1924: John Cole, a newsman in West Virginia, visited the site of an ‘airplane’ crash in Braxton County, and was told by a man in a suit “with high cheekbones, slant eyes, dark skin”, that no-one was hurt and no crime had been committed. He picked up “a little thingamijig on the ground”, and took it home. About 3 a.m. he had a knock on the door. An army officer with the same foreign appearance demanded, and received, the return of “the metal thingamajig.” Keel, The Cosmic Question, pp.148-50.
1952, 30 July: Carlo Rossi, who was fishing near Vico, Italy, at the site where he had seen an airborne disc on the 24th, was approached by a tall thin man who asked him about flying saucers, offered him a gold-tipped cigarette, and when it made him ill threw it into the water, then walked off. “Fearing that someone was trying to silence him, Rossi went to the Public Prosecutor’s office in the town of Lucca and swore out a statement of his UFO encounter.” Randles, MIB, pp.143-44; Keel, The Cosmic Question, p.151 (after Jacques Vallee).
1952, Late August: Sonny Desvergers of Florida received ‘anonymous threatening telephone calls’ at work, saying that he must not talk about his UFO encounter, and was followed about by a black automobile. Keel, Visitors from Space, p.104. Karl T. Pflock, in Evans & Stacy, UFOs 1947-1997, p.48.
1952, September: Following sightings of a ten-foot tall monster in West Virginia by `Kathleen May and some teenagers on 12th, and by the Snitowski family on 13th, “two men appeared in Braxton County posing as peddlers. They systematically visited the homes of most of the witnesses, showing little interest in selling pots and pans but anxious to talk about the sightings for hours.” Keel, The Cosmic Question, p.122.
1954, Easter: Three men who photographed a UFO over the Nullarbor Plain had their film confiscated by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO); one was later visited by a purported ASIO agent who ordered silence and “frightened the living **** out of me.” Randles, MIB, pp.56-57.
1955, July: Edward Mootz was working on the soil by a peach tree in Cincinnati on the 22nd when a red spray fell from the sky, and looking up he saw a red and green object like a pear standing on end. The tree was dead the next day, and it was taken away by three men who said they were from Air Force Intelligence. Two weeks later he saw a black Chrysler Imperial park nearby and three men train a camera on his home. When he challenged them, in broken English they said they were taking pictures of the local industry, and then quickly departed. Stringfield, Situation Red, pp.187-89.
1957, November: Olden Moore watched a circular machine land near Montville, Ohio, on 6th, a few days later the local sheriff drove to his house with men in air force uniforms, they took him to the field where he had seen the UFO, a helicopter was waiting there, he was flown to an airport and put on a plane to Washington, where he was imprisoned for three days, and two officers tried to get him to admit he had seen nothing but a ‘fireball’. Finally he was flown back to Ohio, but later neither the sheriff nor the Air Force would back his story. Keel, The Cosmic Question, pp.155-56.
1961, November: ‘Paul Miller’, one of four men who had seen a UFO land in North Dakota (but not reported it) was called out from work and introduced to two (three?) strangers, who asked to be taken to his home, where they examined the clothing he had worn the night before, especially his boots, then left without any further word. Hynek, The UFO Experience, pp.183-84; Keel, The Cosmic Question, pp.152-53; Evans, ‘Men in Black’, p.32; Keith, Casebook, p.66.
1963: Li Jing-Yang, a security guard in Yangquan, Shansi Province, China, saw an object like two plates sealed together hovering in the sky. The next day he was approached by a strange man dressed in black who warned him not to talk about the sighting. Randles, MIB, p.145.
1964, Late June: Jim Templeton of Carlisle, Cumberland, visited by ‘Number 9’ and ‘Number 11’ who “investigated these things”, concerning his photograph of an unseen man in a spacesuit taken on 24 May. They drove him to the site in a black Jaguar car, “very shiny as if new”, and then left him there to walk home. Randles, MIB, pp.80-82.
1965, August: Rex Heflin of Santa Ana, California, who had taken four Polaroid photographs of a flying disc, was advised by a Marine Corps investigator “not to talk about his sighting”, as did more than one telephone caller. He was then visited by a man purportedly from the North American Air Defense (NORAD), who asked to borrow his prints, but never returned them, and NORAD later denied any knowledge of the matter. Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, pp.448-49.
