UFOs & Demons

If you have read my Final Events book, then this new article from Tony Morrill at his Forteania blog may be of interest, as it focuses on the same topic: the "UFOs are demonic" theory.

Spectral Monsters

In a new post at Mysterious Universe, I ponder (as I often do!) on the real nature of the many and varied cryptids of our world (Bigfoot, Nessie and all the rest), and wonder if they might actually be something more (or, paradoxically less) than mere animals of the unknown kind.

Yep, it's going to get the flesh and blood brigade in a state, but a bit of controversy and debate never hurt anyone. Or, if it did, they need to get thicker skins!

Anyway, here's the article...

Early MIB?

In a fascinating new post at his Twilight Language blog, Loren Coleman asks:

"Was one of the earliest 'men in black' fictional tales, about three MIBs, published five years before the turn of the 20th century?"

He continues:

"Perhaps so. This is a significant book written about three men in a secret organization in pursuit of a man 'with spectacles' who possesses a vanished Roman coin denoting important mystic symbolism."

And, for the whole story - which is undeniably essential reading for anyone and everyone with an interest in the MIB mystery - click right here.

It's interesting to note that coins turn up (and sometimes subsequently vanish) in more than a few MIB-themed sagas, including this one from the 1950s and this from the 1970s.

Real Aliens at You Tube

And still on the subject of Brad Steiger, he emailed me a couple of days ago: "Visible Ink Press has released our new video to promote Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds." And here it is...

Cannibals, Zombies, Wendigos

There's a new article from Lee Speigel over at the Huffington Post that addresses those recent weird attacks on people of a cannibal and quasi-zombie nature.

Notably, Brad Steiger's work is cited, and which suggests a potential link with the Wendigo phenomenon. Check it out!

Britain's Big Cats (and Dragons!)

Here's a new post I just came across that deals with the ever-present matter of Britain's ABCs: Alien Big Cats. It's an article (and an accompanying theory) that will, depending on your views on the ABC phenomenon, either provoke nods of agreement or send your blood-pressure soaring!

God Save The CFZ

Jon Downes and the Centre for Fortean Zoology take on the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen. Be afraid; be very afraid...

Cryptozoological Hazards

Sometimes - as I note in my latest Lair of the Beasts post at Mania.com - going public with the details of your encounter of the weird and monstrous kind can provoke a response you might not be expecting...

Kingman, a Crashed UFO, and a Contactee

In a new post at Mysterious Universe, I kick off with the following words:

"Back in 1973, a man named Arthur Stansel – using the alias of Fritz Werner – provided the respected UFO researcher Ray Fowler with an extraordinary and controversial affidavit concerning nothing less than an alleged crashed UFO event in Kingman, Arizona two decades earlier. It went like this…

"'I, Fritz Werner, do solemnly swear that during a special assignment with the U.S. Air Force, on May 21, 1953, I assisted in the investigation of a crashed unknown object in the vicinity of Kingman, Arizona. The object was constructed of an unfamiliar metal which resembled brushed aluminum. It had impacted twenty inches into the sand without any sign of structural damage. It was oval and about 30 feet in diameter. An entranceway hatch had been vertically lowered and opened.”

Here's the rest of the post, which delves into seriously weird ufological territory that involves a crashed UFO and one of the most controversial and derided Contactees of all time (no, his first name wasn't George!).

It Has Begun...

Finally, after years and years of wishing for my dream to come true, it's finally happening!

The rise of the zombies...

Any day now, you'll hear the following on the airwaves: "Reports are coming in that the recently deceased are rising up and attacking the living."

Well, maybe...

And if you think I'm the only member of the Redfern family who thinks zombies are the next big menace, think again! Here's my dad (shirtless at 80 LOL) ready to do battle with one of the walking dead rising out of the ground.

The Pyramids and the Pentagon: Reviewed

Over at The UFO Iconoclasts(s), Rich Reynolds reviews my latest book, The Pyramids and the Pentagon.

In part, Rich says: "Noah’s ark, ancient levitation techniques (use in constructing the monuments of old), the Mayan and Incan ruins, crop circles, vampires, the Philadelphia experiment, dimension hopping, the face on Mars, UFOs (of course), atomic annihilation, immortality, sacred mushrooms, Marian apparitions, Stonehenge, and crop circles are just some – some! – of the encyclopedic-like accounts that Nick has gathered for this book."

And you can find the full review right here.

Search for Hidden Beasts

This coming Sunday night, at 8PM Central, I'll be on Ken Gerhard's Search for Hidden Beasts show, where, I'm sure, we'll get into a good debate about all manner of cryptozoological creatures!

Yep, that's me and Ken above in an artistic rendition showing us ready to blast a Bigfoot or several!

Here's the link to Ken's show.

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!

   

Micah and the MIB

And we also have Micah Hanks (pictured above) digging into the Men in Black controversy today, in a new post at Mysterious Universe.

Micah says: "The MIBs depicted on the silver screen appear as savvy heroes, of course, who go about proliferating an alien cover-up and flashing deneuralizers at confused bystanders (for their own good, of course). Quite the contrary, the legends within UFO circles that involve so-called Men in Black certainly play a darker role, and are at times even referred to as one of the more scary and menacing aspects of UFO-related phenomenon."

And here's where you can find Micah's full post...

A Memo on the MIB

The Men in Black mystery continues to feature prominently in the wake of the release of Men in Black 3.

Here's an interesting new post on a MIB-themed memo circulated by John Keel of The Mothman Prophecies fame back in the 60s...

Mermaids!

Did anyone watch the Animal Planet's Mermaids show a couple of night's ago?

Well, if you did, what can I say, aside from the fact that (A) it was  highly entertaining; (B) it was an example of "mockumentary" at its finest; and (C) if you didn't take it seriously (as, incredibly, some actually did!), it was all good fun.

Doubtless, there will be some who were angered by the whole thing. Others were maybe baffled by the show and its intent. But, there's no denying it has become a big talking point on the Net, as typing the word "Mermaids + Animal Planet" into a certain, famous search-engine will quickly reveal!

MIB and the Guardian

Britain's Guardian newspaper delves into the weird world of the Men in Black...

Celebrities and the FBI

Back in 2007, my Celebrity Secrets book was published and revealed the extent to which - for decades - the FBI closely, and secretly, spied on a whole host of celebrities - of TV, movies, books and music.

The reasons were, of course, the usual ones: drugs, Mob links, communist ties, sex with politicians, and much more of an entertainingly scandalous nature!

Well, the FBI has recently added some new celebrity secrets to its Vault website, and here they are:

1. New material on John Lennon. I wrote about the FBI/Lennon file in Celebrity Secrets, but the new papers add to what we know about official interest in the dead Beatle.

2. The Orson Welles FBI file was actually released some time ago, but is newly-posted online for those that may want to read it.

3. And here's the 10-part FBI dossier on Charlie Chaplin, also now online.

4. Finally, the following may be of interest: In Celebrity Secrets I included a chapter on the strange story of the FBI, espionage and adventure, and Ernest Hemingway. It so happens that Loren Coleman has a cool new post on Hemingway that you can find right here. And, here's one more from Loren, on the "Hemingway Curse", an article from 2007 that is newly-updated.

Bigfoot and Telepathy

A controversial issue guaranteed to create an inflammatory debate - and here's where you can find the story!

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...