Yes, he was visited by three Men in Black, but they were not of the kind that the U.S. government of the day might have been expected to dispatch.
Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies
While Albert Bender certainly didn’t lie to Gray Barker, he most certainly did not share with him the full story. In fact, Bender had barely shared the bones of it for good reason: the real story was far, far stranger than Barker could ever have imagined. Yes, he was visited by three Men in Black, but they were not of the kind that the U.S. government of the day might have been expected to dispatch. Rather, they fell into the domain of the supernatural, the paranormal, and the occult.
According to Bender, late one night—after toiling away on his old typewriter in his attic environment—he suddenly started to feel sick. He was overwhelmed by nausea, dizziness, a sense that he might faint and, most curious of all, the room was filled with an odor of brimstone or sulfur. Both odors are associated with paranormal activity and have been for centuries. Bender lay down on the bed, fearful that he might crash to the floor if he did not. In seconds, something terrifying happened: three shadowy, ghostly, spectral beings started to materialize through the walls of Bender’s room—yes, through the walls. They didn’t need to knock on the door and wait for it to be opened.
The silhouettelike trio then started to change: their shadowy forms became more and more substantial, and they finally took on the appearance of regular men except, that is, for several notable differences: their eyes shone brightly, like a piece of silver reflecting the sun. Their skin was pale and sickly looking, and they were thin to the point of almost being cadaverous. They closely resembled the deadly vampires of old, which Bender loved to read about in his spare time.
Using telepathy rather than the spoken word, the three men warned Bender that now was the time for him to leave the UFO issue alone—leave it and never return or else. When Bender began to shake with fear, the Men in Black realized that they had gotten their message across, and they duly departed the same way they had first arrived—through the walls. For days, Bender was in a state of fear that bordered upon hysteria. Finally, though, he thought: why should I quit ufology? After all, I’ve done so much work, I’m not going to stop now, so Bender didn’t stop, he decided to take on the MIB and stand up to their threats.
That was a very big mistake on the part of Bender.
In the days ahead, Bender saw the MIB again. On one occasion, late on a Saturday night, Bender was sitting in his local cinema watching a new movie when one of the Men in Black materialized in the corner of the cinema, his blazing eyes focused on the terrified Bender. He didn’t hang around and fled the place. On the way home, though, Bender was plagued by the sounds of footsteps behind him, which seemed to be disembodied, as no one was in sight. In the further days ahead, the MIB returned to that old attic, which yet again caused Bender to fall seriously ill. Finally, after another week of all this terror and mayhem, Bender really was done. His time in ufology was over, for the most part, anyway.
Albert Bender’s story, as it was told in the pages of Gray Barker’s 1956 book They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers, was substantially correct in the sense that it told of how Bender was visited, threatened, and ultimately driven to leave ufology. Through no fault of his own, though, Barker was unaware of the supernatural aspects of the story and assumed that Bender had become a victim of the U.S. government. Finally, though, Bender came clean with Barker.
Far from being disappointed, Barker was overjoyed chiefly because he realized that he could spin the Bender saga into yet another book, which is exactly what happened. This time, though, Barker let Bender write the story himself, which he did. Yes, despite being warned away from the flying saucer issue by the Men in Black, Bender, somewhat reluctantly, reentered the scene and wrote his very own story: Flying Saucers and the Three Men, which Gray Barker eagerly published in 1962. Many people in ufology were put off by the overly supernatural aspects of the story and, as a result, the book was relegated to the realm of obscurity for many years.
It’s interesting to know, though, that behind the scenes, another group of Men in Black suits—and black fedoras—were secretly following the Bender saga. It was none other than the FBI. In other words, although the FBI were not literally Bender’s MIB, the FBI certainly wanted to find out who they were.
Thus, in a strange way, the MIB now had two groups, both distinctly different: the supernatural ones encountered by Bender and the MIB of government officialdom. The provisions of the Freedom of Information Act have shown that both Albert Bender and Gray Barker had files opened on them. Those same files make it clear that none other than the legendary FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover ordered one of his special agents to get ahold of a copy of Gray Barker’s They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers.
After promoting his book, Bender yet again walked away from the UFO issue. This time, it was for good. Bender died in March 2016 at the age of ninety-four in California.
In the years that followed Bender’s encounters, the U.S. government would become determined to uncover the truth of the MIB. During the course of his research into the issue of the Men in Black, John Keel arranged a meeting with one Col. George P. Freeman of the U.S. Air Force. Keel’s interest was driven by the fact that Col.
Freeman had circulated a memo throughout the Air Force ordering everyone to be on guard for the Men in Black. Col. Freeman’s memo read as follows: “Mysterious men dressed in Air Force uniforms or bearing impressive credentials from government agencies have been silencing UFO witnesses. We have checked a number of these cases, and these men are not connected to the Air Force in any way. We haven’t been able to find out anything about these men.
By posing as Air Force officers and government agents, they are committing a Federal offense. We would sure like to catch one —unfortunately the trail is always too cold by the time we hear about these cases, but we are still trying.” Only a few weeks after Col. Freeman’s memo was widely circulated, one came from Lt. Gen. Hewitt T. Wheless, also of the U.S. Air Force: “Information, not verifiable, has reached Hq USAF that persons claiming to represent the Air Force or other Defense establishments have contacted citizens who have sighted unidentified flying objects. In one reported case, an individual in civilian clothes, who represented himself as a member of NORAD, demanded and received photos belonging to a private citizen.
In another, a person in an Air Force uniform approached local police and other citizens who had sighted a UFO, assembled them in a school room and told them that they did not see what they thought they saw and that they should not talk to anyone about the sighting. All military and civilian personnel and particularly information officers and UFO investigating officers who hear of such reports should immediately notify their local OSI offices.” It was this period of interest in the MIB on the part of the government that led to an extraordinary, and almost surreal, development.