Sightings are constant in West Virginia. They are constant in Indiana, Kansas, and Nebraska. We sometimes have 150 sightings in one day around the country. The scope of this thing is unimaginable, and it goes unreported by the major media. The local newspapers often carry headlines about saucer sightings, and feature editorials asking, “Why doesn’t somebody tell us something? (When I write newspaper articles, they often carry them on the editorial page. Many newspapers have dropped the word “UFO” altogether. They now call them “spaceships.” They will say, “Another spaceship was seen last night by 89 people.”)
In areas with sporadic UFO activity, the Air Force pretends to be out of touch with the situation. However, when we have an area where sightings are constant, we also have constant Air Force activity in the air. This comes in the form of flying boxcars – a very large cargo plane that looks rather weird. These Air Force boxcars fly at treetop level, and are loaded with instrumentation. In certain areas, whether it be West Virginia, Indiana, or Long Island, these planes fly back and forth, all night long, over areas where UFOs have landed. They are keeping an eye out, and they obviously have instrumentation. They seem to be trying to do something about the UFOs – trying to make some determination. But they don’t want publicity. I have not written any articles on this aspect as of yet, but I have got a whopper coming up soon.
Right now, everybody is accusing the CIA of investigating UFOs. I wish the CIA would begin by investigating itself. [applause] As you know, they have a very big building outside of Washington, D.C. it has a sign pointing to the “Bureau of public roads.” Everybody knows this means it is the CIA building. If you really want to go out to the CIA building, there is a limousine that leaves every day from in front of the Soviet Embassy, which will take you there.
The CIA has denied to me, personally, that they have had any interest in the UFO subject since 1953 (i.e., since the Robertson report). But some other agency (the NSA) is very interested, and they are investigating these things in great detail. It is not the Air Force, and it is not the CIA.
This brings us to the Men in Black (MIB), whoever they are. They were out in the state of Washington a month ago. They went through eight communities. It was like a blitzkrieg. There was a tremendous UFO flap out there, including the disappearances of many dogs, which goes hand-in-hand with all of this. You may have heard about it. We always have “dognappings” for some reason. God knows what UFOs are doing with dogs!
Whenever there is a really big flap, these mystery men often turn up. They went through several Washington communities and told the witnesses to keep quiet about what they had seen. When the local newspapers tried to do some UFO stories and went around to the witnesses, the witnesses said, “We were told not to talk.” I talked to the reporter who carried out the investigation. I got the names of some of the witnesses, and called them up. I tried to get something out of them. They would not deny that they had seen these things (and it would have been easy for them to do that). They are honest people. They just said they could not say anything about it. They had been warned to keep quiet.
The same thing has been happening out on Long Island and in many other sectors. Within 30 miles of New York, there have been several Men in Black cases in the last two weeks. I have come within a couple of hours of catching one of them impersonating an Air Force officer. I have reported this to the Air Force. I have given them the numbers that were on the phony identification cards these MIB carried. I practically demanded that the Air Force push this thing through.
I have also been to the FBI with this. I am still running around out there, trying to catch these MIB. I have high hopes that one of these days I will. Maybe then, we will find out a little bit more about why they want to suppress the fact that something is happening not only in our skies, but also on the ground – where these things are landing. They must have a reason for it.
The MIB were doing the same thing in 1897. In one case, an object fell out of one of the airships when it flew over a field. The object was simply a piece of pottery with some very strange writing on it. This object was displayed in a local store in Texas. A day or so later, a man no one had seen in town before came through and bought the object. He paid a great deal of money for it, and he looked like an Oriental. His skin was dark. He had high cheekbones. He had narrow, slanting eyes. The full report was in the newspapers in 1897.
Today, the drivers of some of these MIB cars (mostly black Cadillacs) have been described the same way. So, possibly we have been accusing the Air Force, the CIA, and the NSA unjustly. Maybe somebody else is interested in keeping these things quiet. I hope that we will very soon have some answers.
MIB: 1967-68 – SAUCER NEWS, SPRING/SUMMER 1969
Speaking before a closed session of the Congress of Scientific Ufologists in New York in June, 1967, I warned that the Men in Black incidents were on the increase, and that we could probably expect to hear even more from these mystery men in the coming months.
Later, in the pages of Saucer News, I predicted that more and more UFO researchers would be having direct personal experience with the UFO phenomenon. I stressed that further “silencings” were likely to occur. Take a look at the record…
In the past year, an almost staggering number of longtime ufologists have suddenly quit the scene. Some have stopped answering mail altogether, and at least two refuse to speak to any of their old ufological friends on the telephone. Six important UFO personalities have died. Whole regional UFO-investigating organizations have collapsed, and their leaders have publicly disavowed their interest in the phenomenon. Others are now living in bewildered fear, concerned over disappearing mail and perplexed by the antics of their telephones.
The main topic at the 1968 Congress of Scientific Ufologists, held in Cleveland, OH, was the Men in Black. Some researchers were claiming that they had been followed by black Cadillacs, and had even been shot at. Unknown intruders broke into motel rooms, automobiles, and private homes during this hectic year, to steal only UFO research papers, documentation, and photographs. There were literally scores of these incidents. Some of the people trapped in these bizarre situations were newspapermen, writers, and independent researchers not known to the ufological mainstream.
