 This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our Armed Forces and First Responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I for one appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So thank you. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every week you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up tonight, you might think sightings of the infamous Men in Black or MIB might be rare. You'd be wrong. I'll share a long, very long list of actual reports of people seeing and interacting with the strange men in black. If you're new here, welcome to the show and if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness Radio to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast. Watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. Send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. July 1967 Robert Richardson of Toledo, Ohio drove around a bend at night and found a strange object blocking the road unable to halt in time he hit it and it vanished. Three days later two men visited his home at 11pm and questioned him for about 10 minutes. They left in a black 1953 Cadillac whose number was found not to have been issued. A week later, he was visited by two different men in black suits who drove a current model Dodge. Summer 1967 A man in a black suit with a pointed chin, thyroid eyes and long, teapering fingers went into Max's Kansas City in New York and ordered simply food, being apparently unable to read the menu and not knowing how to use a knife in a fork. He told a waitress he was from another world. September 18, 1967 One of several students at Highlands University, Colorado, who had seen a UFO the night before, received a phone call threatening his life if he talked. He told this to a fellow student who a week later in company with a campus police officer saw a blood red object. Two days later, he also received a phone call late at night telling him to forget what he had seen. The next day, a man in the street told him about the sighting and even added information that confirmed some of my own research on Atlantis and told him to keep his mouth shut. A few days later, a black car with tinted windows with a license plate showing nothing but three X's nearly ran him over. October 1967 Mrs. B of Mamosa, San Luis Valley, Colorado, who had made a painting of a crescent UFO that she had seen, was visited by a man who told her, I cannot read but mention any book in any library and I will be able to tell you its contents. He went on to say that humans waste too much time and energy on food when it could all be so easily taken from the atmosphere. He insisted on buying her painting, so she set a high price to which he replied he had no money. He departed in a car which had an Arizona registration. Months later, police said they could not trace the plates. October 11, 1967 Rex Halflin was again visited, this time by two men in Air Force uniforms who arrived in a dark car with a peculiar violet glow coming from behind its darkened windows. They asked him what he knew about the Bermuda Triangle. Whilst they were there, his FM radio emitted several loud audible pops. November 22, Thanksgiving Eve, 1967 George Smith was threatened by a man from a black car with red upholstery which drove off silently. He also had odd phone calls and was followed by a strange man. Around the same time a UFO witness, Mrs. Coporino of Jersey City, saw a black car with red upholstery park outside her house on three consecutive Fridays. Each time, two men got out and rang her bell, but she was too frightened to answer the door. Christmas, 1967 Peggy G., who had two UFO sightings earlier that year and later had a poltergeist in her home, worked in a department store in the afternoon. A guard employed there asked her to lunch and informed her that he was a member of a secret organization working on earth called the Cosmic Brotherhood. When a co-worker mumbled that he was crazy, the guard looked up and told him to get away, rays of light shooting from his eyes. Soon after, he left his job and could not be traced. Later, she had interference on her telephone and saw two men stringing silver tape over the wires near her home. The police when called commented, oh, the silver tape again. December 22, 1967 Mary Hire, newswoman of Point Pleasant West Virginia, was visited by two men in black overcoats who asked her, what would you do if someone did order you to stop writing about flying saucers? Later the same day, Jack Brown, who like the other two looked oriental, came and asked her, what would, what would you do of someone ordered, ordered you to stop to stop printing UFO stories? Brown later called upon Mothman witness Connie Carpenter and Linda Scarbury. January 29, 1968 Following a sighting of a long dark body with dim red and yellow lights at both ends, a woman who lived alone on Keats Island, British Columbia was visited by two men in dark overalls who claimed to be employees of the hydroelectric company. They put up a stovepipe for her, one went on the roof, the man on the ground directed him, and the other would answer, yes, master. February, 1968 UFO investigators patrolling the Mohawk River where a UFO had been sighted saw a red oval for themselves. Several days later, one Peter Stevens was approached in a cafe by a strange man who talked about UFOs and then said, people who look for UFOs should be very, very careful. This was followed by the usual pattern of phone calls and poltergeist activity in the Stevens household. Keep listening. More Weird Darkness is coming up with The Men in Black. October is the anniversary of Weird Darkness and we celebrate by raising funds through our Overcoming the Darkness campaign to help people who suffer from depression. Jamie gave to the Overcoming the Darkness campaign a few years ago and when she did, she left a message saying, I live in the smallest of small towns and Weird Darkness makes me smile sometimes uncontrollably. I suffered from depression for the first time after my father passed away in 2013. It was awful. I didn't understand at first what I was feeling. It's debilitating. Also, my child suffers from extreme depression and I didn't know how to help. It makes you feel useless. Well, of course, he loves your podcast too since I shared it with him. Thanks for all you do to other listeners. Come on people, more donations. We should be able to surpass the goal. Donate, donate, donate. Well, I can't really add anything to what Jamie just said except to say that you can donate, donate, donate by visiting WeirdDarkness.com slash Overcoming. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Overcoming. Welcome back to Weird Darkness Radio. I'm Darren Marlar. If you'd like even more Weird Darkness, you can check out the free audiobooks that I've narrated at WeirdDarkness.com. I've got free audiobooks there by Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, Charles Dickens, Robert Heinlein, and more. You can listen to all of the free audiobooks I've narrated on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash audiobooks. We continue now with true stories of the men in black. Mid-February, 1968. A friend of Brad Stiger, who was doing some investigating for him, was given a piece of metal by a farmer who had seen it fall from a UFO. He returned to his hotel, only defying two men waiting in his room for him. They demanded the metal with menaces. This is apparently the same incident as recounted by Warren Smith, who said it occurred several years ago in a 1976 book who added that several people in the district where there had been a UFO flap had been visited by purported fertilizer salesmen who wanted to talk about the UFO sightings rather than selling fertilizer. The two men were called Jim and Tom. Jim kept smoking cigarettes. They were fused to say from which government agency they came from. When he tried to pay his hotel bill, the staff said they had no record of his staying there. February, 1968. Tom Monalione, a student from Adelphi, Maryland, was visited in a restaurant where he was working to support himself through college. He was visited by Vadig, whom he had met on December 10, 1967, when he came out of an egg-shaped object on a road near Washington. The next Sunday, after he returned home, Vadig came up to him in a very old buick. It looked brand new. It even smelled brand new. He was driven to a remote spot in Maryland, where the egg-shaped object was waiting. He was flown to the planet Lanulus, where all the people were naked and who was given a tour around. They then flew back to Earth and the black buick returned him to his home. From the clock, he found all of this had taken only two hours, though it had seemed much longer. Years later, Monalione claimed that the story was invented. February 26, 1968. At 1 a.m., a man in Phoenix, Arizona, was woken by a knock on his door. I saw a man standing in my room at some distance, wearing dark clothing. I couldn't see his face. He was slender and not tall, perhaps five feet nine. He changed position a few times, and then he was gone. April 4, 1968. Bill and his wife encountered a silent red glowing UFO. That night they were visited in the hotel in Knoxville, where Bill worked by a man dressed in black with jet black hair. When they told him that Martin Luther King had been shot at Memphis, he said, Good, I hope he dies. He remarked every man has its price and tested them by asking for how much money they would run naked across a highway. Spring, 1968. An Indian in black clothes appeared in the middle of the night on a college campus in Minnesota following a series of UFO sightings. He behaved in a drunken fashion. May 2, 1968. The woman from Keats Island, British Columbia, again encountered two men in dark overalls, the elder being the same, but the younger different. The following day a group of hydroelectric employees assured me that yesterday's men weren't hydro men that somebody had been pulling my leg. Early May, 1968. George Smith saw doppelgangers of John Keele, Gray Barker, and James Mosley across the street from his house. A week later, three men stepped out of a black Plymouth of 1960-62 vintage and West Virginia license plates, who claimed to be from Saucer News and asked him to repeat what had happened to him. The magazine denied all knowledge. May, 1968. Bill, who had interviewed a contactee along with Brad Steiger, received a phone call detailing their movements, including where they had stayed and what they ate. They had tried to keep their movements secret precisely because they had heard about the harassment of other UFO researchers. Epoldergeist entered his home, and twice a smallish man cloaked in shimmering light materialized in his bedroom. Late May, 1968. Mary, wife of UFO investigator John J. Robinson, noticed a large black car with red upholstery parked near her front door four mornings in a row, while a man in a dark suit looked piercingly at her. The next day, she saw a doppelganger of Jim Mosley directing the traffic as she returned from shopping. On the 18th, Timothy Beckley and the real Jim Mosley came to visit, they noticed a black Cadillac parked in front of the closed factory next door. They took two photographs of a man standing in the factory door, and Mary identified him as the man who had stared at her. June, 1968. UFO researcher Thomas Weidmeier of Jamestown, New York, was visited by Major Smedley of the Air Force. The interrogation left him with a headache. There was no Major Smedley with the Air Force, but this man was found to have visited other UFO researchers. 1968. A deputy police officer met three mysterious men in black suits. They had an odd manner of speaking, as though they would inhale, then speak until they had expelled all of their breath, then inhale again and begin to speak again. July 5, 1968. Captain Monroe, claiming to be from the UFO Research Institute, Pittsburgh, visited a young man who had photographed a UFO with a Polaroid camera, told him the pictures were faked and that he should keep his mouth shut or something unpleasant would happen to him. July 13, 1968. Young investigator Dan Oh was talking on the phone to another ufologist when their call was interrupted by a Mrs. Slago, who told Dan he should not inquire if aliens exist on earth, as, quote, earth people do not understand, unquote, then broke off. Asked to repeat her name, she said Mrs. Nelson. July 23, 1968. Martin Johnson, an off-duty policeman and his wife, saw mysterious lights over Sheffield. After reporting this to the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, he was called to his superintendent's office where he was interviewed by two men dressed just like the spies on TV in trench coats and trilby hats. They tried to persuade him that he had seen only an aircraft or a helicopter, then said that he was under oath and was sworn to secrecy for 25 years. Summer, 1968. An unnamed journalist in an unstated location reported that several people had said that men claiming to be Brad Steiger and John Keele had warned them not to talk about UFOs. When he tried to talk to a farmer's wife, three short, suntanned men in dark suits wearing dark glasses waved a copy of the magazine with the UFO article and said that Brad Steiger was warning all UFO ciders not to talk. Autumn, 1968. An unnamed friend of Brad Steiger was approached in London by three men in black, asking him about train times. Back in his hotel, he saw the same man on a street corner looking up at his room. A day or so later, one of them confronted him, you are a friend of Brad Steiger. Tell him we shall visit him by Christmas. Steiger related this to another friend who said that if so, send him down to talk to me. No sooner had Steiger left him than he was visited by the cadaver, the thinnest man he had ever seen. He took down the man's car registration and learned there was no such car in Iowa. October, 1968. Brian Leith Lee Andrews, a UFO investigator in Coventry, returned home to notice a man standing by the next door garage. His face was glowing orange, and as I watched, the face changed to that of an old man before my eyes. After this, he started experiencing problems with his telephone and getting threatening calls. He soon abandoned UFO investigation entirely. 1969. A drunken China man staggered into a newspaper office in New York State while a reporter was typing up a local UFO report. He was dressed in a black suit. After much wheezing, he managed to say, don't print that story. He staggered out, bumping into furniture. The reporter followed after him immediately, but the street was completely deserted. As you can tell, encounters with the men in black are not nearly as rare as we probably would like to think. More true stories of the MIB when Weird Darkness Radio returns. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial-free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes, video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash Syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Syndicate. You're listening to Weird Darkness Radio. I'm Darren Marlar. If you're looking for a Weird Darkness merchandise, you can find t-shirts, buttons, hoodies, office supplies, clothes for your kids, stickers, magnets, coffee mugs, and a whole lot more with your favorite Weird Darkness designs. You can find something for you or the weirdo in your life by clicking on Store at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Store. We return now to True Stories of the Men in Black on Weird Darkness Radio. July 3, 1969. An unnamed UFO investigator was confronted by three men in black. On the window of the car, in which they were riding, was the symbol connected with them and their visitations. No explanation as to what it was. Subsequently, he received mysterious telephone calls, his house was searched, and black Cadillacs followed him around. Autumn, 1969. A motorist in Massachusetts came across a UFO blocking the road. A man with popping eyes and a red face who had difficulty breathing approached and asked for a lift to town. He wore a short black coat and very shiny green trousers made out of some material I had never seen before. After he got in the car, the UFO took off and vanished. Asked where he came from, the man said, you wouldn't understand. The motorist deposited him on Main Street and thought of going to the police, but the man said, nobody's going to believe you so don't bother. The man staggered away. October, 1971. Two men with the Ministry of Defense visited Jim Wilson of the Eastern Midlands and told him that he might as well forget all about the light he had seen in the sky in late August because they had identified it as the Russian satellite Cosmos 408. It was later proved that it was not. Two men in a black Jaguar car took to parking by his house in the evening. Police discovered that its number plate was false. On October 21st, officers approached the car to question the men, but suddenly it melted away into nothingness. Late August, 1972. Peter Taylor of Manchester, he lived near the airport, was besieged by reporters over his sighting of a glowing object in the Panines on the night of the 16th and 17th, but two Ministry of Defense men arrived in a large black car, got rid of the reporters, asked him repeatedly about the opening of a T-shaped door in the object and advised him not to talk. October, 1972. Billy Doyle, taking an evening walk away from his job at a hotel near Eastbourne, saw a collection of glowing colored lights. Two weeks later, a CID man interviewed him about it and asked, what would you say if I asked you not to report this? October, 1973. Jerry Armstrong, who had numerous UFO sightings, was served in a record shop in New Market Plaza, Jackson's Point, Canada by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in a long, flowing black dress with long black hair and the blackest eyes I had ever seen. She flung his change on the floor and after he had picked it up, she had vanished. October, 25th, 1973. Stephen Polaski, 22 and two 10-year-old boys, saw a red glowing UFO outside of Union Town, Pennsylvania. Herd screaming sounds, noted a sulfurous smell and then saw two Sasquatch-like 8-men between 7 and 8 feet tall. He fired his rifle and apparently hit one three times. The 8-men retreated into the woods and the UFO vanished. Later that day, when questioned by UFO researchers, he went into a trance in which he saw a man in a black hat and cloak carrying a sickle. He said, if man doesn't straighten up, the end will come soon. There's a man here now who can save the world. November 1st, 1973. At the start of a UFO wave in New Hampshire, Florence Dow heard a thumping sound on her porch. Looking out, she saw a man in black coat and wide-brimmed black hat with what appeared to be a face covered with masking tape. December 1973, Mrs. Verona of Devon, who'd been abducted and raped by an alien October 16th, received phone calls, then letters, then visits from two men who described exactly what had happened and warned her not to talk. They continued to visit for four years until she did go to investigators. March 18, 1974. An intruder broke into a radio station in Paris, France, which had been broadcasting a series of interviews with UFO witnesses and theorists and abstracted all of the untransmitted tapes, though leaving behind those which had already made it over the airwaves. The thief, whoever he was, can hardly have had any motive other than to prevent the remaining tapes from being heard by the public. April 1974. Frank and Cathy were driving in East Hancock County, Ohio when they saw a fiery, pulsating white. They told a few other people about it over their CB radio. At 2.45 a.m., they went to the Wigwam Bar in restaurant where a man rushed up and asked, What did you see in the sky? He was bald, with fingers twice as long as normal. He denied having a CB and was asked then how he knew about it. He said, I live by visions. 1975. Argentine ufologists Anton Ponce de Leon visited Siquiani where there were many UFO sightings, where he met a reporter from the newspaper Altima Ora from Lima, Peru. The reporter had photographed three UFOs in Argentina. He sent them for developing, but on returning to his hotel found that two gentlemen in black and with hats had trashed his room. Further harassment made him extremely frightened. 1975. Two mysterious men in a black Cadillac attempted to confiscate from the Ohio State Director for a Mufon, Nils Paquette some metal samples that were allegedly from a UFO. He said that a check of the license number of the car revealed that the number had never been issued. May 1975. Carlos de la Santos Montiel, whose light plane had been buzzed by three discs on approach to Mexico City, was driving to a TV station to tell his story when two black limousines hemmed his car in. Four men got out and warned him not to talk. So he went home again and in June he agreed to talk to Alan Heineck, but again he was warned off by one of the men dressed in black. 4th of July weekend, 1975. Serial abductee, Cathy Davis, also known as Debbie Tommy, on holiday with her friend Nan and Nan's family in Kentucky's Rough River State Park, spoke to a man on CB radio. He then turned up with two other men in a car which traveled without bouncing on a bumpy road full of potholes, though she had not said where they were and did not know how they found them. All were dressed in blue denim. When they first went into the cabin, it was late and the others would have been in bed, but they were up, yet just still, you know, not moving, like they were hardly awake and not saying anything. One of the men did all the talking, but Hopkins suspected that they were aliens or hybrids. February 3, 1976. Shirley Greenfield of Pennine Ridges near Bolton Lancashire was visited by two men in smart black suits and interrogated by one of them, the commander about her UFO sighting on January 23 and her subsequent purple rash. Early 1976. A couple in a small town in Minnesota where there had been a localized UFO flap since November of 1975 were driving towards town when the man recalled that he had to make a phone call. As he pulled up at a booth, a black Cadillac pulled up, a man got out and pushed him away to get to the phone first. He drove off to a second phone. The black car appeared again and the same individual again rushed out to get to the phone first. This then happened a third time. They chased the car and took its license plate when it took off into the air and disappeared. September 11, 1976. Dr. Herbert Hopkins of Orchard Beach, Maine, who had hypnotically regressed a UFO witness at home alone for the first evening in some time, was visited by a man in black with no hair or even eyelashes who claimed to be from the non-existent New Jersey UFO Research Organization, who made a coin dematerialize. The abductee himself said that a man in a black suit came to his trailer home and warned him not to speak of his experiences. September 24, 1976. Herbert Hopkins' daughter-in-law, Maureen, received a telephone call from a man who claimed to know her husband, John. He and his female companion, who both wore old-fashioned clothes, met with John at a restaurant and back at their home asked them many personal questions. Their behavior exhibited many peculiarities. The man kept pawing and fondling the woman, asking John if he was doing it correctly. Late 1976. When apro researcher Dick Rule was getting evidence analyzed from a supposed UFO landing site, he found himself being followed by a black Mustang with license plate UFO-35, driven by a man dressed totally in black. He also told a newspaper that he believed that the MIB were also monitoring his UFO lectures. 1977. John Maron of Shepherds Bush London was reading John Keele's Operation Trojan Horse while his father watched television. He remarked incredulously, it says here that people get phone calls from flying saucers. They both laughed at the idea. Two or three minutes later, the telephone on the table beside him rang. He picked up the receiver and said, hello. A strangely metallic voice said, this is the first one and rang off. In about 1990, Maron told me that he was still awaiting the second. June 6, 1977. Two men turned up at Ripperston Farm where there had been many UFO sightings. One sat in the flashy metallic colored car while the other inspected the dairy equipment at the back of the farm. Both had pointed chins, high foreheads and penetrating eyes. Later they turned up at the Haven Fort Hotel where the receptionist was puzzled that their car was silent on the gravel track. More true stories of the men in black when Weird Darkness returns. The only thing more spooky than Halloween in October is Spooky Empire. Join me October 27th through the 29th in Orlando, Florida to meet horror celebrities like a nightmare on Elm Street's Freddie Krueger, Robert England, and co-star Heather Langingham. Hellraiser's Doug Pinhead Bradley will be there with other casts from the film. Candyman's Tony Todd, an American werewolf in London's David Moughton, the Crypt Keeper John Kassere, Rose McGowan from Charmed in Death Proof, Kane Hodder from the Friday the 13th films, Harry Hamlin from Clash of the Titans, and so many more including Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Get autographs, take photos, and hear Q&A sessions with your favorite horror celebs. They've even asked me to moderate a few celebrity Q&As too. You'll also find horror themed workshops like making movie props and make-up, horror writing, and more. Get all the details, see a full list of the celebrities, and grab your tickets at spookyempire.com. That's spookyempire.com, and I hope to see you there October 27th through 29th in Orlando, Florida. I'm Darren Marlar, welcome back to Weird Darkness Radio. Have you checked out the Monster Channel? It has horror hosts, B horror movies, retro television commercials, and a whole lot more. You can watch it anytime, absolutely free, 24-7-365 on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. We continue now with more true stories of the MIB. July 29, 1977 Joseph Randall, founder of the Euphology Society International, was driving between Golden and Radium in British Columbia on the way home from work in the Glacier National Park to his mother's place in Invermere. He encountered no other traffic after the Golden Intersection. At about 10.45 p.m., a black, pristine early model Cadillac crossed the highway ahead from east to west. He saw three men inside in black coats and hats. It left a cloud behind it. He stopped and realized that there was no intersecting road, so that this seemed to have been impossible. He did not encounter any other traffic until he reached the Radium intersection. 1978 Rick Moran, who had done a reinvestigation of Mothman and related stories in West Virginia, received various odd telephone calls, some of them threatening, saying that he should drop my interest in UFOs. When he turned up to be interviewed for Joel Martin's talk show at WBAB on Long Island, which was to relate to the use of the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam, Martin told him that he'd been visited by a classic MIB who had cautioned him about doing shows about UFOs. Instead of the intended topic, they decided to go public. Whenever a journalist feels he's in danger, the best advice is to put everything he knows before the public in the hope that once it is public knowledge, there's no reason to threaten the source. They had no subsequent problems. August 4, 1979 Following some local UFO sightings, Sarah, 14 of Toronto, Canada, was unconscious for 15 minutes after a sighting of an arrowhead. Under hypnosis, she not only recalled an abduction, but that a six-foot-tall man in a black suit with slanted eyes, a grey-toned face, long fingernails on tapering fingers, had followed her into the school courtyard during lunch and questioned her about her friends who had also seen UFOs. December 9, 1979 Following an abduction from a suburb of Paris about 7 a.m., there was a knock on the door answered by Jean Pierre Provost. There were three men. One was of average height, very well dressed in dark green, almost black, black tie, white shirt and waistcoat to match his suit. He had a fringe of beard, black like his hair and a mustache. The others were bigger than him, taller and more heavily built. Asked by the bearded man, are you one of the three? He said, yes. Good, in that case you can pass the word to your companions. You've already said too much. An accident will happen to you and if you say more, it will be more serious than that. Then they vanished. He saw them again on several other occasions but the only time they spoke was in a tobacco shop when they threatened him again. Under hypnosis, Provost identified the men as coming from inside the earth and added that the bearded man had been real but that his two companions had not been. Late 1970s. Place, to core. A pseudonym for a rural district south of Auckland, New Zealand. Source, Valerie Adams, 1989. Heaven is a place on earth. Eight years of my life. Auckland, New Zealand, Collins. The book is a memoir of several years that Adams, a well-known New Zealand journalist, spent living in the New Zealand countryside with her husband, Pat Booth, another high-profile journalist. Interpolated with Adams' discussions of the NZ social and political events and personages of the period with which she and her husband were involved, are discussions of her beliefs in New Age and paranormal phenomena such as reincarnation and UFOs. Shortly after moving to the area, Adams learns that the locals regularly see UFOs and eventually has a couple of significant sighting experiences of her own. She interprets the UFOs in New Age terms as a symbol of higher consciousness, feeling that they exude waves of love. Adams also comes to consider the UFOs as the source of a pervasive humming noise that permeates the area at regular intervals and for which no identifiable source can be found. As specific dates are not given, Adams writes that one winter's day, her husband arrives home commuting from his editorial job on an Auckland city newspaper looking distressed and stating, I think I've been chased by extraterrestrials on my way home. Booth recounts being tailed all the way down the motorway from Auckland by a big black van with black glass in the windows and three men in black sitting in the front, describing the van and men as eerie and as so menacing I've never felt so terrified in my life. However, when Booth turns off the motorway into the countryside, the van carries on and does not follow. Adams relates that Booth's interpretation of the van as being driven by extraterrestrials is derived from the fact that both had previously read NZ pilot Bruce Kathy's books on UFOs, presumably Harmonic 33 and Harmonic 695 at this date, which recount Kathy's experiences of being stalked by MIB figures. In the conclusion to the book, Adams muses on the metaphysical meanings of her experiences in Taekwur, especially in relation to her belief that her time in the community is related to karma accrued in a past life. Her evaluation of the above incident is that, quote, the men in black that Patrick and I were involved with was, I feel, a reflection of our own negativity at the time. We simply wouldn't have a visit from them now, because we just don't hold and accept such negativity in our consciousness, unquote. Thanks for listening. If you want even more men in black stories, I have another full hour of them and then some, which you can hear in the podcast version of tonight's show. Also in the sudden death overtime content of tonight's podcast, I'll share stories about supposedly real dragon living south of London, England. A battle-hardened marine trembles in fear at seeing a man with no face on the battlefield. I'll share the curious case of Agnes Bowker's cat, a cat she claims she gave birth to and more. