As the Internet was rolled out across the planet during the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, many tales that would have likely remained localized and, essentially, hidden from the wider public came to the surface. Undoubtedly, one of the more intriguing, if unsettling, of these is accounts of Black-Eyed Children.
What is interesting, however, is that these encounters with these strange entities are remarkably similar to encounters with Men In Black, who themselves appear to stretch back through history. We might ask, then, if Black-Eyed Children are just a different manifestation of the Men In Black, perhaps repackaged for the modern age. If this is the case, then we should ask, why? What are these strange creatures, and why do they have such an interest in interacting with humanity? Indeed, both of these strange entities appear to share traits with other legendary figures such as vampires and their need to be invited into a building before they can enter it, and even shapeshifting creatures; many people who have encountered either state their belief that they appeared to get weaker the longer the respective interactions go on, almost as if they were struggling to maintain their form. Moreover, those who have reported interactions with either of these strange figures have stated how they felt an overwhelming and largely unexplainable sense of fear in their presence, almost as if the beings themselves were placing that fear into their consciousness.
Of course, the Men In Black are seemingly connected to the UFO phenomenon, but further study into this group appears to suggest a much more nuanced organization and agenda, an agenda that, by and large, remains as much of a mystery today as it did when people began reporting encounters with them.
Before we explore some of the most disturbing encounters with the Men in Black, we will start with just some of the equally disturbing cases of encounters with Black-Eyed Children. While these encounters didn’t become widespread until the 1990s and early 2000s with the arrival of the Internet, like the Men in Black, researchers have uncovered encounters with them going back centuries. Indeed, some have suggested that the Black-Eyed Children are extraterrestrials in another guise, while others suggest there is something more demonic about them. One thing is certain: encounters with these bizarre entities are some of the most unsettling on record.
Arguably, the first account with the Black-Eyed Children to gain widespread traction was that of a journalist with the Abilene Reporter-News, Brian Bethal, who had a particularly distressing encounter with these bizarre creatures in 1996 in Abilene, Texas. He reported that, on the night in question, he had made his way to the (then) location of Camalott Communications, which was one of the area’s original Internet providers, in order to pay his bill. The location of the Camalott building was close to a movie theatre, and Bethal was “using the light of the theatre’s marquee” to write his check, which he planned to place in Camalott’s night drop-box. It was as he was doing so that a sudden knock on the driver’s side window shook him to attention.
When he turned to the window, there were two young boys, each dressed in a hooded pullover, standing outside his car, who he guessed were aged between nine and 12 years old. To begin with, he thought the youngsters were going to ask him for money, so he opened the driver’s side window just a little bit. As soon as he did so, however, he was “immediately gripped by an incomprehensible, soul-wracking fear”, something he couldn’t explain.
He described the older boy as being “somewhat suave”, with olive skin and dark curly hair, and who appeared to be the “spokesman” of the pair. The other boy, the younger one, was a “red-headed, pale-skinned, freckled young man” who stayed very much in the background. The older boy then proceeded to explain to Bethal that they had planned to see the movie Mortal Kombat, but they had left their money at their mother’s house, and asked if they could drive them there so they could pick it up. As Bethal reported, this was “plausible enough”, but all the while, the “irrational fear continued and grew” inside of him. He elaborated that he had “no reason to be frightened of these boys,” but he was, terribly. It was at this point that Bethal glanced up at the Movie theatre signs before turning his attention to the digital clock on the car’s dashboard. He realized that the last showing of the evening had already started, meaning that even if he did agree to give them a ride to their mother’s house, by the time he returned, the movie would have almost finished.
Despite this, the “spokesman” assured Bethal that the journey “wouldn’t take long”. Bethal again hesitated. Then, the surreal scenario turned beyond terrifying. He wrote:
“In the short time I had broken the gaze of the spokesman, something had changed, and my mind exploded in a vortex of all-consuming terror. Both boys stared at me with coal-black eyes. Soulless orbs like two great swathes of starless night!”
Despite the intense fear that now fully gripped his body, Bethal did his best to remain outwardly calm, while at the same time offering the first excuse that came into his mind and then winding up the window before starting the car’s engine and putting the vehicle into reverse. As he did so, the older boy “banged sharply on the window” before shouting to Bethal that “we can’t come in unless you tell us it’s okay”, before demanding, “Let us in!” Bethal stated that the words, as well as the anger with which they were spoken, “echo in my mind even today”.
