By KEN KORCZAK
When and where did the famous Men In Black associated with UFOs get started? Who was the first to report them? This article will provide surprising answers.
The mysterious phenomenon of the Men In Black (MIBs) has been a key motif of UFO lore since the inception of the Modern UFO Era. Most will agree that the latter kicked off in the year 1947.
It was in 1947 that three key events occurred:
· June 21: The Maury Island Incident.
· June 24: Pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sightings of nine “disk-like” objects in the airspace over Mt. Rainier in Washington.
· July: The crash of a UFO in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico.
It is interesting to note that — technically — the Men In Black phenomenon emerged into the “UFO milieu” even before the concept of “flying saucers” became a well-identified “thing” after the Kenneth Arnold sightings.
Three days before Arnold reported his sighting, salvage boat captain Harold Dahl claimed a sensational sighting of six gigantic “doughnut-shaped” UFOs over the bay waters of Maury Island in Washington state. One of the objects appeared to be having trouble and “wobbled” as it began to drop thousands of white-colored metal objects into the bay and shoreline. Dahl recovered at least one of these objects.
As part of the subsequent investigation of the event, Dahl would be visited by a mysterious man “dressed in a black suit,” and, in a threatening manner,” warned him to “never talk about the incident.”
So, that was it! Two key elements of the MIBs had been injected into popular culture and the UFO zeitgeist: Mysterious men in dark suits of unknown official agency who show up unexpectedly to issue threats to “shut up — or else” to a UFO experiencer.
But wait a minute! There is a missing element to the MIB phenomenon that confronted Harold Dahl. His MIB was an “ordinary” human being. A third key motif of the MIBs is that they sometimes appear bizarrely “nonhuman,” “alien-like,” or even robotic.
For this final development, we would have to wait until 1953. That was the year that a Connecticut man by the name of Albert K. Bender claimed that three alien MIBs began to visit him at his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Note that he did not reveal this information until almost 10 years after it happened. Let’s just put that latter factoid aside for now.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
At the time of his first visit by the MIBs in 1953, Albert K. Bender was several months into launching his brainchild — the International Flying Saucer Bureau. (IFSB).
Grassroots start-up citizen UFO groups like these were popping all over the place in the early ’50s, not only in U.S. locations, but internationally. The IFSB was a prototype of what we today know as MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network.
Bender’s IFSB was an immediate success. It generated robust interest from the get-go. Hundreds of people paid a fee to sign up as members. Subscribers would receive a monthly bulletin that offered a clearinghouse of “flying saucer” reports gleaned from all media sites, as well as reports sent in by ordinary citizens who had their own sightings submitted to the IFSB.
Bender’s day job was that of a management clerk for Acme Shears, a scissor manufacturer. He also happened to be a competent writer. Furthermore, he possessed a knack for organizing, coordinating diverse groups of people and promotion.
After working long days at Acme Shears, Bender spent just as many hours evenings and weekends building the IFSB. Before long, he had recruited regional IFSB managers in other states, and he soon set up chapters of the organization in the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
DID THE ALIENS TAKE NOTICE?
However, within weeks, weird things started happening. Bender began to “feel a presence” in the spacious attic apartment where he lived in his stepfather’s home. He felt an uncanny sensation of being watched. As this feeling crept up on him, he sometimes smelt the odor of sulfur. This was accompanied by sharp headaches just above his eyes.
Other phenomena followed. One was the appearance of blue-glowing lights in his room. Sometimes, as he approached the door to his room, he noticed a blue light coming from underneath the door. When he entered, the light would vanish. At times, Bender thought to espy “a shadowy figure” that quickly disappeared.
Another curious thing he noticed: Every time these strange phenomena happened, Bender found that his radio was turned on and tuned to a position on the dial that received no station signal. He had always been fastidious about switching off his radio before he left his room.
He was perplexed by these phenomena, but he suspected it had something to do with his determination to “solve the UFO mystery.” Nevertheless, Bender soldiered on and continued to build his burgeoning UFO network.
BENDER FORMULATES A ‘UFO CONTACT’ STRATEGY
But it was when Bender came up with a creative idea to leverage his hundreds of followers to establish contact with “the flying saucer people” that the weirdness exploded to a new level.
