MIB In Brazil...

Here's a bunch of photos from my week at the UFO Forum at Foz do Iguacu, Brazil (got back home yesterday). It was a great time, made many new friends, and spoke on the subject of the recently published Brazilian edition of my 2011 book, The Real Men In Black.

MIB: When books become dangerous...

Probably the strangest article I've ever written, split into two parts. And here's how it all starts...


"There’s no doubt that over the years I’ve written some weird articles on equally weird subjects. But, this 2-part one just might be the strangest of all. In the last few years I have seen a trend develop that seems to be increasing. It basically goes as follows. I am getting more and more reports from people who have read my books and who, as a result and in the direct aftermath, were seemingly targeted by the very same supernatural phenomena I was writing about. No, I’m not kidding.

"It all began back in 2010, when I was promoting my second book on the MIB, titled The Real Men in Black. One of the things I dug into in the book was the matter of MIB and telephone interference. We’re talking about strange voices on the line, weird electronic noises, and hang-up calls. Several people contacted me to report they were experiencing the exact same thing – but only after they had read the book."

Here's part-1.

And here's part-2.

The photo at the top of the page relates to one particular piece of weirdness in part-2...

 

About My Books

Over the past week or so, a couple of dozen people have asked me about three forthcoming books from me, which are advertised on Amazon as being published in August.

They are actually new editions (and published by a different company) of 3 of my older books, The Real Men in Black, The NASA Conspiracies, and Monster Files.

So, aside from the name changes and the cover images, they are exactly the same books.

The MIB Get Effed Up

Last night I was on EffedUpStories radio (is there a better name for a radio show? Probably not!).

The subject: my book, The Real Men in Black.

You can find the show here as a podcast.

And here at YouTube.

A lot of ground was covered, such as (a) the case of Albert Bender; (b) the parallels between the MIB and vampires; (c) MIB and connections with Ouija boards; (d) the Mothman saga of Point Pleasant, West Virginia; (e) the creepy and "dead"-looking appearance of the MIB; and (f) a great deal more of a sinister and weird nature...

 

MIB Invade Finland

Well, sort of...

My 2011 book, The Real Men in Black, has just been published in Finland.

You can find the details right here...

Lecturing on the MIB

It's a while away yet, but I'll be speaking at the MUFON Philadelphia conference on the weekend of October 4 to 6. The subject, my book, The Real Men in Black.

 

Here's the link to the event.

The Real Men in Black: Chinese Edition

For those who might be interested, a Chinese edition of my 2011 book, The Real Men in Black, has just been published.

Don't ask me where you can get it from though, as I have no idea! Aside from going to China, of course!

Quoting Moseley: Contactees and MIB

In the wake of the sad passing of Jim Moseley, I thought I would share with you a few notable quotes that Jim made to me on the several occasions when I interviewed him for my books.

The first one comes from my Contactees book and focuses on Jim's words (highly insightful words, I think it's fair to say) on the controversial Contactee George Adamski, which, I'm pretty sure, got close to the truth about the man who (allegedly!) met the Space Brothers.

Jim said...

“When I met him, Adamski was in his classic mode of the great guru. You could go to him at Palomar without an appointment and he would be sitting there, holding court, and talking to all the people that came in. He seemed like a pleasant sort. He couldn’t prove anything: you had the choice of believing him or not. Now, whether he was genuine or not, he did have a background with the Royal Order of Tibet. Then he wrote his science fiction story, Pioneers of Space, which turned out to be very similar to his later UFO book. I don’t think he literally believed everything he said. But I think what he said was in-line with a personal philosophy that he may very well have taken seriously."

Jim continued:

“I think with Adamski it was like this: if I say ‘I’m Jim Moseley, and I believe in world-peace, love and saving the environment,’ people won’t care. Why should they? But if I say that a spaceman called Orthon told me that we should love each other; well, that certainly gives it more meaning. I think that is one of the big things behind the Contactee movement. They believed in what they were saying; but they needed a higher authority to get it across. Like in religion, you need God. Adamski needed Orthon.”

Moving on, back in September 2010, I interviewed Jim about his views on Albert Bender’s now-legendary claims to have been visited by the Men in Black in the early 1950s.