He stated in his report that he pulled away from the parking lot “in blind fear”, surprised that he didn’t hit another car as he did so. After a moment, he looked in the rearview mirror and was beyond shocked to find the two boys were no longer there. He wrote that:
“Even if they had run, I don’t believe there was any place they could have hidden from view that quickly!”
Just what Bethal might have actually seen or encountered remains a point of discussion, at least to some researchers. However, as the years went on, more and more encounters with these bizarre and unsettling characters surfaced.
One of the earliest encounters with a Black-Eyed Child occurred almost half a century earlier, in Virginia in 1950. The account comes to us from the research files of David Weatherly, with the witness being a 16-year-old boy named “Harold” in the report. On the afternoon in question, Harold was making his way home from school when he came across another boy, approximately the same age, leaning against a fence next to the footpath. Harold said hello to the boy, but he didn’t respond. Thinking the boy hadn’t heard him, Harold went on his way. However, a moment later, the boy stepped out and stated, “I want to go to your house – you’re going to take me to your house!”
It was when the boy turned to face Harold that he could see he had jet back orbs for eyes, with no white visible at all. Harold immediately thought that he should run away from the boy, but no sooner had the thought entered his mind than the boy spoke to him again, stating, “Now, don’t you run away from me, you’re going to take me to your house!” Harold stared at this menacing youth a moment longer before turning and sprinting away as fast as he could. He didn’t stop until he finally arrived home. He recalled, however, that as he was running, he could hear a piercing scream similar to a bobcat; a sound he was almost certain came from the black-eyed boy.
He immediately told his parents of the encounter, who, despite the bizarre nature of the claims, believed what he was saying. So much so, in fact, that his father retrieved his gun and went in search of the assailant who had threatened his son. Meanwhile, his mother, convinced that Harold had encountered the Devil himself, took Harold to a local priest so that he could be “cleansed of the evil influence”. Just what Harold encountered that afternoon as he made his way home remains a complete mystery, but there are many more encounters to explore.
Around a quarter of a century later, in the autumn of 1974, on the other side of the Atlantic in the small village of Aisne in the Picardy region of France, another disturbing encounter unfolded, another, incidentally, documented by the previously mentioned David Weatherly. On this particular afternoon, at around 3 pm, “Alain G” and “Patrick V” were driving through the small village when they drove past a rather ominous-looking house, or more to the point, five ominous-looking “figures” that were standing in the garden of the property. Moreover, these figures appeared to be staring directly at the two motorists.
The two witnesses stared at the figures for several moments, noting that each of them wore the same, identical garments. Each of them was around four to five feet tall, and each had long hair down to their waist. Most disturbing of all, though, each of the figures had “solid black eyes” that filled the two men with fear. When the figures began beckoning the two men to enter the property, this fear increased, and the men put the car in motion and drove away as quickly as they could. After calming themselves, the two men returned to the property a short time later, but the figures were no longer there. They did, though, happen to speak to a neighbor of the strange property who informed them that the strange figures were often seen in the yard, simply staring out in an effort to entice anyone who might pass by into the garden.
In more recent times, in Ohio in July 2010, a worker at a data center had an encounter with two Black-Eyed children while taking a cigarette break on a night shift. On the night in question, at a little after 5 am, the witness (named only by his online tag as Noetic) was smoking his cigarette just outside the door of the building when he suddenly noticed what appeared to be two teenage boys standing across the street. Much like the other encounters we have explored, as soon as he noticed them, he felt an unexplained sense of anxiety and uneasiness wash over him. When he realized the two figures were seemingly staring straight at him, this uneasiness morphed into intense fear. He quickly finished his cigarette and went back inside the building.
Once inside, the fear began to lessen, and ten minutes later, he was back to work, the encounter largely gone from his mind. Then, the intercom on the front door of the building – the same place he had smoked his cigarette – was pressed. He immediately turned to the monitors, not least as there were hardly any night calls at this time. On the screens, he could see the two boys who had been standing on the other side of the street. Tentatively, he spoke into the intercom, asking the two boys what they wanted. No response came back, but one of the boys motioned into the camera that Noetic should come outside to see them. He remained where he was, speaking into the intercom once more, telling the two boys that they should leave.
He then turned away from the monitor and returned to work, hopeful that the two boys would realize he was not going to venture outside and would go on their way. However, when he turned to the monitors again several moments later, both of the boys were staring directly into the camera. Moreover, Noetic couldn’t shake the notion that they were staring through the monitor directly at him, even though he knew this wasn’t possible. He returned to his work, doing his best to ignore the two boys, feeling sure they would get bored and leave. However, when they were still there ten minutes later, Noetic decided to go to the door and confront the pair.
