that left them in a state of nausea, mental confusion, or even amnesia lasting for several days. The investigation of many of these cases never get beyond local police departments, Keel found. Neither the FBI nor any other central government agency was engaged in collecting information on such stories of mistreatment by the mysterious three Men in Black. Responding to accusations from civilian researchers who demanded an investigation and who suggested that the air force was somehow behind such silencings, Colonel George P. Freeman, Pentagon spokesman for Project Blue Book, was quoted as saying that the three Men in Black were not connected with the air force in any way. Nor would any other United States security group claim them. It has never been within the line of duty of any government agency to threaten private citizens or to enter their home without a search warrant. No government agent is empowered to demand surrender of private property by any law-abiding citizen. Freeman went on to say that by posing as air force officers and government agents, the silencers were committing a federal offense.

Broadcaster Frank Edwards (1908–1967), who became well known for his best-selling Flying Saucers—Serious Business (1966), made much of what he believed to be an official plot that had been set to silence him. Before becoming interested in UFOs, Edwards had been conducting a highly successful radio show sponsored by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). He was warned to abandon the subject of flying saucers, and when Edwards persisted, he was given his walking papers. In spite of thousands of letters protesting the firing of Edwards and the silencing of his UFO reports, his ex-sponsor stood firm. When reporters asked George Meany, president of the AFL, why Edwards had been dropped, Meany answered that it was because he had talked too much about flying saucers. Edwards claimed that he later learned that his constant mention of UFOs had been irritating to the Defense Department and that the department had brought pressure to bear on the AFL. Edwards was only temporarily silenced, and he soon had in syndication a radio show that dealt almost exclusively with flying saucers and other strange phenomena. But his sudden death on June 24, 1967, the 20-year anniversary of Kenneth Arnold¡¯s sighting of the flying saucers near Mt. Rainier, Washington, sparked immediate concern among UFO researchers that Edwards had been silenced for good. And it certainly added to the paranoia that he had died on the day before he was scheduled to address the Congress of Scientific Ufologists assembled at the Hotel Commodore in New York City.

Stories of the Men in Black have continued unabated since their origin in the early 1950s. In 1997, the motion picture Men in Black starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith became a smash box office hit by portraying the sinister ¡°three men¡± as two men who worked for a secret government agency that patrolled the action of aliens living secretly on Earth. The concept that originated in fear and distrust of the government or of some nefarious secret organization of aliens or agents was played for laughs, and the motion picture used state-of-the-art special effects to create astonishing outer space creatures. A sequel to the successful film was released in 2002, and the legend of the frightening Men in Black knocking at the doors of those who had witnessed UFO activity to threaten and to silence them continued to be seen as a vehicle for comedy. If the UFO silencers are a hoax, no one has yet answered who is perpetrating it and why. Whoever comprises this persistent silence group either knows, or gives the impression of knowing, a great deal more about the universe than the current scientific community does. Although no one can be absolutely certain, one theory is that these strange visitors are UFO investigators who belong to a research group that has standardised their visiting uniform. Others say they are actually aliens trying to cover their tracks. Sceptics believe they are pranksters or simply figments of witness¡¯s imaginations. Many researchers of UFO phenomena continue to believe that the Men in Black are agents from another world who labor to spread confusion and fear among Earth¡¯s serious UFO investigators and those witnesses of UFO activity.