So, you’ve seen some strange lights in the
sky. Maybe you’ve managed to take some photos
of what looks suspiciously like an alien craft. If you’ve been really good this year, perhaps
you were even invited aboard for dinner, drinks, and a romantic anal probing. Either way, it’s probably best to keep it
to yourself, otherwise you might receive a visit from the Men in Black. These days, when people mention the Men in
Black, we tend to think of the movie franchise starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, or
possibly the comic book upon which the films were based. But where did the idea come from? And more importantly, is there any truth to
it? Sceptics claim the idea of “Men in Black”
is a form of collective hysteria born out of overactive imaginations and an overwhelming
willingness to believe ... and there’s definitely a case for this ... but perhaps it’s not
quite as simple as all that. You see, the real problem with the whole Men
in Black theory is that it’s full of facts, lies, facts that turned out to be lies, lies
that turned out to be facts, and facts that turned out to be lies that later turned out
to be facts again. It’s all very confusing. The legend of the Men in Black starts in June
1947 with a man, a boy, and a dog. Marine scavenger Harold Dahl was out in his
boat gathering logs near Washington’s Maury Island when he saw six doughnut shaped objects
hovering directly overhead. You’d imagine that was probably cause for
some concern, but things soon got worse when one of them suddenly fell out of the sky in
a shower of metal debris which injured Dahl’s son and killed the family dog. So much for ‘we come in peace’. Luckily, in amongst the chaos and dog-death,
Dahl managed to snap some photos of these mysterious objects, and he rushed off to show
the evidence to his supervisor, retired military pilot Fred Crisman. Crisman went back to the site with Dahl and
was amazed to see one of the strange flying objects with his very own eyes. You might be thinking this makes for quite
a compelling sighting - two witnesses, and one an ex military man, no less. Unfortunately, it’s fair to say Fred Crisman
wasn’t the most reliable of men, as he’d once written to pulp magazine “Amazing Stories”,
claiming to have fought mysterious evil creatures when stuck in a cave in Burma during World
War Two. So, yeah, not exactly the kind of guy you’d
want your sister to marry. The morning after the incident, Dahl was visited
by a man in a black suit. This “Man in Black” dealt with him in
the most horrific and terrifying way imaginable ... he took him to a local diner .... OK,
that doesn’t sound so bad. But the black-suited figure really ruined
the mood when he warned Dahl not to say anything about the incident, otherwise ‘bad things’
would happen to him. But by that point it was too late, the wheels
were in motion and loads of people already knew what Dahl and Crisman claimed to have
seen - even the press were getting involved. Years later, after a government investigation,
Dahl admitted the entire thing had been a hoax ... but then a few years after that,
he recanted his confession and claimed he’d been coerced into making it. As we’ll see, this kind of wishy washy behaviour
tends to be a bit of a theme with Men in Black encounters. You’re told something that’s supposedly
“true”, then you’re told it’s a big lie, then you’re told that it’s true again. It’s kind of like watching the news. Dahl’s story was first recounted in Gray
Barker’s 1956 book “They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers”. It was also in this book that he related the
story of Albert K. Bender, which introduced the Men in Black to a much wider audience. Bender, you see, was the founder of the “International
Flying Saucer Bureau”, so he wasn’t exactly shy about his interest in little green men. In 1955, however, he went a bit too far by
claiming he had a document in his possession proving the US Government was involved in
a UFO cover-up ... and before you could say “tin foil hat” three Men in Black showed
up on his doorstep looking equal parts suave and threatening to tell him not to pursue
the case any further. It clearly worked a treat, too, because Bender
immediately stopped his research, completely shut down the bureau, and spent the rest of
his life slowly losing his grip on reality, while his previously intelligent, well-researched
writings gradually turned into eccentric ramblings. Take his 1962 book “Flying Saucers and the
Three Men”, for example. By this point, Bender was claiming the Men
in Black could float a foot off the floor, that their eyes lit up like lightbulbs, that
they were monsters from the planet Kazik ... and a bunch of other things that even George Lucas
would reject for being too far fetched. Since Bender, there have been far too many
MIB encounters to cram into one video, but there are a couple of stand-out ones. In 1964, Jim Templeton was visiting Solway
Firth in Cumbria when he decided to take a photograph of his daughter. When the film was developed, however, he was
shocked to see a white figure in a “space helmet” standing behind her. When Kodak verified the film as authentic
the story went public, and soon enough Templeton was being visited by two gentlemen calling
themselves “Number Nine” and “Number Eleven”. With names like that, they simply had to be
government agents. The numbers demanded to visit the site of
the photo and Jim obliged, but when “Nine” and “Eleven” realised he hadn’t actually
