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GALAXY DEFENDERS?
Inside ‘real’ Men in Black where ‘shadowy agents suppressed UFO encounters’ after conspiracy theory inspired hit movie
THE 26th anniversary of Men in Black, an era-defining film in the late 1990s, has arrived.
Released on July 2, 1997, and starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the sci-fi action comedy captured fans' imagination and UFO conspiracy theorists' close attention.
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Although every aspect of the Men in Black cinema story was fiction, many still believe in the supposedly real Men in Black, known as shadowy agents who suppress stories of those who claimed to encounter UFOs and aliens.
In fact, several alleged and unsettling encounters with mysterious government figures in the late 1940s, '50s, and '60s are said to have inspired the beloved classic.
Those who claim they were visited by the MIB noted they always arrive in pairs of two or three — it's never just one, per .
Their job is allegedly to ensure that UFO witnesses stay silent about what they saw and supposedly issue stark threats.
Given the nature and the immediacy of their supposed appearances, some believe the so-called real MIB are aliens in disguise.
Author Gray Barker's 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, detailed the first recorded and alleged account of the MIB appearing.
They supposedly appeared in front of a man named Harold Dahl after an encounter on June 27, 1947, now referred to as the Maury Island UFO Incident.
Dahl claimed that while gathering logs with his son out on the island in Puget Sound, Washington, near Seattle, he saw six-donut shaped objects hovering, which later dropped debris that struck him.
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He then took photographs, which he later showed to his supervisor, Fred Crisman, who also visited the location and claimed to have witnessed one of the UFOs.
Eerily, the next morning, Dahl said he was visited by the MIB, where one man allegedly stated to him: "What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe.”
Although both Dahl and Crisman later admitted that this was a hoax, rumors of the MIB didn't stop there.
A man named Albert Bender created a small group in 1952 called the International Flying Saucer Bureau, which published a magazine called Space Review, per .
In the 1953 edition of the magazine, Bender claimed that the MIB approached him, who he described as “three men wearing dark suits."
They requested that Bender stop publishing information about UFOs.
Space Review did cease its operations that year, and the International Flying Saucer Bureau ended — leaving speculation among the public.
Some believe that Bender created the incident as a mysterious way to end the publication due to insignificant profits.
Bender's story was featured in Barker's book, and the MIB were further described as “three men in black suits with threatening expressions on their faces."
"Three men who walk in on you and make certain demands. Three men who know that you know what the saucers really are!”
Years later, in 1962, Bender released his own book, Flying Saucers, and the Three Men, and the description of the MIB got even more detailed and intense.
"They floated about a foot off the floor… They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style," Bender wrote.
"The faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them… The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs."
"They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable," he continued.
Before the release of the film, which gave the MIB a more positive, lighthearted, and funny approach, the idea was that if a person claimed they had an encounter with the supposedly real Men in Black, it meant that their UFO encounter story was that much more valid.
The Men in Black were folklore and myth, that is, until the 2013 documentary Mirage Men offered another perspective on the existence of the MIB and who they could be.
Evidence revealed in the documentary offers the idea that instead of aliens and UFOs being among us, the United States government was persuading the public to believe that we had made contact, per
The documentary centers around Richard Doty, a former Air Force special investigations officer and alleged "man in black."
Doty said he inserted himself within UFO conspiracy theorists to foster their imaginations about some classic tropes, including Area 51, abductions, and little green men being seen.
The former government employee claimed that he and several co-workers offered lies to ufologists, and if anyone came too close to what the military was truly working on, they were the ones who supposedly alerted them.
Around the Cold War, if the lies of the United States' encounters with aliens spread to the Soviet Union, it was even better, according to Doty.
Most notably, Mirage Men seemingly debunked the UFO mystery surrounding cattle mutilations in the 1970s in New Mexico, which had a wide range of rumors that deemed aliens the responsible party.
The alleged actual reason the horror instances occurred was due to a United States military experiment in underground "nuclear fracking."
The documentary also claimed that experimental military helicopters that claimed to fly silently would attach flashing lights to fool the American public.
Although, Mark Pilkington, writer of the book Mirage Men, noted that the man's claim still likely isn't the whole truth of the situation.
"Some of what he said was true, and I'm sure a lot of it wasn't, or was a version of the truth," he said of Doty, per The Guardian.
"I have no doubt Rick was at the bottom of a ladder that stretches all the way to Washington."
He added: "It's unclear to what extent he was following orders and to what taking matters into his own hands."
So, do the Men in Black really exist?
Edward Snowden's leaked GCHQ's Art Of Deception still seems to imply they might.
The PowerPoint presentation's complete title was The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations and included what was referred to as the Disruption Operational Playbook.
Phrases in the leaked government presentation appeared to say "swap the real for the false and vice versa" and "people make decisions as part of groups."
Either way, plenty of questions remain.
Are the MIB real and sowing lies that UFOS and aliens truly exist to confuse and control the public, or could it be a manipulation intended to confuse and distract from the possibility that contact has already been made?
For more related content, check out The U.S. Sun's coverage of how scientists have supposedly revealed the "truth behind the Vegas UFO," but some sightings remain unexplained.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
The U.S. Sun also has the story of how several witnesses claimed they saw United States "military jets dogfighting with a UFO" over a lake.
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