John Keel, Mothman & Albert Bender

Picked up these at last weekend's Mothman Festival: (A) a DVD collection of old and rare John Keel lectures (many on Mothman); and (B) a 1962 collection of Albert Bender's "Space Review" newsletter. Not bad!

Albert Bender and the MIB - Again

As per my post of yesterday on Albert Bender and the Men in Black, here's my lengthier piece on the latest development, at Mysterious Universe.

It begins as follows and you can find it right here...

"Back in the early 1950s, a new aspect was added to the growing UFO phenomenon: the Men in Black. Yes, there were one or two pre-1950s MIB encounters (such as the saga of the sinister character that terrorized a certain Harold Dahl, one of the key figures in the notorious UFO event at Maury Island in June 1947). But, overall, it was the 1950s that saw the rise of the MIB.

"We pretty much have one person to thank for that rise. His name was Albert Bender. From his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bender created the International Flying Saucer Bureau, and went on to publish a newsletter/journal called Space Review. It was filled with information on then-recent UFO encounters, letters from fellow researchers, and much more of a flying saucer nature."

MIB, Albert Bender, and Space Review

For those who may be interested, there's a new, bound collection of Albert Bender's early 1950s newsletter, Space Review, now available. Bender being the guy who played a major role in the development of the Men in Black mystery.

Here's the link...

I have written a more extensive piece on all this for the Mysterious Universe website and which will be published in the next day or two.

In the meantime, I can go one better than Bender's journals: here's one example of a number of Bender's letters I own.

This one (framed on my office wall) was sent from Bender to New Zealand researcher Harold Fulton in November 1953, and makes references to Bender's phone being "tapped," and things that will "disturb the learned ones."