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen. Not only will you hear a copy of tonight's show, you'll also get daily episodes of Weird Darkness I post 7 days per week. Again, you can subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen. Or just search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness, and please tell others about Weird Darkness Radio who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness Radio is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions, copyright, Weird Darkness 2023. Now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Jonah 2 verse 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in forever, but you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. And a final thought, people do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures. Frederick M. Alexander I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, keep listening, hour two of The Weird Darkness Radio Show is coming up. They say you are what you eat, and if that's true, I'm soon going to be looking like pumpkin head from that horror movie, because I just received my limited release box of pumpkin cookie chunk from Built Bar. This is a seasonal flavor, so I have to stock up on it when it comes out. Built bars are not candy bars, they're protein bars. The pumpkin cookie chunk bar has 19 grams of protein, plus it's low sugar, low carbs, and low calories, but you'd never know it's a protein bar if you just taste it. Built bars have become my go-to guilt-free solution for dessert, late afternoon, or even late night snacks, and often I just grab a built bar as a full meal, because they're pretty filling. You know how everything pumpkin is going to disappear soon though, so grab your pumpkin cookie chunk built bar while you can before they sell out. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and look in the limited release section for Pumpkin Cookie Chunk. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and use the promo code WeirdDarkness all one word to get 10% off your entire purchase. Road dogs, billy big rigs, big strappers, flat bed cowboys, freight checkers, trucklets, 18-wheelers, deadheads, yard dogs, get your ears on, whatever you call yourselves or whatever call sign or moniker is thrust upon you. This episode is dedicated to all you truckers driving the Boulevard, keeping our bellies full, shelves stocked, septics cleaned, and brains entertained with what you're hauling. In the eyes of this ratchet jaw, and I'm honored to have you listening. Maybe once in a while grab your CB, head to Sesame Street and tell other drivers how to join this weirdo convoy. Appreciate it. May your brake checks be with you, your shutter trouble be absent, and your bare bites non-existent. Keep it cool on the stool. This is Spooky Santa, and I'm tan and on the side. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every week you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up tonight, you might think sightings of the infamous Men in Black or MIB might be rare. You'd be wrong. I'll share a long, very long list of actual reports of people seeing and interacting with the strange men in black. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're already a member of this weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness Radio to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter. And visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast. Watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. Send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The list I am about to share can't be complete, but it does I think include all of the well-known cases and many little-known ones. Obviously, nearly every entry should include the word allegedly or supposedly, but I've generally omitted them as they would get too repetitive, though their presence should be assumed. References are to the particular editions of books that I've consulted for clarification. John Keele's Visitors from Space is the 1976 British edition of the work, better known by its original title of The Mothman Prophecies. Here are just some of the MIB encounters. 1924 John Cole, a newsman in West Virginia, visited the site of an airplane crash in Braxton County. He was told by a man in a suit with high cheekbones, slant eyes, dark skin that no one was hurt and no crime had been committed. He picked up a little thingamajig on the ground and took it home. About 3 a.m., he had a knock on the door. An army officer with the same foreign appearance demanded and received the return of the metal thingamajig. 1947, 22nd of June, Harold Dahl was visited at 7 a.m. by a man dressed in black who drove him in a black Buick sedan to a café where he told him about his sighting of six doughnut-shaped objects the day before near to Tacoma, Washington State in such detail that he could have been there and said that if he loved his family, he would keep quiet about the matter. Dahl was later questioned by two Air Force intelligence officers, Frank Brown and William Davidson when they set off by air to return to their base. The plane crashed, they were killed. Two days later, Kenneth Arnold, who had also investigated the affair, was flying home when his engine cut out and he was forced to crash land. It has become common for riders to say that Dahl admitted the story was a hoax, but an August 1947 teletype from the Seattle FBI Special Agent George Wilson to J. Edgar Hoover stated that, quote, please be advised that Dahl did not admit to Brown that his story was a hoax, but only stated that if questioned by authorities, he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want any further trouble over the matter, unquote. 1950. An unnamed Presbyterian minister and his young son visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, became lost in a labyrinth of corridors and found themselves in a room where there was a large glass case containing small humanoid bodies. The father was instantly grabbed by several men and forced to sign papers before being allowed to leave. The son told this story to Sharon Larson of the Center for UFO Studies in about 1974. 1951. Several naval officers and crew in a motor launch near Key West saw a cigar-shaped object hovering over the water. A fighter plane appeared and the object flew off, vanishing in seconds. As soon as the launch docked, they were surrounded by men in dark suits who held them for hours, questioning them in a way that seemed more aimed at discrediting them than anything else. The only source for this story is an anonymous letter in a Miami paper. 1952. Summer. Gian Pietro Manjuzzi had taken some photos, nowadays usually dismissed as fakes, of a flying saucer in the Italian Alps. Claimed he was visited by an American secret agent disguised as an Italian ski mountain policeman who interrogated him through a long night, apparently trying to get him to repudiate his story of having seen a disc-shaped object land on a glacier. July 30, 1952. Carlo Rossi, who was fishing near Vico, Italy at the site where he had seen an airborne disc on the 24th, was approached by a tall, thin man who asked him about flying saucers, offered him a gold-tipped cigarette, and when it made him ill threw it into the water, then walked off. Fearing that someone was trying to silence him, Rossi went to the public prosecutor's office in the town of Luca and swore out a statement of his UFO encounter. Late August, 1952. Sonny Desvergers of Florida received anonymous threatening telephone calls at work saying that he must not talk about his UFO encounter and was followed about by a black automobile. September, 1952. Following sightings of a 10-foot-tall monster in West Virginia by Kathleen May and some teenagers on the 12th, and by the Stotowski family on the 13th, two men appeared in Braxton County posing as peddlers. They systematically visited the homes of most of the witnesses, showing little interest in selling pots and pans, but anxious to talk about the sightings for hours. October, 1952. Lyman H. Streeter, who had been receiving strange beeps on his radio, which he believed to be messages from flying saucers, was visited by Mr. Clark, who claimed to be from the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and told him that in the interests of national security, he must not talk about this. More true stories of the men in black when Weird Darkness returns. Paranormal experiences, encountering extraterrestrials, extraordinary states of consciousness, spiritual phenomenon, encounters with non-human entities that can't be explained by science. These stories of what people have come across are ubiquitous here on Weird Darkness, and often those who have had these encounters choose to stay quiet and not even tell close friends or family out of fear of ridicule, and they suffer silently, trying to deal with the internal horror of what they've experienced. If I'm describing you or someone you know, there is now a place you can turn to for professional counseling from experts who, unlike others in their field, are open to the paranormal, supernatural, and extraterrestrial experiences of others, and they're not there to explain away your experience, but to help you recover from it and move forward with living. I'm referring to the Opus Network. If you want to reach out for help or learn more, look for the Opus Network towards the bottom of the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. You can stay up to date on everything Weird Darkness and also maybe win some cool prizes at the same time by signing up for the email newsletter. It's free, and every month I draw one name at random to win a cool creepy prize. You can sign up for the Weird Darkness newsletter for free at WeirdDarkness.com. We now continue with True Stories of the Men in Black. July 22, 1953. A mystery car drew up outside the home of the president of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau who'd been suffering poltergeist happenings at 3 a.m. and remained there until after 6.30 a.m. September 16, 1953. Albert Bender, founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, told Gray Barker in a letter, do not accept any more memberships until after the October issue of space review is in your hands. About the same time, Bender told August Roberts that three men had visited him and, in effect, shut him up completely as far as saucer investigation is concerned. On October 4, Roberts and Dominic C. Luchesi interviewed Barker, who said that the three men wore dark clothes and black hats, but his usual response to the question was, I can't answer that. For example, do the saucers come from Venus as stated in Adamansky's book? I can't answer that. Do they come from Mars? I can't answer that. The final October 15 issue of space review contained the statement, the mystery of the flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by orders from a higher source. In 1962, Bender would relate that three men with glowing eyes had materialized in his bedroom. All of them were dressed in black clothes. They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Hamburg style. Later he was teleported to a secret Antarctic saucer base. They told him that they were from another star system. They had merely assumed human bodies, being hideous monsters in reality, and were here to extract a chemical from our seawater. Once they had finished this mission, Bender would be free to tell his story, as he duly did. Late 1953, contactee George Adamski wrote that I was visited by three men who direly threatened me demanding certain papers I had for one thing, some of these I gave him, and was promised their return, but this promise was never kept. I did not give him some of my important papers. There was no denying that I was frightened. Before they left, I was told to stop talking or they would come after me, lock me up, and throw the key away. 1954, Maureen Abbott was waiting for a Bakerloo line underground train in London late at night when she saw a large black panther run along the tracks. Two days later she was visited at her home by a government official who advised her as they sat and drank cups of tea not to talk about the experience. Easter 1954, three men who photographed a UFO over the Nullarbor plane had their film confiscated by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, ASIO. One was later visited by a purported ASIO agent who ordered silence and frightened the living out of me. Late 1954, Maureen Keach, Dorothy Martin who had been communicating with aliens by automatic writing was visited by two men, one an ordinary human being, the other very strange. The former did all of the talking. He said, I am of this planet but he is not. For half an hour he told her that she should not publicize her information as the time is not right now. Later she was visited by five young men who told her that what I said was all false and mixed up and they told me that they were in contact with outer space too and all the writings I had were wrong. 