Connecting The Dots, A Classic Story

Introduction:

This is an example of a long-time UFO witness, the telling and re-telling of the story, and the evolution of the witness’s experiences over time in relation to other events around the world, coinciding with the main witness’s experiences. We also discuss a strange connection between the case, the mysterious Men In Black, and the still often mysterious military. The purpose is to explore the psychological factors alongside the mystery, connect the dots between similar experiences, and delve into the issues surrounding the research of mysterious subjects. We, however, end up with some striking coincidences that leave us wondering.

UFOlogy has long been plagued with the issue of creating mysteries more often than solving them. Part of the problem is the nature of the subject itself—it is a mysterious, intriguing, and often awe-inspiring topic that ignites the imagination like a spark to a powder keg. Inaccuracies in reporting sightings, errors in the re-telling of sightings past, sensationalism, and the entertainment factor has made the topic into a hodge-podge of anecdotal evidence, heresay, stories, and thousands of pages of research that settle upon the general consensus, “we don’t know.”

UFOs in BC. Canada, fall of 1967

UFOlogy has historically been laden with hoaxers and wild imaginations, from enthusiastic writers and entertainers such as George Adamski and Gray Barker, to the average overly-imaginative witness with access to a computer and internet.

Before the internet, however, these “average witnesses” relied on phoning in their reports—contacting the press, radio stations, and even the military in response to a sighting or experience. This is precisely what a witness in 1967, after seeing a half upside-down saucer with a half-orange on top, did. The story, re-told on a website called UFO BC in the late 90s, follows a witness with a long history of sightings.

RW, as we’ll call him in this writing, was a teenager at the time of the sighting and had both of his parents present during the sighting, which occurred in August, 1967 at night. “A shooting star don’t look like an upside-down saucer with a half orange on top.” Begins the article in the Columbian newspaper. The witness not only told the newspaper, but also the radio station and RCC Vancouver.


In response, an officer was designated to interview the witness and his parents at their residence. The officer, a first lieutenant, arrived at their house on 18 Sep 1967 (according to the case found in the declassified documents included in over 8,000 pages of Canadian UFO files). The 1998 article on UFO BC describes the event in further detail:

“The witness called the airport regarding this sighting, but no one there could offer any information. R.W. then went to the Columbian newspaper to share his story, who reported it in the next edition, and to R.W.’s dismay, included his name and address. This was soon followed by a telephone call and a visit from a military man, a Sgt. Major, who said he was from Jericho Beach military base. After arriving at the witness’ home, dressed in full uniform, and arriving in a green military car, he asked if he could come in and discuss the sighting with the witness and his parents. He supplied the three of them with note pads and pencils, and asked them to go into separate rooms and draw what they had seen the day of the sighting. They agreed.”

(Re-telling of the story, ufobc.ca...)

The 1998 version of the witness’ story implies the military man behaved in an unusual manner, leaving abruptly taking the sketches and a series of Polaroid photos the witness volunteered with him. According to the official report, the interviewer was not a “Sgt. Major” but was in fact a F/L. Consistent with the story on UFO BC, he did have them go into three separate rooms, sketch the objects, and these sketches were kept and eventually declassified. The UFO BC article fails to mention that the witness and his family had two sightings rather than just one, and both of these sightings are discussed in detail in the declassified pages. Here is one of the pages, for example:


The F/L wasn’t the only person to pay a visit to their residence in response to their UFO reports: (UFO BC again):

“Approximately 2 weeks later they got a visit from an individual described as very tall and lanky with a military type haircut, dark wrap around glasses, and a sickly looking greyish white complexion. He said that he had seen the article in the paper and would like to talk to them about the sighting. The witness and his parents invited him in. When offered some coffee and cookies, he seemed puzzled, and asked "What is this?", to which the mother replied "it’s just coffee." The visitor then gulped the very hot coffee straight down, crumbled the cookies up with his hands, and put them in his mouth! He spoke with a slow, slurred type of speech, and seemed to have something like a British accent. During the conversation he was asked where he was from, to which he replied "Oh, quite a distance from here". He went on to say that he was to have met with the object the day of the sighting, but that he had been ‘late’. Noticing the TV set in the corner, he suddenly seemed apprehensive, pointed at it and asked "What is that?", to which the mother replied, " It’s a television", then proceeded to turn it on. The visitor then quite excitedly said "That’s a communicator! Turn it off!"

