Almost Unknown CE3, or Ambulatory Dream??

This is an odd thing to say the least. It may also have been no mystery at all. I'm going to post it because it comes from an apparently very rare small book in the SITU library, and the "case" shows up neither in Alberto Rosales' Humanoid catalog, nor in UFO-DNA, nor is talked about on the internet, so I think it's essentially a forgotten incident.

It is of course possible that it is appropriate that it is forgotten. Perhaps nothing happened here at all --- there is certainly not much to go on. But this tale is at a minimum interesting; and maybe it might spark some ideas in somebody's head, so here it is.

The story, "The Transparent People", was told to a person named William J. Eisenman by a New Jersey farmer named Frederick von Krueger --- admittedly any illusions nowadays to "Freddy Kruger" are unfortunate, but we will ignore such trivia. The book was written in 1972, and says that the incident occurred "ten years earlier". I always find such casual comment irritating as a researcher, but let's take this literally and say the event happened [or not] in 1962. The tale gets on paper when Eisenman hears about it, and goes and listens to Krueger's narration of it, and mainly repeats the narrative as told with surprisingly little inquiry of the teller to clarify or revisit anything. The result is a very small hardcover book of 27 pages if you include the title and table of contents. I found this well within my scope of reading stamina, though not always my comprehension.

I'm going to try to illustrate this tale out of thin air [so don't take the illustrations overly seriously, but the above one is genuine as it is in the book].

Fred Krueger was a small acreage [4] farmer in Old Tappan, NJ. One evening, time of year not stated as usual, he was getting ready for bed [c.11:30pm]. He undressed and went right to sleep. His next awareness was that he was standing naked outside of his house in the yard --- no idea how he got there.

He was walking out from the house and past a round metal storage building he had there. He felt that he was walking involuntarily but wasn't resisting it.

Ahead of him he saw what he thought at first was his round building, but then realized that he'd passed it already. Coming closer, he saw it as "two soup bowls inverted one atop the other" with a small dome. And it was landed in his field.

During this time, his wife, who had not gone to bed, heard what she thought were voices outside, but couldn't understand anything said. She searched the house for her husband, and finding the bed empty, assumed that he'd gone outside, possibly talking to someone. She called out, got no answer, no further conversation occurred, and she let it go. [This is one of the ridiculous failings of this book. Mrs. Krueger is the "supporting witness" in the story, but nothing whatever is said about her, whether she was deceased, whether the transcriber talked to her... nothing].

Meanwhile, Krueger found himself standing next to the vehicle and almost on top of a "platform" of softly luminescent "ivory" with various colors swimming within it. Upon stepping onto this platform he was raised into the craft.

Once inside the inner corridor was bathed in a low intensity light. He describes this as something like Ivory, but his words give more the impression of something pearlescent. He wandered a bit down the corridor and entered a room, which contained a gray-colored chair.

He felt compelled to sit in the chair facing what seemed to be a curtain of hanging disks just in front. The chair then moved "into" the soft disk-wall and he found that he merged into it like a mold. Once completely inside the mold, two soft objects fitted over his ears and he fell asleep.

Rather than trying to revisit this part of the episode later, I'll say now that Krueger says nothing more about it --- no speculation. I, however, have no such qualms. This is to me a rather neatly imaginative way of guessing how a human could be placed in a safe stasis for some very unusual travel to 'elsewhere', for at the end of this episode Krueger regains his feeling of self-conscious mobility, leaves the ship, and steps onto a location like-but-not-identical to Earth.

It is at the moment that he jumps off the craft to the ground that he turns and has a fairly good look at two of his "captors". His description is terribly inadequate. All you can divine from his words is that they were humanoid in shape, and looked as if they were made of the same light [pearlescent and somewhat transparent] that he'd experienced everywhere on board.

When Krueger jumped, he floated gently to the ground. This area of the planet was desert and mountain, almost entirely of red sedimentary rock. Scrub bush scattered about and trees ran up hillsides. Above the mountains in the distance was a bluish haze.

Four other of the creatures were standing somewhat near a huge tunnel entrance which was mechanically carved out of the mountain. Krueger hesitated for a long while, but as they were not paying any attention to him, and he currently saw no other option, he entered the tunnel.

The tunnel was extremely long and lighting was dim, coming from somewhere above. Krueger walked along hugging one side, mainly un-met and uneventful.