1955, 20 workmen were repairing the outside of a factory in Southern New Jersey which was engaged in classified work for the Navy when they saw gigantic circular object descend and hover over the car park for several minutes. As they were about to clock out, a man in civilian clothes herded them into a meeting room where he florished a sheaf of papers saying, we want you all to sign an oath of secrecy promising not to tell about what you saw today. Those of you who don't want to sign needn't come in to work tomorrow or ever again. Everyone signed. John Keel stated that this story is more folklore than fact. The story has circulated by word of mouth for years but no one has ever pinned down any of the original witnesses if they exist. July 7, 1957, Luciano Galli of Rome was walking from his home to work after lunch when a black theot pulled up and a man with piercing jet black eyes spoke to him and invited him to come with him. They drove to Croera Ridge outside of Rome where a saucer-shaped craft was waiting. He was taken for a ride into space. July 1955, Edward Moots was working on the soil by a peach tree in Cincinnati on the 22nd when a red spray fell from the sky and looking up he saw a red and green object like a pair standing on end. The tree was dead. The next day it was taken away by three men who said they were from Air Force Intelligence. Two weeks later he saw a black Chrysler Imperial parked nearby and three men trained a camera on his home. When he challenged them in broken English they said they were taking pictures of the local industry and then quickly departed. November 1957, Oldenmore watched a circular machine land near Montville, Ohio. On the 6th a few days later the local sheriff drove to his house with men in Air Force uniforms. They took him to the field where he had seen the UFO, a helicopter was waiting there and he was flown to an airport and put on a plane to Washington where he was imprisoned for three days and two officers tried to get him to admit that he had seen nothing but a fireball. Finally he was flown back to Ohio but later neither the sheriff nor the Air Force would back his story. February 1958, a man from Garnesfam who had previously materialized in her living room turned up at the front door of Cynthia Appleton Aston Birmingham wearing a black suit departing in a black car with tinted windows. He visited her several more times in the next six months. August 1960, Ray Hawks saw a wobbling gray disc whilst running a tractor outside of Boulder, Colorado. A few days later he found a helicopter at the same spot with three men in Air Force uniform who told him, we want you to tell the newspapers that the saucer will be back on August 20. September 1961, W. D. Clinton, who was corresponding with George Adamski, was visited by a short man in a tan topcoat who said he was engaged in a political survey to see whether people in the area had voted Republican and he felt the strong impulse to invite the man in. His skin was smooth as though he had never shaved in his life. His skin reminded me of a baby's skin. When he smiled his teeth were perfect and very white. The color of his skin was brown like an Indian. His hair was dark and trimmed in a business-like manner. He looked almost too perfect and it bothered me. After the man left, Clinton got the urge to go into the backyard where he saw a brilliant white ball of light which later became clear and looked identical in every way with the scout ship photographed by Adamski. November 1961, Paul Miller, one of four men who had seen a UFO land in North Dakota but not reported it, was called out from work and introduced to two or three strangers who asked to be taken to his home where they examined the clothing he had worn the night before, especially his boots, then left without any further word. 1963, Li Jing Yang, a security guard in Yangguan, Shansai Province, China, saw an object like two plates sealed together hovering in the sky. The next day he was approached by a strange man dressed in black who warned him not to talk about the sighting. More true stories of the men in black coming up. If you'd like to see me in person, I'm taking the Weird Darkness Beast all over the nation to conferences, conventions, festivals, expos, and more. You can find out where I'll be in the weeks and months to come by visiting WeirdDarkness.com and then clicking on Road Trip. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Road Trip. Have you ever noticed that in just about every post-apocalyptic TV show or movie, the electrical grid is gone, no power at all, anywhere, no places to plug in a radio to get news, and you can forget about charging your mobile devices or relaxing in an air-conditioned house or apartment. We rely on electrical power. Did you know that the power grid we are currently surviving off of was designed in the 1800s? It's so fragile that in 2003, a tree branch hit a power line in Ohio and it shut down 21 power plants, and close to 100 people died because of it. And it's not just natural disasters. In January, a power station in North Carolina was damaged by gunfire, marking the third time it happened. The terrifying truth is that our national security experts are warning us that our aging power grid is now more vulnerable than ever and these attacks just raise a new level of threat. Those post-apocalyptic TV and film scenarios could easily turn from fiction to fact. Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or even months. Your life would be frozen in time at the moment the power fails. Lights all over the country would go out, throwing people into total darkness. That's why having your own personal source of solar power is more important than ever. With the Patriot Power Generator, you get a solar generator that doesn't install into your house because it's portable. You can take it with you wherever you go, even use it indoors. And it's powerful enough for your phones, medical devices, even your refrigerator. Right now you can go to 4patriots.com, that's the number 4, patriots.com, and use the code WEIRD to get 10% of your first purchase on anything on the website, including the life-saving Patriot Power Generator. You'll also get their famous guarantee for an entire year after your order. Plus, free shipping on orders over $97. And the reason I approached 4Patriots to be a sponsor? A portion of every sale is donated to charities who support our veterans and their families. Prepare for the future. Go to 4patriots.com today and use the code WEIRD to get 10% off. That's the number 4, patriots.com, promo code WEIRD, and ensure you will survive the future. We now continue with true stories of the real men in black on Weird Darkness Radio. Late June 1964. Jim Templeton of Carlisle, Cumberland visited by Number 9 and Number 11 who investigated these things concerning his photograph of an unseen man in a spacesuit taken on May 24th. They drove him to the site in a black Jaguar car, very shiny as if new, and then left him there to walk home. August 1965. Rex Heflin of Santa Ana, California, who had taken four Polaroid photographs of a flying disc, was advised by a Marine Corps investigator not to talk about his sighting, as did more than one telephone caller. He was then visited by a man purportedly from the North American Air Defense, or NORAD, who asked to borrow his prints but never returned them, and NORAD later denied any knowledge of the matter. September 1965. William McCoy and Robert Good, policemen on patrol in Brasoria County, Texas, saw a great rectangular glob of purple light. Then, low-flying light planes, apparently unmarked, flew back and forth over the area of the sighting for the next two days. Shortly after the incident, two strangers turned up at the sheriff's office looking for Deputy Good. They tracked the officer down in a local restaurant and immediately proceeded to describe in detail what the UFO looked like, even before Good had an opportunity to tell them. Then they suggested that if he should encounter a similar machine in the future, he should cooperate with its occupants and keep any conversations with them to himself. The identities of these two mystery men have never been determined. December 1965. An official at an industrial plant reported a glowing object to the state police. A few hours later, two military officers turned up, questioned him, and warned him, don't talk about this matter to anyone. April 1966. A man claiming to represent a government agency so secret that he couldn't give its name appeared in a school in Norwalk, Connecticut and grilled two 12-year-old boys for two hours about a disc-shaped object that had pursued them at ground level. 1966. An Ohio farmer saw a glowing circular object land in his fields. Next morning, a black limousine pulled up and a man in an Air Force uniform told him to forget what he had seen. He was a little fellow, with, as the farmer said, a face like a Chinaman or a Jap. September 1966. UFO investigator Steve Yankee, working night shift at a paper mill, visited at 3 a.m. by two men in black who asked him about the Jessup Allende case. After they left the room, he looked down the corridor and saw they had vanished, but there was a sense of dissipated energy 10 feet from the door. 1966. An unnamed UFO lecturer was called upon in his study by a man claiming to be Carlos Miguel Allende, who warned him to discontinue his research or wind up a suicide like Dr. Jessup. 1966. An interesting report of three women in black was given by one correspondent who had received this strange visitation after observing a large gray disc in the sky over his suburban residence. October 1966. George Smith of Elizabeth, New Jersey went to visit two teenagers who had seen a mysterious green entity. The boys were surrounded by a crowd. He noticed two men emerging from a large black car leaving a third behind the wheel. They had a slight slant to their eyes. Later, when Saucer News investigators went to visit one of the lads, Smith noticed the same black car parked nearby and the same two men get out and watch the house while the interview was going on. Two weeks later, he received a phone call telling him to give up UFO investigating. October 11, 1966. Several witnesses to a glowing object over the Wanaki Reservoir, New Jersey, including a policeman with an unlisted phone number, received phone calls before they had reported to anyone warning them to keep quiet. Later, several witnesses were gathered in a high school auditorium by an Air Force officer who derided them about the sighting. No one could remember his name and afterwards, the Air Force denied all knowledge of the case. Mid-November, 1966. A man who had seen a UFO near Parkersburg, West Virginia on November 2 and not reported it was visited by a scientist from Ohio who told us it would be better if we forgot the whole thing. Mid-November, 1966. After Woodrow Darenberger of Mineral Wells had met Mr. Cold, supposedly from Lanulos in the galaxy of Ganymede on November 2, two salesmen visited Mineral Wells and went from house to house with their wares. They weren't very interested in making sales, at one house they offered Bibles, another hardware, and a third they were Mormon missionaries from Salem, Oregon. A UFO wave was taking place in Salem at that time. One man was tall, blonde, and looked like a Scandinavian. His partner was short and slight with pointed features and a dark olive complexion. They asked questions about Woody and were particularly interested in opinions on the validity of his alleged contact. Late 1966, Gray Barker whilst investigating Mothman near Point Pleasant found a note on his door, abandon your research or you will be regret you have been warned. Late 1966, early 1967, Ivan Sanderson whilst riding uninvited visitors noticed a car that kept driving past his rural home in New Jersey. He noted the license plate and was informed that no such car existed. He was then visited by two men in Air Force uniforms who asked about his book. They refused to show him identification, so he ordered them out of his house at gunpoint. The local Air Force base commander denied knowing about them and said he should report them to the police for impersonating Air Force officers. He was plagued by strange electronic noises over his phone for a long time afterwards. Early 1967, West Virginia, black limousines halted in front of hill homes and deeply tanned census takers inquired about the number of children living with the families, always the children. In several instances, the occupants of the big black cars merely asked for a glass of water. A blonde woman in her 30s, well groomed with a soft southern accent, visited people in Ohio and West Virginia whom John Keele had interviewed. She introduced herself as John Keele's secretary, thus winning instant admission. The clipboard she carried held a complicated form filled with personal questions about the witness's health, income, the type of cars they owned, their general family background and some fairly sophisticated questions about their UFO sightings. Keele, by the way, had no secretary. Early January 1967, Mary Hire, who was reporting on Mothman for a local paper and would later run UFO stories, was visited in her Point Pleasant West Virginia office by a very small black-haired man with hypnotic eyes and a thin short-sleeved shirt and shoes with very thick soles. January 9, 1967 The Christianson family of Wildwood, New Jersey, who had seen a UFO on November 22, 1966, were interviewed by the strangest-looking man I've ever seen, wearing a thin black coat, who introduced himself as tiny from the missing airs bureau. He spoke in a high, tinny voice, in clipped words and phrases like a computer, as if he were reciting everything from memory. His black trousers were too short and they could see a long, thick green wire attached to the inside of his leg. It came up out of his socks and disappeared under his trousers. John Keele commented that he had not heard of this feature in other MIB cases. Was tiny wearing electric socks or was he a wired android operated by remote control? He departed in a black 1963 Cadillac. February 7, 1967 Robert A. Stiff of Saucer Scoop received the first of 13 threatening phone calls beginning I would suggest you drop your investigation into certain so-called UFO reports. February 22, 1967 Mothman Witness Connie Carpenter was stopped by a man in a black 1949 Buick who attempted to abduct her. Early 1967 contactee Woodrow Derenberger was visited in the appliance store where he worked by two men with olive complexions in black suits who warned him to forget all about what you've seen. He thought they must be from the mafia. Spring 1967 Carol Wayne Watts of Texas who had encountered a landed saucer on March 31 and on subsequent occasions taken photos of it failed a lie detector test. He later told Robert Lofton of the University of Colorado that driving to Amarillo to take the test he stopped to help a woman driver in apparent distress when he was knocked down from behind and two men in dark business suits told him that if he passed the test he would be shot. March 1967 Shane Keurs in her last year at Westmoreland High in New York State was walking to school when she was approached by a short man with slanted eyes and a slight oriental accent. He knew her name and asked her peculiar questions such as what is volleyball and basketball. He offered to take her for a car ride in her lunch hour. She ended the conversation with the words, it was nice meeting you, took three steps away then turned around again. But the man had vanished, which she considered impossible. A month later in a nearby store she noticed an albino man and a long black overcoat who kept staring at her. The following year she saw a UFO and came to believe that she had been abducted. I still have a lot more men in black stories coming up on Weird Darkness. New technology isn't just for the living anymore. When the dead want to make contact they will use any means. Radio, TV, mobile phones, cars, you name it. The other side just won't be quiet and technology often helps make their presence felt. Whether it's a last goodbye from a loved one, a warning from beyond the veil, or just making sure we know they are still there, ghosts in the machines, scary true stories of the paranormal by G. Michael Vasey tells how ghosts, demons and the dead use our own technology to communicate with us, using true and often creepy stories from people just like you. Ghosts in the Machines, scary true stories of the paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, narrated by Darren Marlar. Here are a free sample of this audiobook on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. I'm Darren Marlar, welcome back to Weird Darkness. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts, I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There I've gathered numerous free resources to help you fight depression, including the Seven Cups app, the Suiciding Crisis hotline, ifred.org and more. These resources are absolutely free and they are there when you need them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. We now continue with true stories of the M.I.B. on Weird Darkness Radio. Early April 1967. A farmer north of Gallipolis, Ohio, saw a big red and white glowing thing sitting in a field near his barn, which left a 30-foot circle of scorched earth. A circuit box in the barn burnt out. Next day, two men supposedly from the electric company turned up and fussed around with the transformer on the pole by the road. They did not have an electrical truck, just a panel truck. They were foreigners, jabs or something. They weren't very friendly, dressed in ordinary overalls. They had on funny shoes with very thick rubber soles. A week later, he received a telephone call that sounded like a neighbor who warned him about a crazy man with a beard. Ten minutes later, John Keele, bearded, unusual in that part of the country, turned up and he ordered him off. Later, the neighbor told him that he had not made that call. Early April 1967. A woman who lived near the summit of Mount Misery on Long Island, where there had been many UFO sightings, was visited by four men with high cheekbones and very red faces, who said, My land belonged to their tribe. They had no car, so they must have walked up the muddy hill, but their shoes were spotlessly clean. The same week, a woman with striking white hair claiming to represent a local newspaper asked her a number of personal questions about her family background. The newspaper denied employing anyone of that description. May 5, 1967. Mary Hire saw the little man who had visited her in January on the streets of Point Pleasant. When he saw her, he ran off and leaped into a black car driven by a very large man. May 1967. Mrs. Ralph Butler of Awatana, Minnesota, who had seen UFOs and heard strange voices on her CB radio visited by Major Richard French, who had a pointed face and long hair and said he was interested in CBs and UFOs. She offered him some jelly and he tried to drink it out of the bowl. May 17, 1967. Following a UFO encounter on Mount Misery, Jane received a phone call telling her to go to a local library and get a book on Indian history and turn to page 42. She did so, finding the place deserted except for a female librarian. The words of page 42 turned into a message from them. Later, she started to see the librarian wherever she went. It proved to her that her name was Leah and that she came from another planet. After she sucked out the contents of an egg from Jane's refrigerator, it was suspected that she really was a reptile. This woman also introduced her to A. Paul, who drove a black Cadillac. May 1967. A young man from Belprie, Ohio had some interesting UFO sightings. Shortly afterwards, he had a brief encounter with two black-garbed oriental-looking men. They appeared confused or drunk and seemed to have difficulty walking. May 1967. On a number of occasions, I actually saw the phantom Cadillacs as advertised, complete with sinister-looking passengers in black suits. On Long Island, following the directions given me in an anonymous phone call, I pursued one of these cars down a dead-end road where it seemingly vanished into thin air. There were no side roads or turn-offs. By Keel, in the Cosmic Question. June 21, 1967. J. P. Perrow, a radio broadcaster with WBAB at Babylon, Long Island, who had reported on local UFO sightings and interviewed Princess Moon Owl, who said that she was from the asteroid Cerys, was abducted by a black Cadillac which had flashing lights on the dashboard. I couldn't take my eyes off of them, he said. It felt like they were hypnotizing me. They stopped at an isolated crossroads where the man asked her questions which didn't make any sense to her. Finally, they returned her to the spot where they had picked her up. July 16, 1967. Following an encounter with a brilliant blue-white source of light on a road between Mommy and White House, Robert Richardson of Toledo, Ohio found a piece of metal which he believed had come from the UFO. The next day he was visited by two men who did not give their names and asked questions about the incident. They departed in a black 1953 Cadillac with license number 8577-D, but when he checked with police, they told him this number had not yet been issued. July 11-17, 1967. UFO investigator Robert Easley of Defiance, Ohio was followed by a man in a black sedan with no license plates as he drove to the scene of a sighting. On the 15th, the car drove past as he talked of UFOs with his girlfriend on the front porch. When they got off the subject, the car left, but when they got back on it about an hour later, the same car returned, as if the driver could read their minds. On the 17th, checking another report, the same man followed him. He also received 12 phone calls of a beeping sound for about 15 seconds followed by silence. Thanks for listening. If you want even more Men in Black stories, I have another full hour of them and then some which you can hear in the podcast version of tonight's show. Also in the Sudden Death Overtime content of tonight's podcast, I'll share stories about a supposedly real dragon living south of London, England. A battle-hardened marine trembles in fear at seeing a man with no face on the battlefield. I'll share the curious case of Agnes Bowker's cat, a cat she claims she gave birth to and more. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen. Not only will you hear a copy of tonight's show, you'll also get daily episodes of Weird Darkness. I post 7 days per week. Again, you can subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen. Or just search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness, and please tell others about Weird Darkness Radio who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness Radio is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions, copyright Weird Darkness 2023. Now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Jonah 2 verse 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in forever, but you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. And a final thought, people do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures. Frederick M. Alexander. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Don't go anywhere, Weirdos, because sudden death over time is up next. As you already know, Built Bar is a sponsor of Weird Darkness. Don't tell them I said this, but I would continue to let them be a sponsor without them paying me at all, so long as they continue to send me these free samples. Today I received their new cookies and cream chunk. It's like having actual cookies and cream chunks in the candy bar. These are protein bars, these aren't candy bars, so they're low calorie. This has 18 grams of carbs. That's fewer carbs than an average size banana or a honeycrisp apple. This is my lunch, and it feels like I just had dessert. This cookies and cream chunk is just insanely good. You can save 10% off of anything you buy from Built. Just go to WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and use the promo code WeirdDarkness. All one word, you can get 10% off your entire order, including the cookies and cream chunk. Okay now the hard part is, this actually tastes like dessert, but I want to eat another one. We now continue with True Stories of the MIB. Early 1980. According to William Moore, APRO directors gave him a letter from Craig Weitzel, an Air Force cadet at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had photographed a landed UFO and a silver-suited occupant. Back at base, he was approached by a man in a dark suit in shades who said his name was Huck and wanted the UFO pictures which he duly handed over. But when Moore interviewed Weitzel, he denied having taken any photographs of the UFO or having had a strange visitor. August 18, 1980. Charles Affleck, one of six members in the Swindon Center for UFO Research or SCUFORI, found a note on his doorstep. Cease UFO study. In the weeks to come, other members received similar missives, some in the mail with Swindon postmarks, and there were also peculiar, threatening phone calls. They were eventually able to prove that the culprit was one of their own members. September 1980. Beryl Hollands of Goldborn, near Wigan in Lancashire, who had seen a UFO on August 31, was telephoned by a supported scientist from Jodrell Bank who would not say how he obtained her number. He advised her not to associate with the cranks in ufology. Mid-November, 1980. Michael Elliott, doing flying saucer research in a university library in the U.S., was approached by a very thin, dark man in a black suit who asked him about flying saucers, placed his hand on his shoulder and said, Go well in your purpose. After he had left the witness terrified, he noticed that there was no one in the library, not even at the information desk. He forced himself to sit down again. When he left an hour later, there were two librarians behind each of the two desks. August 6, 1981. David Ellis and his wife Caroline, pseudonyms, who ran the horseshoe's public house outside Matlock Derbyshire and had several recent UFO sightings, were visited at 7 in the morning by two men in black with gray suede gloves, like twins, who were revealed to be hairless when they took off their hats and apparently wore lipstick. They warned the couple to say nothing, made Caroline's signet ring disappear, then drove off in a black Mercedes which had no number plate. The ring soon reappeared. Afterwards, they received several telephone calls from a somewhat metallic voice, also warning them not to talk. October 6, 1981. Grant Breeland and N.B. of Vancouver, Canada, who had sighted a UFO from vantage points three miles apart, the former, having taken a photograph, were visited by two strange men who intimidated them sufficiently that Breeland never released his picture, and N.B. would not cooperate with investigators. Another version of this same story, Breeland saw two men who lacked fingernails at a key mart store. One asked him, what is your name? The other asked where he lived, and then, what is your number? Their lips did not move when they spoke. When they left, he followed them. They walked across a muddy field and then vanished. No other people were in sight during the incident, though after the men vanished, the place was populated again. December 29, 1980. The night after UFOs had been seen near the U.S. Air Force Base at Randallsham Suffolk, one of the witnesses, Larry Warren, received a telephone call, ordering him to be in the parking lot in 20 minutes or else. There, two men in dark suits motioned him to get into a dark blue sedan where an eerie, green glow suddenly filled the vehicle, and he lapsed into semi-consciousness. They took him to a secret underground facility beneath the base, of which he had been unaware. He later found himself wandering around the base in a daze and discovered that two days had passed. Early 1980s. Private investigators of UFO sightings in New York's Hudson Valley were contacted by James Madison, reportedly of the National Security Agency, NSA, who wanted to obtain videotape footage shot by a witness. He said he wanted to forward the tape to Dr. Bruce McCabe. He later told Heineck and Inbrogno that he knew that Madison really was with the NSA. When they refused to turn over the tape, Madison told Inbrogno, you know, Phil, the government has done away with people for a lot less. February 14th, 1983. Colin and Lynn Reagan of Swanborne Buckinghamshire, who had recently seen a glowing UFO several times, were visited by two men calling themselves Frederick Gratton and George Edwards, who said that they were from the Ministry of Defense, and advised them not to talk about it for reasons of national security. February 19th, after Colin had experienced missing time, they visited him again and put him into a hypnotic trance, under which he recalled that he had been taken aboard a spaceship and made to have sex with an attractive female alien. April 25th, 1984. Gwen Freeman of Blair Gallery, Scotland saw a group of strangers in Black Yiddish attire walk in single file up the path of a neighbor's house and enter. Not long after they left, but when she and her son called on the woman, she denied having received any visitors. Later that day, Mrs. Freeman saw a UFO. A week or so after, a man and a woman in dark, old-fashioned clothes called on her and told her that she must not speak more of what she had seen, otherwise a great evil would befall her. May 1984. Marie, U.S. Eastern Seaboard, posted a citing report to Jules Valiantcourt of Mouffon. He never received it, but a man in a brown suit driving a gray Mercedes turned up with her form, claimed to be Valiantcourt and asked her questions about the details. December 1984. C.B., leaving her New York office at 11 p.m. after working overtime, saw three small globes of light that floated around her. On the way home, she stopped at a deli to get cigarettes and there was a new counterman of curious appearance. His skin very pale with a yellowish cast and large slanted eyes. He said, it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it can be very scary. There was no one else in the deli. When she returned the next day and asked about the new counterman, one of the employees she was familiar with told her there was no new employee. He also said that he had manned the counter the previous night and that she had not come into the store. Early 1985. Dan Selden from near Cleveland, Ohio woke up in bed to see three people dressed in black in his room. The experience was totally realistic and yet dreamlike at the same time. One was a woman with dark eyes and black hair, of whom he recalled when hypnotized by Bud Hopkins that she looks evil, but she looks pretty too. She then had intercourse with him. January 26, 1986. About 7.30 p.m., Paul Rebek of Epping, New South Wales, received a visit from a man who said, hello, sir, I am a representative of the Uranus Peanut Company. Would you like to sample my wares? He bought some peanuts off him and was told, thank you, the council will remember you favorably, good night. He turned but seemed to vanish after a few steps. Rebek thought it must have been a spectral man in black. July 10, 1986. UFO witness Michael Lane of Bradford on a paper round delivering the Bradford star was walking down Sticker Lane when suddenly everything went quiet. There were no people about nor cars either. A large black shiny car, a bit like a Cadillac, drew up to the roadside to the left of him from behind as he was walking and stopped. A man in black shouted, forget everything you know about UFOs. He saw it was a left-hand drive car. After the car drove noiselessly away when it was about 150 yards distance, all normal background noise, people and traffic returned. And quote, I also felt a tingling sensation all over, like pins and needles. February 1987. Bruce Lee, not the Kung Fu star but an editor at New York Publishers Morro, walking along Lessington Avenue with his wife on a Saturday, went into a bookshop to see how books he had edited were being displayed. A short couple bundled up against the cold so that even their faces could hardly be seen, picked up copies of Strieber's abduction narrative Communion, a Morro title, and flicked through them impossibly fast, saying things like, oh he's got this wrong, and oh he's got that wrong. Their accents were Upper East Side Jewish. Lee went up and asked what errors there might be in the book. The woman glared at him and through her sunglasses he could see enormous, dark eyes which reminded him of those of a rabid dog. He hastily left with his wife and they went off to a bar and soaked his shock in margaritas. He concluded that they had been aliens who had presumably learned to speak English from Upper East Side