He approached the front door of the building, but before he opened the door, he looked through the one-way glass to get a close-up look at the disturbing pair. When he did, though, he could see that the two youngsters didn’t look like normal teenage boys at all. He could now see that where their eyes were was nothing but total blackness. He took a moment to process what he was seeing, and once more, decided to confront the two boys and tell them to leave or he would call the police. As soon as he opened the door, however, it seemed the two boys had read his thoughts, with one of them saying to him, “That will not be necessary – we simply need to use your phone. Can you let us in?” Noetic refused, stating that only employees were allowed in the building before returning inside and pulling the door firmly shut. Once back at his desk, he took a look at the monitors. He could see that one of the boys had made his way to the other side of the street once more. The other, though, was still outside the front door of the building, staring into the security camera, once more, as if he was looking directly at Noetic. Noetic eventually called the police, but by the time they arrived at around 6 am, both of the boys had vanished.
Only two years later, in November 2012, in Northeast Louisiana, a particularly unsettling encounter with Black-Eyed Children unfolded. The account came to light in September 2015 when the witness spoke of the incident on Darkness Radio. According to the report, at around 3 am on the night in question, the witness was in the middle of their night shift at a 24-hour gas station when the area experienced a sudden power cut, plunging them into complete darkness. Using the torch on his mobile phone to see, he made his way to the backup generator and powered it up. Within moments, the back-up lighting came on, which lit up the till register and the parking lot, although the rest of the gas station, like the surrounding area, remained in total darkness.
As there had been high winds in the region, the witness assumed this to be the cause of the blackout, and so he returned to the till register and waited for the power to be restored. However, as he stared blankly out of the window, he suddenly noticed something moving at the edge of the blackness that surrounded the gas station. He immediately focused on the movement, eventually making out what appeared to be three young children riding bikes. Whether coincidence or not, as soon as he recognized them as children, two of them brought their bikes to a sudden stop and got off them, heading straight for the locked door of the gas station kiosk. Instead of trying to open the door, however, the two children – a boy and a girl, each aged between nine and 12 years old – simply stood there, staring inside.
Although he was beginning to feel a little more unsettled at this point, the witness made his way to the front door and opened it. Rather than coming inside, though, the two children simply stood there, completely motionless. The witness asked the two youngsters if they were okay, pointing out that it was extremely late for them to be out on their own. Instead of answering him, however, the young girl asked if she could use his phone. He immediately reached for his mobile and went to hand it to her. When he did, though, she refused to take it, saying instead, “No! I need the real one”, motioning to the landline that was on the wall. It was at this point that the witness caught a glimpse of the young girl’s eyes, noticing immediately that they were completely black.
As soon as he saw the jet-black orbs, the witness slammed the door shut and locked it. Through the locked door, the youngster asked again to use the phone. Trying his best to stay calm and not show any signs of fear, the witness stated that the children should “go home” as it was late. Instead of doing as he suggested, the two children remained at the doorway, staring in through the glass. Then, after several moments, they both turned around and made their way back to their bikes, joining the third child, who had remained on the outskirts of the gas station parking lot. A moment later, all three of the youngsters took off into the darkness on their bikes.
The following morning, when his shift was finished, the witness reported the disturbing incident to his manager, asking him to look qt the CCTV footage to see if it had picked up the strange children. However, because of the power outage, the CCTV had stopped recording, and consequently, no footage of the encounter was captured. Of course, we might ask if the power outage was caused by the three strange youngsters or whether it was nothing but a coincidence.
Two years after that, in September 2014, in the United Kingdom, an article appeared in several national newspapers regarding several encounters with a Black-Eyed Girl of Cannock Chase, something that UK researcher Lee Brickley had been investigating for several years. According to Brickley’s report, a local woman was on the chase when she heard a sudden piercing scream ring out, leading her to believe that a young child was in trouble. She immediately made her way to where the sound was coming from, although she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then, however, she got a sudden feeling that someone – or something – was behind her.
She spun around immediately, and there behind her was a young girl wearing a white dress with her hands completely covering her eyes, “as if she was waiting for a birthday cake!” The woman watched the young girl for several seconds, who remained completely still and silent. Cautiously, the woman approached the youngster, asking if she was okay as she approached. Instead of answering her, however, the girl simply removed her hands from her eyes and stared straight at the woman. The witness later stated, “That’s when I saw they (her eyes) were completely back – no iris, no whites, nothing!”
Now feeling beyond terrified at the surreal scene before her, the woman reached for her daughter and ran from the scene as fast as she could. As she did so, she glanced behind her, worried that this strange figure would be following her. However, to her shock, the girl was nowhere to be seen, as if she had vanished into thin air.
