The challenge of the Men in Black is that they seem at once quite believable and yet impossible. They are merely men wearing dark clothing and sunglasses, yet they are able to know the impossible. What can we learn from these mysterious dark clad men? Speculation has arisen that they are everything from alien humanoids to government agents dispatched to discourage evidence of aliens from hitting the masses.
You’ve just witnessed a cigar shaped object hovering above the interstate as you’re on your way home from work. As you walk toward your front door you fumble nervously for your keys so you can gain entrance to the solace of your home and a return to a normal life when suddenly you hear a clearing throat behind you. Your keys tumble from your fingertips and clatter to the floor as you turn to face three men standing in the street behind you all dressed in black. One walks forward toward you and says, “We need to talk about your experience.” Such is a typical encounter with the men in black. Most likely it would be followed by any amount of intimidation from simple veiled suggestions to the victim being “taken for a ride” to a mysterious undisclosed location.
Who are the men in black? Or if the case may be, what are they? They appear to have quite serious yet emotionless demeanors. They always dress entirely in black with black ties, sunglasses, and often even black anachronistic fedoras that date them to the 1950’s. They often seem unfamiliar with their environments with shoelaces tied in bizarre ways, and clothes that seem almost an extension of their bodies rather than mere garments, almost as though they have no skin separating their innards from the clothes they wear. Such observations suggest they’re actually extraterrestrial constructs. Otherwise it seems they may be members of a terrestrial organization, not necessarily affiliated with the government. They seem to know things long before anyone else could possibly know which makes it likely that they may work to a limited degree outside of the space-time continuum as we understand it. Alternately, they may simply have the ability to control perception and implant memories of themselves. Why? To add a level of urgency to the UFO community. Or perhaps “they” don’t exist, but rather are a sort of thought-virus that has infected the UFO community. Would such an adversary be any less real even if incorporeal?
It seems as the field of paranormal unexplainable topics progresses, a possibility arises that they may be all linked. Perhaps the first incident of Men in Black is telling of their nature and origins. It was Albert K. Bender who was the first to report an encounter with the mysterious agents of the unknown. Though the evidence he had uncovered was no more noteworthy really than any other evidence to come out it gained the attention of the MIBs, and they threatened him in person at night at his house. Strangely enough, they seem to follow only some people who have UFO experiences, but their presence is not necessarily related to the dramatic nature of the story.
What are the MIB and why are they here? Of course as the phenomenon progresses it will be interesting to note if their behavior, clothes, and vehicles will likewise change or if they will remain anachronistic even after another fifty years.