The Wheezing MIB
Legendary investigator John Keel chronicled numerous accounts of the MIB—Men in Black, strange characters who have been known to show up in conjunction with UFO encounters.
The Men In Black are typically dressed in old fashioned black suits and fedoras. Some witnesses have seen them arriving or leaving in old model, black cars.
There are various opinions on the origin of the MIB. Some people believe they are simply government agents collecting information on UFOs. Others think they may be artificial beings, noting the odd, robotic behavior the men sometimes exhibit.
Of course, yet another opinion is that the Men In Black are aliens themselves who are monitoring life on earth and keeping check on those who have seen UFOs.
Keel noted several cases wherein these odd men appeared to be suffering from an unusual condition. In a Saga article, Keel wrote about one particularly strange MIB encounter:
“In the fall of 1969, an astonished motorist in Massachusetts found the road blocked by a large flying saucer. A red-faced man with “popping eyes” came up to his car and asked the witness to drive him into the nearest town. The man wore a short black coat and “very shiny green trousers, made out of some material I have never seen before.”
As soon as the man got into the car, the object on the road lifted silently into the air and vanished.
The witness tried to talk to his passenger, but the “man” seemed to have great difficulty breathing. When asked where he was from, he replied: “You wouldn’t understand.”
The driver was thinking of going straight to the local police station as soon as he let the man out. But when the stranger got out of the car on the town’s main street, he wheezed and said:
“Nobody is going to believe you so don’t bother.”
He appeared to stagger uncertainly as he moved away.”
Keel notes that “visitors” such as the character described above in the shiny green pants behave like deep sea divers who have come up from the depths too quickly.
In the case of divers, excess nitrogen in the body can cause a diver to suffer from vertigo and nystagmus (a condition that creates rapid, involuntary movement of the eyes.)
Apparently, in a number of the cases Keel chronicled, the visiting entity asked for a glass of water so they could “take a pill.” Witnesses watched these strange “men” swallow their pills, after which, their condition changed to normal. At least, as close to normal as such beings could get.
Keel reported that in 1976, he managed to obtain one of the pills the purported aliens were using. He had a chemical analysis done on the pill and it came back as nothing more than simple sulfur.
Recurring themes run through many classic cases of weird entity encounters. The shiny green pants worn by the Massachusetts “man” harken back to reports of the grinning men. Some of the odd requests remind one of encounters with the black eyed children. And of course, there’s the running theme of the MIB that weaves through so many UFO accounts.
Perhaps it’s all a grand game and we, the witnesses, investigators, and chroniclers of such incidents are unwitting players. Or perhaps we’re simply being played. Either way, the mystery continues to unfold with each generation, and we have to wonder, what’s coming next?