Jews. May 1987. Abductee Krista Tilton of Tulsa, Oklahoma was out near Sedona, Arizona when she was confronted with an old-fashioned black limo. So shiny I could see my reflection in it, she said. One of two men inside said the time is all wrong as they drove off she tried to take a photograph but nothing happened when she pressed the shutter. January 15, 1988. Peter Spencer, who had photographed a green alien on Ilkley Moore visited by Jefferson and Davies, purportedly from the Ministry of Defense, who could not have known of the case, who asked him how his electric fire worked and requested the negative which he had lent to Peter Hough. When he told them this, they left. 1988. Maria, a Mexican woman married to an Englishman from Cheltenham, told a reporter that there were extraterrestrials living there. She knew about them because they had communicated with her by telepathy and then one day she saw two of them walking down the street. They had no hair, they wore hats to hide the lack of it on their heads but she could nevertheless see that they had no eyebrows. She said that they wore black coats and they knotted at her as they went past. 1988. A work party from the Universal Education Foundation, cleaning up the King Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado, which they had just purchased from Burl Lewis, found some loose leaf pages about UFO sightings by Nellie Lewis, whose horse Lady, misnamed Snippy in several news accounts, had supposedly been killed by a flying saucer in 1967. A few minutes later, two men in the work party that I didn't know left, she said. They had taken the pages with them. No one else in the work party knew them either. August 1988. Margaret Harris and Margaret Wilson of Chandler's Ford Hampshire saw a bright yellow light while driving home from Christchurch. Wilson took several photographs and back home telephoned the police. She was not surprised when a man claiming to be a reporter called at her house and asked if he could take the film away to be developed. The story did appear in South Ampton Papers, but neither the man nor the film were ever seen again. late 1980s. Frank Patamore of Iris and Cottage Somerset, who had suffered bizarre electrical problems in his home, requiring him to replace more than 20 light bulbs in a week, was visited by uncountable numbers of well-wishers and experts, spiritualists, dousers, exorcists, ghost hunters, psychic researchers, and men in dark suits who arrived unannounced, delved into briefcases to produce maps and other documents but could not be traced on the contact telephone numbers which they left. June 1990. McCleary, a farmer in Tipperie County, Ireland, found two crop circles in his outfields. Two more appeared later. The morning that the last appeared, a thin man dressed completely in black stepped out from behind a shed. He had something dead about him and the clothes looked 50 years old. He asked about the circles. late 1990. New England uvologists Philip Imbrugno and Marion Horrigan found that some of their post was going astray, since witnesses would write asking why they had not responded to a previous letter when this had not been received. Imbrugno then had a phone call from a man who identified himself as Major Andrews, the Air Force representative to the FAA, who wanted to know how many reports they had received in the New York area. He said that the Air Force was concerned about the increase of sightings in the area since they did not want a UFO scare on their hands. He said the Air Force was investigating the sightings and asked Imbrugno if he would cooperate in exchange for information. He agreed and a few weeks later received a packet of reports from the Air Force, though they did not contain earth-shattering information. January 1991. David Huggins gave a presentation at a UFO conference on his abduction experiences. The following day, an unknown man drove three times around Huggins block, stopping each time in front of his house. February 2, 1991. Bud Hopkins received the first of a series of letters from Richard and Dan, who claimed to have witnessed the abduction of Linda Cordile in November 1989. They initially said they were police officers, but later they said they were security guards with the United Nations. April 29, 1991. Linda Cordile told Hopkins that Richard and Dan had abducted her in a black Mercedes and drove around, questioning her for three hours. June 1991. A helicopter hovered above the yard of abductee David Huggins in Wellington, New Jersey. The pilot snapped photos. October 15, 1991. Linda Cordile told Hopkins she had been again abducted, this time by Dan in a red Jaguar sports car. He had taken her to a beach house on Long Island. 1993. As Lincolnshire abductee Laura Bond walked her dog, a limousine with black side windows stopped by her. There were three men in black suits inside. 1996. Michael Drew Hartley, a freelance television producer from Brighouse, West Yorkshire, planned to make a program about the legend that a monument at nearby Kirkleys marks the grave of Robin Hood. As helpers, he recruited two media students from Dewsbury College and a young woman on the staff of Brighouse Library also offered her assistance. Quite suddenly, all three pulled out. When he questioned the students, both said that someone had visited them late at night and told them to have nothing to do with the Robin Hood film, or it would affect their future careers and could have even more serious consequences. The librarian said the facts, saying that she was busy with other commitments but he never learned her exact reasons as she never spoke to him again. Hartley himself received a telephone call from a man with an Oxbridge accent who claimed to be from MI6. Though not threatening, Drew was puzzled as to how the caller seemed to know a lot about him. The film was never finished. January 1996 A Southern California cover band took a break from a late night jam session for a smoke when they all blacked out. They awoke ten minutes later but the lead singer had vanished. He reappeared two days later with scars. In the third week of February, he was sitting on the porch when a black Cadillac pulled up and three very pale, very bald men in black suits got out. At first glance they kind of looked Oriental, one of the men said, but a closer look let me know that they were not Oriental at all. They said that they were with the FBI and that he had to accompany them to their office to answer some questions. He hesitantly got in the car, which though a 78 model smelled brand new. They drove him around for half an hour, warned him not to continue to talk about his alien abduction and showed him a series of grisly pictures of mutilated bodies which they said was what happened to people who do not comply. They also showed video footage of them killing people. When he was returned, his friends took down the license plate but the police told them no such plate was registered in California or with the FBI. The victim put the story on a computer bulletin board anonymously out of fear. May 1996 Jim Keith interviewed David Huggins on the telephone, immediately following the conversation Huggins phone rang again, but there was silence on the other end. August 23, 1996 Jim Keith interviewed John Keele. Afterwards Keith's phone rang but there was a silence on the line. He also later received a breather call. 1998 Jerry Anderson, not the producer of Thunderbirds of UFO monitors East Kent, or UFO mech, who was investigating the Burmarsh UFO incident of March 8, 1997, received a letter signed by Wing Commander A.W. Ward of the RAF. It read as if it were written by someone whose first language was not English and ordered him to cease his investigations. He later discovered that this officer really existed, but when he wrote to him he received a reply, this time in fluent English, denying that he had written that first letter. He was visited by people supposedly from the TV licensing authorities who demanded to see his license. They went away when he showed it, but this is extremely odd since TV licensing men only visit homes that do not have licenses. On February 9, 1999, he received a tape cassette in the mail which proved to be a recording of a telephone conversation he had with another researcher, Chris Rolfe, in January of 1998. October 2000 Colin Perks, who had been trying to locate the grave of King Arthur, was visited by Miss Sara Key, the most beautiful woman he had ever met, who wore an expensive looking black suit. She told him many intimate details of his research, which he thought impossible for an outsider to know. She said that she represented the interests of a number of people within the British government and the ruling establishment, who had been looking at occult matters since World War II and knew that what he was doing was dangerous. If he did not cease, quote, you will receive another visitor, unquote. He ignored this and pressed on with his research, but he did get another visitor. Not this time a government official, but a gargoyle, a seven-foot-tall entity with leather wings, glowing red eyes and fangs, which terrified him. January 10, 2003. The M.O.D.'s UFO desk received a call from a woman who said that in the small hours, she and her mother had seen lights in the sky from their home in East Dalwich, South London, and feared this might be a terrorist attack. So she had called Peckham Police, who eventually sent a car around. In it were two policemen and two men in spacesuits with dark glasses who called themselves Mork and Mindy. These men told her not to look at the object because of possible radiation, and they carried a transmitter or possibly a digger counter which kept clicking. As the woman's eyes hurt from watching the lights, they offered to wash them out with a solution, though she declined. She was then told not to talk to anyone about this and certainly not the press in case it caused panic. After that, they had asked the women for their birthsigns and then left. When the M.O.D. contacted the police, they naturally denied the Mork and Mindy story, saying that they had only sent two officers without any radiation equipment, that the woman thought the lights were aliens, not terrorists, and that they themselves had been unable to see them. Later, the mother wrote a letter of complaint, stating that they had discovered that Mork and Mindy was a TV sitcom about an alien and that they had been trying to make us look foolish. More Weird Darkness is coming up with The Men in Black. Loneliness can be a real burden, and while you can always log on to social media or watch TV, sometimes you just want someone near you. I mean, what if you could be in your living room sitting right next to Michael Myers or sleeping in your bedroom with Freddy Krueger? Maybe watch a horrible B movie with Elvira right there next to you. Have dinner with Hannibal Lecter. Do some quilting or sewing with Pinhead watching over you the whole time. Maybe wash and groom your dog in the presence of the Wolfman. Bobbletopia is the place to get your favorite horror characters as bobbleheads, and their Nikka line of hyper-realistic horror action figures is incredible, like King Kong, the alien Xenomorph, Pennywise, Frankenstein's Monster, and more. And most every item is under 40 bucks. No need to be lonely any longer. Visit bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness and get 10% off your first order by using the promo code Weird Darkness. That's bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness. See, you're feeling less lonely already. Men in Black reports would seem to admit seven possible explanations. 1. The whole story was fiction. And I suspect that this does account for the M.I.B. events in Bud Hopkins' book, Witnessed. 2. The witness hallucinated the encounter. An obvious possible example is Albert Bender's claim that three men in black with glowing eyes materialized in his bedroom late at night. 3. The M.I.B. were ufologists with peculiar agendas of their own. This proved to be the origin of the threatening messages received by scufori members in 1980. Jim Mosley suggested that investigators from the Washington UFO group, NYCAP, who liked to give the impression that they were a government agency, would say to witnesses, don't talk to anyone else about this, because they wanted the exclusive. 4. The incident was a practical joke. This probably accounts for that last Mork and Mindy story. The Peckham Police, if they were responsible for it, would hardly have admitted to the Ministry of Defense that they'd been fooling around when they were supposed to be on duty, in an area with a high crime rate at that. Hence their denial and the usual exhortation not to talk to anyone about this may have been intended to cover up their own misbehavior. 5. The M.I.B. were from the government. It can be objected that there have been several occasions when M.I.B. have claimed to represent the Ministry of Defense or the United States but later the USAF or the MOD have denied it. More than once, indeed, the Air Force have gone so far as to state that the M.I.B. have committed a federal offense by impersonating military officers, whilst the Ministry of Defense have said that they never investigate UFO cases in person, though they may interview witnesses by telephone. As against that, a careful reading of the books of Dame Stella Rimmington, former head of MI5, suggests that when MI5 agents have to identify themselves to the public, they say that they are from the Home Office, and no doubt the CIA has a parallel policy. So it's possible then that M.I.B. could indeed be from the government, though not the particular agency they say they represent. 