This visitor appeared to have shared many traits common to the Men In Black, known as MIBs, an acronym popularized by writer John A. Keel. Physical traits including pale skin, dark sunglasses worn indoors, and lanky builds are commonly reported, as well as behavioral traits including strange eating behaviors and unusual speech patterns. Next post coming up, standby...

It’s interesting to note the time RW experienced his sightings and his encounter with the mysterious tall visitor, the fall of 1967, coincided with the MIB and UFO events around the Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, WV. It would sound at first that this part of the UFO BC article was fabricated whole cloth, but the CFOC declassified report, which includes all of the witness’ (and his parents’) sketches, includes a comment from his mother, who was apparently made “very upset” by another visitor that appeared right after the first sighting. According to the report, this visitor told her the UFOs could kill her:


The 1998 article on UFO BC includes further details of their conversation with the unusual visitor:

“During the course of the remaining conversation, (which was curiously dotted with Biblical quotations) the witness’ mother made a remark about UFOs and said that if they were coming here to harm us, perhaps we should arm ourselves, and shoot at them first. Upon hearing this remark, the visitor became quite upset and said "You could never harm us, we could destroy your world in the blink of an eye, and would not hesitate to do so!" All this time the visitor kept checking his watch, reported as being ‘very fancy’ and on the right hand, then suddenly stood up and said "I must leave now, but may I come back again?" R.W. and his parents replied in the affirmative. He then went to the door, and when the witness and family extended their hands to shake his hand, he did not accept, but simply raised his right hand and walked out the door. Immediately after closing the door, they looked out the front window, but the visitor was nowhere to be seen.”

It must be noted that there are multiple errors in the UFO BC write up, the most obvious being the year and the order of the visits—the UFO BC article states the unusual visitor appeared 2 weeks after the military man, whereas in reality, their strange guest appeared before the military man. These errors are likely due to the fact that the witness was reciting his experiences from memory over the phone, and lost some of the finer details over the years (1967 to 1998).

Men In Black, The Space Race, and Great Showmanship

The 1960s were a time when the world was fascinated with the idea of UFOs and alien visitations. Popular culture ran rampant with movies, radio shows, and television shows devoted to the topic of visitors from other worlds, and the witness himself admitted to the F/L that he occasionally watched “The Invaders” on CTV. Meanwhile, man himself was just beginning his reach into space, Russia and the USA began sending men up on rocket ships in 1961, and a human managed to set foot on the moon in 1969. Space was all the rage, imaginations sparkled with dreams of a space-faring future for humanity, and the idea of someone from somewhere else reaching into the atmosphere of planet earth was an awe-inspiring thought for many. It is without a doubt that the tone of the world at the time had some influence on how unusual events were perceived, but not every unusual sighting can be dismissed as imaginative fluff.

Sometimes, a genuine sighting with multiple witnesses such as the one discussed here, can be embellished with “sprinkles” for effect. Often, witnesses are so excited about what they’ve seen that they “milk” it, note the comment on the CFOC file regarding the over-active imagination of the witness. This does not, however, mean the entire sighting was a fabrication, and does not rule out the possibility of an extraterrestrial, or at least top-secret experimental military origin.