As the interview progressed, Moseley practically shouted down the telephone to me that: “This is funny: there’s something wrong with the phone here! The longer I talk the more static I get!"

As I noted in The Real Men in Black regarding this odd case of phone interference:

"...Perhaps the souls of [Gray] Barker and [John] Keel decided to turn the tables, and duly partook in a few tricks from the other-side on Moseley. Or, maybe, the Men in Black – so oddly keen on playing disruptive games with our telephones – were engaging in a few Trickster-like shenanigans of their very own on Moseley and me. Given that Moseley is skeptical of much of the MIB lore, possibly, in their own unique way, the Tricksters were trying to tell him that he should not be quite so skeptical, after all."

Well, maybe, now, Jim finally knows the truth behind the MIB, the Contactees and all the rest!

New Page at Paradigm

Over at the New Page Books blog, you can find an overview of their time spent last week at the Minneapolis-based Paradigm Symposium. As you may know, New Page have published many of my books (including The Real Men in Black and Contactees), but this was actually the first time I was able to meet NP's Michael and Laurie Pye in person. Needless to say, a great time ensued!

Here's the link to the post.

Reviewing the real MIB

Well, after 9 days on the road lecturing (Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas), during which I had no Internet access (which actually felt very good!), it's time to get back to it.

Over at The Examiner, "Frank Zero" reviews my The Real Men in Black book, and says in partL

"Nick Redfern does great work once again, this time focused on the Men (and Women) In Black. The book is a great blend of case files, analysis, comparison, and interviews that Nick conducted personally. It also follows some of the work of the great researchers in this area like John Keel. All in all, the MIB phenomenon beckons many more questions than it does provide answers, however there are some visual and auditory consistencies in their behavior that make these strange Dark City analogues recognizable."

Men In Noir

For those who are in France, from France, or speak French, the French edition of my book, The Real Men in Black, is now available right here.

Rich Reynolds: MIB Thoughts

In a new post at The UFO Iconoclast(s), Rich Reynolds delves deep into the puzzle of the Men in Black, and suggests that, perhaps, evidence of their sinister actions dates way before many have even begun to suspect. But, they may not have always dressed in black...

Rich kicks off as follows:

"The Men in Black, whom Nick Redfern has documented rather fully in his book, The Real Men in Black, have been with mankind for a lot longer than surmised.

"They ensued right after the dawn of civilization, if The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and various myths have any reportorial accuracy.

"The modern-day MIB phenomenon began with Gray Barker’s introduction of them in his 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

"However, those versed in early religious and mythological tales know that Men in Black types have ponced on humanity well before 1956."

And here's where you can find the rest of Rich's thought-provoking post.

Allen Greenfield Q&A

When my book The Real Men in Black was published last year, one of the things I was very pleased to be able to do was to share with the reader the views, thoughts, opinions and experiences of author and ritual magician, Allen Greenfield, relative to the MIB puzzle.

Well, there's an excellent new interview with Allen now available online - thanks to Chris Knowles of the Secret Sun. You can find the info to this lengthy Q&A right here.

Definitely not one to be missed if you are fan of Allen's work or want to find out more about him - which you should!

Mothman Vs. Mothra

Late last night I watched, for the first time in years, the Japanese "monster movie" Mothra.

And, on doing so, a few things occurred to me that suggested uncanny parallels between Japan's famous, flying, mothy monster and John Keel's acclaimed title, The Mothman Prophecies:

1. Mothra was released in Japan on July 30, 1961. Although Mothman is perceived as being very much a beast of the mid-1960s, John Keel's book tells of a summer 1961 encounter with a winged humanoid on Route 2 along the Ohio River that involved "a woman prominent in civic affairs in Point Pleasant, West Virginia."

2. In the movie, Mothra - after breaking through a dam - causes the collapse of a bridge. And no-one with a sound knowledge of the Mothman affair, surely, needs to be told that a collapsing bridge is a key and integral part of The Mothman Prophecies.

3. The film focuses on Mothra rescuing and acting as protector to a pair of foot-tall, fairy-like girls who are played in the movie by The Peanuts, a Japanese girl-group of that era. John Keel's classic book includes several notable references to fairies, including the way in which centuries-old encounters with such entities clearly parallel more modern day incidents with enigmatic creatures of a fantastic nature.