6. The M.I.B. are aliens secretly living on Earth. In some instances, the M.I.B. themselves have stated this. 7. The M.I.B. are UFO nuts, but they come from another dimension rather than another planet. That was the view of John Keel. Although the narrative about Albert Bender in Barker's They Knew Too Much has been widely cited, Bender's own book has been little read and discussed. I guess that ufologists supposed from Barker's book that Bender had been silenced because he had uncovered the truth, and they all supposed that this truth corresponded to their own pet theories. But his narrative about hideous monsters extracting an element from our seawater at a concealed Antarctic base did not match anyone's pet theory, so that the book, if noticed at all, was denounced as a further part of the cover-up. Some two-fifths of all M.I.B. reports come from the three years 1966 to 1968, and all but two of those in the United States. There must be some reason for this statistical anomaly, but I'm not sure what. If possibilities six or seven were correct, it could be that in 1966 a giant UFO landed secretly in North America and disgorged a number of men in black, returning to collect them again in 1968, but somehow I doubt it. More plausible is reporting bias. A major source for M.I.B. reports are the books of John Keele, whose UFO investigations were mainly conducted in those years. Yet all of the instances reported by Brad Steiger and many of those from Timothy Beckley also come from the same period. The geographical bias is blatant. There are 95 cases from the United States, 22 from the United Kingdom, four from Canada, three from Italy, three from Australia, two from France, and one from each of China, Argentina, Mexico and the Irish Republic. To some extent, this is again no doubt reporting bias, but of course it could also be cultural bias. That is, people in English-speaking countries have often heard of M.I.B. reports and therefore relate their own, whereas in other places they have not and do not. Another problem is an obvious one. Witnesses have frequently been told by M.I.B. not to talk about what they have seen. It is a reasonable presumption then, at least some witnesses have followed this advice, in which case there must be M.I.B. and UFO incidents that have never been reported to anyone. But I can think of no way of even guessing what proportion of them remain unknown. Sometimes paranoia is incited by events that do have essentially mundane explanations. Another quotation from John Keel is pertinent. In the spring of 1967, following the publicity that attended Mothman and the UFOs, mobs of strangers descended on Point Pleasant. Cars filled with students from neighboring colleges would arrive unannounced at the homes of witnesses named in newspaper accounts, often late at night and expect to be welcomed. Mary Hire and all the others were subjected to silly interviews by people who obviously didn't have any notion of how to go about investigating anything. Some of these investigators were tactless and impolite, as only teenagers can be, to the point of being offensive. One by one, the witnesses fell silent, refusing to talk to any more strangers, so newcomers saw a new mystery. Someone had obviously ordered everyone in the Ohio Valley to shut up. As John Rimmer observed in his review of Nick Redfern's book, there is no standard pattern to reports of M.I.B., who are not always, for instance, said to be dressed in black. There are a few common themes, however. Often they are said to be of oriental appearance or completely hairless or both. There are only three women in black cases known, and in one of these, no details were given. It's interesting to note, though, that in both of the other two, she was described by the witness as the most beautiful woman or girl that he'd ever seen. Whereas American M.I.B. tend to drive black Cadillacs, Jenny Randalls claimed that in Britain, they are nearly always said to drive black Jaguars. Now, Jaguar cars are not common, and most of them are not black. But I have noticed that in London, when the police stop the traffic to make way for some VIP, such as a visiting head of state, often they are in a convoy of black Jaguars. Some time ago, indeed, I saw the Queen go past in one, though her usual cars are a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley. All of this to say, it's not intended to reach any definite conclusions. It's simply a concise attempt to lay out the claims that have been made, which, even if they are all fiction, ought to be of interest, at least to students of modern folklore. In 1569, during Elizabethan England, a young servant by the name of Agnes Balcher claimed in court that she gave birth to a cat or some form of a monster. She even produced the cat-like creature. Amazingly, credible witnesses testified in support of Agnes' story during the many hours of testimonies. Numerous individuals painstakingly investigated the ordeal. Meanwhile, officials and aristocrats tried to figure out what to do. The story of Agnes Balcher's cat was spreading like wildfire and became a huge sensation all the way up to the Privy Council of Queen Elizabeth. Why did Agnes claim to have had a cat monster as a baby? And why did people take it so seriously that it required investigation and court hearings? Agnes Balcher was the daughter of a butcher named Henry Balcher, who lived in Harborough. Although Mr. Balcher had passed away, her mother was still alive. Agnes was 27 years old and worked as a house servant in Leicestershire, England. In 1598, she became pregnant out of wedlock, which at that time was a shameful and scandalous situation. On January 22, 1569, Agnes testified in Archdeacon's Court that she gave birth to a cat or some type of monster. Interestingly, this was not so outlandish, as in the late 1500s, superstitions ran rampant and many people believed in things like black magic and witchcraft. Some of the country folk theorized that Agnes' child may have been a sign or warning about terrible things to come. Indeed, Agnes made many wild and incoherent claims. Her story changed often. She admitted to having had sexual relations on multiple occasions with a servant boy, Randall Dowley. However, she insisted that it was something else that fathered the creature. At one point, she claimed that a cat came to her and had sex with her six or seven times. Then another one of her tales reported that it was a bear or a dog or something that changed shapes. Agnes added to her story that she once worked for a schoolmaster, Hugh Brady. Supposedly, he sexually abused and raped her a number of times. In the course of their relations, he told her that she needed to marry the devil and give herself wholly to him. She said that Brady told her he would send something to her that indeed came to her in the form of a man who later appeared to her as a greyhound and a cat. The midwives and other mothers of the town who were supposedly present at the birth gave testimonies that suggested some truth about Agnes Bowker's cat. Her first midwife, Margaret Ruse, testified that when she examined Agnes, she noticed something in her body besides the natural course thereof. She claimed that she couldn't tell what it was inside Agnes, but nonetheless it pricked her. The second midwife, Elizabeth Harrison, tended to Agnes at the time of her labor. She claimed that a creature came to Agnes, sometimes in the form of a bear, sometimes as a dog and sometimes as a man. Harrison also indicated that Agnes had told her that she met a Dutch woman while she walked the countryside and the woman told Agnes she would give birth to a moon calf, some monstrous creature or aborted calf. None of the wives present for Agnes' birth actually saw the monster come out of her body though. The situation was unusual enough that a group of local men took Agnes Bowker's cat and performed a rough autopsy. They cut the cat's body open and found bacon and straw in the gut of the cat, but nothing unusual or monstrous. The men reported to the townsfolk that instead of being a supernatural entity it was a normal cat, albeit skinned and dead. The men also presented evidence that Agnes had attempted to borrow a cat from a neighbor. Unfortunately, that neighbor's cat mysteriously went missing. Later, the tale had spread by word of mouth and eventually the Archdeacon's commissary, Anthony Anderson, decided to conduct a full investigation. This was probably partially out of curiosity, but it also could have been an attempt to stop the spread of the story, which was blanketing the surrounding areas. After questioning witnesses and Agnes herself and analyzing the rapidly decaying cat, he declared the animal to be a normal cat. He wrote that the cat contained the full length, thickness and bigness of the same, measured by a pair of compasses. He even went so far as to do a post-mortem procedure on another cat and outlined the stark similarities to Agnes' cat. Others were also not fooled. In February 1569, he passed on a drawing of the cat, the results of the examination of the cat and another cat as comparison and full transcripts of testimonies. This package of information was then passed to William Cecil, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, who shared it with Edmund Grindel, Bishop of London, in August 1569. Anderson also passed on his opinion of the situation. It appeared plainly to be a counterfeit matter, but yet we cannot extort confessions of the manner of doings. Elizabethan England was highly religious and conservative. The community was divided between Catholics and Protestants, and there were strong beliefs that the devil was very much at work amongst them. Bad things happened to women who became pregnant out of wedlock. During court testimonies, Agnes revealed that she had tried to kill herself. This is not surprising, for a woman in her circumstances did not have many options. Thus, people speculate that Agnes fabulated stories to try to cover up the truth. Her tales did have a common thread. In each, she was almost always the victim of someone or something else. Perhaps this allowed her to avoid the shame and receive the care and attention that she did. Had she told the truth, she probably would have lost her employment and found it difficult to ever obtain another job. Although her stories were inconsistent at best, they were not all that far fetched for an ultra superstitious society. This is likely the reason officials gave Agnes Bowker's cat story a great deal of attention, court time, and investigative manpower. Agnes undoubtedly was pregnant. Testimonies indicated that Agnes lied to Joan Dunmau when she told her that she had had a baby and that her baby was in the care of a nurse. She also claimed that she gave birth to a stillborn baby. So what really happened to her real baby? There are two lines of thought. Some people think she committed infanticide. The others believed Agnes really did have a monster cat baby as a portent, something terrible to come as a result of the evil sins the tutors had committed. Nobody knows whatever happened to Agnes. Either she was very simple-minded and gave a genuinely confounding story, or she played herself off as a victim so convincingly that she suffered few consequences. Nonetheless, her curious story, so bizarre and remarkable in nature, has survived over 450 years. In recent decades, the United States has become a world leader in gun violence, particularly mass shootings. Sadly, it seems like every few months that one troubled person will take out their anger or hatred on a large group of people and do so with a gun. But when did this begin? Murder has been a part of the human experience since the beginning, and gun violence is nothing new. But when exactly did this large-scale practice of mass shootings begin, at least in the U.S.? While there may be no easy answer, some believe it all started with a man named Howard Unruh. On September 6, 1949, Howard Unruh walked through his hometown of Camden, New Jersey and fatally shot 13 people in just 12 minutes. It quickly became known as The Walk of Death, and it may also very well be the first mass shooting in American history. Many experts believe Howard Unruh, born in Camden, January 21, 1921, had always shown signs of being disturbed, all the way back to his early childhood. A psychiatric evaluation performed after the shooting showed he had had a rather prolonged period of toilet training as a child and hadn't walked or talked until he was 16 months old. At the time, his late blooming didn't strike anyone as being odd, though post-arrest evaluations seized on these details. But aside from his delayed maturity, Howard Unruh hadn't displayed any significantly unusual behaviors. His parents separated when he was young, and he and his younger brother James were raised by their mother Frida afterward. His school records showed that he was shy and had ambitions to work for the government. After high school, Unruh joined the army and was deployed to serve in the European Theater of World War II. Certain incidents from his time there would likewise later be looked back upon as signs of his being disturbed. While his commanders reported that Howard Unruh was a competent soldier and a good marksman, it was his personal behavior that worried others. While in combat, Unruh kept a diary in which he recorded every German soldier he killed. He would note the time, date and circumstance and describe the aftermath and the body in incredible, gory detail. James would later recall that after returning from the war, his brother was never the same. Indeed, after coming home in 1945, Howard Unruh spent four miserable years living with his mother in Camden, slowly turning into an even more disturbed and psychotic young man. During the four years between leaving the army in 1945 and his walk of death in 1949, Howard Unruh spent his time keeping track of every perceived personal affront made against him and thinking of ways to make the offenders pay. Two persistent sources of perceived affronts were neighbors Maurice and Rose Cohen, who owned the pharmacy below Unruh's home and whose backyard abutted his. They'd squabbled over a gate that he'd put up between their yards. Rose had yelled at Unruh about the volume of his music and Maurice had reportedly called the indeed homosexual Unruh a queer. For this, and plenty of other affronts both real and imagined, Howard Unruh was about to get his revenge. On the evening of September 5, 1949, Howard Unruh put himself to sleep the same way he had every night for the past four years, by running through the laundry list of people, mostly his neighbors, who he felt had offended him in all the ways he could make them pay. He was particularly angry that night, because when he'd arrived home he'd noticed that the garden gate that he'd recently installed between his yard and the Cohen's had been broken. For Unruh, who had slowly been becoming unhinged, this was the final straw. Tomorrow he would do what he'd been dreaming of for years, get revenge on all those who had upset him. The next morning, September 6, Unruh awoke to breakfast being prepared by his mother, as usual, and as usual the two squabbled over a small matter. However, this particular squabble appeared to have escalated as Unruh's mother stormed out of the home that she shared with her son and left for a neighbor's house at around 9.10am. Ten minutes later, Howard Unruh emerged from the house, armed with a German Luger P08, a 9mm pistol he had purchased in Philadelphia for less than $40. First, on his kill list, was a local shoemaker named John Pilarchik, who he shot and killed instantly. Next, Unruh walked over to the local barber shop, where proprietor Clark Hoover was cutting the hair of a 6-year-old boy named Orris Smith, who sat atop an old carousel horse as Hoover worked while the boy's mother sat nearby. Unruh shot the boy first, then Hoover. He ignored the mother. Back on the street, Unruh shot seemingly aimlessly at a boy in a window who managed to avoid the shot. Then Unruh turned his attention to a tavern across the street, into which he fired multiple shots, though he himself didn't actually go inside. Witnesses would later recall Unruh walking carelessly through the street, almost meandering with a stoic look on his face as he fired shots into the bar. Shockingly, no one in the tavern was hurt. After the tavern, Howard Unruh headed to the local drugstore, the workplace of perhaps his most sought-after targets, Maurice Cohen and his wife Rose. While he was on his way to the drugstore, a bystander accidentally walked into Unruh. Unruh shot him without a second thought. The Cohen's saw Unruh coming but they weren't quick enough. Cohen's wife Rose, who had been hiding in a closet, was shot several times. Cohen's mother, Minnie, who had been attempting to call the police was also shot. Finally, Unruh shot Maurice, who had attempted to escape onto the roof. The shot propelled Maurice off the roof and onto the pavement below. Still, though, Howard Unruh wasn't finished. He shot a passerby in a car who had slowed down at the site of Cohen's body on the street. He then turned around and shot at another car, killing the driver and one of the two passengers. Finally, he made his way to the tailor shop in search of his final two victims. Unfortunately, the tailor wasn't home, so Unruh settled for shooting his wife. Then, in what he would