1965 September: William McCoy and Robert Goode, policemen on patrol in Brazoria County, Texas, saw “a great rectangular glob of purple light”. Then, “Low-flying light planes, apparently unmarked, flew back and forth over the area of the sighting for the next two days. Shortly after the incident, two strangers turned up at the sheriff’s office looking for Deputy Goode. They tracked the officer down in a local restaurant and immediately proceeded to describe in detail what the UFO looked like – even before Goode had an opportunity to tell them. Then they suggested that if he should encounter a similar machine in the future, he should cooperate with its occupants and keep any conversations with them to himself. The identities of these two mystery men have never been determined.” Keel, Operation Trojan Horse, p.254.
1965, December: An official at an industrial plant reported a glowing object to the state police. A few hours later two ‘military officers’ turned up, questioned him, and warned him “Don’t talk about this matter to anyone.” Keel, The Cosmic Question, p.153 (after Frank Edwards).
1966, April: A man claiming to represent “a government agency so secret that he couldn’t give its name” appeared in a school in Norwalk, Connecticut, and grilled two twelve-year-old boys for two hours about a disc-shaped object that had pursued them at ground level. Keith, Casebook, p.76.
1966 (?): An Ohio farmer saw a glowing circular object land in his fields; next morning a black limousine pulled up, and a man in an air force uniform told him to forget what he had seen. He was a little fellow “with a face like a Chinaman or a Jap.” Keel, The Cosmic Question, p.153.
1966 (?): “An interesting report of ‘three women in black’ was given by one correspondent, who had received his strange visitation after observing a large, gray disk in the sky over his suburban residence.” (No more details given.) Steiger and Whritenour, New UFO Breakthrough, p.76.
1966, 11 October: Several witnesses to a glowing object over the Wanaque Reservoir, New Jersey, including a policeman with an unlisted phone number, received phone calls, before they had reported to anyone, warning them to keep quiet. Keel, The Cosmic Question, p.157. Later, several witnesses were gathered in a High School auditorium by an Air Force officer who derided them about the sighting. No-one could remember his name, and afterwards the Air Force denied all knowledge of the case. Science and Mechanics, The Official Guide to UFOs, pp.99-101.
1966, Mid-November: A man who had seen a UFO near Parkersburg, West Virginia, on 2 November, and not reported it, was visited by ‘a scientist from Ohio’, who “told us it would be better if we forgot the whole thing.”. Keel, Visitors from Space, p.50...
1966-67 (?): Ivan Sanderson, whilst writing Uninvited Visitors, noticed a car that kept driving past his rural home in New Jersey, noted the license plate, and was informed that no such car existed. He was then visited by two men in Air Force uniforms who asked about his book. They refused to show him identification, so he ordered them out of his house at gunpoint. The local Air Force base commander denied knowing about them, and said he should report them to the police for impersonating Air Force officers. He was plagued by strange electronic noises over his phone for a long time afterwards. Keith, Casebook, p.76.
1966-67 (?): West Virginia: “Black limousines halted in front of hill homes and deeply tanned ‘census takers’ inquired about the number of children living with the families. Always the children. In several instances, the occupants of the big black cars merely asked for a glass of water ... A blond woman in her thirties, well-groomed, with a soft southern accent, visited people in Ohio and West Virginia whom [John Keel] had interviewed. She introduced herself as ‘John Keel’s secretary’, thus winning instant admission. The clipboard she carried held a complicated form filled with personal questions about the witnesses’ health, income, the type of cars they owned, their general family background, and some fairly sophisticated questions about their UFO sightings.” Keel had no secretary. Keel, Visitors from Space, p.83.
1967, 9 January: The Christiansen family of Wildwood, New Jersey, who had seen a UFO on 22 November 1966, were interviewed by “the strangest looking man I’ve ever seen”, wearing a thin black coat, who introduced himself as ‘Tiny’ from the ‘Missing Heirs Bureau’. He spoke in a high, ‘tinny’ voice, in clipped words and phrases like a computer, “as if he were reciting everything from memory.” His black trousers were too short, and “they could see a long thick green wire attached to the inside of his leg, it came up out of his socks and disappeared under his trousers.” John Keel commented that he had not heard of this feature in other MIB cases: “Was Tiny wearing electric socks? Or was he a wired android operated by remote control?” He departed in a black 1963 Cadillac. Sanderson, Uninvited Visitors, pp.160-61; Keel, Visitors from Space, pp.85-89.
1967, 7 February: Robert A. Stiff of Saucer Scoop received the first of thirteen threatening phone calls, beginning: “I would suggest you drop your investigation into certain so-called UFO reports.” Steiger and Whritenour, New UFO Breakthrough, p.21.
1967, Spring (?): Carroll Wayne Watts of Texas, who had encountered a landed saucer on 31 March, and on subsequent occasions taken photos of it, failed a lie detector test. He later told Robert Loftin of the University of Colorado that, driving to Amarillo to take the test, he stopped to help a woman driver in apparent distress, when he was knocked down from behind, and two men in dark business suits told him that if he passed the test he would be shot. Beckley, The UFO Silencers, pp.34-38; Keith, Casebook, pp.79-82.
1967, Early April: A farmer north of Gallipolis, Ohio, saw a “big red and white glowing thing” sitting in a field near his barn, which left a thirty foot circle of scorched earth. A circuit box in the barn burnt out. Next day two men supposedly from the electrical company turned up and “fussed around with the transformer on the pole by the road”; they did not have an electrical truck, just a panel truck; “They was foreigners ... Japs or something ...they weren’t very friendly ... [dressed in] ordinary overalls ... They had on funny shoes with very thick rubber soles.” A week later he received a telephone call that sounded like a neighbour, who warned him about “a crazy man ... with a beard”. Ten minutes later John Keel (bearded, unusual in that part of the country) turned up, and he ordered him off. Later, the neighbour told him that he had not made that call. Keel, Visitors from Space, pp.141-42.
1967, May: Mrs. Ralph Butler of Owatonna, Minnesota, who had seen UFOs and heard strange voices on her CB radio, visited by ‘Major Richard French’, who had a pointed face and long hair, and said he was interested in CB and UFOs. She offered him some ‘Jello’ (jelly), and he tried to drink it out of the bowl. Keel, UFOs, p.185
1967: A young family man from Belpre, Ohio, had some interesting UFO sightings. Shortly afterwards he had a brief encounter with two black-garbed Oriental-looking men. They appeared confused or drunk and seemed to have difficulty walking. Keel, Disneyland of the Gods, p.152.
1967, 16 July: Following an encounter with a brilliant blue-white source of light on a road between Maumee and Whitehouse, Robert Richardson of Toledo, Ohio, found a piece of metal which he believed had come from the UFO. The next day he was visited by two men who did not give their names, and asked questions about the incident. They departed in a black 1953 Cadillac with licence number 8577-D, but when he checked with police they told him that this number had not yet been issued. Lorenzon, UFOs over the Americas, pp.42-3. Lorenzen, Coral & Jim, UFOs over the Americas, Signet Books, New York, 1968.
1967, 11-17 July: UFO investigator Robert Easley of Defiance, Ohio, was followed by a man in a black sedan with no license plates as he drove to the scene of a sighting. On the 15th the car drove past as he talked of UFOs with his girl friend on the front porch. When they got off the subject the car left, but when they got back on it about an hour later, the same car came back again, as if the driver could read their minds. On the 17th, checking another report, the same man followed him. He also received 12 phone calls of a beeping sound for about 15 seconds, followed by silence. Beckley, The UFO Silencers, p.15.
1967, July: Robert Richardson of Toledo, Ohio, drove around a bend at night and found a strange object blocking the road: unable to halt in time, he hit it, and it vanished. Three days later two men visited his home at 11 p.m. and questioned him for about 10 minutes. They left in a black 1953 Cadillac whose number was found not to have been issued. A week later he was visited by two different men, in black suits, who drove a current model Dodge. Evans, ‘Men in Black’, p.33.
1967, 18 September: One of several students at Highlands University, Colorado, who had seen a UFO the night before, received a phone call threatening his life if he talked. He told this to a fellow student, who a week later, in company with a campus police officer, saw a blood red object. Two days later he too received a phone call late at night telling him to forget what he had seen. The next day a man in the street told him about the sighting, “and even added information that confirmed some of my own research on Atlantis”, and told him to keep his mouth shut. A few days later a black car with tinted windows, with a license plate showing nothing but three X’s, nearly ran him over. Beckley, The UFO Silencers, pp.16-17.
1967, 22 December: Mary Hyre, newswoman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was visited by two men in black overcoats who asked her: “What would you do if someone did order you to stop writing about flying saucers?” Later the same day, ‘Jack Brown’, who like the other two looked oriental, came and asked her: “What – would – what would you do – of someone ordered – ordered you to stop - to stop printing UFO stories?” Brown later called upon Mothman witnesses Connie Carpenter and Linda Scarberry. Keel, Visitors from Space, pp.19-27.
