Inside ‘real’ Men in Black where ‘shadowy agents suppressed UFO encounters’ after conspiracy theory inspired hit movie

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.

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.