by Nick Redfern
The second case in which a Man in Black was caught on film revolves around a longtime observer and chronicler of the MIB and their actions: Allen Greenfield. Not surprisingly, when one takes into consideration its bizarre and graphic nature, Greenfield recalls the eerie encounter as if it were yesterday: “I did not mention my Men in Black experience for many years,” Greenfield readily admits today, “because I’m not part of the phenomenon. I try to stay in the historian/investigator category. And if I had not been with a huge group of fellow ufologists at the time, I probably would have never told the story. But, there are other living witnesses to it.”
Allen Greenfield, author of Secret Rituals of the Men in Black.
It was in 1969, Greenfield reveals, that he had his face-to-face encounter with a Man in Black. In keeping with what we know about the MIB, the experience was neither pleasant nor welcoming: “This was at the National UFO Conference [NUFOC], which was held that year in Charleston, West Virginia. And that would have been the June 24 weekend— which is when it was always held, because it was the date of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting in 1947.”
Amid the bustling throng of devotees of the UFO phenomenon, authors, researchers, members of the press, and those curious members of the public who were there just to see what all the flying saucer controversy was really about, there was someone else at the NUFOC event. It was someone strange, someone who seemed truly unearthly. It was someone with whom, by now, we have become uneasily familiar, as Greenfield notes: “There was a person there dressed in black—with dark glasses that looked almost like clip-on prescription glasses to me— who was hovering around the convention. I spotted him, but a lot of other people didn’t, or they didn’t pay any attention to him. Well, we took a break for lunch on the Sunday of the convention and about a dozen of us went across the street to a restaurant. And we’re dining when this being began to hover around our table. He fit the classic description of the weird Men in Black: he was kind of held together very loosely, very pale and putty-like in appearance, with a mechanical-sounding voice, and stiff movements.”
Greenfield decided that it was high time he confronted the darkly dressed figure, to try to determine his identity and ascertain his reason for being at the conference. After all, it’s not every day that one finds oneself in the company of a Man in Black! Greenfield remembers: “At this point in time, I was very interested in the whole Walter Mitty theory for the Men in Black, that he was just some kid who’s trying to freak us out, or just trying to seem important when he wasn’t. But that doesn’t explain the rest of it and what happened next. So, I say to him, ‘Why are you following us around? What’s your deal?’ And I more or less leaped out of the chair, nearly knocking it over as I said it, and he immediately turned around in that robotic way that the Men in Black have. He didn’t run; he walked stiffly to the door. If he was a person playing a character, he was doing it very well.”
For Greenfield, however, this particular Man in Black was not about to get away—unlike most of his shadowy brethren—without Greenfield getting proof of his presence. Stressing to me that he always carried with him a state-of-the-art camera containing black-and-white, high-sensitivity, fast film, Greenfield says he raced out of the restaurant and planted himself directly in the face of the Man in Black: “I don’t recall saying anything to him, except for, ‘Who are you?’ and he said, ‘I am a Man in Black in training.’ So, I said, ‘Then you won’t mind this,’ and I quickly took a photo of him while he was frozen in place.”
Captured! Allen Greenfield’s Man in Black.
Greenfield was not prepared for the next startling phase of the experience, which is absolutely typical of the elusive modus operandi of the Men in Black: “The streets were essentially empty when I took the picture, which is important for what happened next. I was right by him, so I knew I had gotten the shot, but then he went around the corner, and when I got around the corner—following him—he had vanished. And I would say the amount of time involved was barely two seconds; I was right behind him, literally right behind him. I didn’t expect him to be gone; I expected him to be running or walking down the street. I have no idea how to explain that, and I didn’t see any place where he could have dodged into a doorway.”
Greenfield could only add to me, still utterly perplexed by the surreal experience after more than 40 years: “He was gone, just gone.” The priceless photograph, fortunately, remains.
7
Madmen and Monsters (Early 1970s)
As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s the Men in Black puzzle showed no signs of being solved. In fact, for the darkly attired ones, it was pretty much business as usual. In July 1972, Patricia Hyde, a former employee of the FBI, had an encounter that brought her into direct contact with one of our mysterious, shadowy men. At around 9 o’clock on a summer’s evening Hyde witnessed a strange object flying in the skies of Arcadia, Florida. Quite naturally, as is often the case following UFO encounters, Hyde wished to find out more about what she had seen. As a result, she began to dig deeper into the complexities of UFO phenomena.
Shortly after her sighting, Hyde was confronted at her apartment by an unusual-looking man dressed in dark clothing, who had deeply slanting eyes. “Miss Hyde,” said the Man in Black, in a fashion that left Hyde in no doubt that his warning was a very real one, “you will stop investigating flying saucers!” Further similar visits occurred, and Patricia Hyde eventually got out of UFO research. Such is the effect that a traumatic encounter with a Man in Black can have on a person (Beckley 1990).
In the early 1970s, author and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman encountered a Man in Black.
Loren Coleman, one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists and the author of, among many other titles, Bigfoot! and, with Mark A. Hall, True Giants, had his own unsettling encounter in the early 1970s with a mystery man of the type that packs the pages of this book. Coleman says today of his uncanny experience: “One of the weirdest meetings I ever had with what I thought could have been a Man in Black took place when a ‘Lieutenant Applegate’ visited me in Decatur, Illinois” (Coleman 2010).
At the time of the visit, Coleman was looking into the strange saga of what became known as the Mad Gasser of Mattoon—a bizarre figure that, during the 1930s, terrorized the women of Botetourt County, Virginia, and, a decade later, did likewise in Mattoon, Illinois. The modus operandi of the prowler was simple: According to the legend, he chose to “gas” his unfortunate victims, render them temporarily paralyzed, and then gain access to their property—presumably to steal or take advantage of whatever or whomever caught his eye.
One of the victims of the Gasser’s later attacks was a Mrs. Bert Kearney of Mattoon. On the night of September 1, 1944, around 11 p.m., Mrs. Kearney was overcome by a “sickening, sweet odor in the bedroom,” that provoked a kind of creeping paralysis in her legs and burned her lips. Terrified, she screamed for her sister, Martha, who was also in the house, and breathlessly explained what was going on. Martha too could not fail to notice the strong odor. Police were quickly called, but a careful search of the property failed to find any trespasser (“Aesthetic Prowler” 1944). Later that same night, however, a mysterious man was seen: He was viewed lurking in the shadows outside Mrs. Kearney’s bedroom window, this time by Mr. Kearney, a taxi driver who had just raced home after being alerted to the night’s dramatic events. Notably, the prowler was described by Mr. Kearney as being tall, dressed entirely in black, and sporting a tight-fitting black cap. Some might suggest that the presence of a darkly dressed, sinister man in a hat, coupled with an overpowering odor that filled the bedroom and that had a negative effect on the victim, are highly reminiscent of central facets of Albert Bender’s MIB experience in 1953.
Back in 1944, however, certainly no one was talking about the Men in Black. And, given that the Kearneys had what the local media described as “considerable sums of money at the house,” the immediate and wholly understandable thought was that the prowler had tried to drug his victim with chlorofo
rm and then steal the cash. This was never proven, however, and as further attacks began to occur throughout the area, fear gripped the populace. Despite the fact that, throughout the years, fingers were pointed at various people suspected of being the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the matter has never been fully resolved, and the whole series of events is still steeped in deep mystery and legend (“Aesthetic Prowler” 1944).
And it was this mystery that inadvertently led Loren Coleman to have his own encounter with a Man in Black in the early 1970s. At the time, Coleman notes, “I was looking into the mysterious Mad Gasser of Mattoon and related latter-day entities.” One of those latter-day entities was the unforgettably nicknamed Enema Bandit. His real name was Michael Hubert Kenyon, and, in December 1975, he pleaded guilty to six counts of armed robbery, and served six years in prison. Kenyon’s attacks ran from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and were highly curious, as Coleman reveals: “He targeted coeds, picked out the most overweight of two or three bound women, and gave them enemas” (Coleman 2010).
Coleman dug deeply into the exploits of the Enema Bandit that ranged from Illinois to Kansas, and Oklahoma to California: “At the time, as I often do, I was writing individual letters to many newspapers in the country, trying to track down what they had published on what I thought was a very human criminal. The pattern of similar activities that were directed to mainly women victims interested me in terms of the configuration of the Mad Gasser attacks. I wanted to make certain that any bizarre human examples that seemed to follow the random model of the Gasser be compared” (Coleman 2010).
Coleman’s persistent digging into the exploits of both the Mad Gasser and the Enema Bandit caught someone’s attention. In the midst of his research, late one night, there was a knock at the door of the Eldorado apartment in which Coleman and his first wife, Toni-Marie, were living. Coleman remembers vividly what happened next: “A darkly suited, very thin man who said he was with the Decatur Police Department stepped into my life. He identified himself as Detective Lt. Applegate. I don’t recall seeing an I.D., as those were much more trusting days. He said he was checking to see if I was the Enema Bandit, and why I was digging into this story. He said I should stop researching this series of cases. It was a startling encounter. He justified this by noting that since the Enema Bandit appeared to like media attention—he did not say how he knew this—I was targeting myself with all my letters asking for articles on the Enema Bandit. It seemed to make sense at the time” (Coleman 2010).
The next development in the story, however, most assuredly did not make sense. A couple of days later, Coleman checked with the DPD, a spokesperson for which stated they didn’t even have a Lt. Applegate in their employ. It was then, said Coleman, that he started “wondering about whom Applegate might really have been.” Coleman’s final words on the matter only add to the uneasy atmosphere that permeates this story: “Years later, in doing more work on names, I discovered that ‘Applegate’ was another name for the Devil in some literature. It was a very spooky encounter” (Coleman 2010).
Throughout the years, the MIB have played integral roles in paranormal-themed incidents that extend far beyond just UFOs, including marauding monsters like the one fabled to live in Loch Ness, a body of water formed more than 250 million years ago when massive movements in the crust of the earth led to the creation of a gigantic rift across Scotland that is now known as the Great Glen. As the centuries passed, and as the deeper parts of the Glen filled with water, the landscape began to change, and three new, sprawling bodies of water were duly born: Loch Oich, Loch Lochy, and Loch Ness.
At nearly 24 miles in length and almost a mile wide, the largest of the three, Loch Ness, contains more water than any other British lake, and at its deepest point, extends to a mind-boggling depth of around 700 feet— and possibly even deeper, some suggest. Surrounded by dense trees and ominous-looking, huge slopes, it is little wonder that Loch Ness has, for centuries, been viewed by many as both a magical and a sinister location. And as anyone who has ever marveled at the many and varied mysteries of our world will be well aware, the loch is the alleged home of Nessie—arguably the world’s most famous lake monster. Or, more correctly: lake monsters. Beyond any doubt, if Loch Ness does harbor something large and unidentified, then the possibility of there being just one creature is absurd. Only a significantly sized colony of unknown animals could be responsible for such a lengthy and ongoing phenomenon. That is, of course, if the beasts have flesh-and-blood origins—which, incredibly, may not be the case, as we will soon see.
Far stranger things have occurred at Loch Ness than mere monster sightings, such as when Aleister Crowley purchased a house on its shores in 1900. During his time at the two-century-old Boleskine House, Crowley was engaged in a magical sequence that was designed, in Crowley’s words, to create a knowledge and conversation with the holy guardian angel. The ritual was an elaborate one, consisting of several weeks of purification and ritual work for Crowley. At the site of what is arguably the world’s most famous monster, Crowley’s actions, which included black masses and wild orgies, led to some highly disturbing phenomena. In his autobiography, Crowley described how the spirits he summoned at Loch Ness got wildly out of hand, causing one servant to flee, and a workman to go insane. Crowley also insinuated that he was indirectly responsible for a local butcher accidentally severing an artery and dying as a consequence. Crowley had allegedly written the names of certain demons on a bill from the butcher’s shop.
Richard Freeman, resident zoologist at the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology, asks, “Could it be that the demon-summoning ritual had worked in a way that Crowley had not foreseen?” Freeman continues: “Modern-day wizard Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels thinks this may well be the case.... Doc made the acquaintance of a man named Patrick Kelly [who] claimed to have photographed a lake monster in Lough Leane [Ireland], in 1981. This, however, was not the most fantastic of his claims” (Freeman 2005). It certainly was not: Kelly told Shiels that he was a direct descendent of Edward Kelly, the notorious scryer of Dr. John Dee, who happened to be the court magician to England’s Queen Elizabeth I, and who claimed to speak with the dead via a young medium whom he had trained. The modern-day Kelly also claimed to Shiels that his father, Laurence, had met Aleister Crowley in Paris in 1933, shortly after he left the Abbey of Thelema. Crowley apparently told Laurence that he was very interested in the story of the Loch Ness Monster—whose first major flap of the 20th century was then in full swing.
The origins of the Loch Ness Monster, then, may be acutely different from what many have long presumed. With that in mind, next in our study of the Men in Black is the case of another man who came to believe that the creatures of the loch had truly anomalous origins, and who, as a result of his investigation (or his unwise meddling, perhaps) became the target of a definitively hostile Man in Black at the loch itself.
Fredrick William Holiday was born in 1920, and was a well-known journalist, angler, cryptozoologist, and wildlife specialist. Largely prompted by sensational newspaper stories of the early 1930s, Holiday devoted much of his life to investigating the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster, and in the 1960s became a member of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. After several hundred hours of faithfully and carefully watching the loch, Holiday was able to claim four sightings of mysterious creatures within its deep, dark waters.
In his 1968 book, The Great Orm of Loch Ness, Holiday suggested that the animals might very well be monstrous invertebrates. By 1972, however, Holiday had publicly, and very radically, rejected his initial hypothesis that the Loch Ness Monsters were purely physical creatures that science had yet to classify. This can be demonstrated by his second book, The Dragon and the Disc. In its pages, Holiday suggested there was a definite relationship between lake monsters and UFOs. He even offered the possibility that the beasts were evil in nature, and perhaps had paranormal or demonic origins. This theory was borne out by an event that occurred on June 2, 1973. On that day, Holiday rendezvoused at Loch Ness with a
Reverend Dr. Donald Omand, who was about to attempt something truly remarkable and probably unique: nothing less than a full-fledged exorcism of Loch Ness.
In Holiday’s own words, “We stopped first at the beach of Lochend where a protective ceremony was enacted. This consisted of a brief service followed by the application of holy water in the form of a cross to the foreheads of the participants.” Dr. Omand then intoned, “Grant that by the power entrusted to Thy unworthy servant, this highland loch, and the land adjoining it may be delivered from all evil spirits” (Holiday 1986). The group then made its careful way, via Inverness, to the southeast shore, on to Fort Augustus, and then to the ruined remains of Urquhart Castle. At each location, an exorcism was faithfully performed. The culmination of the day’s events was a cleansing ritual aboard a boat in the middle of Loch Ness itself. Holiday admitted with some degree of concern that he fully expected one of the mighty beasts of the loch to wildly break the surface of the deep waters at the height of the exorcism. Fortunately for both him and Dr. Omand, however, such a creature failed to appear.
Although many mainstream researchers and students of the monsters of Loch Ness loudly scoff at the notion that they might be anything more—or, paradoxically, anything less—than flesh-and-blood creatures, others have been prepared to at least look at the data suggesting that the paranormal might play some role in the ongoing Loch Ness controversy. One of those was a renowned Loch Ness Monster hunter named Tim Dinsdale, who, commenting on the exorcism of Dr. Omand, publicly said, “I was not inclined to scoff at Dr. Omand, or those associated with him, though I could hardly subscribe to the belief that the monster was a phantom. Having seen and filmed it I knew otherwise, but where the dark forces were concerned, if Dr. Omand believed it was possible to rid the place of them he deserved to be given a respectful hearing” (Dinsdale 1976).