In popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, Men in Black (MIB), are humanoids dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them silent.
Aka : MIB; Horlocks; silencers
Description
Always traveling in twos and threes, driving dark limousine cars and wearing sunglasses and impeccable dark suits. Extremely sensitive to light, vaguely "foreign" in appearance, they keep their mouth closed except when issuing cryptic warnings and threats to UFO witnesses. Their faces are white, hairless, plastic-like and might be masks hiding their real nature. John Keel, a paranormalist, pretends he had dealings with them and he thought they weren't even human.
Origin
Because of their secret agent look and how they are uncannily well informed, UFOlogists claim that they work for the government, although US intelligence agencies have denied all knowledge of them. They might be bio-synthetic forms or even holographic images working for aliens invaders.
Powers
They seem to have telepathic powers and have also been reported to mysteriously disappear when their cars are chased.
Role
Men in Black are responsible for silencing witnesses to UFOs and ensuring that UFO events are kept hidden from the public. Men in Black supposedly use all forms of persuasion from phone calls and surprise visits to the threat of deadly force if necessary. They usually confiscate any "evidence" that the contacted might have collected.
Sightings
The very first occurrence of MIB was traced to a man named Albert K. Bender. He was the editor of a flying saucer publication called the "Space Review" In the October 1953 issue he placed an announcement stating that he had come across information that would solve the flying saucer mystery but they could not print it because they were ordered not to.
They then ended the announcement warning others in saucer work to be "very cautious" they then stopped their publications. Later in an interview Bender stated that "three men wearing dark suits" had ordered him to stop publishing flying saucer material, and that he had complied with the order because he had been "scared to death" of them.
He later published a book called Flying Saucers and the Three Men in Black in which he explained The Men In Black in more detail: they were, he claimed, from somewhere called Kazik; he had visited their spaceship in Antarctica; they had told him that their agents had infiltrated the Pentagon.