Finally he came to an offshoot where you could see down at the end a lake of water [all this apparently still inside the mountain]. At the bottom of this side passage, he found a bench by that lake. There he rested and tried to think. There was no sound, no birds, no animals of any kind. Out in the lake there seemed to be a geyser spraying shimmering water, dancing like a thousand glittering mirrors. Krueger felt at peace here. This place, due at least to the dancing geyser, had life; the rest of the planet, the tunnel, the transparent people, seemed like parts of a tomb.

During this time, Krueger saw two separate "people" emerge from doors in the mountain wall and walk right by him. He then saw two of them emerging in a canoe from a dark cave area, cross to an archway out in the lake and disappear behind it. Krueger was puzzled and concerned that these beings apparently didn't care whether he was there or not. He wandered briefly to the lake shore and saw small fish therein. This led to a concern as to whether other more dangerous things might be in there, and he backed away. Ultimately, he decided that even the pleasant lake was a dead end and went back up the tunnel. At the entrance the four beings were still standing about, and still taking no notice of him. They never moved nor spoke. He made his way over to the pearlescent platform and jumped on it. Into the vehicle he went--- no sign of the beings anywhere. He found the room with the chair and the curtain of disks. He sat. The curtain encompassed him... and he slept.

Most irritatingly, it is not stated whether he woke outside in his field naked, or in his bed.

So what was this? Easily the number one hypothesis would be a vivid imaginative and strongly-convincing ambulatory dream. Krueger doesn't seem the type, but we don't know enough about him. Was he fascinated with UFOs or Space or Science Fiction? Eisenman, as usual, has done a lousy job on such things. [The only comment from the UFO community that I've found was from Lou Farish, who suggested that Eisenman and Krueger sit down and start all over with the details]. All we know from the text is that Eisenman himself was interested in all manner of absurd things and that Krueger was an amateur cave explorer once. Krueger, like many UFO experiencers, later became very interested in NASAs work in hopes of finding out something which would help him understand his own encounter. Certainly nothing like profiteering or fame is playing any role here.

But what, or who, is??? Could Frederick Krueger possibly have really gone somewhere beyond the Earth???

Well, it's fun to think about anyway.

A Fafrotsky Solved?

A few posts ago we had a case of a couple in front of their home when the wife [during a rainstorm] was pelted by smallish yellow plastic pellets. She harvested quite a few of these, though not HUGE amounts, and considered it a mystery. One of readers suggested that this case might have been mischief-making meatheads. Well, in this case that could well be true.

These "toy" pellet guns are all the rage worldwide now it seems. The pellets are of varying sizes and very often yellow or yellow-orange [the yellow-orange ones at the very top of the post look exactly like the fafrotsky pellets to me, and are one type of commercial object], and range in size up to small "marble-sized." [as you can see]. The guns are made for rapid fire [relatively speaking] so it would take only only moron to fire away at the lady involved.

The misuse of these guns has gotten [of course] out of hand, and some are capable of breaking glass and even eyeglasses. Some localities [such as the Philippine site pictured above] have banned their sale because of a number of injuries caused by the things [want to bet that the US doesn't?]

This theory for our case seems sufficient for it to be placed as the primary working hypothesis. We could put it at near-certainty if someone could compare the pellets harvested by the lady with these commercial gun pellets and determine that the product was easily available.

Hopefully no one feels mad about solving some of these things. The only way to unravel the truth about the mysteries of the Universe is to determine what the mysteries vs the non-mysteries are.

Thanks to our correspondent for the idea which seems to work.

An Early Induced Out-Of-Body-Experience??

Again reading some of the old library journals that I bought to preserve. In this one (Atlantic Monthly, April 1924), there was the article indicated above. Its title ["What Death Is Like"] intrigued me as I surveyed the table of contents, but upon reading, I didn't really expect an OOBE. But this is what's reported here, and interesting enough that I thought you might like it.

This case involved a woman who was intrigued about hypnotism, but suspicious of it. The activities described by the article occurred somewhat by accident, as she was just visiting a sanitarium in which a friend was resident. A hypnotist was there at the time, by coincidence, demonstrating his techniques. She remained wary of the thing. Her friend, however, told her that she herself had been learning about hypnotism, and that it wasn't hard nor dangerous. Later, upon going to her room, the friend offered to demonstrate. With some reluctance, and assuring her friend that she would not likely succeed, the author of this piece acceded to the request to try it.

