by Nick Redfern
Night Terror—I’m still very shaken from something that just happened. I’m terribly upset and can’t get back to sleep. 1:21 was the last time I looked at the clock before having fallen asleep. The next thing I know I was awake again, and was staring at my bedroom curtain. All of a sudden, this harsh tingling feeling started in my legs and worked its way up my torso and into my head until my whole body was being crushed; lots of pressure and a loud noise was humming in my ear. I was trying hard to scream: ‘Adam!’ But, I couldn’t. I remember looking back toward the curtain and saying to whoever, or whatever, was there: ‘I hate you, you son of a bitch! I hate you!’ Then I came out of it, or woke up. I lay there wondering if I had the start of a stroke or an aneurism. I looked at the clock again and it read 1:42 a.m. I’m still woozy and foggy and cannot completely focus my eyes. They feel dry and irritated. I’m really scared and I know I won’t sleep anymore tonight.
Did something foul and unspeakable come calling in the early hours of that terrifying morning? And was it linked with the sinister presence of the two Men in Black? Looking back on what occurred, Meindel believes that is precisely the nature of what occurred: “I have the feeling that when you investigate these things—UFOs—they become aware of it, and of you. And why I think that is because when we moved to our new house, where we live now, I thought it would be all over. I thought it would leave us alone, because we weren’t at the old apartment where it had all happened. But on day two of being here, Adam and I saw this strange red ball of light come right down over us—in the sky, I mean—while we were outside. It felt like someone, or something, was saying, I’m watching you.”
Today, Meindel reflects with trepidation upon the horrifying series of experiences that began with the Men in Black and that took a hold of her life for a significant period: “Since this all happened, I have stayed away from the UFO thing. I do still dabble in it a bit, but I’m not really researching it deeply anymore. It scared me from going into it any deeper. I got the message, and I’m not going to mess with the UFO thing anymore.”
Meindel concludes, in a fashion to which surely the many unfortunate witnesses of the Men in Black can relate, “The fear is still with me.”
Situated only a short distance from the city of Albany, New York, the Albany Rural Cemetery was designated in 1841 in response to an ever-growing problem of widespread flooding at cemeteries within the city itself. On October 7, 1844, a dedication marked the opening of this new locale, a tree-filled and tranquil place that houses the remains of a number of historical figures, including Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president of the United States; a noted sculptor named Erastus Dow Palmer; and Daniel Manning, who served under President Grover Cleveland in the position of Secretary of the Treasury.
Also buried within the Albany Rural Cemetery is a Charles Hoy Fort, after whom the renowned monthly magazine on just about everything supernatural, Fortean Times, is proudly named. Fort, a dedicated early-20th-century collector and chronicler of stories relative to UFOs, strange creatures, ghosts, paranormal phenomena, and much more, penned a number of highly revered books that carefully recorded his dedicated research, including Lo!, Book of the Damned, and Wild Talents. It is therefore fitting for a place holding all that is left of this renowned paranormal visionary to also be home to a wide range of supernatural phenomena, including a ghostly black dog, phantom cars, and what is believed to be the spectral remains of a pair of tragic lovers who passed on decades ago, whose souls are forever doomed to wander among the old gravestones.
Against this notable history of connections to all things unsettling, in 2009 the Men in Black decided to put in their own appearance at the cemetery.
“It was May of 2009,” says Claudia Cunningham, “and a friend of mine named Linda, who is a registered nurse at the Veteran’s Memorial Hospital in Albany, had an encounter with the Men in Black at the cemetery. Last spring she called me and said, ‘I know you’re interested in this stuff, and you know I’m into the Ouija boards, and I like to go to the card-readers, but something really weird has happened.’ And she wanted to know if I could help her out with it.”