Fiction anticipating fact? The strange work of a cosmic trickster? Or just a case of coincidence and me seeing something significant that isn't quite so significant, after all?

Whatever the answers to those questions, in pondering on all this, I am reminded of the words of author Colin Bennett, who told me, when I interviewed him for my book, The Real Men in Black: "When we imagine, we create a form of life.”

Is that what happened here? Did a famous monster movie provoke such fascination that a real-life equivalent stepped out of the collective unconscious and imagination and into the heart of the real world?

Strange Tales of the MIB

As some of you (but probably not many, at this stage) will know, I am currently working on yet another book on the Men in Black puzzle, for which I've got about 30,000 words complete so far. And in terms of final word-count, this is likely to be a very big one, and is significantly different to my earlier MIB-themed output.

Its title: Strange Tales of the Men in Black.

My earlier MIB-based titles have all been filled with files, witness reports, and data, but it was very much the case that I interviewed people, transcribed their accounts, and then presented the data in chapter format, partly in their words, and partly with me relating their accounts in summarized format.

But, it’s fair to say that my latest book on the Men in Black is somewhat of a radical departure from that format, in the sense that I am specifically letting the witnesses – certainly, the most important people when it comes to trying to understand the nature of the MIB phenomenon – tell their own stories, solely in their own words, and regardless of whether that's 500 words or 5,000.

And there won't be any chapters, as such. Rather, each case will have its own section - whether long or short. After all, there's no rhyme or reason to the MIB, so I figured why not have that reflected in the layout of the book?!

My role, in this new book - Strange Tales of the Men in Black - is merely to introduce you to the plethora of players in the seemingly never-ending saga of the Men in Black, have them relate the amazing facts - in wholly unedited and uninterrupted form - and then I;ll try and come to some form of conclusion with respect to each and every case cited in post-case "Comments from Nick"-style sections.

So, if you have (A) had a MIB experience, (B) have a theory about who or what they might really be, and/or (C) want to offer a comment or observation on anything MIB-linked, and are willing to share that info, do let me know, and I will be very pleased to hear from you.

I wish I could afford to pay each and every one who is willing to have their account included, but (despite what some have said and even written!), the field of a freelance writer is not a rich one! I will, however, send every contributor a free, signed copy of the book on publication, thank them in the Acknowledgments, and include any web links/blog links etc that the person may like to have included.

And if that appeals: You can reach me right here.

And for a bit of background about how I got interested in the MIB controversy and my previous output on the subject, here you go:

I was eleven years old when I was introduced to the menacing and macabre world of the enigmatic Men in Black. It was a typically bleak and windswept English evening in the late autumn of 1976 when they first darkened my door.

On the night in question – wide of eye and full of youthful excitement and anticipation - I eagerly began reading the disturbing pages of John Keel’s classic title, The Mothman Prophecies, which told of distinctly strange goings-on at Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the mid-to-late 1960s.


Strange goings-on? Hell, outright supernatural foulness and malignancy would be far more apt terminology! A glowing-eyed, winged-monster, surreal reports of contact with enigmatic alien intelligences on lonely, moonlit, tree-shrouded roads, occult phenomena plaguing the town, and lives manipulated and transformed in ways near-unimaginable were the order of the day - as was the brooding, predatory, and repeated manifestation of the dreaded MIB.

For reasons that I have never truly been able to fathom, from that very day onwards I became particularly fascinated by the Men in Black, their silencing of UFO witnesses, their near-ethereal presence in our world, and, of course, their overwhelming and mysterious elusiveness.

Who, or what, were they? From where did they originate? What did they want of us? Why were they so deeply intent on preventing Flying Saucer-seekers from learning the truth about UFOs? Even as a child, such questions plagued and tormented my mind. And, the further and deeper I dug into the world of Forteana, the more I found myself attempting to penetrate the veil of unsettling darkness and hostility that seemed to forever surround the MIB.

In the immediate years that followed my reading of John Keel’s legendary study of Mothman, I sought out just about as many works on the MIB as was conceivably possible. And, at the absolute top of my list – in joint first-place - were Gray Barker’s 1956 title They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers and a small, overwhelmingly bizarre book titled Flying Saucers and the Three Men. It was penned in 1962 by a curious and undeniably paranoid character named Albert Bender, without who there simply would be no MIB puzzle – period.