Unbeknownst to herself, she turned out to be easily hypnotizable, even by this raw amateur. But that was not the biggest surprise. Her friend, obviously a completely immoral thrill-seeker at heart, then suggested that she "leave her body". This clownish friend had no idea what she was doing, nor how to undo anything which might occur. Here's what did:

"In obedience to her words, something very remarkable happened. I felt as if an inner spiritual body were being dragged out of my physical body through the head --- and with intense physical suffering. I could compare the process only to tearing out a firmly embedded plant by the roots from the ground. I seemed to have a light ethereal body, floating in a horizontal position directly above my physical body, perhaps three feet away. And I thought: 'How strange! How wonderful! I am here and my body is there! Now I know that I have never believed in immortality. I have thought that I believed it; I have wanted to believe it; but my astonishment shows me that I have never really believed the mind could exist apart from the brain. I have never really believed that the self, the ego, could go on thinking and being apart from the physical self. This must be death. Never again shall I be afraid of death. How free I feel! How delightful it is to be unhampered by all the limitations that are a part of the body!'."

Then she became acutely aware of both the physical world, but also of a world of spiritual presence. These "presences"were all about her and she wanted to stay with them and go on with them. Something was nagging at her that she was not ready. She protested that she didn't want to go back to that old "dry-goods box" [her body].

Meanwhile she noticed that her "friend" was first exulting then panicking hysterically. Somehow her disgust with these antics gave way to compassion and she made an act of will to "go back". Again the passage was through the head, and again with great suffering. She was quite discombobulated for a time before the reintegration[?] was complete, and she was able to think and talk normally. She left the building as soon as she had recovered, and never saw nor talked to that "friend" again.

That experience has much congruency with near-death experiences brought on by severe trauma. It is particularly interesting because it is written before most of the publicity given these things later in the century. And it seems to be roughly in the category of self-induced OOBEs that alleged masters of that psychic trick seem to be able to do.

I've wondered for a long time now if much of Clairvoyance wasn't really a type of OOBE. It might not be. Perhaps there is a merely "direct" way of knowing outside of any relationship with our spatial dimensions. But maybe, just maybe, our consciousnesses "separate" and leap out and "go there" when they Clairvoye. This idea came to me [after no doubt it had come to thousands of people earlier] when I read Mind-Reach. Mind-Reach was spoken of mainly in clairvoyance terms, but the key psychic succeeders were clearly using a type of OOBE. I was impressed by the text... but could you really believe any of this?

Years later I joined the Society for Scientific Exploration, welcomed as a university science prof and a UFO researcher mainly, and there was Hal Puthoff, the primary scientist on the Mind-Reach project. I had an interest in his work; Hal had an interest in UFOs; we became friends. Hal is on the right in the picture from the 1960s above. On the left is the well-known-by-the-insiders-of-government research, Christopher [Kit] Green. In the middle is the superstar of the Mind-Reach project, California police detective, Pat Price [guess how he solved his crimes].

I instinctively like Hal, so my judgement here is probably no good, but he has always been a straight-shooter with me. Hal could talk about some of the stuff that he did at the Stanford Research Institute, but hardly all of the secret stuff done specifically by the government. Still his SRI stories gradually eased my mind about the validity of the techniques and the results with people like Price. If the SRI results are no good, it was not because of Hal Puthoff.

As time has gone on, the government has released the majority of the Black side of these experiments... and Hal has become free to talk about those. He said that the experiments generally took place out of a rooftop electronically-sealed laboratory on top of the radiophysics laboratory at SRI. Originally it was the CIA who sponsored these, but later the administration of the thing was taken over by the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA]. Hal says that many agencies had their hands in this, "including a couple which I can't yet name". Now he named CIA, DIA, and National Security Agency --- what's left? What's so secret that it's beyond CIA, DIA, and NSA?? Oh well, ... not to pry....

Hal has said that Pat Price was able to "go" to a secret USA facility and mentally "walk around" inside, seeing clearly enough to bring back specific knowledge, even names on doors. He said that Price did an extremely accurate "reading" of a Soviet facility. The great majority of this information, admittedly, did not reach the level of actionable intelligence, although Hal is more positive about that, feeling that much of the problem is that the inner corridors of the intel community just can't get comfortable with the idea. It was Pat Price who described plainly that he'd sort of "fly" to the target, and once there nose around just as if he were physically present --- clearly OOBE.