admit was his only mistake that day, Unruh shot at what he thought was a shadow, but turned out to be a two-year-old child playing with a toy. By the end of his walk of death, a mere 12 minutes from start to finish, Howard Unruh had killed 12 people and injured four. One of the injured would later die from his wounds, bringing the death toll of what may have been American history's first mass shooting to 13. Following the unintentional killing of the two-year-old child and knowing police had been alerted and were on their way, Howard Unruh ran back to his home and barricaded himself in. By then, the police had surrounded the area and were intent on bringing Unruh in alive. At the time, there was little police protocol in place for such an incident. Should they enter the home? Should they wait for him to come out? Should they simply open fire? Across town, while the police plotted their next move, local newspaper editor Philip Buxton, who had heard of the commotion, got an idea. Looking up Unruh's phone number in the phone book, he simply called the man. And, to his surprise, Howard Unruh answered. Buxton recorded the transcript of the call. At this point, Buxton heard gunfire in or near the Unruh home. Then the voice trails off. It was then that police decided what to do. Crawling up to the roof, police dropped tear gas into Unruh's home through a window. Shortly after, he expressed his intent to surrender. As he walked out, the police patted him down and cuffed him. One asked him just what he had been thinking. What's the matter with you, he demanded? You a psycho? I'm no psycho, Howard Unruh replied. I have a good mind. A police investigation followed Howard Unruh's arrest, though it was hardly necessary. He confessed immediately and took full responsibility for the shootings. He gave the police a detailed description of what had happened, and police noted the same careless, stoic attitude witnesses had reported seeing in Unruh as he shot up the tavern. At that point, during the interview, just after the arrest, one of the police officers noticed blood pooling on the floor under Unruh's chair. Sometime during the day, Unruh wasn't quite sure when he had been shot in the leg. He was taken to the hospital, though the bullet could not be recovered. Instead, he was patched up and shipped off to the psychiatric unit at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. Over the course of his stay, dozens of psychiatrists attempted to figure out what drove him to kill, though none were entirely successful. The farthest they got was getting Unruh to admit that what he had done was wrong. Murders of sin, he told them, and I should get the chair. But alas, Unruh would never truly answer for that sin. In 2009, Howard Unruh died in the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. His last words were reportedly, I'd have killed a thousand if I had enough bullets. Never having stood trial for what may have been the first modern mass shooting in American history. Up next, I'll share an account of a large dragon reportedly living about 40 miles south of London. Boxer John Chicken Divine ended up spending a lot of time in the brig, more so than in the ring and thus began his career of crime. A battle-hardened Marine camping with his fellow soldiers is engulfed in fear at a terrifying figure in the nighttime brush. These stories end more when Weird Darkness returns. He is young and intelligent and highly trained. He is Eric Banfeld, shipwrecked on a long-forgotten colony world where brawn and brute strength are more valued than knowledge, physically untrained and emotionally unprepared in the barest skills of survival. He seems compelled to spend a short and very unpleasant life as a half-naked savage worked like a beast of burden on a world so sunk into barbarism that its inhabitants have no concept of the wheel. It's either that or die is only possible chance. His only hope of becoming one with the folk is to become a singer or teller of stories. But in Eric Banfeld's case, he must be a singer of lies. Singer of Lies, a science fantasy novel by Michael R. Collins. You're a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. In 1614, a pamphlet was published in London, England with the rather alarming news that a large serpent or dragon was apparently living in St Leonard's Forest near Horsham, about 40 miles south of London. The pamphlet entitled True and Wonderful begins with an admission that some stories printed in pamphlets previously had been false, but states that hopefully the readers would understand that this pamphlet was not one of those. It then talked a bit about some known attributes of serpents in general and some brief mentions of historical accounts of strange serpents and or dragons. Then the pamphlet moved on to its primary topic, the strange reptile, then inhabiting St Leonard's Forest. There was a spot in the forest near a connyworn or rabbitworn of about three to four square miles in which the creature roamed, which encompassed a place called Fagate. The animal was also seen within half a mile of Horsham at one point. The animal was about nine feet long, with a thick middle and thinner neck and tail. It had two odd bumps on its back that were thought to be the start of a pair of wings. It was believed to have legs and it was observed to be able to move about as fast as a running man, but it was also known to leave a slimy trail wherever it went, and this slime smelled powerfully noxious. The creature's neck was estimated to be one Ella long or about 45 inches and had a ring of white scales around it. The scales on its back were blackish and what little had been seen of its belly seemed to be red. The creature would lift its head straight up on its long neck to scan about whenever it was disturbed. The observations had to have been made at a great distance. However, as the pamphlet states, the serpent slash dragon could spit its poison up to about 64 feet. An unnamed man and woman had been walking in the forest and had apparently gotten too close to the creature, for their bodies were found in the forest, poisoned and greatly swollen. In addition, one man decided he would kill the serpent dragon by setting his two large mastiffs on it. Both mastiffs died in the attempt and the man strategically retreated. Neither the bodies of the people or the bodies of the dogs were preyed upon, so it was assumed that the beast was mainly eating the rabbits in the warren that it was staying near. The pamphlet then ends with the names of two men who claimed to be witnesses to the creature. Is this a true report, though, of an odd creature? Contrary to common belief, most reports of claimed actual dragons often noted these creatures were unusually poisonous, which the account above nicely reflects. On the other hand, no further report of this beast was ever made that I can find at least, and though the author stated that it was a true and currently living beast, the pamphlet was published in London 40 miles away from where the animal was possibly living. This distance was such that transportation of that day would largely prevent most of the pamphlet's readers from being able to trot off to check on the veracity of the report if they were inclined to do so at their own risk. Never in the history of nicknames has there ever been a more misleading one than John Chicken Divine. Born in Waterford, Ireland, Divine was a living embodiment of the Notre Dame fighting Irish mascot. He began his fighting career by attacking his shipmates while still a sailor in 1863, earning time in the brig. By 1865, Divine gave up the seagoing life and began working as a runner for James Shanghai Kelly, San Francisco's legendary crimp. Crimping or shanghying, kidnapping sailors and selling them to ship captains, was the economic engine that powered the Barbary Coast. It was a team sport. Runners would lure or strong-armed sailors into the boarding houses or saloons owned by the crimps. The sailor would then be rendered unconscious through drugs or violence and sold to ship captains. Divine's expertise with blackjacks and brass knuckles made him indispensable to Kelly and he soon became Kelly's top runner. Divine received his nickname when a boxing manager called him a Shanghai Chicken in reference to the bird's legendary pugnacity. The name stuck and Divine became known as the Chicken. He won his first two fights, but after being knocked unconscious in a fight that lasted 106 rounds, Divine retired from the ring. Divine's capacity for alcohol and mayhem were legendary. Between 1865 and 1871, he was a one-man crime wave. He was arrested 79 times, 30 times for drunkenness, but spent only two years in jail. He had friends in both high and low places. His friends in high places got the charges reduced, while his friends in low places made the witnesses disappear. Divine's luck changed, however, on June 13, 1868. He was drinking with Johnny Nyland, another runner, when they learned of Shanghai Kelly's death in Peru. After drinking many toasts to their former employer, the two decided to honor him by attacking sailors. With guns and knives, they invaded a boarding house on Broadway and Front Street and chased the sailors into the street. Nyland stole a huge carving knife as a war prize. Then they decided to visit Billy Maitland's saloon and boarding house. Nyland charged into the saloon, waving the knife while Divine fired his pistol at the bartenders. Maitland, a huge man and a tough fighter, heard the commotion and came down the stairs. He took the carving knife from Nyland and kicked him into the street. As Divine came toward him, holding a gun, Maitland chopped down with the knife and completely severed Divine's hand. Divine later replaced his hand with a hook, which he used to great advantage when fighting. Divine's friends gave him $800 to set up a cigar stand, but he quickly squandered the money and returned to crime. He was arrested 28 times in 1869 alone, including twice for beating Mary Dolan, his common-law wife with whom he had a son. As his drinking got worse, his criminal reputation suffered. In February 1871, he was convicted of stealing three pigs feet and was sent to jail for a month. Later in the year, he fatally wounded August Kemp, a young German to whom he owed $20. Before he died, Kemp identified Divine as his attacker. Divine denied the charges, of course. If they convict me, they will murder a man who is as innocent as a babe unborn, he said. But the jury disagreed. He was convicted and sentenced to death. In jail, awaiting his appeal, Divine tried twice to escape, but was foiled by alert guards. The chicken's crimes and career proved a boon to newspaper circulation. In a three-page article in the San Francisco Call, subheaded pictures from the life of an utterly depraved man, the summary reads, The writer of this piece has sought, for the record, a single good action performed by the chicken while in this city, but his labors have been in vain. On May 16, 1873, Divine's hanging was covered with all the solemnity of a coronation. Eight thousand people stood in the streets outside the jail. Inside the prison, it was standing room only. Every aspect of the execution, his last night, what he ate for his last meal, his attire, were all covered in great detail. He was dressed in a dark speckled cloth suit with black slippers, white stockings, white shirt and collar, and a narrow black silk necktie. Finally, at one o'clock, John Chicken Divine, whose career was an almost unmatched career of crime, stepped into space and met his maker. While serving in the Philippines Marine Corps, I was deployed in the south of the country to a place that has seen countless battles. I was initially assigned administrative work at our battalion HQ, but was rotated to a company that was often on patrol. It was on one of these patrols that I saw something that still weakens my knees even to this day. We often received intelligence reports of enemy sighting. This time, my squad was ordered to verify the report. As is often the case, the patrol took three days of humping in the bush, following any leads and updated reports. It was the second day of our patrol, when intelligence came in, saying that the enemy has moved out and is possibly en route to another island. We were ordered to report back to Company HQ. As it was already evening when the report was received, our squad leader decided to pass the night in the bush and move out early. We were setting perimeter when one of us spotted a faint figure moving slowly at about 70 yards away. With only our squad leader having a night vision goggle, the location was pointed out to him. He had difficulty locating the figure through the NVG, so he sent two fireteams downrange. I was in one of the fireteams. The figure was quite visible, even with only the moon illuminating the otherwise pitch black surroundings. As we slowly approached and at around 50 yards, the figure seemed to me to be gliding rather than moving, and I thought it was strange. Closing in at around 20 yards, we saw that the figure was not only gliding, it was actually floating about two feet off the ground. It was gliding erratically, sometimes passing close to our crouched bodies. By this time, I was really scared. My heart was beating so fast, I thought it would pop out of my chest. What made it worse was that we all saw it. The figure was dressed like a normal living person, but he had no face. The best I can describe it is as if the face was erased. Its skin was very pale as if drained of blood. It seemed to have bullet holes across its chest. At one point, it stopped gliding. I looked through my rifle scope and I had the fright of my life when I saw it looking straight back at me with its featureless face. Every hair in my body stood up. I had to fight the urge to run and scream like a girl. Suddenly, the figure just vanished in front of us. I think every one of us was too scared to move. We were eventually ordered to withdraw and return to the perimeter. How I didn't soil my trousers is beyond me. We reported to our squad leader what we saw and he said he believed us. He ordered us to prepare to move out as he radioed for transport. Everyone was quiet in the truck on the way back to company HQ. No one spoke a word. We later found out that each of us who were sent down range had the same experience of being looked at by whatever it was. Our squad leader ordered us to keep the experience to ourselves. I was silent about this until I got out of the military. October is the anniversary of Weird Darkness and we celebrate by raising funds to help people who suffer from depression. Catherine sent in a donation during a previous overcoming the darkness campaign and said, I wish your podcast had been around several years ago. My brother would have loved it and maybe he wouldn't have felt so defeated. Rom committed suicide in October 2012 leaving devastated family and friends. I hope this donation gets the help and support they need and understand others want them to stay in their lives. We all know someone who has been affected by depression or suicide and Catherine's message is the perfect reason for you to give whatever you can this month during our overcoming the darkness fundraiser where 100% of the proceeds are donated to organizations that help people struggling with depression. You can learn more about these organizations and make a donation of any amount at WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. All Things Strange and Macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen.