Having now studied an abundance of data on encounters of the MIB kind, surely the most important questions of all are: Who—or what— are the Men in Black? And what is the true nature of their dark and unearthly agenda? Trying to answer those questions is a formidable task indeed; however, the veil of secrecy, darkness, and elusiveness that surrounds the MIB can be successfully penetrated and interpreted—if, that is, one possesses an understanding of the strange realms into which one should go snooping.
To even have a hope of understanding the complexities of the Men in Black phenomenon, we have to first take a deep look at the “three men” of MIB legend. Based on what you have read thus far, you may be forgiven for assuming that the trio I refer to are those sinister souls that have so often manifested out of places unknown to threaten, intimidate, and silence those who, by accident or design, dare to enter the ufological playpen. The three men I have in mind are not our mysterious visitors, however. No; they are a trio of other, very different characters. And in many ways they are even more mysterious and legendary than the Men in Black themselves. Indeed, without these particular three men, the phenomena of the MIB would simply not exist—or, at least, it would not exist in the form and motif in which it is today most readily recognized. The three men to whom I refer are—if you have not yet fully surmised—Albert Bender, Gray Barker, and John Keel.
It is only by trying to understand the inner workings of this band of story-weavers extraordinaire that we can make at least some sense of the Men in Black. And to do so, it is essential that we examine the thoughts, ideas, conclusions, and memories of various key figures in ufology who met, knew, or corresponded with the three, who have studied their lives, experiences, and careers deeply. We start, as we surely must, with Albert Bender.
Many students of ufology are content to dismiss Bender’s story without even a second thought, particularly the admittedly hard-to-believe tales of his wild trip to Antarctica, and his clams of having been entrusted with the alleged truth behind the UFO phenomenon. Jerome Clark, one of the most learned and clear-headed thinkers in ufology, says, “Flying Saucers and the Three Men is, obviously, a mediocre science fiction novel. Bender, I’m sure, wrote it to get saucer buffs off his back. Even Barker was privately disappointed with the manuscript, as he told me a few years after its publication.”
Nevertheless, Clark does not totally write off Bender as a fantasy-prone character of no consequence. As was noted earlier in the pages of this book, Clark gives credence to the possibility that Bender was visited, in 1953, by agents of the FBI. He continues, on a related line of thinking
There is some substance, however much it got exaggerated, to They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. Something frightened Bender, and to some degree that something intrigued Gray Barker, who wasn’t quite so cynical in the early 1950s as he was to become. Barker, however, blew hot and cold in his private thoughts, some preserved in correspondence. He knew that Bender was of a frightened, paranoid nature and—beyond that—liked people to pay attention him. These considerations led Barker to wonder if Bender hadn’t expanded some small, genuine incident into something extraordinary and melodramatic. At other times Barker wondered if maybe something truly unusual had occurred. Of course, the doubts he entertained were not mentioned in his entertaining book.
Jim Moseley, Gray Barker’s closest friend up until Barker’s death, says of Bender: “I think his story was just silly and naïve, and don’t know why anyone would have believed it. I never did. I think Gray Barker did for a while, and then he eventually realized that it was nonsense. I think Bender wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, which is better than to go quietly or slowly. There was nothing original or detailed about anything he said. This story about the Antarctic was just ridiculous. I think he quickly got bored or discouraged with flying saucers and wanted to go out with a bang instead of a whimper. He just decided to quit.”
But is that really all there is to it? Maybe not. Here’s where things get murky—and controversial.
Jerome Clark may be on-target in his suspicion that Bender really was interviewed by FBI agents back in the early 1950s—possibly as a result of the 1953 recommendations of the CIA’s Robertson Panel—and then subsequently turned what might have been a fairly traumatic encounter with a trio of G-men into a complex tale of visitation by three far more disturbing alien-like Men in Black. But there are other aspects of Bender’s story that cry out for scrutiny, and suggest that far more may have been afoot in that dark attic all those years ago.
We have to start with Bender’s state of health—physical and psychological. As I have noted, the man was a character of near-infinite complexities. An obsessive-compulsive who was deathly afraid of cancer, deeply involved in occult matters, and spent the majority of his time hanging out in his stepfather’s dimly lit attic, Bender was hardly what many people might describe as normal. That does not mean, however, that Bender was incapable of existing in the real world; he certainly was. He held down a regular job with the Acme Shear Company, today known as Acme United Corporation. He established a phenomenally successful UFO research group—albeit one that was not fated to last for long—and he even penned a book: Flying Saucers and the Three Men. And really, who among us is worthy of defining what it means to be normal?