There is only one alternative hypothesis that I have ever been able to contemplate which would say that these things did not happen. Because I know Hal, and I have good reason to trust his view of these matters, any alternative would have to be one in which Hal himself didn't know that something else was going on. Let me say now that I don't believe that, but I'm going to be intellectually honest and give you the alternative theory anyway.

The only way that these results didn't happen but Hal thought that they did would be if the intelligence community whizzed the whole thing up, leaving Hal [and probably Russell Targ too] out of the real loop. Given the amount of involvement by the primary physicist-investigators, it's hard to see how they could have done this --- but there certainly would have been motive. Motive would be to fool the Soviets into believing that we were succeeding at something VERY dangerous to their keeping of secrets. Hal has said that the CIA informed him that the USSR was spending millions trying to crack this problem of remote viewing. Our "success" would require them to waste a lot more money. Also, this would constitute a "honeytrap" for Soviet spies, or a test for our own personnel's loyalty-to-secrecy. Such are the bent subtleties of the Black World Mind.

But in the end I believe my friend. I think that he would have sniffed out any puzzle-palace fooling about, and he also had enough positive evidence outside of the Black Project side of this to know that the best remote-viewers could make it work at least some of the time.

Still... what do I really know of what goes on behind the Dark Mirror.....? ....

you are getting sleepy....

sleepy....

sleep.....

Snap out of it, you overly dramatic goof!!!

OUI-JA: Yes, Yes? NO, NO.

When I was a grade school kid in St. Albans, WV, I was rummaging around in a basement closet where things like MONOPOLY games were stored, and came across a OUI-JA board [looking very like the one above in memory]. I asked Mother what it was [Dad was at work], and she said that it was just an old board game that used to be popular back when she was a high school student [that would have been the 1930s]. I asked her how it was played, and she began to describe it --- the thought dawning on me that this seemed very improbable what I was hearing. I was always somewhat of a "romantic" thinker, but this seemed ... well... nonsensical. She began to try to express that some people thought that something else... spirits... moved the planchet. This was stunning to say the least --- even to a Catholic boy who believed and still believes in such spirits. She then stopped and said that Dad did not like the OUI-JA board even being in the house [and probably didn't even know that Mom hadn't thrown it out long ago].

Whereas Mom was [and still is] a person who almost refuses to use her reasoning powers, preferring a simplistic feelings-in-the-moment way of living, Dad was the most brilliant elite thinker I had ever experienced [and remains one of the brightest in my experience even now]. Dad viewed the OUI-JA board as "valid" phenomenologically, but dangerous. He had thought deeply about it [as he did everything] and had come to the conclusion that the Church theologians had come to: this board was akin to things like trance mediumship and automatic writing --- not necessarily evil or dangerous [especially to begin with] but a hot, dark fire to be playing in. [I have put Mom's attempt to express what Dad told her in much more intellectual phrasing than she did]. I put the board back, and never even talked to Dad about it [wish that I had now, but I was just a kid].

Early in the life of this blog, what seems nearly a different age [September 8, 2009], I posted an entry on OUI-JA. A comment from the great Jesuit writer and sociologist, Andrew Greeley, had inspired me to "go take a look". So off to the internet I went. I found about 1000 cases where people were reporting their experiences. I used the first 500 that I found to make a crude study. The weight of the statistics told [to my view] a strong story: OUI-JA experiences started out childishly and fun, turned odd and a bit creepy, then turned dark. The majority of the persons reporting said that the experiences were negative and were not going "back in". A third said that the board was constantly into a morbid death theme and almost a quarter said that they themselves were given death threats. The most stunning element to me was the 40% reporting of poltergeist-like activities ultimately breaking out.

The above add: "Amusing, Scientific, Instructive", might be one of the more misleading immoral adds of all time. "Thought compelling" and "Deeply Interesting", yes.

So, unless I wanted to go back and log the second 500 cases that I found, I thought that I was through with this topic. But along comes reading New Atlantean Journal and LO!, another article on OUI-JA.

So, what did it say?

The thing was called: "Playing with unknown forces: The Ouija Board". [Andrew Piotrowski]. Author was identified as a Toronto Psi researcher preparing a book on researches into Ouija. He began the article with three stories. In the first, the person became addicted to "playing" the board. Phoney religious leaders began manifesting in the messages giving her dangerous advice, and finally an "invitation" to "come over" to them. She then attempted suicide. [failed fortunately]. Piotrowski described her condition as "possessed".