That “something really weird” to which Linda was referring was nothing less than a dramatic daytime encounter with the Men in Black. Cunningham sets the scene for what was soon to follow:
Albany Rural Cemetery is a very imposing place. It’s located on a two-mile hill, and is full of extremely beautiful crypts holding the aristocracy of the early settlers. With this in mind, Linda decided to go on a little historical tour of her own; this was around 2 p.m. She pulled in the main gate, and you go over a railroad track. And then about 50 feet, you come to these big wrought-iron gates, which are open during the day. On the left is a very Gothic-looking, round building that contains the records of everyone that’s buried there. Across the street from that is the crematorium. The road goes right into the cemetery, and it’s a very wide, black macadam road.
When she arrived, Linda spotted from her car what she presumed was a calm and tranquil spot to sit and relax. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the exact opposite. When she looked up again after glancing down to take the keys out of the ignition, her breath was taken away when she saw that, within barely a second or two, a black, military-looking SUV had parked directly behind her. So close was the SUV that Linda told Cunningham it looked like it was practically in the backseat of her car. Quite naturally, Linda’s first thought was, I’m going to get robbed or worse. So, she put her car in drive, and very slowly crept away from the SUV. “But,” explains Cunningham, the SUV “went back up the hill and didn’t follow her at all. She watched in her rearview mirror and it looked like the SUV was going down one of the side roads.”
Linda, explained Cunningham, is an Italian girl with a temper, and certainly no one was going to put one over on her. So she decided to do a bit of detective work and began to follow the driver of the SUV. When Linda reached a chain-link fence where the road ended, however, the SUV was nowhere in sight; it was almost as if it had vanished, literally. But when Linda headed back to the entry point to the cemetery, she was in for a big surprise: There was the SUV again, parked right in the middle of the road. As if that was not strange enough, Linda then encountered the driver of the mysterious vehicle.
Claudia Cunningham believes the MIB have demonic origins.
Cunningham recalls what her friend told her: “There was a man, all in black, about 40 years old, black hair— the whole regalia—standing on the side by the driver, and it looked like he was talking to the driver. Linda said to me, ‘Very slowly, I pulled up, and he kind of nodded.’ And then she jammed the accelerator, and she quickly looked in the mirror, but he was gone—immediately. He was there one second and then gone the next. There was no time for him to run or go anywhere.”
“That was enough to really get me going,” says Cunningham. “I’m the type that when I get my teeth into something I can’t let go until I find out the answer. So, for a couple of months after that, I would bring it up in conversation with my mother, my boyfriend; people who are open-minded to this stuff. One day—I had moved back in with my mother, who is 95, and I take her shopping every day—I said to her, ‘Let’s go over to the Delaware Shopping Plaza,’ which is about three miles from our house.”
It was here that Cunningham went from being someone who had merely been fortunate enough to hear of an encounter with the Men in Black to actually being a direct participant in such an event. “I parked in front of one of the stores,” she said. “It was a nice day; I had my windows down and my dog in the car. And to my right there was this big black SUV. I joked to my mother: ‘Hey, maybe that’s one of those guys that Linda saw.’”
Based upon what happened next, perhaps Cunningham should not have been quick to make light of the situation: “I went into the store, got my purchase, and got back in the car. I was about to turn the key in the ignition and go home. But, from right around the back of the SUV, this little man peeked in the car at me on the passenger’s side. H
e had the black hat—like John Lennon wore in the ’60s, the black leather cap that started a whole fashion trend— and he had a three-quarter length black shirt that looked like it just came out of the store, black pants, and black sunglasses. This man steps up on the curb—towards the store—and he just took his glasses down barely an inch and kind of looked right at me and smiled.” The smile, recalls Cunningham, “was so creepy.” She qualifies this description of the man’s facial expression by explaining that “It wasn’t scary, but it was like he was saying to me, ‘You wanted to see one of these guys—a Man in Black— and so here I am.’ So, my take on this is that I believe that you draw to you whatever you believe in. I always wanted some affirmation of Linda’s experience, and this was like a confirmation.”
For Claudia Cunningham, the experience was undeniable evidence that there is far more to our existence than meets the eye: “I know there is a supernatural world. And with the Men in Black, I think they are demonic. They’re from the dark side, and here to confuse us. I believe they’re here to do a lot of mischief and can take on different forms. They can appear as a ghost, as a Man in Black, an alien. They’re here to turn us away from God, and drag us into darker areas.”