seen the so-called spaceman in the flesh - well, suit - they got angry and stormed out of the
field. Talk about touchy! Maybe that’s why “Number Ten” didn’t
come along. He probably couldn’t deal with the tantrums. In 1976, Doctor Herbert Hopkins was working
on a UFO case in Maine when he received a mysterious phone-call from someone claiming
to be a fellow UFO researcher. The stranger invited himself over to Hopkins’
house, but when he arrived he turned out to have a very unusual appearance. He had no hair, no eyebrows, was extremely
pale, and, of course, was wearing the obligatory black suit. Either this guy had fallen asleep while drunk
in a college dormitory, or there was something decidedly fishy going on. If the man’s hairless face wasn’t enough
to set alarm bells ringing, Hopkins’ dog went absolutely mental when the guy came in. Now, to be fair, dogs aren’t always right
about people. If they were, then all postmen would be complete
bastards. But as it turned out, Hopkins’ pooch was
right to be weary of this character. After questioning him about the UFO case,
the stranger told Hopkins to reach into his pocket and take out a coin.. Hopkins did as he was told, and to his astonishment,
the coin vanished into thin air before his very eyes. And then things started to turn sinister. The Man in Black asked if Hopkins had ever
heard of Barney Hill, a famous UFO abductee who had recently died. Hopkins admitted that he had, at which point
the Man in Black came out with this threatening little gem: “Barney didn’t have a heart
... just like you no longer have a coin.” Subtle. And, let’s be honest, shit-your-pants terrifying. Having dropped this threat-bomb, the Man in
Black gently suggested Hopkins might want to think about destroying all his research
material and shutting the hell up for a decade or two. Unsurprisingly, Hopkins obliged. Most stories follow this same pattern, with
the Men in Black arriving out of nowhere to hush up UFO sightings and research. But the real Men in Black may actually be
doing exactly the opposite. According to the book “Mirage Men”, and
the documentary of the same name, the vast majority of UFO evidence was not created by
lonely individuals who just so happen to get through more tin foil than the average consumer,
but by the US government. And that far from covering up the existence
of aliens, they’ve been doing their best to make us believe in them this whole time. In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked thousands of
classified documents from the NSA. Amongst this mountain of information was a
PowerPoint presentation called “The Art of Deception”,containing various images
and diagrams pasted with such enigmatic phrases as “People make decisions as part of groups,”
and “Swap the real for the false and vice versa”. Intriguing ... but what did it all mean? Mirage Men offers up an explanation in the
form of Richard Doty, who features heavily in the documentary. Doty was an agent for the “Air Force of
Special Investigations” – or Air Force OSI – an organisation which many ufologists
believe to be the real Men in Black. Doty claimed that he and his colleagues would
feed false information to members of the public using the kinds of techniques laid out in
the Art of Deception with the sole purpose of creating a tingle in the underpants of
any budding ufologists. According to Doty, the patter went something
like this: “I’m with the government. You cooperate with us, and I’m going to
tell you what we really know about UFOs.” You’re probably wondering why the US government
would bother with something so ridiculous, but the reason is actually kind of ingenious
- to obscure the truth beneath a stack of lies. This was during the Cold War, and America
was busy testing all sorts of different advanced and secret technology - tools of war they
most definitely didn’t want the USSR to know anything about. By using Air Force OSI agents like Doty to
fan the flames of UFO sightings across the country, they made sure any strange objects
glimpsed streaking through the clouds would immediately be linked with UFOs and little
green men, not top secret spy planes and communist-seeking missiles. And by the way, while we’re wading through
this swamp of conspiracy theories and exaggerations, I should make it clear that the Air Force
OSI is a completely genuine federal law enforcement agency. It was set up in 1948 to investigate crimes,
protect secrets, warn of threats, exploit intelligence opportunities, and operate in
cyber warfare. In fact, after pilot training,the OSI remains
the second-most requested career choice in the Air Force for officers. This is worth mentioning, and even celebrating,
because in the world of the Men in Black, a solid fact is a rare beast. Mind you, despite apparently being 100% legit,
Doty does come across as a bit of a dodgy geezer. Which probably shouldn’t be a surprise considering
he claims his role at the OSI was to spread misinformation and basically confuse the crap
of everyone who crossed his path. Mark Pilkington, the writer of Mirage Men,
believed that some of what Doty said was true, some of it wasn’t, and that some of it was
a version of the truth ... which, let’s face it, kind of sums up the whole Men in
Black phenomenon in a nutshell. To illustrate this point, Doty claims to have
been a part of the “Majestic 12”; a secret organisation founded by President Truman to