At first, the idea of RW’s first visitor, the “UBC” man who never took off his sunglasses, sharing so many traits in common with the Point Pleasant, WV MIB reports sounds almost too convenient. It’s possible that a newspaper clipping made its way across the thousands of miles between WV and BC, or a friend, relative, or colleague of the witness or his parents got word of the events somehow and relayed it to him, igniting his imagination. His perception would then be skewed in bias, looking for everything “unusual” about any of his visitors in response to the sighting, and dismissing everything “normal.” On the other hand, this person likely did show up, may or may not have been a put-on artist, but his comments did have quite an effect on the witness’s Mother. Why would someone go to the house of a UFO witness, act deliberately strange, frighten the witness, and depart? How many times has this happened? How many of the Point Pleasant MIB reports were the result of the same sort of behavior?

First-thought logic suggests it was a big show put on across the continent, put together by a group of either civilian hoaxers, or even military personnel in an elaborate government psyop which would involve tapping phone lines, harassing witnesses, and possibly even collaborating with activities associated with Project MKUltra (a true government mind control experiment that was exposed in 1973), or something else, perhaps of otherworldly or otherwise non-human origin.

Continuing The Puzzle

The witness, RW, in Surrey, BC, went on to have many more hard-to-explain experiences, some involving further visits with the Men In Black, all the way up until the year 2001.

In 2000, he saw another saucer-type object, this time described as “thimble-shape.” The object was described to move left, right, up, down all at a high speed in a small area. It had a bright white light underneath it with a bluey-green neon type light in the center, which felt warm to the witness despite the cold night air. It had orange and red lights around its perimeter, a bright white light on top, and produced a whirry “jet-like” noise. The object eventually stopped for about 30 seconds, took off crossing over the Canada Way, then disappeared. (ufobc.ca...)

A couple weeks later, he claimed to experience another unidentified flying object, this time shaped like a regular airplane, but it was enormous—its wingspan was in the neighborhood of 300’ and its length was about a city block. It had a V-shaped tail, eight engines (four on each side), was black, gray, silver in color and had a red ‘Z’ on the tail section. The lights from the windows were brilliantly bright—it had two rows of windows in the front (which were round), and three rows in the back (which were oblong.) The craft was slowly hedgehopping over his neighborhood, floating along like a balloon. It produced a rumbling locomotive type sound. The sighting lasted about 15 minutes according to the write up on UFO BC, ending with the aircraft banking sharp right and disappearing. Next post coming soon, standby...

Gray, unmarked aircraft behaving strangely have been a regularly reported occurrence. John A. Keel wrote about them on numerous occasions, even mentioning one gray, four-engine jet flying low over the trees in West Virginia dropping a load of silver tape. It’s interesting to note that RW’s jet appeared to have what “looked like smoke” pouring out of the extreme right engine. The sighting occurred at 4:40 PM local time in November, the sky would have been getting darker and it would be difficult to tell what was coming out of the aircraft—could this plane have been dispensing something more than smoke?

The witness phoned the airport asking about the sighting. Unsurprisingly, they gave him a run around, phoning back the next day to tell them they could find nothing on radar to match his description.

A few days later, he received a phone call from a “General McDonald” who claimed to be from Canadian Air Defense in Goose Bay, Labrador. He asked questions about the witness and the sighting, pointed out geographic coordinates stating the witness lived under a flight path, mentioned another aircraft that was airborne at the time (the witness agreed but also pointed out another location). The general asked if the witness experienced any interference with electronic devices such as TVs, computers, did he drink, smoke, do drugs, or had he been institutionalized. The witness took the latter questions as a personal affront to his credibility and hung up on the general after making a rude remark. The general phoned back, saying “you don’t get rid of me as easily as that” and with no further ado, continued asking questions. RW again hung up after yet another rude remark, and this time, the general did not phone back. Curiosity got the best of the witness, who dialed *69, only to be told his phone did not provide access to that number, which is not unusual for a government/military/law enforcement number.

To this day, figures of authority, government, military and so on often use private numbers or other hidden numbers to contact their subjects. The witness implied with his report to UFO BC that something was “off” about the general, but the questions were standard for a UFO witness report. Establish the credibility of the witness, get a background on the sighting, obtain further details, and find out in general if the case is worth pursuing further.


Apparently, the case was worth pursuing further, as on December the 1st, 2000, RW entertained two new guests.

A Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme appeared at RW’s door, producing two wallets, one black, one brown, containing photo ID’s that stated they were from the “Department of Canadian Air Defense” according to the witness. He extended his hand but both of the two men rejected the handshake. They asked to come inside, one made a remark upon entering that the head of a walking stick in the hallway, a Chinese carving, reminded him of the primates back home. This is interesting because it could mean anything, or it may not have been said at all. Going back to the original case in 1967, the write-up on the declassified pages stated a possible explanation for the discrepancies between RW’s sketch and his parents’ sketches was the “over-active imagination” of the witness, and his reporting of details that “were not observed.” Moving forward with that in mind, we follow RW and the investigators to the kitchen, where they apparently refused to walk past the microwave oven. The witness had to lower a portion of a counter to let them sidle through the extra space. It can be reasonably assumed he was taking them to the kitchen table to sit and talk about the sighting.

Assuming two men did actually visit RW in 2000 to talk about the sighting he phoned in to the airport and later discussed over the phone with “General McDonald”, it’s difficult to read into what percentage of the witness’s accounts were actually observed. Similarities between the two men and some of the MIBs referenced in John Keel’s works are uncanny, but extra details are present in RW’s case that set them apart from most of the others.

Like quite a few of the Keel MIBs, they were olive-skinned and had Oriental features. They both wore large eyeglasses with thick rims, gray suits with black shirts, and one wore a white tie. They had very large feet, RW estimated size 14. Keel wrote of MIBs who wore shoes with thick soles, perhaps people were catching onto this and these “new” MIBs who visited RW wore shoes designed to look flatter but still do the same job, thus looking larger when their feet inside the shoes may well have been “normal” sized?

They looked into the witness’s eyes when they questioned him and seemed to “pierce his brain.” (witness description)

They asked if he (RW) was psychic and also broached the topic of another sighting he had in the 1960s, which at no time during the visit did he mention it to them. This isn’t so astonishing when one considers how easy it is to find the file in the Canadian UFO files that even you, the reader, got to see earlier in this story. The report was likely brought up to them before they visited the witness as background material.

So far, there are two places to take this—either this Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme were “genuine” MIBs, or the over-active imagination of the witness “embellished” the report to UFO BC to make a spectacle of an otherwise mundane investigative visit. The latter seems like the logical answer, but going back to the original case in 1967 and the unusual visitor that the witness’ Mother was very upset by, so much so that she told the military man about them, there is a little room for wonder. Once again, was the 1967 visitor a put-on, or something else? Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme performed no show—the demonstration with the microwave oven was perhaps the most outlandish behavior they exhibited during the visit, if they actually did do so and the witness didn’t “add” that detail. The visitor in 1967, however, all but made a scene at their residence, “That’s a communicator! Turn it off!!”, gulping the hot coffee straight down, crumbling the cookies with his hand, so on.

The two visitors in 2000 acted in a reserved manner, getting the investigation done. It is mentioned in the UFO BC article that “at no time did they speak to each other” during the visit, however, they also were said to have spent about a half an hour scouring the yard with a Geiger counter when one called out to the other, “come over here and look at this.” RW was told to stay where he was.

When the witness asked what it was he had seen, the reply was that it was an experimental balloon, and the noise he had heard was the air escaping from it. Next post, standby...

What is normal, anyway?

What can be implied by all of these comparisons, these stories, and this witness? When investigating the validity of an unusual event that falls into the category of UFOs, UAPs, and MIB visits, a history of the witness and their character, imagination, interest, and history must be obtained as best as possible, but there also seems to be a repeating tendency for these witnesses—they frequently deny having a prior (or any) interest in the phenomenon. The witness we discuss here did so, but it’s clear he had either read Keel’s work far too many times, or something genuinely strange happened in Surrey that year, that had something very much to do with what may have happened in Point Pleasant in 1967.