She continues on this path: “I think the whole UFO phenomenon is demonic and is deceiving us to believe they are aliens. It’s all smoke and mirrors. The deception makes it look like they’re from another planet and here to silence us about UFOs and aliens. No. This is spiritual. When the Men in Black warn people about UFOs and aliens and why we should not say anything about sightings, our mind is not on the spiritual. They want us to think they are alien; it helps their deception to spread evil and drag people into the occult world.” Cunningham’s parting words to me were: “Linda got the feeling they were here to do something really awful too. The word she used was malevolent. And that’s what I think too: malevolent.”
Before we move on to pastures new—but still, of course, utterly black in nature—it’s worth noting that cases involving Men in Black and their impossibly appearing and disappearing vehicles are quite prevalent. For example, Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was provided with the details of a strange MIB encounter that occurred in a small Minnesota town in late 1975 that falls firmly into this category. No UFO was seen on this particular occasion, but a motorist was harassed on a lonely stretch of highway by the driver of a large black Cadillac, which nearly forced the man into an adjacent ditch. The irate man quickly righted his vehicle and headed off in hot pursuit, only to see the black Cadillac lift into the air and, quite literally, disappear in the blink of an eye!
Jenny Randles has investigated a similar case that occurred in Britain in August 1981. In this particular incident, the witness, one Jim Wilson, had seen an unidentified—but not overly fantastic—light in the sky, and was later blessed with a visit from a pair of suit-wearing characters flashing ID cards that demonstrated they came from the British Ministry of Defense. The two suggested to the man that he had merely viewed a Russian satellite—Cosmos 408—and that he should forget all about the experience.
That would indeed have been the end of things, were it not for the fact that Wilson found that, on a number of occasions shortly after the visit occurred, that his home seemed to be under some form of surveillance by two men sitting in a black Jaguar (which is the preferred mode of transport in most British Men in Black cases). The police were called, and, across the course of several nights, stealthy checks of the immediate vicinity were made. After seeing the car parked outside Wilson’s home on several occasions, and then managing to get a good look at his license plate—which they were quickly able to confirm as being totally bogus—the police carefully closed in, with the intention of speaking with the pair of MIB and finding out the nature of their game. Unfortunately, they never got the chance to do so: As two uniformed officers approached the vehicle and prepared to knock on one of the windows, the black Jaguar melted away into nothingness. There was a deep reluctance on the part of the officers to prepare any written report alluding to such an event!
Just like the Men in Black themselves, even their vehicles are seemingly able to perform ghostly disappearing acts.
12
Women in Black (2000)
Thus far, all of the cases we have placed under the microscope have involved Men in Black. But what of Women in Black? Have such encounters occurred? Yes, they have, although their numbers are certainly less; perhaps barely a handful. Or it might be more accurate to say that reported cases involving WIB are far fewer than those involving their male counterparts. Whatever the reason, the infrequency of reports does not detract from their significance. Indeed, as I have noted already in these pages, Albert Bender had a cousin who had received a bedroom visitation from a Woman in Black—although the details are admittedly scant. Far less scant in details, however, is the bizarre case of a man named Colin Perks, with whom I met in 2001, before his death in 2009. He had an overriding obsession with finding the final resting place of the legendary King Arthur, which he came to believe was somewhere in the vicinity of an old abbey in the ancient English town of Glastonbury.
The ancient abbey at Glastonbury, England.
In the latter part of 2000, when his investigations into the tales of King Arthur were at their most intense, Perks received an odd, carefully worded telephone call from a woman who said she wished to meet with him to speak about his Arthurian studies. Perks found this highly unsettling, as he had no real family to speak of, and very few of his work colleagues and friends had any significant knowledge of his passion for the tales and mythology surrounding the ancient king. That Perks’s enigmatic caller apparently did know, however, convinced him to agree to meet with her—at his own home, no less, not far from the legend-filled town of Glastonbury.