Interestingly, Brickley’s aunt had a very similar encounter when she was only a teenager in 1982. According to what he informed the newspaper, his aunt was on the chase when she heard a young girl calling for help. When she turned in the direction the calls were coming from, she could see a young girl wearing a white dress who appeared to be running in the direction away from her. Worried about the youngster, Brickley’s aunt ran after her, eventually catching her up. She put a hand on the young girl’s shoulder in an effort to turn her around and check that she was okay. However, when the young girl faced her, Brickley’s aunt could see that where her eyes should have been, there were just two jet-black orbs. The pair stared at each other for several seconds before the girl turned around once more and ran in the opposite direction, eventually disappearing into the distance. Incidentally, Cannock Chase is a hotspot of such activity, with reports of everything from the Black-Eyed Girl to UFOs and even cryptid creatures.
Without a doubt, one of the most disturbing encounters with Black-Eyed Children occurred one bitterly cold night in January 2016 in Vermont in the United States. On the night in question, in the middle of a snow blizzard, an unnamed husband and wife were woken suddenly by the sounds of knocking at their front door. As perplexed as they were, they both got out of bed, wondering who would be knocking at their door in such atrocious conditions and at such a late hour. Perhaps, they reasoned, someone had broken down outside and theirs was the first house they had come to. Before opening the door, the woman peered outside. Although she was able to see two sets of footprints in the freshly fallen snow, she couldn’t see any sign of a car on the road.
Then, the knocking at the door came again, and although she couldn’t explain why, she suddenly felt a great sense of unease. It was at this point that she ensured her husband was beside her, and as the knocking came again, he made his way to the front door and prepared to open it. There on the doorstep was not a stranded motorist, but two young children – a boy and a girl – each around eight years old. As soon as the woman saw the two children, the unease in her increased, and she even began to feel a genuine sense of fear. At the same time, she noticed how inadequately dressed they were for the brutal, snowy conditions, and, despite the growing unease inside her, she invited the pair inside.
They accepted the invitation, and she promptly led them to the living room. Interestingly, and perhaps something that should have been taken as a warning, as the children walked into the house, the couple’s two cats suddenly appeared extremely agitated, with one of them even hissing at the youngsters. She brushed it off as nothing to worry about and told the children to make themselves comfortable on the sofa, asking them if they would like a hot chocolate. However, instead of answering her, the pair simply stated, “Our parents will be here soon!” It was only later, after the pair had left, that the woman realized that whatever she said or asked them, this was the only response they gave, as if they couldn’t speak English but had managed to recall this particular phrase, at least to begin with.
At this point, the woman left the room and went into the kitchen to prepare the hot chocolates. When she returned around a minute later, the woman noticed for the first time that where the children’s eyes should have been, there were just “two jet-black balls”, similar to two gigantic pupils. Upon seeing this, she stared at them in shock for several moments, eventually managing to compose herself despite the increasing fear she felt about the entire situation. Then, both of the children stood up and asked in unison if they could use the bathroom. The woman replied that they could and that it was at the end of the hall. The youngsters headed in that direction without responding. Whether coincidence or not, as soon as they did, the woman’s husband’s nose began to bleed. Then, a moment after that, the power in the property went out, plunging everyone into darkness, with the only light in the house being that which came from outside through the windows. It was as she was reaching for a tissue in this limited light that the woman realized the two children were standing at the end of the hall, watching them silently.
After several seconds, the two children suddenly came to life, both exclaiming, “Our parents are here!” before making their way to the front door. They opened it and stepped outside into the bitterly cold, icy night. The woman headed towards the front door, eager to shut it as quickly as she could. Before she did so, however, she could see the two children stepping into a black car, next to which stood two mysterious and ominous-looking men, each dressed in the same style dark suit, as if they were part of a security unit. She was almost positive there had been no car outside their property when the children had arrived, and he didn’t recall seeing the headlights of the vehicle approaching the house, which, given there was no light inside the property, she surely would have done.
When the two children were inside the car, the two men got in also, and it moved away, disappearing into the night. As soon as it did so, the power in the house suddenly came back on. In a bizarre and tragic twist, both witnesses experienced ill health in the weeks and months that followed, with both of them regularly having nosebleeds. Although they couldn’t explain it, both were certain that this sudden downturn in their health was a direct consequence of their encounter with the two strange children.
It is interesting that the last encounter we have examined would appear to have a direct connection to the Men in Black, if we assume that the mystery gentlemen who arrived to pick up the pair were indeed the infamous group, and now would be a good time to turn our attention to these equally mysterious and disturbing organizations.