This new “alien outreach” plan was like a prototype of the CE5 alien contact initiative Dr. Steven Greer would develop decades later. In an issue of the IFSB publication, Bender asked all members to join him in a coordinated joint UFO contact experiment.
On March 15, 1953, at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Bender asked his members to lie down or find a comfortable and quiet location where they would not be disturbed. With their minds in a relaxed, meditative state, they were to all mentally repeat this message:
“Calling occupants of interplanetary craft! Calling occupants of interplanetary craft that have been observing our Planet Earth. We at the IFSB wish to make contact with you. We are your friends, and we would like you to make an appearance here on Earth. Your presence before us will be welcomed with the utmost friendship!”
The message goes on, but that’s the gist of it.
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Incidentally, if you think the opening phrase sounds familiar, it is because it’s the source of the lyrics for the 1976 song “Calling Occupants” by the Canadian rock band, Klaatu. It was a minor hit for Klaatu, but the next year, Karen and Richard Carpenter of the Carpenters recorded the song and sent it to the top of the U.S. and international charts.
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Anyway, the day of contact arrived, and Bender dutifully reclined in his bed, repeating the phrase asking for friendly contact and assuring the “flying saucer people” that Earthlings are friendly and wanted to initiate a benevolent relationship with the extraterrestrials.
It’s unknown whether any of the hundreds of IFSB participants achieved ET contact — but Mr. Bender sure did — and it was not at all what he expected.
After looping through the contact phrase just one time, Bender was accosted by the caustic “rotten egg” odor of sulfur permeating his room. His head began to throb, and he was suddenly launched away from his physical form into a full-blown out-of-body experience!
Floating several feet up into the space of his high-ceilinged attic room, he was astonished when he looked down to see his physical body lying in bed. Then, suddenly, he began to hear a “non-audible” voice, as if he was receiving a telepathic transmission. It was the aliens he was hoping to contact. They said to him:
“We have been watching you and your activities. Please be advised to discontinue delving into the mysteries of the universe. We will make an appearance if you disobey.”
Frightened and perplexed, Bender replied:
“Why are you not friendly to us, as we do not mean to do any harm to you?
The aliens replied:
“We have a special assignment, and we must not be disturbed by your people.”
With that, Bender was released from his out-of-body state, slammed back into his physical body, and he felt like he had been run over by a truck. His head throbbed with pain, he was nauseated, and a noxious “rotten eggs” smell not only reeked in his room but seemed to infest his entire body. It took several days of open windows, air fresheners and cleaning before the repulsive odor dissipated.
Obviously, the aliens — to whom he had made such a gracious and friendly overture — were not interested in benevolent interaction with humanity!
Utterly perplexed and doubting his confidence in what happened, Bender nevertheless concluded he was “not insane,” and that he had not merely dreamed or imagined his alien contact event. Still, he was deeply conflicted about sharing his experience for fear of being disbelieved and “called a nut job.”
He eventually opted to quietly share his story with two of his closest IFSB lieutenants, but their reaction was anything but supportive. Just the opposite. They blasted him with outright contempt and hostility. They told Bender that if he published his account in the IFSB newsletter, they would “immediately resign” and cut all ties with him. They told him his “crazy claims” would demolish the credibility of the IFSB, and that he would “rightly and deservedly” be labeled “mentally unbalanced.”
Well!
THE WEIRDNESS WAS JUST GETTING STARTED
So, now Albert Bender found himself in a quandary. He felt utterly alone. At best, he was rendered bereft of a supportive community. At worst, he felt betrayed.
Unfortunately, the high weirdness was only beginning. Despite the blowback from his compatriots, Bender felt a “patriotic duty” to report his alien contact experience to government officials — if only to warn authorities about a hostile extraterrestrial presence operating on Earth with a nefarious agenda.
Thus, Bender proceeded to type up a comprehensive report, which he intended to send to the Pentagon. However, just the process of writing caused the sickening headaches to return. The smell of sulfurous “rotten eggs” welled up every time he started clacking away at the keys of his manual typewriter. Frightening shadows and blue glows haunted his attic apartment.