John Keel wrote about witnesses back in the 60s who exhibited symptoms of exposure to actinic rays (produced by electromagnetic effects)--sunburns, headaches, flash burns on the eyes (similar to eyes that have been exposed to a welding torch). RW phoned the on-call doctor shortly after his visit from Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme complaining of similar symptoms, but was pronounced OK after an examination. The doctor supposedly asked him if he “had been exposed to a welding torch.”

Another interesting point is the witness provided photos of two items that were sitting on the window sill just inches behind where one of the men was sitting—a Rod Stewart cassette tape and a bottle of Windex, both of which exhibited gross distortion as if heat or microwave energy had been applied to them. It would have been easy for a hoaxer to take a hair dryer, hammer, etc to the objects, photograph them, and send them to a UFO website for attention and notoriety (or simply for amusement), and upon closer inspection of the pictures, it was disappointing to note the nozzle of the Windex bottle was not distorted, however the bottle portion was. It’s possible that whatever energy it was was too weak to affect the thicker material of the nozzle, but it’s a point to bring up either way.






Image source: ufobc.ca Article




To be continued...

when I have more writing time, at least.

The Watch

Another interesting feature of the witness’s experience with Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme is their alleged response to his “very unusual” (according to the visitors) watch. The watch appears to have been a marcasite ladie’s style bracelet watch with a flip top and fold-over style clasp. The band was leaf-style links and the face was silver in color.

“They noticed that Roy was wearing a very unusual watch. Touching his arm, Roy said the visitor’s hand was cold and clammy. They asked where he had found it and when, plus additional questions as to the state of the field. On being told a metal detector had been used in locating it six inches below the ground and discovering the watch was still going, they questioned what a metal detector was!”

(UFO BC)
Mr. Samuel himself was supposedly wearing an unusual watch—a description of the visitor’s attire is provided in the article:

“They were wearing gray suits with black shirts, one had a white tie, and the other was buttoned up to the neck. The one with the tie had a clip that contained a red "stone" that flickered. Mr. Samuel had a ruby ring surrounded with diamonds. His watch was square but without apparent hands, instead being encircled with buttons that periodically illuminated from white to green to mauve. The strap appeared to be molded into skin and was a solid steel band. The belt on his pants was of metallic strips with a square buckle.”

This watch apparently provoked yet another visit from an unusual man on December 27, 2000. He provided photo ID wearing dark glasses that showed an address from Albuquerque, NM and stated his name was (a very original) Mr. Smith. This visitor was between 4 feet 8 inches and 5 feet tall, had size 13 or 14 shoes, and wore a charcoal suit with a black fedora, white shirt, and black tie. His sunglasses were of the wrap-around variety and had silver frames. His skin was pale white, he had long fingers and was very thin. He spoke in a slow, slurred type speech pattern and responded briefly to any questions asked of him.

The purpose of his visit, according to the visitor, was to check out RW’s watch. He took out a pick-like tool from his suit pocket and expertly opened the watch, proceeding to scan the interior of it with a pen-like tool that emitted a thin, mauve beam of light. He took photos of the watch with a small 2x3” camera that had a screen on the back displaying a purple screen. When Mr. Smith took a disc that was inside the watch (the disc contained a number and some unreadable script) and threw it into his briefcase, RW asked for it back to which the visitor apologized.

What would these MIBs want with the watch, and what was the deal with the disc? Earlier in the article, Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme inserted a small disc into their tape recorder (replying to RW’s question that it would tape for eight hours or more) that was between a nickel and a quarter in size. If or not the disc in the watch had anything to do with that data medium, it’s an interesting point.

Another interesting point is the earlier visitor in 1967 was wearing a “very fancy” watch on his right hand. It’s not impossible that these visitors collect watches, or at least use them as a form of data storage. For some reason, RW’s watch was of interest to his visitors. This brings us back to the possibility of embellishment—it’s not impossible that Mr. Samuel and Mr. Graeme knew Mr. Smith was interested in collecting watches, told him about it, and sent him over. Mr. Smith or one of his colleagues did phone RW in advance, so it wasn’t a completely unsolicited visit:

“A man appeared at Roy's door, stating that he had come to see the watch. During the past month Roy had a call from a person who claimed his colleagues, (the two men in gray?) had told him about having seen Roy's unusual watch.”

