The Real Men in Black

by Nick Redfern

  Interestingly, despite his public statement that he could hardly accept the idea that the monster of the loch had supernatural origins, in a private letter to Holiday in 1974, Dinsdale wrote that he had been personally aware for some years of what seemed to be a paranormal element to the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon. Ted Holiday actually had very good reason indeed to believe that there was something highly strange about the beasts of Loch Ness, and that all was not as it initially seemed. Commenting on his monster-hunting activities at the loch and elsewhere, he noted that on all too many occasions when people tried to photograph the monsters of the deep, their cameras failed to work properly, or the photographs came out fogged or blurry when they were developed. Holiday admitted that most Loch Ness Monster researchers dismissed such anomalies as anything other than mere chance, primarily because the overriding viewpoint was that physical animals—even ones of an unknown type—simply did not have the ability to cause cameras to malfunction. And yet, the sheer, illogical number of reports on file in which camera-related problems were so prevalent added weight to Holiday’s growing beliefs that there was something very, very unsettling about the long-necked creatures that have, for so long, called Loch Ness their home.

  The most disturbing aspect of Holiday’s research was still to come, however. One day in 1973, not long after the series of exorcisms performed by the Reverend Dr. Donald Omand, Holiday was once again at Loch Ness, still faithfully seeking the truth about his enigmatic, elusive nemeses. He later recorded that on the day in question, “...across the grass, beyond the roadway and at the top of the slope leading down to Loch Ness…stood a figure. It was a man dressed entirely in black. Unlike other walkers who sometimes pause to admire the Loch Ness panorama, this one had his back to the loch and was staring fixedly at me” (Holiday 1986).

  Echoing what so many others have said about the Men in Black, Holiday admitted to feeling a deep sense of malevolence and abnormality emanating from the cold, passionless entity in his presence. Suddenly, Holiday heard a curious whispering or whistling noise, and the Man in Black vanished in an instant. Later, there was a near-fatal sequel to this disquieting event: When he returned to Loch Ness in 1974 to continue his investigations, Holiday was stopped in his tracks after only a few days with a serious heart attack. As a stretcher carried him up the edge of the loch to a waiting ambulance, he peered groggily over the side and noted that he had just passed over the exact same spot where the Man in Black had stood the previous year.

  Sadly, Holiday passed away prematurely in 1979; he was not even 60. Some might be inclined to suspect that he was a victim of the Men in Black.

  May 3, 1975 was the date of a truly memorable UFO encounter, complete with MIB, that was brought to the attention of Dr. Josef Allen Hynek, who acted as a scientific advisor for the U.S. Air Force’s UFO investigation programs Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book, and who, in 1973, had founded the Center for UFO Studies. The unfortunate figure that got caught up in this mystery was a man named Carlos Antonio de los Santos Montiel, who had a close encounter of the UFO kind after taking to the skies from Mexico City in his Piper Aztec 24 aircraft. It was while in the vicinity of Tequesquitengo that his aircraft was briefly surrounded by three small saucer-shaped vehicles that shadowed him extremely closely. Disturbingly, those same UFOs, as they surrounded Montiel’s aircraft, seemingly elevated it from 15,000 feet to 15,800 feet, before soaring away into the skies towards the Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatal volcanoes. That experience was nothing compared to what happened next.

  Hynek (who passed away in 1986) said that several weeks after his encounter Montiel was supposed to appear on a Mexican television show to talk about his UFO experience. He never showed up at the studio. Montiel claimed that his car had been forced off the road while he was driving to the station. A strange-looking man dressed in black clothing approached Montiel after he successfully brought his car to a halt, and suggested in stern tones that it would be most unwise for him to go on the show. Montiel chose to follow the man’s advice—and, just maybe, it saved Montiel’s life.