As I noted early on in the pages of this book, Bender was plagued by pummeling migraines, suffered from dizzy spells and acute light-headedness, was constantly bothered by sulfur-like odors in his immediate environment, and was often forced to lie down in his attic bed when the migraine attacks, odors, and dizziness overwhelmed him—at which point he would either fall asleep or enter into what was clearly an altered state of perception, and the Men in Black would then invade, and intrude upon, his privacy and slumber. For those who might doubt that Bender was prone to falling into a strange state of mind and consciousness, consider the man’s own words: “Often I would seem to drift off as if a cloud were carrying me into the inky, boundless depths of space” (Bender 1962).
Many of the symptoms that affected Bender are quite explainable as something far more down-to-earth than the Men in Black: epilepsy, a condition that causes seizures, and results from abnormal or excessive synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. Epilepsy is somewhat unique in that there are no less than 40 different types of the condition, which have varying symptoms and forms of treatment. Perhaps of relevance to the Bender saga is the phenomenon of “single partial seizures”—also known as Jacksonian Epilepsy—which can result in the sufferer experiencing mild to moderate hallucinations, confusion and fear, lightheadedness but not outright unconsciousness, and strong, imaginary odors in the immediate vicinity. Some of those affected by such seizures have reported odors resembling burning rubber and sulfur—exactly as Albert Bender reported. This latter condition is known as Phantosmia, and is defined as the presence of a smell that has no real, external point of origin. Effects of seizures can also involve the feeling of leaving one’s physical body, which may not be so different from Albert Bender’s repeated experiences of journeying into the inky, boundless depths of space, as he imaginatively worded it.
That Bender was affected to a severe degree by migraines may be an important factor in his story, too: Approximately 15 percent of epileptics report migraines. And among the most curious side effects of migraines are: the perception of floating lights in the immediate vision, strange and strong odors, and distortions in the size and shape of objects. On this latter point, recall that in one of his more significant attic-based encounters, as well as being overwhelmed by a smell of sulfur, Bender saw in the room, a “large object of indefinable outline”—which sounds very much like a migraine-induced distortion of perception (Bender 1962).
But what of the curious poltergeist activity that Bender reported? Surely that cannot be connected to something as mundane as epilepsy, right? Perhaps it can: In 1958, a parapsychologist named William Roll introduced the term recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, or RSPK. Roll came to believe that repeated neuronal discharges resulting in epileptic symptoms might actually provoke RSPK, which in turn could lead the patient to inadvertently generate poltergeist activity in his or her immediate vicinity. Roll, commenting on his controversial research and theories, said that he had examined the cases of 92 individuals with suspected RSPK, of whom more than 20 had symptoms that seemed strongly suggestive of epilepsy.
If the overpowering sulfur-like odors, poltergeist activity, vivid hallucinations, feelings of dread and confusion, a sense of bodily separation, and dizziness and light-headedness Bender experienced were all prompted by some undiagnosed condition of the brain, then how do we explain the story of his alleged trip to Antarctica? If not simply an outright fabrication, such a convoluted and intricate tale would clearly require someone to hallucinate in a fashion far beyond what one would expect in someone with epilepsy or another disorder. Still, certain facets of this aspect of Bender’s story could have been borne out of his own highly complex subconscious. In fact, there are very good reasons for believing that this is precisely from where they were generated.
Bender—who comes across as a solitary character at the best of times—never made any mention of girlfriends in the mid- to late 1940s, or even at the dawning of the 1950s, when his 20s were by then almost behind him. All the trips to the Bridgeport cinema that Bender describes— even on carefree Saturday nights when he should surely have been letting his hair down with a girl or two—were made alone. Bender did refer, on one occasion, to holding a party in the attic for a bunch of work friends, and stated that when they saw his horror-themed room, “the girls in the party seemed to be quite shocked…and didn’t stray far from their escorts” (Bender 1962). We can, perhaps, infer a great deal indeed from the fact that nowhere in this story does Bender make any kind of reference to his escort.