recover and investigate alien aircraft. The small problem being that the Majestic
12 very probably doesn’t exist, and even most dyed in the wool ufologists think it
to be a hoax. Doty does claim to have been involved in a
case well-known among conspiracy aficionados, that of Paul Bennewitz, an electronics entrepreneur
based in New Mexico. Bennewitz had built his own UFO-spotting equipment
and, in 1979, he started picking up weird radio transmissions and spotting bright lights
in the sky near his home which he was convinced were of alien origin and absolutely categorically
couldn’t have been caused by anything from Earth. Oh, I think I forgot to mention - Paul lived
just across the road from Kirtland Air Force base. But yeah I’m sure that isn’t relevant…………. Anyway, Doty and his colleagues quickly realised
Paul was seeing things he shouldn’t have been - namely classified military technology. But instead of asking him to stop, they actively
encouraged it. They told him they were interested in his
findings, dumped fake props for him to discover, and even gave him software that helped him
decode the “extra-terrestrial” signals he was picking up. Within a few years, Paul was interpreting
alien languages, spotting crashed UFOs in the hills, and even sounding the alert for
a full-scale invasion ... but these activities came to an abrupt halt in 1988 when Paul’s
family decided it was best for our planet, the alien’s planet, and the universe as
a whole, if they just checked him into a psychiatric hospital. Some stories, however, were too nutty even
for Richard Doty. For example, he completely denied involvement
in the “Project Serpo” papers ... which is probably a good thing, because they shared
a lot of plot points with Stephen Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”,
only with the added bonus of a cultural exchange program between human beings and the aliens
of the planet Serpo. Speaking of films, many conspiracy theorists
believe Hollywood’s sci-fi output is specifically designed to make the truth about aliens look
unbelievable to throw us off the scent, or perhaps to subliminally prepare the world
for “first contact”. For example, the 1951 film “The Day the
Earth Stood Still” --- featuring the appearance on Earth of a peaceful alien called “Klaatu”
-- was thought by some to be the government’s way of testing the waters for real alien invaders. Farfetched, you say? Well, maybe ... but producer Darryl Zanuck
had links to the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board, writer Edmund North was ex-military,
and during the making of the movie, director Robert Wise is said to have become a firm
UFO believer after talking to several influential figures in Washington. And while we’re talking UFOs and Hollywood,
we really need to mention Dan Aykroyd. Yes, that Dan Aykroyd: comedy legend, creator
and star of Ghostbusters, member of the first ever cast of Saturday Night Live, and oh,
yeah, complete and utter UFO obsessive. Aykroyd is basically the David Attenborough
of extra-terrestrial lifeforms. He was the celebrity face of the “Mutual
UFO Network”, created the 2005 film “Dan Aykroyd: Unplugged on UFOs”, and to this
day still plays an active role in the UFO community. You probably thought that “Coneheads”
and “My Stepmother is an Alien” were just fun comedy movies from the 80s and 90s ... but
to Aykroyd they’re both hard-hitting documentaries. And yes, Dan Aykroyd has his own Men in Black
story to tell, too. In 2002, he was busy filming a UFO-based TV
show when he stepped outside to take a phone call. from Britney Spears. The fact it was Britney, Bitch, isn’t relevant,
but it’s a nice little fact-nugget all the same. Anyway, Aykroyd was mid-Britney call when
he noticed a black SUV parked nearby. A tall man stepped out, dressed all in black,
and gave him a very dirty look indeed. Aykroyd did a double take, but when he looked
back, the car had vanished. Two hours later, he was told his show had
been cancelled, and to this day has never been given a reason why. Coincidence? I think…. nnn-yeah probably. But hey, I guess we’ll never know for sure. Putting Dan Aykroyd’s vivid imagination
to one side for a moment, the Air Force OSI version of the Men in Black has been on the
radar again recently thanks to another celebrity ufologist, ex-Blink 182 singer Tom De Longe,
who is now co-founder and Chairman of the “To the Stars Academy”. In 2017, the academy released two videos to
the New York Times -- “Go fast” and “Gimbal” --- both of which featured UFOs that were
recorded by Navy aircraft. And to the orgasmic satisfaction of UFO nuts
everywhere, the OSI confirmed the videos were genuine and that they had no explanation for
the ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ they showed. So, is the Air Force of Special Investigations
unit the truth behind the fiction of the Men in Black? Perhaps. But it’s fair to say the far more enigmatic
versions we’ve covered today will stick around in the public consciousness for a good
while yet. After all, the OSI doesn’t have its own
theme song, or action figures, or even an animated TV series ... well, not yet, anyway
... but at least we know they definitely exist, so that’s something. Thanks for… Sorry, sorry, I have to take this. Hello? Yes, this is Arran speaking. Calling from where? … Oh, I see... I've told them too much? I have to... really? Well, if there’s no other option. I'm sorry everyone. It’s out of my hands. Memory thing flashes