Although, as we shall examine shortly, the Men In Black appear to have had a presence on Earth for centuries, one of the first reports to captivate the wider public occurred in the winter of 1966, when Woodrow Derenberger had several interactions with a man who claimed he was called Ingrid Cold, a person who approached Derenberger on a lonely road after a UFO had landed close up.
Another intriguing encounter occurred in the early 1970s when Dr. Hopkins, who had been investigating UFO sightings for several years, claimed to have received an out-of-the-blue visit from a strange man dressed in a black suit, black hat, and a large black coat. When this mysterious visitor removed his hat, Dr. Hopkins could see that he was completely hairless and overly pale. Ultimately, this strange gentleman “recommended” that Dr. Hopkins cease his UFO research before stating that he had to leave as his “energy was running low”.
One of the most thought-provoking encounters with the Men In Black, however, happened several years before each of these at the start of the 1960s, and it is to that account we will turn our attention next.
In November 1961, Paul Miller, along with three friends, was returning home in North Dakota from a hunting trip. It was as they were making their way along the quiet highway that they noticed a strange-looking object overhead, which proceeded to land in a field by the roadside. To begin with, the four friends thought they were seeing a small plane make an emergency landing, and so they slowed their vehicle in case those involved required help. However, as they approached close to where the object had come down, it simply disappeared.
They continued on their way, each of them rather perplexed by what they had seen, and unable to offer a rational explanation. Several moments later, however, the object suddenly reappeared, and this time, two humanoid figures emerged from inside of it. Miller brought their vehicle to a stop and stepped outside. He raised his gun and fired it at the two strange humanoids, appearing to wound one of them. Now fearful of this bizarre scenario unfolding in front of them, Miller jumped back into the car and they drove away as fast as they could. It was only when they were approaching the town of Minot that the men realized they couldn’t account for the last three hours. Realizing something out of the ordinary had taken place, the four men agreed to keep the encounter to themselves and not report it. The following day, however, things took an even stranger turn.
Miller, despite still feeling shaken by the bizarre events of the previous evening, went to work at his Air Force office. Not long after he arrived, three men in black suits arrived asking to speak with him. Miller asked to see their identification, something they declined to show, stating only that they “worked for the government”. They then stated to him that they “hoped he was telling the truth” about the UFO he witnessed, something that froze Miller on the spot. He asked how they knew about the incident, given that he and none of the other witnesses had reported it, to which the men simply stated they had “had a report”. Miller later recalled that these men “knew everything about me; where I worked, everything”, adding that even how they asked questions about the sighting, it was clear that they already knew the answers, and, as such, would know if he was lying. Miller was sufficiently shaken by the meeting, so much so, that it was several years before he finally reported the incident to UFO investigators.
A very similar encounter occurred several years later in July 1967 in Toledo, Ohio, when Robert Richardson was driving to a meeting of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). Richardson recalled that as he was rounding a bend in the road, he was suddenly confronted with a bizarre object that had suddenly appeared in front of him. He didn’t have time to fully apply the brakes, and his car collided with the object, although the impact was minimal. Then, to his utter shock, the object simply disappeared before his eyes.
He immediately reported the incident to local police, who accompanied him back to the scene of the incident. However, when they arrived, all they found were his tire marks on the road where he had put on his brakes. Richardson returned home, but the encounter swirled around in his mind, so much so that he returned to the scene a short time later. This time, he discovered a “small lump of metal”, which he contemplated could have come from the mystery object. He picked up the piece of metal and took it home with him.
He thought that would be the end of the incident, but three days later, at around 11 pm, a knock came on Richardson’s front door. When he answered it, he was confronted with two men, both seemingly in their 20s and both dressed in dark suits. Although they didn’t identify themselves, they entered his home and began questioning him, making it discreetly clear that they were privy to knowledge that was not available to the wider public. They stayed for around ten minutes before leaving in a black Cadillac, leaving him a card with a phone number on it. Interestingly, when Richardson tried calling the number a short time later, he received an automatic message that the number was “not yet issued!”
Over the next week, Richardson began to put the episodes out of his mind, believing that whatever had taken place, the surreal events were now behind him. However, one evening, again completely out of the blue, two different men, again dressed in dark suits, arrived at his property. They spoke to him about the UFO he had seen, attempting to convince him that he hadn’t seen or hit anything unusual. However, it was when they mentioned the piece of metal he had recovered that he was rocked somewhat, not least as he had only told two close APRO colleagues about it. Richardson informed the men that the piece of metal had been sent for analysis, to which the men responded that:
“If you want your wife to stay as pretty as she is, then you’d better get the metal back!”