In the second case, a lonely woman felt that she had found a friend through the board. [on whatever the other side of it is]. The entity began giving her hope for a new relationship with some yet-to-be-met boyfriend. The board gave her the address where she should go to meet him. She did. Was raped and beaten, lost her senses, and is now institutionalized. [Great sales pitches for Ouija, eh?]

His third account was his own first experience, where he did not touch the planchet himself but just took dictation while others worked the board. He said that this was pleasant.

Piotrowski then stated that there have been several researchers in the past who consistently established that there is a real phenomenon here. In support of this, he cites William F. Barrett.

W F Barrett was the son of a protestant minister who became a leading physicist in late 19th century England. He is notable to us as the Founder of the Society for Psychical Research. And, in my opinion, the author of the best book studying Dowsing ever written. Barrett was interested in many elements of the psychic anomalies, including poltergeists. I have not made a study of Barrett, but would bet that his interest in poltergeists led him to Ouija. Barrett said that in the ouija ritual "communication with a supernormal intelligence did, indeed, take place; that it mingled with the personalities of the subjects and guided their muscular movements". And Piotrowski continued: therefore "the subjects were somehow taken over, used, manipulated by an unknown outside force, a force or personality other than the experimenters themselves." Ummmmm.... "don't sound good to me."

He then cites a modern Psi researcher named Ian Currie [sorry could not find a portrait]. Currie talked to many Mediums and psychics who spoke about Ouija. Although Currie sees Ouija as a mixed bag he says this: "The board tends to attract lesser spirits, personalities characteristically sadistic and psychopathic..... The board spirits are members of a terrorist world, citizens of a psychic jungle". .... great.

So, what is this "dance" all about? What's on the "other side of the mirror"? Is it Demonic? Is it "merely" Spirits of varying moralities and goals? Is this just a ritual which spills out our own nasty inner selves?

The Catholic Church says: Demons --- tricky ones, as are they all. My Dad decided that this seemed to be true, and Mom should throw the board away. I don't see this as just being us and our whacky brains  in our worst light. Some of these experiences are so negative and physical that they really stretch that hypothesis for me... and, I'm an Irish-American Catholic, so as one of my younger brothers said "I/we believe that shit". [He was referring to why the movie The Exorcist scared the fudge out of him, despite being a 6'4" 280 pound defensive lineman and a weightlifting record holder.]

Hmmmm... I get it.

Till next time, play cards or watch football instead.

Men In Black, Addendum: A moment in UFO History.

Some time ago I had the pleasure [?] [well, in some sense of the word] to listen to a taped talk by John Keel on the Men-in-Black topic. At the time I didn't know enough to recognize its probable historical impact. [Don't overplay this, folks, it hardly changed the course of world history, but may have had significance in how the University of Colorado finished its UFO examination].

John Keel. In many ways one of the least helpful people to lurk within the wider UFO community. A sometimes riveting writer and speaker, who at times didn't seem to care one whit about what he was saying [truth-wise] and at others seemed to be simply out of his mind. The Men-in-Black topic was perfect for both of his mindsets.

In the talk on this tape, Keel claimed the following things: MIBs were responsible for strange disappearances of people and animals, most particularly teenage boys; MIBs are/were knocking out police car radios and are/were responsible for whole system power outages; MIBs drive around in mysterious cars three times the normal size of automobiles; "something very bad and very serious is in the works" he muttered ominously; MIBs are responsible for poltergeist activities, the eery sounds of babies crying in the night, of monsters and ABSMs; MIBs are beginning to start fires in buildings, and are showing up as monk-hooded giants to terrorize people. All of this is "A Nightmare on the Ground that has been completely unpublicized".

I will leave it to your best estimate as to whether this was Keel in his liar or insane mode.

If you think that he was "right on the money", well, please don't try to get my home address and come for a visit.

This talk by Keel was part of the equally-unhelpful James Moseley's 1967 UFO convention in NYC. And guess who attended? Edward Condon, showed up at that convention ready to fully enjoy himself with a great hoot at the UFO fools who he firmly believed composed the entirety of the UFO community. In one sense the convention did not disappoint. Even the talk by Ivan Sanderson [which we have a copy of in the SITU archives], came dangerously close to being chaotic, unpolished, lunacy. But Keel as you can see went far beyond that into a world of dark paranoia and unsubstantiated claims which would have better served the fictional pen of Stephen King than the mind of Edward Condon.

Condon was not amused.