There’s nothing terribly abnormal about the idea of a watch collector, but his behavior, also asking the witness to unplug his microwave oven, slurring his speech, and drinking 3 glasses of water, one after the next, was unusual. Again, how much of that was “added” by the witness in his telling of the story is difficult to determine. The witness continued to describe more objects including a hair-blower nozzle and a ruler in a drawer not far from where Mr. Smith was standing became warped, much like the tape and the Windex bottle.

Marcasite watches, particularly mid-century types, came in many different brands and styles. The flip-top style of RW’s watch was popular with brands like Geneva, Bucherer, and Pierre Nicol. It wasn’t a terribly uncommon style, but an exact match is difficult to locate. The witness was offered $45.00 at a swap meet in cloverdale, an offer which he declined. He told Mr. Smith that he’d part with it for $500, and with no surprise or haggling, Mr. Smith replied that he would “have to check with his colleagues.”

A photo of the watch (ufobc.ca):

More later.................

The watch was picked up eventually (January 2001) by two new visitors. These two were described as very tall, very bony with large heads, hands, feet, all out of proportion to the body according to RW. They wore black suits, black hats, and black sunglasses which they never took off. When asked about the glasses, they replied that they could see perfectly well. Each carried a brief case with an inverted “L” shaped handle.
They produced $250, saying they would come up with the other $250 later, to which the witness responded in with concern, “I’m moving soon.” The response was, “We know. We can find you if we want to.”

They took several tubes of liquid and proceeded to pour the contents over the watch, reassuring the concerned witness that “no harm would come to the watch.”
The liquid is a strange addition to the story—could it have been a sanitizing serum, or a microscopic nano type material designed to scan and possibly even reproduce the watch? Could it have been a preperative formula to change some of the properties of the watch prior to its transfer to wherever it was they were taking it? A simple cleaning solution? And what about the “disc” that was inside the watch?

During these visitor’s stay, the witness’s two Persian cats were acting up, trying to claw their way out a window (which was unusual behavior for his usually calm cats). The cats also acted up during the previous visits from the other three men. The story about the watch being picked up by the two tall visitors is difficult to find on the web, and appears to have disappeared entirely from UFO BC. A summary of the events can be found on a paranormal enthusiast website here: www.phantomsandmonsters.com... and it is also retold in the Albert Rosales collection of humanoid encounters in the 2001 files.

Accounts of “men in black” taking “souvenirs” from witnesses are not extremely uncommon, but this has to be the strangest case. Taking this whole thing and putting it together leads to an even clearer picture of what may be going on.

Aftermath

To put the whole mess into perspective:
1967—double sighting of saucer-type unidentified aerial phenomena, followed by an unusual visitor (MIB?) and a military investigator visit, who interrogated the witness and his parents at their house. The story was written up and eventually declassified, revealing the witness’s story of the visitors coming to his house to be at least partly true.

1997—the witness experiences an unusual “sleep paralysis” event involving a white, square room filled with bright light and what looked to be light blue sheets hanging all around. He awoke with a red, itchy rash on the back of his left hand, and the constant sensation of being “watched.”

2000—The jet makes its flyby over Surrey, 18 November 2000. The witness phones it in, the military calls, then two men show up at his door. They notice the watch, then notify their colleagues.
The colleagues then proceed to inspect and later purchase the watch from the witness for a high price.

What’s interesting to note is the topic shifted so quickly from the UFO report to the witness’s watch. Let’s take the idea that these “men in black” were actually regular “human” agents that the witness “exaggerated” for theatrical effect. Why, though, would they pay so much for such a simple watch that was previously valued at $45.00? Government agents are known to pay what they need, within reason, to get what they need, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go through over a marcasite mid-century timepiece—sending multiple oddly-dressed agents over and paying $250. If the disc was what they were after, why didn’t Mr. Smith produce some excuse for needing the disc, and offering the witness money for that?