A UFO-chasing newsman in Philadelphia was reportedly shot at while in a laundromat. Another reporter in West Virginia was repeatedly harassed. Accounts of identical harassments came in from Canada to Mexico City, and even from Sweden and Germany. No place seemed safe. Even TV producers, writers, and personalities concerned with UFOs have admitted to me, in confidence, that they, too, have been undergoing all kinds of strange experiences. One changed his unlisted home number three times and, still, the harassment continued. Another had his phone taken out altogether.
Those who have been on the outside of this have read the various reports with sarcasm and disbelief. But it has all been horrifyingly real to the hard-working researchers who have been probing into strange and revealing cases in their own areas. The old speculations blaming “the government” for these abusive and senseless tactics may be invalid.
It is abundantly clear that a mysterious third party is involved – a party who seems to be directly related to the UFO phenomenon itself…
If you want to try to understand what is really going on, you must shelve your personal beliefs, and try to base your conclusions upon the obvious implications in all of the events now taking place all over the world. The subject is most complicated. A simple and brief explanation is not possible. You must prepare yourself to understand the complex “big picture.”
A knowledge of history is more important than a knowledge of astronomy. Mankind lies at the core of the mystery. Man’s past and future are directly involved, and will be affected – seriously affected. So, try to broaden your general knowledge. Base your speculations on the available facts, not upon wishful thinking.
When you are on the right track, you will know it. Your phone will start ringing, but there won’t be anybody on the other
end. Or, there may come a soft rap on your door in the middle of the night.
And then you’ll howl with indignation: “Why didn’t somebody tell us that this is what it was all about?”
Somebody has been telling you – over and over again – but you haven’t been listening.
CHAPTER 4
THE UFO SILENCERS – SAGA MAGAZINE, MAY 1975
Planes were a rare sight in 1924. A few hardy airmail pilots were just beginning to blaze trails in rickety old biplanes, and a handful of barnstormers were turning up at county fairs in decrepit Jennies left over from World War I. But most Americans had never even seen an airplane, and when a sputtering engine sounded in the skies over cities and suburbs, people ran into the streets to gape with wonder. In May of that year, there was great excitement on the isolated farms near Gem, WV, in Braxton County, when a huge aircraft suddenly appeared, bobbing and weaving closer and closer to the ground, until it dipped down into a thick forest and apparently crashed. According to the farmer who watched it go down, it was “as big as a battleship” and didn’t seem to have any wings. In those days, every plane crash was big news commanding headlines around the world, so a local newsman, the late John Cole, eagerly joined the party that went searching for the wreckage. They systematically scoured the woods and, within hours, they found the wreck in a small clearing. “We weren’t the first ones there, though,” Cole recalled more than 40 years later:
There were already five or six men in the clearing. Some of them were dressed in black business suits, neckties and all, and that seemed damned silly in that part of the woods. Others were dressed in coveralls of a funny color – some kind of shiny material. They were talking among themselves in a rapid-fire foreign language when we found them. They got real excited when they saw us. The men in coveralls ran into the wreck, like they were trying to hide. Some of our men were carrying guns, and one of them said, “By God, they’re spies!” He started to raise his rifle. I told him to put it down.
The strangers were all small, just a little over five feet tall, and they all looked like Orientals. You know, with high cheekbones, “slant” eyes, and dark skin. One of them spoke English with a peculiar accent. He told us nobody was hurt, and that everything was “all right.” He said he would call on the sheriff later and make a complete report. But he never did. There wasn’t much we could do. No crime had been committed. Nobody was hurt.
John Cole was in his eighties at the time of the interview, but his mind was sharp and his memory was clear. He had not read anything about flying saucers, he claimed, and was unfamiliar with the Men in Black lore. He continued:
Here’s the funny part. While I was looking around, I spotted a little metal thingamajig on the ground. I picked it up and decided to keep it. I put it in my pocket. We all finally went away, leaving the foreigners to fuss with their contraption. It didn’t look like much of a flying machine. In fact, it was a wonder it could fly at all. It was like the fuselage of a modern plane, with windows and all. But it didn’t have any wings, tail, or propellers. And, like the farmer said, it was mighty big. I’d say it was at least 75 feet long. It filled the whole clearing.
I went back home. I was living in Weston in those days. I went right to bed. I was pretty tired from all the day’s hiking. About 3:00 a.m., somebody started pounding on my door. I got up and looked, and there was an Army officer standing there. He was dressed in one of those broad-brimmed hats they used to wear, with the leg wrappings and all. It was a U.S. Army uniform all right. I was in the Big War. But we didn’t see many soldiers in West Virginia in those days. Anyway, except for his clothes, he looked just like those foreigners from the airplane: slant eyes, dark skin, but maybe a little taller.