For a man in his 20s, and verging upon his 30s by the time he seriously immersed himself in the UFO arena, not to have had a girlfriend, or a wife, might strike many as being odd. Certainly, it would not have been a healthy situation for Bender, physically or mentally, sitting all alone in a dark attic on weeknights and a dark cinema on the weekends. Indeed, repressed sexual energy can wreak mental and physical havoc upon a person’s well-being. Not only that, but such repression can manifest within the subconscious in surprising and vivid ways.
In the pages of his 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, Bender revealed the details of a late-1953 incident following his decision to close down the International Flying Saucer Bureau that can be considered little more than amusing soft-core porn. As usual, this encounter began with the smell of sulfur, and, lo and behold, his three Men in Black were once again quickly on the scene to transport Bender back to Antarctica. This time, however, it was a much more pleasant and far more rewarding experience: Three hot Barbarella-style space-chicks dressed in figure-hugging white outfits removed every stitch of Bender’s clothing, leaving him naked as the day he was born. The astonishingly obliging babes from the stars then massaged some form of skin-warming liquid into every part of Bender’s body...without exception.
The aliens then reassured Bender that this was all for his own good. Indeed, they asserted that the mysterious liquid “will make life better for you. There is one dreaded disease on your planet which all persons fear, and you will have no need to fear this once you have received this treatment” (Bender 1962). Logic suggests that the dreaded disease that all persons fear was almost certainly cancer. And, recall that Bender had, long before his UFO experiences even began, a wholly irrational fear of developing cancer, which easily befitted the illogical mindset of the classic hypochondriac.
What all this tells us about Bender is that he had repressed sexual fantasies about getting it on with a trio of gorgeous space girls, a terror of developing cancer— conveniently lessened by a reassurance from the aliens that he will now be forever cancer-free—and longstanding anxieties about having been visited by agents of the FBI adorned in black Fedoras or Homburgs. Those internal worries then collided in chaotic fashion, duly spilled out of Bender’s subconscious, and fell right into the heart of a semi-awake, altered state borne out of an undiagnosed condition of the brain—hence the sulfur-like smells, the strange out-of-body sensations, and the blackouts that went along with integral parts of the story. Remember, too, that Bender had a cousin who, years before, had supposedly been visited by a Woman in Black. We cannot rule out the possibility that Bender (who was well aware of the story) subconsciously added aspects of that affair to his own. And thus, as a result of this curious, and possibly even unique chain of events, were born the Men in Black.
Greg Bishop also suggests that Bender’s experiences may have been entirely of his own making—although certainly not from a deliberately deceptive or deceitful perspective:
I think that because Bender was so involved in the occult, maybe this played on his subconscious and he had the experience in kind of a hypnagogic, waking dream state. For me, that makes more sense than evil entities that actually came into his room. I think that the interaction between our minds and the UFO phenomenon is a lot more important than people realize. And, if there was anything there, then Bender’s predisposition, because of his occult and horror background, would be that he would have a negative experience with whatever it was that appeared. Bender may have had some kind of a real experience, but became fantasy prone to the point of delusion. It’s more like a Walter Mitty character where the world’s revolving around him and it’s exciting.
Bishop’s theory that some of Bender’s experiences may have been hypnagogic ones is significant. Hypnagogia is a term that describes the stage between wakefulness and sleep—a stage in the sleep process that may be dominated by a wide variety of sensory experiences. For example, those in hypnagogic states have reported hearing voices ranging from barely audible whispers to wild screams. Others have heard random snatches of speech—largely nonsensical, but occasionally containing unusual, fictional names—and some have seen disembodied heads, or what appear to be fully formed entities in their bedroom. All of this typified Bender’s experiences. Humming, roaring, hissing, rushing, and buzzing noises are also frequently reported by people experiencing hypnagogia.
Finally, whether due to hypnagogia, epilepsy, or some other condition, all the evidence points to Bender’s encounters being definitively home-grown. If further evidence were needed to bolster this theory, we have it. In early 1954 Bender met Betty, the woman of his dreams, and the two were married on October 18th of that year. No one should be surprised to learn that from then on the hot girls from the stars discreetly bid Bender farewell, as did the Men in Black.
The most significant statement on this matter comes from Gray Barker, who, in 1980, said of Bender to researcher and author Jerome Clark, long after the Bender story had become a part of UFO history: “If I’d been there in his room while he was in ‘Antarctica’ maybe I would have seen him lying in his bed in a trance” (Randles 1997).
Let us now learn more about the remaining two characters that were as instrumental in generating and nurturing the Men in Black legend as was Albert Bender: Gray Barker and John Keel.