Barker, a skilled, atmospheric writer with a flair for all-things dramatic, gothic, dark and stormy, was the perfect person to address the MIB mystery. But, he would never have been in a position to do so had it not been for the eccentric Bender – who, in 1953, was allegedly silenced by a trio of black-garbed, glowing-eyed entities from some strange netherworld after getting too close to the truth about Flying Saucers.

For someone now just barely in their teens, I found both Barker’s and Bender’s books and tales to be even more captivating than those of Keel. Of course, as my teens became my twenties, and then my thirties, my views on the MIB phenomenon changed, in some ways subtly, but in other ways far less so. But there was one thing that never did alter: My earnest wish to solve the puzzle of the true nature, origin and intent of the Men in Black.

Since those now-long-gone days of my childhood, I have pursued the MIB on a scale that has far exceeded my quests for Bigfoot, the Chupacabra, and the truth about Roswell combined.


My first book, A Covert Agenda, which was published in 1997, detailed a number of curious MIB-style encounters in the British Isles from the 1950s onwards.

One year later, my follow-up title The FBI Files, detailed what the Bureau knew about the MIB puzzle.

My 2003 title, Strange Secrets, included a chapter on the little-known issue of government documents on the Men in Black.

Three years later, I penned On the Trail of the Saucer Spies, which was a full-length study of the secret surveillance of certain elements of the UFO research community by MIB-type characters in government.


In 2010, I contributed material to Curse of the Men in Black: Return of the UFO Terrorists, penned by John Stuart and Tim Beckley.

Then, in 2011, my The Real Men in Black hit the bookshelves. This latter title specifically addressed the paranormal side of the MIB phenomenon, with a great deal of page-space focused upon the possibility that the darkly-clad ones might be time-travelers, energy-sucking vampires, Tulpas, Trickster-style entities, or even demons from Hell – or maybe all of the above!

And, in that same year, I was very pleased to be asked to write a new Foreword to an updated edition of Gray Barker’s 1983 book: M.I.B.: The Secret Terror Among Us.

In other words, while I have never been fortunate enough to have received a late-night visit from the MIB (Yes, I would consider such a visit to be fortunate, as I might then be able to finally answer the riddle of who they really are!), they have certainly got their grips into me in other ways.

Having written about, and pondered so extensively on, the Men in Black, would I consider my research in this area to be a full-blown obsession? Maybe so; I can’t really deny such a possibility, as much as I would dearly prefer to.

But, if an obsession it is, then I’m certainly not the first – nor will I probably be the last – to be pulled, magnet-like, into the eye of the MIB hurricane. Bender, Barker, Keel: they all came before me, and all three became truly enveloped by MIB high-strangeness.

Will Strange Tales of the Men in Black be my last word on the MIB mystery? I'm 100 percent certain it won't!

   

MIB: Development and Perception

Loren Coleman has a very good new post on the MIB, titled MIBs: Silencers vs Killers, which shows the fascinating way in which the imagery of the MIB has developed and evolved over the years.

Indeed, a solid argument can be made that the MIB of old - the pale, scrawny and menacing types that seem far more like Nosferatu than James Bond - have been eclipsed by the "secret agent" angle.

Of course, much of that results from the phenomenal success of the Men in Black movies. But, it's worth noting that - as Loren's article makes very clear via providing us with good imagery of the MIB - there has been a definite change in perception regarding the Men in Black.

I also think a good argument can be made that - as I note in my The Real Men in Black and On the Trail of the Saucer Spies books - there are at least two category of MIB: government and "something else."

And, I think officialdom has some degree of knowledge of this "other" group, even if they don't have all the answers regarding who or "what" they are. And just to confuse things even further, there seems to be evidence that the Intel/military world is not beyond occasionally exploiting and using the weirder MIB motif to hide and camouflage its own actions.

More on all this in a later post...

The Men in Black Invade France!

Well...sort of...!

Actually, the blog-post title is intended to let people know that a French edition of my The Real Men in Black book is now available. And you can find all the info right here...

The Men in Black - Fact & Fiction

With the release of Men in Black 3, over at Mania.com I take a look at the MIB in the real world. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones they ain't!

In fact, the real MIB are just about your worst nightmare ever...