What "percentage" the Nightmare talk of Keel played in this is just my speculation, but Condon came back from NYC a changed man. He returned to the project with the attitude that he was not studying some light foolishness as he had thought, but that the project was engaged in a report about a subject which had serious negative consequences for the mental health and reasoning processes of the people who became too involved with UFOs. UFOs, ridiculous as they seemed to Condon, were dangerous. Dangerous not in themselves [as they did not even exist], but dangerous in where they led the untrained mind.

Condon began to speak about UFOs as never being allowed into the schoolrooms of the nation, as the concept would damage the childrens' minds --- he is quoted as saying exactly that. He went from a sort of benign uncaring about how the project did its business, to a malign hostility towards the subject and even its sane researchers such as Hynek and McDonald, suddenly beginning to openly call them "kooks". After this convention, the Final Report of the Colorado Project had far less chance of containing balanced conclusions than it had previously. John Keel was certainly part of that. In that, Keel and Moseley were precisely what the intelligence community wanted: foolish dupes capable of turning off any serious person who might decide to look into the subject.

The previous post gave my thoughts on the three different things which are dumped into the MIB "bag" by indiscriminate observers and interested parties. Who can say what the third group [the crowd from Whackland] are? But regardless of what/who they are, they are not the thing John Keel described in New York in 1967. He was WAY over the top. He was in pure Hollywood horror movie country. He was wrong, and he either didn't know, or he didn't care.

John Keel was an entertaining writer and speaker. We could have done without him.

MEN-IN-BLACK?

If one is going to goof off and go fishing in shallow waters, they might as well be interesting shallow waters. I was cleaning up Sanderson's collection of anomalistic journals just before I traveled back here to Wheeling, and was surprised to see that he had accumulated a high stack of something called The New Atlantean Journal. I'd had very little "experience" with this magazine, and opened up a few. The first thing that you notice about it is the "Board of Consultants". J.Manson Valentine; John Michell; Brinsley Le Poer Trench; Brad Steiger; George Hunt Williamson; Vincent Gaddis; Riley Crabb; and Gray Barker. Mind-boggling. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have all those people in the same room. Surely the pillars of logic and reason in the Universe would shake, rattle, and roll right down a Black Hole which conveniently opened. BUT, interesting? Yes.

This magazine was the effort of Joan Whritenour, now Joan O'Connell, and her husband Patrick. Joan had previously run newsletters on these topics, especially UFOs, and her old first try, Saucer Scoop, actually began rather well before falling into paranoia about violence and conspiracy. SO.... I "scooped" up a bunch of these NAJs and hauled them off to Wheeling for some fun reading.

In the first one that I picked up while still back in Kalamazoo, there was a reported incident of an MIB encounter. It was one of the weird ones. I photocopied it, stuck it in the backpack, and now it has risen from the dead to inspire this post. But before I get to that Out Proctor tale, since there may be some readers who aren't too grounded on what we're talking about here [MIBs aren't really like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith], I'm going to give a very brief background foundation.

The MIB phrase enters the anomalies literature in a modern way with this guy Albert Bender. He was an early UFO club founder, who was not wired too tight apparently. He did attract several well-known individuals to join his organization [Gray Barker was one] way back in 1953. 1953 was, one remembers, the year that the Robertson Panel cautioned the intelligence community to monitor such citizen groups for dangerous activities which could amount to producing hysteria to poking their noses in to places they didn't belong. As it turned out, Bender was a candidate for both.

In august of 1953, something whizzed into New Haven CT and blasted a hole in a metal sign. The picture above is from a page in the USAFs Blue Book files. [There's no evidence that the USAF investigated this incident, but pretty good evidence that the Navy did].

Somehow a member of Bender's fledgling organization beat the military to the punch and acquired some metal fragments from the scene, which were not originally part of the sign. These were sent through Bender to a lab for analysis. The analysis report above is also a sheet from the Blue Book microfilm. As the even-though-it-seems-unlikely explanation for this event is probably a wayward piece of military ordnance [from the Navy], this grabbing pieces and having them privately analyzed could definitely be classified as sticking one's nose where it doesn't belong.

In September Bender got a visit. And, despite that to all sense these were Navy officers following up on this case, the Three Men in Black legend was energized and on center stage.