Richardson wondered if these mysterious visitors had obtained information by interrogating the APRO investigators, through phone taps, or perhaps by more paranormal means (something we will explore later). He also noticed that while one of the men spoke perfect English, the other had a heavy, unidentifiable accent. There was something “vaguely foreign” about them.
Two decades later, one of the most chilling Men In Black encounters on record unfolded in Wytheville, Virginia. In early July 1987, radio journalist Danny Gordon was working for the country music radio station WYVE when he became aware of a UFO report from the Sheriff’s department, with several of the witnesses being serving police officers. Although he had no real interest in such matters, and he was skeptical of the report, as it was his hometown, he decided to investigate the sighting further and then presented a “light-hearted” piece on his show. To his surprise, as soon as the show aired, multiple listeners rang in to report their own sightings. In fact, there were so many reports from listeners that he set up a program dedicated to such reports, describing the response as a “lightning rod moment”. Indeed, the more reports from listeners that came in, the more people reported their own encounters, with descriptions tending to be of “egg-shaped” objects with “red, green, and white flashing lights” around them.
Although Gordon believed that his listeners were definitely seeing “something”, he was still certain that a rational explanation could be found. The military, for example, saw fit to comment that what people were witnessing was nothing more than military aerial refueling missions, something that was rejected by many people. Gordon looked to clarify this explanation and contacted an Air Force General at the Pentagon. He was told that such refueling missions would only occur at an altitude of over 13,000 feet, and “under no circumstances” would they take place below this. As many of the reports were of objects at an approximate altitude of around 5000 feet, the military explanation suddenly seemed on shaky ground
At this point, Gordon sought the help of his friend Roger Hall to assist with the investigations. They decided they needed to see one of these objects for themselves, and so began traveling to locations where they had been reported. They spent several hours in one such location but didn’t spot anything out of the norm, and so decided to drive toward the main town. It was during this journey that the men spotted a “very unusual object coming across the horizon”. Gordon brought their vehicle to a stop so they could take in as much detail as possible, describing the object as “very large” with a “dome-shaped top” and a “strobe putting out multi-colored lights from the right side”. Hall described the object as being the size of “two football fields” with “three huge picture windows” at the back and moving at an altitude of around 1000 feet. Stranger still, Gordon reported seeing a red orb-like object approach the larger craft and dock with it.
The pair were so shocked by what they were seeing that they completely forgot to take any photographs of the aerial anomaly, but when they returned to the location the following evening, they managed to capture several images, although the images themselves were blurred and only captured part of the object. By this stage, Gordon realized they were investigating something of importance and so arranged for a press conference so as to reach a wider audience. The night before the press conference, however, things took an ominous turn when Gordo received a rather unsettling phone call from a mysterious individual who declined to identify themselves. Ultimately, he was told that “the CIA and the Federal Government” were very interested in the sightings that had been reported in Wythe County, and that he should “leave it alone” and not “mess in defense matters”.
Not deterred, Gordon went ahead with the press conference. However, when he returned home the following evening after his regular radio show, he was shocked to find his home had been broken into. Despite the carnage and mess he found the place in, it didn’t appear that anything had been taken, although he was now beginning to question just what he had become involved in, and even his wife urged him to pull back a little from his investigations. The reports, though, continued to come in.
Things settled down somewhat for several weeks. Then, Gordon, along with his wife and daughter, witnessed another of these mysterious aerial vehicles. They had spent the day at a shopping center and were heading back to their car when they noticed several children looking upward and pointing to the sky. They turned their attention to where the children were looking and were shocked to see “four different aircraft flying in formation”. Moreover, the objects, despite their size, moved in complete silence. Realizing he had his camera with him, Gordon once more managed to capture a photograph. However, coincidentally or not, the moment after he had done so, all four of the objects vanished. He estimated that around 200 people witnessed this event alone, and by early October – around three months after his initial show detailing such sightings – he had in excess of 1500 reports in his files.
It wasn’t long after this mass sighting that Gordon received another chilling phone call at his home. This time, the person claimed they were a “retired military intelligence officer” who told Gordon to record their conversation “in case anything happened to him”. This former intelligence officer then stated that he, too, had investigated UFO sightings for years, and that he had also received interrogating phone calls and outright threats. Most concerning, though, were his claims that as a consequence of his actions, his son had been “given” leukemia, from which he had sadly died. He then warned Gordon that “they will try to hit you if they think it is advisable for their purposes”, and they would do this with “skin contact chemicals” placed on his door handle or his steering wheel. Moreover, he was warned he would almost certainly be unaware of such action until he became ill. Incidentally, part of this conversation was aired on the television show Unsolved Mysteries several years later.