Now let’s investigate the idea that these visitors were something other than of human agency origin. What if the watch (and the disc that was inside of it) contained some kind of device that altered the perception of the witness allowing him to see the jet and the thimble-shaped object? It’s not impossible that the watch itself had something to do with the sightings, if they were in fact “valid” and with non-human origins.

There are certainly many directions to go with the interpretation of these events, and almost all of them rely on the integrity of the witness, the accuracy of his reporting, and the amount of details added, removed, or “bent” for the sake of the story. This is true for almost every single UFO/MIB report ever written or told. So how can we solve a mystery when the very nature of the human mind—bias, excitement, belief, wonder, fear, disbelief, skepticism, etc, alters details of often very true stories, sometimes even the most seemingly insignificant details that could alter the ability for any investigator to come to any conclusions about what happened?
These detail alterations tend to snowball—someone else tells the story, gets another detail wrong, then someone retells that version of the story, adds another incorrect detail, and so on and so forth. All of this to say that many UFO cases are shrouded in mystery not because of the unexplainable nature of the events themselves, but because of the human mind’s tendencies to take an observed event and “massage” it, knowingly or unknowingly (often, the witness simply can’t help it, they do not even know they’re doing it).

The bottom line is, many cases are relegated to the garbage bin unjustly. Some events may sound so unbelievable to the investigator that they simply disregard “high strangeness” cases, moving on to the more “believable” reports and spending their time on those. However, one must take into account that these “unbelievable” cases often have some grain of truth to them, and with enough patience and sleuthing skills, the investigator may just be able to extract that grain and connect it to the next one.

Like the old saying, “there is some truth behind each lie”, there is something to take note of in every case, no matter how difficult it may be to believe.

originally posted by: servovenford
... the interviewer was not a “Sgt. Major” but was in fact a F/L. .

I know what “Sgt. Major” means, but what does F/L mean?

This visitor appeared to have shared many traits common to the Men In Black, known as MIBs, an acronym popularized by writer John A. Keel. Physical traits including pale skin, dark sunglasses worn indoors, and lanky builds are commonly reported, as well as behavioral traits including strange eating behaviors and unusual speech patterns. Next post coming up, standby...

I believe that there are people with pale skin and lanky builds, and maybe some of them wear sunglasses indoors. I also wouldn't be a bit surprised if some government or intelligence agents follow up on UFO reports though a lot of the time I think the people following up are UFOlogists or UFO investigators.

So sure if you report a UFO event it's not surprising you'll get some visitors, but the MIB stories seem exaggerated. If you like the MIB stories, there are 6 of them in this video of "real MIB", and one includes a photo and the other includes a video, though I must say both the photo and the video look like ordinary people to me, not even "lanky".

The Creepy Real-Life “Men In Black”


The two guys who discuss these cases seem like one sort of skeptic and the other sort of "believer", but I think it was even the believer who said even if it really happened nobody will believe you and you sound crazy when you tell the story:

This is a screencap of the video of the two alleged MIBs, but as the they say in the video, how do you know these aren't just business people?

I've seen people that look like that and never thought of them as "MIB".

The more unusual features never seem to be documented in photos, though if it happened today, everyone's got a smart phone so there would be no excuse for not snapping a photo of the mysterious visitors if their appearance is really as "out there" as some people describe.

originally posted by: servovenford
Government agents are known to pay what they need, within reason, to get what they need, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go through over a marcasite mid-century timepiece—sending multiple oddly-dressed agents over and paying $250.

They never came back to pay him the other $250?
He thought these guys were creepy, yet for some reason he trusted them to come back and pay the other $250?
That doesn't make sense, does it?

Anyway it's an interesting story, and you did a nice job telling it.

The percentage of people who are actually crazy is pretty low, but when you multiply that by 7 billion you come up with a surprisingly large number of crazy people on the planet. Then in addition to those crazy people, you have a bunch more people who may not be crazy but they may have issues with their perceptions, and tell stories with exaggerations in them.

So I think there's probably a thread of truth somewhere about people following up on UFO reports, but a lot of the more "out there" descriptions trying to make the MIBs sound like aliens seem exaggerated, or maybe some people telling the MIB stories really believe them but are a little crazy.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence that MIBs are as strange as some people claim seems practically non-existent, except for just far-fetched-sounding stories with nothing to back them up. Well, one story in the video is about a UFO that crashed into a man's car, then the UFO disappeared except a small piece of it the man picked up and sent out for analysis. Some MIBs showed up and asked for the piece, but he said he didn't have it anymore (he had already sent it for analysis) but they didn't say what the results of the analysis were. Now if that turned out to be a piece of metal with extraterrestrial isotope ratios, then we might have something,but they didn't even mention the results of the analysis.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

F/L = First Lieutenant, my bad. Anyway, great post!! Thanks for taking the time to read my tl;dr sized OP.
I agree-- I myself am very, very pale, very skinny with very long arms and legs and some of my friends have poked fun at me for keeping my own wrap-arounds on indoors. I have an extremely thick prescription and if I forget my regular glasses in the car or somewhere, I have to keep my prescription wrap-arounds on so I can see.
I certainly have been wondering how many of these "MIB"s are, like we're saying, regular people/investigators (the actual CFOC report says the tall, pale man claimed to be from "UBC" which I presume was an early variation of UFO BC (their local UFO group).
The other side of the possibilities here are strange indeed, however--the way he behaved with the hot coffee and the crumbling cookies, and how he had to make such a scene. What was he trying to do with that? A real put-on, if he was a Joe-Human UFOlogist. An interesting question to ask the witness if it were ever possible would be if they experienced any signs of exposure to actinic rays after his visit.

A skeptic point of view points to a mass craze of exaggeration, truth-bending, and over-zealous UFOlogists or official investigators who, in combination with the former psychological factors, were indeed made out to be a much bigger thing than they actually were.

A "believer" point of view points out the fact that it was an awfully large mass hoax if it was one, with no particular good reason for human-people to expend so much energy to make the world believe in these possible other-worldly zoot-suit people, and that it's possible the strange after effects such as sunburns, flash burns, etc point to a more "exciting" explanation.

The problem with the believer point of view is that it dismisses the possibility of humans acting strangely. Everyone knows humans are fully capable of acting very weird. Phantom photographers, etc, not unlike the government or some shadowy psy-op operation. Remember MKUltra? Remember what the "powers that be" are capable of? You never know.

It all goes back to it, how much truth can you extract from a lie or an exaggeration? That's what makes the whole topic of UFOlogy so frustrating at times. The human element. Now I'm rambling. lol



Edit: I must also point to, with kudos, your own thread from a while back that fits in with some of the psychology I've mentioned on here--people need to read this: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Unfortunately I don't believe in "some truth in every lie".

There are many stories I would like to believe but then I'm reminded that 20 million people suffer from schizophrenia worldwide and sometimes there is just lies in the lies.

a reply to: In4ormant

I get what you're saying. I don't want to straight up say you're missing the point because it's my fault for using a poor idomatic example.

I plead oopsie daisies.

What I was trying to say with that example is that just because it sounds crazy doesn't mean to disregard it and toss it in the rubbish bin. Not that every made-up case is true in some way. Basically at least "take a look" at any possibilities hidden in there before hitting the BS button.
And sometimes, you'll turn up with nothing.

But maybe... just maybe... that one case...

a reply to: servovenford

Yep,

Its only gonna take 1

a reply to: In4ormant

Or 12...

Anyway enough of my theatrics.

Also sorry this was so long, I literally forgot where I was going with it by the end, but on re-reading it, I have to admit it was fun.

I'm going to let it lay now... thanks for reading, folks
Happy Holidays and all that