It went into the spotlight because of this book. Gray Barker, who himself had been a pretty sane UFO researcher up to that time, became fixated on this. It was because Bender just suddenly quit, went incommunicato, and was said to be paranoid/terrified. Another researcher named Jarrold seemed to have the same thing happen. Barker never regained any seriousness about the field, and became an unhelpful nut for the rest of his life, creating hoaxes and all manner of disruptive crap.

Part of that pile of crap happened when Bender finally resurfaced from his own version of lunacy with a tale of "what really happened" which was either delusional or craftily invented to make money. Barker by that time was "all in" on such travesties. So, he helped Bender publish a tale which despite its fictional character then inspired a lot of others to engage in the most incredible of stories and claims. From that point forward, UFO investigators have been barraged by a huge variety of things, all claiming somehow a relationship to Men in Black, but manifestly of wildly different natures. But lest you become discouraged, some of these very high strangeness stories may well be true --- just not Bender's, and probably having nothing to do with UFOs.

In my way of looking at the topic, there are three entirely different categories of things which flow into UFO files trying to be called MIBs. The first is simple ordinary intelligence agents doing their jobs. This is what happened to Bender. This is the equivalent of any intelligence agent going into the field for any reason. The top picture above is Captain Edward Ruppelt down in West Palm Beach investigating the Desverges case in 1952. If he was wearing his dark blues, he could have been a man-in-black. The picture below is our buddy Kevin Randle. He was intelligence for some of his run. Kevin can be pretty scary when talking about Stanton Friedman, but generally he's a good guy. Have to admit he's got the glasses for the job, though.

Could Allen Hynek have been a Man-in-Black? Well, in a way he was one of the first. In 1953, after the Robertson Panel had fingered Coral Lorenzen and the fledgling APRO as a potential trouble-making situation, Hynek and Bob Olsson from Blue Book made a special trip to try to talk her into being more Air Force friendly. Unlike Bender, Coral was tough as nails and basically ignored their "patriotic" plea. [I have the dim bell ringing in my ear that she condescended to asking prospective new members about their political propensities in order to join, but I can't find my old reference, so take that with a grain of salt].

Hynek may also have figured in a somewhat weirder case as well.

In 1955 the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory moved its HQ from Washington DC to Cambridge, MA to accept the job of creating a worldwide satellite tracking network --- they knew that we and the Soviets were on the brink of launching something. The staff expanded and Allen Hynek migrated from Ohio to Massachusetts to join Fred Whipple in directing the project. He was, therefore, away from Blue Book quite a lot in the 1955-1959 years. Sometime in 1968, NICAP received word from a 1955 witness [at the time the chief pilot of the East Coast Pilot's Association] that he and two others encountered a UFO while on practice landing maneuvers on a lake near Worcester, MA. Their own flight landed then at Hanscom field, and the sighting was immediately reported to the base officers.

Three weeks later, the witness was told to report to the USAFs Cambridge Research Center [these guys did the green fireballs and had plenty of UFO experience]. He was met at the door of the facility by two men [in black?] taken inside AND BLINDFOLDED [!]. He then was taken into an elevator which rode up and down seemingly aimlessly for ten minutes. It stopped finally, they got out, the blindfold came off, and he was sent to an office. The person waiting for him inside was HYNEK! Hynek cross-examined him for quite some time, finally admitting that the witness' testimony interested him greatly, since scientists on the roof of the research center had seen a similar object one hour earlier than his encounter. Well, Allen, who would have thought it of you? You could have had Tommy Lee Jones' job.

The second class of wannabee MIB reports are of intelligence agent impersonators. I haven't some juicy case to retell here for you, but this phenomenon got so prevalent that the military began trying to find and convict these people for impersonating officers. AND they admitted to the public that they knew that this was going on. On reflection you can see where nothing would be so "natural" than for this to happen. Some UFO compulsive nut whizzes up some credential to flash, gets word of a case, shows up quickly, and confiscates pictures/negatives/whatever for his personal collection. Somewhere in my files in Michigan I have several cases from New England which smell of this going on.

Categories one and two are mundane almost to the point of boredom. Category three is not. Category three is straight out of Whackland. Albert Bender's own book, mentioned above, hardly qualifies. It's just really bad fiction. What we are encountering here is "The Very Strange Visitor". This is the kind of stuff that John Keel lived off. Keel, however, is all "dark" about it [probably a reflection of his own inner persona]. The cluster of incidents, though often frightening in their raw alien-ness, aren't necessarily "dark", but rather [usually] just absurd. These are things which just don't fit. They are worse than the Fairies or the Ghosts or the ABSMs. They are just WHACK.