At 7 p.m. on the arranged night, there was a loud knock at the front door. Upon opening it, Perks found himself face to face with what he described as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Around 6 feet in height, perhaps 40 years of age, with a head of cascading black hair and milk-colored skin, she wore a chic, expensive-looking black suit. She identified herself as Miss Sarah Key, but, for all intents and purposes she was a Woman in Black. She stood in brief silence, awaiting permission to enter. Precisely as Dr. Herbert Hopkins had done with his Man in Black back in 1976, Perks threw caution to the wind, chose to invite the mysterious visitor into his home, and motioned her into the living room. As the two sat down, the conversation, according to Perks’s memory, began something like this: “Mr. Perks, I and several of my colleagues have followed your research closely these last few years.”
“That’s rubbish,” Perks replied. “I’ve published nothing and spoken to virtually no one. If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I keep myself to myself and that’s how I like it.” Nevertheless, Key replied with a cruel smile, “I do know all about you.”
As evidence of her claim, the Woman in Black rattled off detail after detail about Perks’s quest to find the remains of King Arthur. Key said she was there to express the concerns of a select group of people within the British ruling elite who had a particular interest in certain facets of Perks’s dedicated studies.
The story outlined to Perks was mind-blowing. The resting place of King Arthur, he was carefully informed, was also the gateway to a harsh realm populated by nightmarish creatures that would likely provoke catastrophe if allowed entry into our world. Further, prying open Arthur’s tomb would ensure the opening of that dreaded door. Thus it was vital that he cease his investigations, she said, lest disaster be unleashed upon the British Isles— and maybe upon the entire planet as well.
According to Perks, at that point, Key drew close to him and said something along the lines of, “Mr. Perks, you cannot begin to understand the enormity of what stands before you. That is why I am visiting you and not... someone else. If you continue and don’t let this matter drop, that someone will come calling—believe me. And that you will not want.”
Key then stood up a
nd headed for the door. Her demeanor became far more pleasant, and, as Perks recalled it, she said words to the effect of “That’s about it, Mr. Perks. You’ve done well but don’t go snooping anymore. What you are on the verge of uncovering is the gateway to another world. And you do not want to know what is there, believe me. And we do not want you to open that gateway. Go out and enjoy yourself and put all of this behind you. If you persist, though, you will receive another visitor and things will then be out of our control.”
Miss Key, a definitively British Woman in Black—who sounds rather like Diana Rigg’s character Emma Peel in the classic 1960s TV adventure series The Avengers—turned on her black spiked heels, exited the door while Perks stood in silence, and melted into the darkness as enigmatically as she had originally appeared. Unfortunately for Perks, he could not let his research come to a halt after so many years of tirelessly pursuing and trying to unravel the old legends of the fabled king. Having taken the unwise path of ignoring the message of his Woman in Black, Perks did receive another visitor—one far different from the deadly alluring Sarah Key.
Around 9 p.m. on a Saturday night in early November 2000, Perks was driving home from the city of Bath along a particularly long stretch of tree-shrouded road. Oddly, given that this was a weekend evening on the fringes of a bustling city, Perks said that he saw absolutely no other cars on the road. He did see something, however: Suddenly, Perks was confronted by what looked like a large man standing in the middle of the road, straddling the center white line. As Perks slowed his vehicle to a snail’s pace, to his terror, he could see that the “man” was actually nothing of the sort.
Pale of skin, it had scrawny arms and legs, and affixed to its upper torso was a pair of huge, leather-like appendages—wings, in other words—of a distinctly bat-like nature. As the headlights of his vehicle bathed the animal in a cascade of light, Perks could see that bones shone through its legs, which appeared practically hollow. But most terrifying of all was the head of the monster: Hairless and with two pointed ears, its fiery eyes burned deep into Perks’s soul. A malevolent sneer broke out on its hook-nosed face while a pair of large, lethal-looking fangs extended down from a gaping mouth.