He said, “You picked up something yesterday. We need it back.” I was half asleep so, at first, I couldn’t think what he meant. Then I remembered that metal thingamajig. It was still in my coat pocket, so I went and got it. I asked him, “Is this what you mean?” He didn’t answer. He just took it and walked off, without a word. He didn’t seem to have a horse or a car. I shuffled back to bed. But the next day, I started wondering about it. How had he managed to track me down? A couple of days later, I went back to those woods and found that clearing. It was empty. The grass and bushes were all crushed down where the airplane had been, but there was no other sign of anything or anybody. The farmer said he had seen some lights in the sky the next night, and thought the thing had taken off then. You know, I never wrote the story up for my newspaper. After that Army officer came by, I figured that maybe it was a secret Army deal of some kind. I thought I had better leave well enough alone.
Braxton County produced a series of UFO and monster sightings in the 1950s and 60s, and I ran into Mr. Cole while I was investigating some of those more recent events.
Several years later, I received a letter from a man in the Northwest recounting an almost identical incident, which supposedly happened in Oregon in the 1930s. A strange plane had crashed. Local farmers collected pieces of it and, shortly afterwards, Army officers visited them and rounded up the “souvenirs.” Variations of this charade have occurred in England in 1909 and, more recently, in Spain. Modern UFO investigators have vainly tried to link these mystery men with the CIA and the military, accusing them of being part of some massive conspiracy to hide “the truth” about flying saucers from the public. But hundreds of similar episodes have now been reported and closely examined by highly qualified civilian researchers. It is evident that these Men in Black (so named because they are usually dressed in black suits) do not represent any known government, but are actually related to the UFO phenomenon itself. Their basic purpose is to spread confusion and prevent official investigators from learning the truth about UFOs.
They have done their job well. Despite 27 years of controversy and investigation, no real evidence of any kind has fallen into the hands of the authorities. Aside from scorched circles of grass and holes in the ground, no physical debris from a flying saucer has reached official investigators. Even worse, the clever manipulations of the MIB have succeeded in convincing both official and amateur investigators that many true UFO reports were nothing more than pointless “hoaxes.” In several instances, witnesses and investigators have even been discredited altogether by such manipulations.
Since most UFO enthusiasts believe that flying saucers are space vehicles from another planet, they cannot fit the apparently very human MIB into their theories. Multi-armed, bug-eyed monsters are more acceptable as UFO pilots than olive-skinned, Oriental-looking gentlemen. There have been monster reports in a growing number of landing and contact cases, but reports of the human-type greatly outnumber them. This is why some leading UFO researchers speculated for years that flying saucers might be coming from behind the “Bamboo Curtain” in Asia. But in 1967, the Soviet news agency, Tass, openly accused the CIA of controlling the phenomenon and causing the widespread sightings in Tashkent, which is in southwestern Russia. Those sightings somehow inspired a revival of religious beliefs, and Soviet officials viewed such actions as part of some fiendish capitalist conspiracy.
Today, the term “Men in Black” is generic and is applied to any mysterious stranger who appears at the site of a paranormal event. However they do not always dress in black or look Oriental. Instead of having the classic olive complexion, some appear to be deeply tanned, even during the middle of winter. They often walk unsteadily, like they are drunk, and display other symptoms of “the bends” (a reaction to too much nitrogen in the blood). They speak slowly, parrotlike, as if they are reciting memorized speeches. Their dark eyes are usually described as being “hypnotic.” Many witnesses have also commented on their hair, which is usually an unnatural color – as if it were dyed. Some have very short hair, like a crewcut just growing back in, with a neatly shaved circle toward the back of the head. They don’t have much of a sense of humor but, when they do laugh, a kind of cackle escapes their lips. Some seem to have difficulty breathing, gasping between words. In a few cases,
the MIB seemed perfectly normal in every respect, until they made a small blunder of some kind. When offered a dish of Jell-O, one of these more “normal” types tried to drink it. Offered a cigar, another tried to chew it up and eat it rather than light it.
The majority of the MIB are well-dressed in expensively cut suits, usually black or gray, and made of a glossy, slightly reflective material. In a number of reports, they are seen wearing shoes with unusually thick rubber soles. One odd consistency in these reports is that their clothing usually seems to be brand new. The soles of their shoes look unwalked upon. They look as if they have just left their haberdashers. Yet in a number of instances, their brand-new clothes were strangely out of date. They were wearing styles that had been out fashion for several years or, even more odd, they were dressed in styles that came into fashion several years later! The same peculiar feature is apparent in their vehicles. They have been seen in automobiles that were 20 years old, or older, yet were as perfect as a showroom model. Witnesses who have entered the MIB vehicles reported that they smelled new.
Black Cadillacs with heavily tinted windows seem to be their preferred mode of transportation but, in recent years, they have also appeared in Volkswagens and Fords. One witness in the Midwest claimed he was visited by a tall, extremely thin, cadaverlike man who traveled in a car that seemed to be assembled from the parts of many makes and models. Phantom campers, station wagons, and panel trucks have also been reported with increasing frequency. Witnesses in several cases have managed to get the license numbers of the mysterious vehicles, but police checks revealed that no such numbers had been issued!
Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel Page 7