Ivan Sanderson, who had no idea what to make of such extreme strangeness, received a letter from an admirer who told of one such thing. She said that she was in Kentucky enjoying a car race in 1962. She noticed a man some distance away, just standing. Uninterested she avidly turned back to watch the races. Suddenly she became aware that this man was sitting right beside her. He was medium height and build and age, but normalcy stopped [subtly] there.

His hands just lay down alongside his legs, unmoving. They showed no signs of veins nor any alteration of color anywhere at all. ['Too perfect", she said]. There were no markings even where the bending points of the fingers should be. He watched things, but only by moving his eyes, not his head. His head occasionally did change position, but it was as if it mechanically rotated to a new spot and stayed there. His clothes, though ostensibly work clothes, were perfect --- no wrinkles; no signs of perspiration nor stain. Never a sound. His face in profile was chiseled so perfectly as not possibly real. He didn't blink nor move any part of his face. His hands never moved. There was no sign of there ever being a beard.

She ultimately turned her attention back to the races. Suddenly he was right up next to her crowding her, even though she hadn't seen him move until they touched. She shifted towards her husband to gain some space. The "person" shifted again. This happened three times, and the "person" was suddenly gone. After exchanging remarks with her husband, who said "that guy was just weird", they settled into the races again. Back he was suddenly right along side. Now she turned to fully face him. He had somehow altered his head [she didn't see it move] and fully faced her.

" I was looking right into his eyes. Mr. Sanderson, the contrast between the life in the pupils of those eyes and the unaliveness of the rest of that body still makes me feel sick. Even the whites of his eyes were not real. No part of that body was alive but there was life in those pupils. It was like that artificial body just wasn't there when I looked into those pupils. I don't know what he was...."

And The Lord knows, neither do we.

The case which started this post topic, from the New Atlantean Journal is uglier and maybe I should be creeped out more by it than the last one, but that last thing is one of the creepiest things I've ever read. But this one is full-out WHACK, so maybe it's carnival enough to be more entertaining.

1975, Wauwatosa, WI: 7:30pm, the doorbell rings. The wife goes to answer. About four feet from the door was a person in odd clothes holding a 5-foot long white crooked cane. She, through the locked screen door, inquired: "yes? Yes?". Then hearing no response, she called her husband. He was boggled by the appearance of the visitor and murmured to his wife: What the hell is this, something left over from Halloween? [It was November at the time]. He unlocked the door and stepped out.

"The skin on his face was the same as smoked meat and the face was lined with deep grooves." The mouth was a small dime-sized puckered opening. He had an extremely pointed chin. He wore a hat. "It was shaped like a man's straw hat except the brim was more narrow". He had tufts of hair which stuck out beneath it. The hands were deformed and looked almost clawed. The legs were bent.

The husband reached towards the entity. It struck its crook on the pavement three times. The "visitor" then moved away, not by walking but simply drifting over the ground. It moved to the edge of the lawn and the street, where [the husband and wife suddenly noticed] were four other identical creatures --- dress, crooks, and all. One was a roly-poly shape, and it was at the center of the group. They would strike their canes and "bounce" into the air two to three feet high, in appearance like the low-gravity effect seen when the astronauts bounded on the Moon. When they affected walking, their feet would move, but they were not within two or three inches of the ground. The couple was surprised that they couldn't remember much about the dress of the "things" nor other details of facial features etc. But they did say: "They looked like oversized gnomes". As the couple retreated inside, the visitors drifted away. One raised its hand as if in final goodbye.

What is this stuff? Although the couple intellectually "punted" and thought that must have been visited by "aliens", these sorts of experiences carry almost none of the flavor of the core UFO phenomenon, even the Close Encounters. What are they? What "realm" do they inhabit? Why do they emerge? Why the apparent meaninglessness?

In the world[s] of the anomalies, some things are actually rather easy to grasp. Of them, UFOs are [in my opinion] the easiest --- they're just part of good old common physical reality, no matter how fancy their inventions are. Psi seems to be "just" an erratic personal brain talent, which takes a "short-cut" through spatial dimensions to accomplish what it does. NDEs and OOBEs seem to be "merely" the separation of the spirit/consciousness-focuser from the physical organism. Even Faerie seems less "alien" in the old dictionary sense of that word.

Whatever this stuff is, "J" and "K" don't have a chance. They need to stick to UFOs.

Till next time--- check under the bed....