  8

  Doctors, Dead Ponies, and a Man in Brown (Late 1970s)

  A sinister MIB case rivaling that of Albert Bender in high strangeness occurred around 8 p.m. on the evening of September 11, 1976. Hours earlier, Dr. Herbert Hopkins could never have guessed that his world was about to be plunged into chaos, but that is precisely what fate had in store for him. Hopkins, a general practitioner who lived in Orchard Beach, Maine, had experience in the field of hypnosis, and had then recently subjected to regression therapy an alleged alien abductee named David Stephens. It was in October 1975 that Stephens, a resident of the nearby town of Oxford, suffered from a period of missing time after an experience with anomalous aerial lights while driving late at night. In an attempt to open the door to the hidden depths of Stephens’s mind, and to try and determine what had really happened to him, Hopkins ultimately opened the door of his own home to a Man in Black.

  On the night in question, Hopkins was home alone when the telephone rang. On the other end was someone claiming to represent the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, who wished to speak with the doctor about the Stephens case. Hopkins did not know it at the time, but there was no New Jersey UFO Research Organization. Had he known that, it’s highly unlikely that Hopkins would ever have considered doing what he chose to do next: He invited the man over, right then and there. This in itself was very curious and totally illogical, Hopkins later realized, as he did not even think to ask the man’s name. Also, the Hopkins home had been broken into on two occasions, which made his actions even more puzzling—and reckless. As a result of Hopkins’s invite, the voice at the end of the phone soon arrived on the scene. In fact, he arrived too soon.

  Because it was already after 8 p.m. and the skies were dark, after hanging up the telephone Hopkins went to the door and turned on the outside light, to provide his visitor with some illumination when he finally arrived. To Hopkins’s astonishment, however, the Man in Black was already there, making his slow, steady way up the porch stairs and directly toward the stunned doctor. Oddly, there was no parked car in sight, and Hopkins knew there was no telephone booth close by from where the man could have conceivably gotten to his residence with such mystifying speed. Even odder, Hopkins simply opened the door wide and let the man in.

  The identity of the man did not become any clearer when he entered the Hopkins residence. Perhaps it was the unsettling appearance of the caller from the darkness that helped ensure that Hopkins totally forgot to secure a name: The man’s clothes and Homburg hat were utterly black, his suede gloves were gray, his skin was deathly white, and his body was skinny in the extreme—as was evidenced by the fact that the man’s wrinkle-free suit was clearly way too large for his sickly looking, skeletal frame. More astonishing, when the man sat down and removed his Homburg, Hopkins could not fail to see that he was totally devoid of any hair on his head. There was not even any telltale stubble. In addition, he lacked both eyebrows and eyelashes. The man’s bright red, extremely thin lips stood out dramatically in contrast to his milk-white skin.

  A sure sign that something awful and inhuman had entered the Hopkins abode was the reaction of the family’s dog, which was part German Shepherd and part Collie. It barked furiously as the man came into the living room, then put its tail between its legs and raced off to the safety of a nearby closet, where it shakily remained for the duration of the mystery man’s visit. The Man in Black was seemingly unfazed by the actions of the frightened hound; he got directly to the point and began questioning Hopkins about his work on the alien-abduction experience of David Stephens. Even the mode of questioning struck Hopkins as strange: The man had no detectable accent, was entirely unemotional and monotone, and seemed robotic in his physical appearance and mannerisms. Strangest of all, at one point, as he listened carefully to Hopkins, the Man in Black placed the backs of his fingers to his lips. Hopkins noted with amazement that the gray gloves the man was wearing quickly became
stained red; this unusual character was wearing bright red lipstick.

  Things then seemed to go from plain odd to distinctly sinister. The dark visitor told Hopkins that he, Hopkins, had two coins in the left pocket of his pants, which, amazingly, turned out to be true. The mysterious guest then told rather than asked Hopkins to take one of the coins out of his pocket and hold it in the palm of his hand, which he duly did. Laying on the orders even thicker, the Man in Black then instructed Hopkins not to look in his direction, but to carefully keep his eye fixed on the coin. Hopkins could only watch, awestruck, as the silver coin took on a blue color, became blurry, changed from metallic form to a vaporous substance, and finally faded into nothingness.