Needless to say, Gordon was shaken by what he was told and now began to reconsider his investigations into such matters. Then, several weeks later, Gordon received a visit at his home from two men who claimed to be journalists who were interested in his work. Both appeared professional and neatly dressed, and so Gordon agreed to be interviewed. The interview lasted around 45 minutes, with one man speaking to Gordon and the other casually walking around the house, every now and then taking a picture. Then, the two men left, giving Gordon a card with their contact details on and promising to send him a copy of the newspaper with the interview in it. Several days passed, and when no newspaper arrived at this property, Gordon contacted the newspaper to ask if the article had appeared. To his shock and growing uneasiness, he was informed that the newspaper had no journalists under the names he had given working for them. Moreover, they had no plans to run an article on his investigations.
This revelation caused Gordon to recall the interview, and he realized just how much information the two men–whatever they were–had obtained from their visit, not only what he had willingly told them, but from them speaking with his wife and daughter, as well as viewing all of his photographs. He then recalled the man who had wandered around his home during the interview. When he checked his negatives from the shopping center sighting, he discovered they were missing.
These latest disturbing events proved to be the breaking point for Gordon and his family, with his wife moving out of the house with their daughter, terrified at who might call at their home next. Although Gordon didn’t receive any more visits from mysterious gentlemen, nor receive any further unsettling phone calls, he suffered a heart attack not long after, believed to have been caused by stress. He, too, eventually left Wythe County, stating several years later that if he could go back in time, he would “not report the UFO story”, adding that it had caused “too many problems” in his life. We should contemplate that the so-called journalists were Men In Black, and it was perhaps they who were behind the many problems, break-ins, and phone calls Gordon received, and, on this occasion, their tactics appeared to work.
It isn’t just in the United States that these encounters with Men in Black take place. There are many such reports from all over Europe (some of which, as we shall see shortly, are on record from hundreds of years previously. One of the most unsettling of these Men In Black cases from outside of the boundaries of The West unfolded in Tokyo, Japan, and comes to us from the research files of respected researcher and fellow Mysterious Universe writer, Brent Swancer.
The basic account features a UFO enthusiast named Nobu, who had managed to capture several pieces of footage of UFOs over central Tokyo. After working late one evening at his office, Nobu was riding home on the late-night bus. To begin with, he was the only passenger. However, after several stops, a strange “elderly gentleman”, who was dressed entirely in black, got on the bus also. Despite the bus being empty other than Nobu, this man chose to sit in the seat directly opposite his, something that immediately unnerved him. Nobu faced forward, not wanting to make any kind of eye contact with the strange man, although he occasionally stole a sideways glance at him. When he did, he could see the man was looking out of his window, although not at the moving terrain outside, but to use the window as a make-shift mirror to watch Nobu.
Eventually, Nobu turned to face the man to take in as much detail as possible. He could see that the man’s suit was ill-fitting and loose, while on his lap, he had a black, leather briefcase that he fidgeted with constantly. The man also wore a strange, black hat that was a cross between a bowler hat and a fedora. Most unsettling of all, though, was the man’s unusually long, thin fingers, as well as his skin, which appeared to have streaks on it, as if he was wearing some kind of make-up that was running and so revealing a much paler skin underneath.
So unsettled was Nobu that he decided to get off the bus a few stops early, not looking back at the man once. As he stepped onto the street and the bus pulled away, however, he decided to take a look at the vehicle towards the window seat where the disturbing man had been sitting. To his utter shock, though, the man was no longer there, and the bus was empty. Had he gotten off the bus unseen? It seems unlikely. Whatever the truth, Nobu was deeply disturbed and unsettled by the encounter.
While the Men In Black encounters we have explored so far have all taken place in the modern era, many accounts stretch much further back in time, many of which are documented in the book Casebook on the Men In Black by Jim Keith. Keith points out, for example, that the moniker “the Black Man” was often synonymous with Satan in the Middle Ages, although it is perfectly possible that these shadowy figures were the same figures we would recognize as the Men In Black in our modern era.
One of the earliest accounts Keith documents involved two shepherds in France in 1520, who confessed to meeting a “tall, dark man” who told them he was “the Devil’s bondsman”. This shadowy figure seemingly influenced the shepherds to do their bidding, and they went on to murder five people before eating their victims, crimes for which they were executed. A similar incident occurred just over half a century later, also in France, in 1577, when a woman named Catherine Doree encountered a “tall, dark man” who convinced her to sacrifice her own child.