1968, February: UFO investigators patrolling the Mohawk River where a UFO had been sighted saw a red oval for themselves. Several days later one, Peter Stevens, was approached in a café by a strange man who talked about UFOs, then said: “People who look for UFOs should be very, very careful.” This was “followed by the usual pattern of phone calls and poltergeist activity in the Stevens’ household.” Beckley, The UFO Silencers, p.19.
1968, June: UFO researcher Thomas Wedemeyer of Jamestown, New York, was visited by ‘Major Smedley’ of the Air Force, the interrogation left him with a headache. There was no Major Smedley with the Air Force, but this man was found to have visited other UFO researchers. Steiger, Mysteries of Time and Space, p.200.
1968: A deputy police officer met three mysterious men in black suits. “They had an odd manner of speaking – as though they would inhale, then speak until they had expelled all their breath, then inhale again and begin to speak again. Keel, Disneyland of the Gods, p.152.
1968, 5 July: ‘Captain Monroe’, claiming to be from the UFO Research Institute, Pittsburgh, visited a young man who had photographed a UFO with a polaroid camera, told him the pictures were faked, and that he should “keep his mouth shut or something unpleasant would happen to him.” Steiger, Mysteries of Time and Space, p.198.
1968, 23 July: Martyn Johnson, an off-duty policeman, and his wife, saw mysterious lights over Sheffield. After reporting this to the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, he was called to his superintendent’s office, where he was interviewed by two men “dressed just like the spies on TV, in trench-coats and Trilby hats.” They tried to persuade him that he had seen only an aircraft or a helicopter, then said that he was “under oath and was sworn to secrecy for 25 years.” David Clarke and Andy Roberts, ‘The UFO Files’, Fortean Times 284, February 2012, pp.30-31.
1968, Summer: An unnamed journalist in an unstated location reported that several people had said men claiming to be Brad Steiger and John Keel had warned them not to talk about UFOs. When he tried to talk to a farmer’s wife, three short suntanned men in dark suits wearing dark glasses waved a copy of a magazine (with a UFO article?) and said that “Brad Steiger was warning all UFO sighters not to talk. Keel, Our Haunted Planet, pp.96-97. 1971, October (?): Two men ‘with the Ministry of Defence’ visited Jim Wilson, of the Eastern Midlands, and told him that “he might as well forget all about” the light he had seen in the sky in late August, because they had identified it as the Russian satellite Cosmos 408. (It was later proved that it was not.) Two men in a black Jaguar car took to parking by his house in the evening. Police discovered that its number plate was false. On 21 October officers approached the car to question the men, but suddenly it “melted away into nothingness”. Randles, MIB, pp.167-69.
1972. Late August: Peter Taylor of Manchester (he lived near the airport) was besieged by reporters over his sighting of a glowing object in the Pennines on the night of 16th-17th, but two ‘Ministry of Defence’ men arrived in a large black car, got rid of the reporters, asked him repeatedly about the opening of a T-shaped door in the object, and advised him not to talk. Randles, MIB, pp.106-7.
1972, October: Billy Doyle, taking an evening walk away from his job at a hotel near Eastbourne, saw a collection of glowing coloured lights. Two weeks later a ‘CID’ man interviewed him about it, and asked: “What would you say if I asked you not to report this?” Randles, MIB, p.111.
1974, 18 March: An intruder broke into a radio station in Paris, France-Inter, which had been broadcasting a series of interviews with UFO witnesses and theorists, and abstracted all of the untransmitted tapes, though leaving behind those which had already made it over the airwaves. The thief, whoever he was, can hardly have had any motive other than to prevent the remaining tapes from being heard by the public. Bourret, The Crack in the Universe, p.7.
1974, April: ‘Frank’ and ‘Kathy’ were driving in east Hancock County, Ohio, when they saw a fiery pulsating light. They told a few other people about it over their CB radio. At 2.45 a.m. they went to the Wigwam bar and restaurant, where a man rushed up and asked “What did you see in the sky?” He was bald, with fingers twice as long as normal. He denied having a CB, and asked how then he knew about said: “I ... live ... by ... visions!” Keith, Casebook, pp.184-86.
1975: Argentine Ufologist Anton Ponce de Leon visited Sicuani where there were many UFO sightings, where he met “a reporter from the newspaper Ultima Hora, from Lima, Peru.” The reporter had photographed three UFOs in Capillani, Argentina. He sent them for developing, but on returning to his hotel found that “two gentleman in black and with hats” had trashed his room. Further harassment made him “extremely frightened”. Keith, Casebook, pp.94-95.
1975 (?): Two mysterious men in a black Cadillac attempted to confiscate from the Ohio state director for MUFON, Nils Pacquette, some metal samples that were allegedly from a UFO. He said that a check of the license number of their car revealed that that number had never been issued. Sheaffer, UFO Sightings, p.205, citing the National Enquirer, 23 September 1975.
1975, May: Carlos de los Santos Montiel, whose light plane had been buzzed by three discs on approach to Mexico City, was driving to a TV station to tell his story when two black limousines hemmed his car in. Four men got out and warned him not to talk. He went home again. In June he agreed to talk to Allen Hynek, but again he was warned off by one of the men dressed in black. Randles, MIB, pp.146-148.
1976, 3 February: ‘Shirley Greenfield’ of Pennine Ridges, near Bolton, Lancashire, was visited by two men in ‘smart black suits’, and interrogated by one of them, the ‘Commander’, about her UFO sighting of 23 January, and her subsequent purple rash. Randles, MIB, pp.8-19.
1976, 11 September: Dr Herbert Hopkins of Orchard Beach, Maine, who had hypnotically regressed a UFO witness, at home alone for the first evening in some time, was visited by a man in black with no hair or even eyelashes, who claimed to be from the non-existent New Jersey UFO Research Organisation, who made a coin dematerialise. Randles, MIB, pp.163-66. The abductee himself “said that a man in a black suit came to his trailer home and warned him not to speak of his experiences.” Imbrogno and Horrigan, Contact of the 5th Kind, p.17.
1980, September: ‘Beryl Hollins’ of Golborne, near Wigan in Lancashire, who had seen a UFO on 31 August, was telephoned by a supposed scientist from Jodrell Bank, who would not say how he obtained her number. He advised her not to associate with the ‘cranks’ in Ufology. Randles, MIB, pp.122-24.
1981, 6 August: David Ellis and his wife Caroline (pseudonyms?), who ran The Horseshoes public house outside Matlock, Derbyshire, and had had several recent UFO sightings, were visited at seven in the morning by two men in black with grey suede gloves, “like twins”, who were revealed to be hairless when they took off their hats, and apparently wore lipstick. They warned the couple to say nothing, made Caroline’s signet ring disappear, then drove off in a black Mercedes which had no number plate. The ring soon reappeared. Afterwards they received several telephone calls from a ‘somewhat metallic’ voice also warning them not to talk. Taylor, The Uninvited 2, pp.87-93, 105.
1988, 15 January: ‘Peter Spencer’, who had photographed a green alien on Ilkley Moor, visited by Jefferson and Davies, purportedly from the Ministry of Defence (who could not have known of the case), who asked him how his electric fire worked, and requested the negative, which he had lent to Peter Hough. When he told them this they left. Randles, MIB, pp.139-40.
1990, June: McCleary, a farmer in Tipperary County, Ireland, found two crop circles in his oat fields; two more appeared later. The morning that the last appeared, a thin man dressed completely in black stepped out from behind a shed, he had something “dead” about him, and the clothes looked fifty years old. He asked about the circles. Keith, Casebook, pp.97-98.
1998 (?): Jerry Anderson (not the producer of Thunderbirds!) of UFO Monitors East Kent (UFOMEK), who was investigating the Burmarsh UFO incident of 8 March 1997, received a letter signed by Wing Commander A. W. Ward of the RAF. It read as if it were written by someone whose first language was not English, and ordered him to cease his investigations. He later discovered that this officer really existed, but when he wrote to him he received a reply, this time in fluent English, denying that he had written that letter. He was visited by people supposedly from the TV licensing authorities, who demanded to see his licence – they went away when he showed it, but this is extremely odd, since TV licensing men only visit homes that do not have licences. On 9 February 1999, he received a tape cassette in the mail, which proved to be a recording of a telephone conversation he had had with another researcher, Chris Rolfe, in January 1998. John Harney, Magonia Monthly Supplement 13, March 1999; UFO Magazine.
Men in Black Encounters - A Short Catalogue