  This strange character then suddenly made a less-than-veiled threat to Hopkins. He told the doctor that Barney Hill—the husband of famed 1961 alien abductee Betty Hill, about whom we will learn more in a later chapter— had died because he had no heart, just as Hopkins now no longer had the coin. A feeling of pure dread came over the doctor.

  The Man in Black then ordered Hopkins to destroy any and all data relative to the David Stephens affair; otherwise Hopkins would surely be bound to follow the same fate that befell Barney Hill. (In reality, Hill’s death was not due to any heart-related ailment at all; his premature passing, in 1969, was actually the result of a cerebral hemorrhage.) Ensuring that he did as he was told, Hopkins was strongly warned by the Man in Black that he would definitely know if Hopkins had followed his instructions—or had not.

  Then came what was perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the evening: The speech of the man suddenly began to noticeably slow down; he stood up on what Hopkins could see were clearly unsteady feet, and made his way to the door, which Hopkins opened for him. Gripping the railing tightly, the Man in Black departed with a clumsily worded claim that his energy was running low. An astonished Hopkins could only watch with a mixture of fear and trepidation as the man took slow, cautious steps toward a very bright light that illuminated the driveway to such an extent that Hopkins could not make out what was responsible for the intense glow—only that it was no car. Or, at least, it was no normal car. Hopkins raced to the kitchen window to try to get a better view of the scene, but both the curious caller and the light had vanished in the few seconds it took Hopkins to reach the kitchen.

  By the time his wife and children returned home from seeing a movie, Hopkins was in a state of considerable distress and near-panic. After telling them of what had occurred, he wasted no time in demagnetizing all the tapes of the interviews he had conducted with David Stephens, and then, just for good measure, threw the tapes into the roaring fireplace, where they were soon forever destroyed, as were Hopkins’s precious notes and files. Such a thorough cleansing, Hopkins earnestly prayed, would bring things to a halt. It did not. For almost a full week afterward, Hopkins had terrifying nightmares during the early hours in which the face of the Man in Black loomed before him and over him, getting ever bigger and ever closer. And the family was briefly cursed with a prevalent calling card of the Men in Black: widespread telephone interference.

  It was all quite enough, unsurprisingly, for Dr. Herbert Hopkins to walk away from the David Stephens affair without even a single look back. There is, however, one final point worth noting. It relates to the ability of the Man in Black to transform one of the coins taken from Hopkins’s pocket into a vaporous substance. And it is a point that suggests the MIB phenomenon may be much older than we actually suspect. It comes from Men in Black authority Brad Steiger: “Many of the great alchemists—a subject I’m fascinated by—were seeking to find angels that they could command. Magic is seen as an unapproved ritual when it’s to bring profit to oneself, but they were seeking to command these entities to bring them forth the secret to turn base metals into precious metals. I have found a number of instances where alchemists were visited by a gentleman in black, a prosperous burgher in black, who appeared in the laboratory and demonstrated certain things to them. Some are benevolent and some are more sinister.”

  Sinister men dressed in black, of the type Steiger describes—that had the ability to morph metals, and during mysterious visitations subsequently demonstrated such skills—sound astonishingly like centuries-old versions of Dr. Herbert Hopkins’s very own manipulator, or in this case destroyer, of metal.

  I am also conversant with the facts surrounding the experience of yet another doctor with the MIB in the mid-1970s, also in the United States, in a small town in northern Idaho. In this instance, the doctor (who requested anonymity here) was asked to conduct an examination of a young boy’s arm that had been marked with an unusual abrasion.

  “I asked him how he got the strange marks, and what created them. He replied, ‘The space doctors.’” As the doctor listened, the boy related seeing a “low-flying airplane” enter a secluded area of woodland near his home. Curious as to what was going on, the boy ventured into the woods and came across a group of strange-looking people who, said the doctor, “captured” the boy, transferred him to some form of craft, and subjected him to “countless medical and intelligence tests.”

  All of this could have been considered nothing more than the result of an overactive imagination on the part of the boy. Five years later, however, an event occurred that cast such a down-to-earth scenario into major doubt. The doctor was at home, watching television, when there was a knock at the door. There, before the doctor, were two men dressed in “black jumpsuits, black shoes, and black gloves and even sunglasses.”