Around a decade after that, in Great Britain, Dr. John Fian was accused of plotting to kill the future King James I and was put on trial for witchcraft and for being a part of a witches’ cabal. One of those on trial with him, Agnes Sampson, stated during the proceedings that they had regularly conversed with a strange, mysterious man who was dressed in all-black clothing and wore a black hat. This man, Sampson offered, had a face that was “terrible”, glowing eyes, and claw-like hands.
A particularly intriguing encounter unfolded in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, and adds another layer of nuance and complexity to these mystifying encounters. According to the account, a “West Indian slave” claimed to have met a particularly “tall man with white hair in black clothes”. It is not entirely clear what the purpose of this meeting was from the tall man’s perspective, but the witness claimed he was accompanied by an equally tall creature who was “hairy” all over but who stood “upright like a man”. Could this hairy man have been a Bigfoot, a creature often seen in locations of UFO sightings, which themselves have a connection to the Men In Black?
One last thing to mention here are apparent sightings of these Men In Black figures during times of plagues and outbreaks of disease. Perhaps the most infamous of these is the Black Death, records of which, as limited as they are, document several strange sightings of “black-cloaked men” seen spraying some kind of mist in wheat fields. Chris Pittman even notes that some witnesses reported seeing these strange, dark-clothed men “mowing down wheat” with “scythes” that made a strange “swooshing sound” but did not cut the wheat. As Pittman speculates, could these scythes actually have been some kind of technical device? Moreover, could these mysterious, cloaked men have given rise to claims of the Grim Reaper, who, in turn, could have been the Men In Black of the Medieval Age?
These are just a small handful of these encounters with “tall, dark” men, usually dressed in black clothing that can be found across the centuries from the 1500s onwards, and we can only imagine how many others might have gone unrecorded in the centuries before that. Were these strange individuals the Men In Black of their age, and if so, perhaps we need to readjust what the Men In Black’s agenda might be in our modern world. It is interesting to note that there are no accounts of these tall, dark men that are in the same time window as strange “bronze shields” or “ships” being spotted in the skies. Moreover, are these tall, dark entities somehow connected to the Black-Eyed Children, perhaps as a different manifestation from the same source?
Indeed, we should perhaps remind ourselves of the words of Albert Bender, who, after his research resulted in arguably one of the first books on the UFO subject to gain traction in the wider public arena, received a visit from the Men in Black, and shortly after this visit, Bender pulled back significantly from his research. He would, though, eventually state that the Men in Black’s “true form” was so “monstrous” that they used their Men in Black appearance to disguise themselves. If this is true, then, once more, might we imagine that the Black-Eyed Children might be another “form” of these strange figures? Indeed, it is interesting to note that those who have encountered the Men In Black, even in the modern era of the 2000s, claim their attire and general appearance appear to be locked into the late 1940s and 1950s, when the Modern UFO era began. Might we find that future encounters with Black-Eyed Children would see these strange youngsters have the appearance and clothing of 1990s children?
There are also other clues as to the presence of the Men In Black and the Black-Eyed Children in the many myths, legends, and folklore around the world. If we go all the way back to the ancient Egyptian civilization and its mythology, we find the god Anubis, who was often depicted as a tall, cloaked figure who acted as a guardian of the dead and a judge of souls. In Mesopotamian legends, we can find tales of the Apkallu, who are often associated with hidden teachings and esoteric knowledge, and, of particular interest to us here, held great influence over humanity, something that we detailed earlier in many of the speculative Men In Black encounters of the Middle Ages throughout Europe. If we stay in Europe for a moment, it is worth mentioning the Alp-luachra of Celtic lore, who seemingly have the same ability as the Black-Eyed Children to instill unexplained fear in those they encounter.
With all of this in mind, then, the overriding question is whether there is a connection between the Black-Eyed Children and the Men in Black? If we recall the 2016 encounter with the Black-Eyed Children in Vermont, for example, it appears the men who arrived to collect the children were, for all intents and purposes, the Men in Black. It is worth noting such details as witnesses to both of these strange entities being left confused and frightened, as well as the notion, particularly with the Black-Eyed Children, of having to be invited into a building before they can enter (perhaps reminiscent of vampire legends).
Ultimately, if there is a connection between these two mysterious figures, then we might ask, for what purpose do they interact with humanity? While the answer to that question eludes us, one thing that would appear to be certain is that these interactions are not for humanity’s benefit.