  Only one spoke, and inquired as to whether or not the doctor had “known of the boy.” The doctor asked why the two MIB wanted to know, and the response of the talkative one was that he was merely curious. Naturally suspicious, the doctor related only part of the story as it related to the boy, after which one of the MIB managed a slight emotionless smile. Both then quickly departed, never again to darken the doctor’s door.

  The morning of April 11, 1977 was a very strange one: No less than 15 wild ponies were found dead at Cherry Brook Valley, Dartmoor, Devonshire, England, by a Tavistock shopkeeper, Alan Hicks, who had been crossing the bleak, windswept, ancient moors with his children. It was not until mid-July, however, that the media began reporting on the incident in depth. Newspaper articles in my possession show that the story traveled as far as South Africa. Indeed, the Durban Daily News recorded on July 15th that “Men in masks using metal detectors and a Geiger counter yesterday scoured a remote Dartmoor valley in a bid to solve a macabre mystery. Their search centred on marshy grassland where 15 wild ponies were found dead, their bodies mangled and torn” (“UFO link with pony deaths” 1977).

  While other investigators were looking for evidence of malnutrition, disease, poisoning, or even gunshot wounds, these four men were seeking proof that visiting extraterrestrials were responsible for the deaths. If a UFO had been in the vicinity, suggested John Wyse, the founder of the Devon UFO Center, to which the four men were attached, it was not at all inconceivable that evidence of such a landing just might still be discernible, although none was ever found. According to the Dartmoor Pony Society, however, the ponies had probably died natural deaths on various parts of the moors and had been simultaneously dumped together by a farmer unwilling to bear the cost of their burials.

  Numerous other theories were postulated at the time, but the trail went cold until 1991, when Jonathan Downes, a prolific author, journalist, and investigator, began to probe the case. Downes—who was living in Devonshire at the time (and resides there to this day)— succeeded in tracking down a number of those people who had been quoted by the newspapers some 14 years previously. Curiously, Downes detected a distinct reluctance to talk, even after almost a decade and a half. Even more bizarre, one of those same individuals, who strictly adhered to a non-paranormal explanation for the pony deaths, complained to a research colleague of Downes’s about constantly pestering her day and night, when in actuality the only contact had been one solitary telephone call.

  As Downes noted, this w
as all reminiscent of the Men in Black–related experiences of the writer John Keel, who stated in his book, The Mothman Prophecies, with regard to such annoying and mysterious telephone victimization, “I kept a careful log of the crank calls I received and eventually catalogued the various tactics of the mysterious pranksters. Some of these tactics are so elaborate they could not be the work of a solitary nut harassing UFO believers in his spare time. Rather it all appears to be the work of either paranormal forces, or a large and well-financed operation by a large and well-financed organization with motives that evade me” (Keel 1991).

  The 1977 pony deaths were never resolved, and, with the investigation of Jonathan Downes having eventually hit the proverbial brick wall, the telephone assault duly faded away, too.

  The Men in Black were still out in force as the 1970s came to an end. A researcher named Richard D. Seifried recalled an incident that occurred in 1979 when two MIB were present at a lecture on UFOs in Ohio. According to Seifried, both were dressed in “very neat, dark suits [and] sported GI haircuts and what looked like Air Force regulation dress shoes” (Seifried 1993).

  At the end of the lecture, Seifried and his friends left the hall, and, while walking along a long corridor toward a parking area outside, saw the two men directly in front of them. “They rounded the corner,” recalled Seifried. “Although we were probably no more than 40 or 50 feet behind them, by the time we turned the corner the two men had disappeared…what they did was inhuman” (Seifried 1993). This experience, it will be noted, is very reminiscent of that of Allen Greenfield who, a decade earlier, in 1969, had a Man in Black encounter at a conference on UFOs in Charleston, West Virginia. And, just as was the case with Seifried, Greenfield’s Man in Black eerily vanished into nothingness when he tried to quickly pursue it.