Nevertheless, he finished his report but then decided to file it away in a drawer while he mulled over the potential consequences to himself and humanity. He eventually decided to mail his alien contact account, but when he went to his desk drawer to retrieve his document, it had vanished!
THE MIBs STEP IN
Albert Bender now found himself locked in a twilight zone of agonizing indecision. He was convinced he had bombshell information and genuine knowledge about the presence of unfriendly aliens working a dark agenda. However, he could not reveal his information on pain of being ridiculed and ostracized by the very organization he had created. The aliens were also monitoring him and producing threatening phenomena whenever he “stepped out of line.”
Despite all, it was in this environment that he continued his UFO work, much to the displeasure of his alien watchers. Eventually, however, “the flying saucer people” decided it was time to take further action.
This came in the form of a visitation to Bender’s home by three fully materialized Men In Black — and this is where all the attributes of these strange beings came to fruition as we know them today — tall, extremely odd “not-quite-human” entities adorned in black suits, black neckties, black fedoras, dark sunglasses and weird eyes hidden behind those shades.
In the case of the MIBs that visited Albert Bender, their eyes “glowed like flashlight bulbs.” Those eyes evinced a penetrating effect that made Bender feel they could “invade his mind” and “know what he was thinking” even before he could formulate his thoughts.
The MIBs didn’t come knocking at his door. Rather, they simply materialized in his room; their feet floated three feet above the floor.
BENDER TOURS UNDERGROUND UFO BASE IN ANTARCTICA
So, now I am going to skip over scads of information about Bender’s interaction with this MIBS for the sake of brevity, except to tell you that –despite being threatening and hostile — the MIBs at this point offered to disclose to Bender why they were visiting Earth, where their base of operations was on our planet and the purpose of their mission.
Bender described a detailed account of an elaborate journey wherein the MIBs transport Bender to a fantastically vast underground industrial base deep beneath the surface of Antarctica. The MIBs provide Bender with a full tour of their facility.
They disclose to him that their primary interest on Earth is to extract a specific substance from our oceans. This vital substance, whatever it is, is gleaned from seawater and manufactured into small cubes to create a product the aliens valued in the extreme and were eager to bring back to their planet.
The MIBs warned Bender that nothing could prevent them from completing their mission. If they had to, they said they could “kill every human being on the planet” as easily as destroying an ant colony by pumping insecticides through every tunnel and chamber of an anthill complex.
After an hours-long, mind-shattering tour of alien technology, industrial machinery and hidden spaceports where Bender observed UFOs landing in and taking off, the MIBs returned Bender to his home with a stern warning to keep his mouth shut about everything he had seen.
The MIBs told him they had the ability to monitor him 24/7 and could listen in on any conversation he might have or read any secret document he might write and attempt to send to the U.S. authorities. If Bender told anyone — anyone at all, even an intimate partner in secret — they would not hesitate to kill him. This they could do remotely at any time from any place.
As for Bender, he concluded that he now “knew the secret of the UFOs” but with the grievous caveat that the secret must remain with him alone forever — or until the aliens completed their mission, finished their ocean mining operation and left the planet for good.
For Bender, “knowing the secret of the UFOs” made the IFSB irrelevant. Thus, to the shock of his dedicated team and thousands of enthusiastic subscribers, he announced he would dismantle and disband the International Flying Saucer Bureau.
Just eight months after it launched in March of 1953 to remarkable success, the IFSB shuttered its doors in October of that year. The only reason Bender could offer his bewildered colleagues and fans was that he had “learned the secret of the flying saucers,” and this had rendered the IFSB irrelevant.
A CONSPIRACY VACUUM CREATED
Telling his IFSB fans and colleagues that he has “learned the secret of the UFOs” was the biggest mistake of Albert Bender’s life. It served to create a massive “vacuum chamber” into which gazillions of conspiracy theorists rushed in to fill with their own, often wild pet theories.
What’s worse, finding a way to force Bender to cough up his secret became the favorite “contact sport” of thousands of people. Bender began to receive a deluge of letters — many of them threatening — from individuals who insisted that he reveal what he knows — or else.
Bender found it necessary to change his phone number, only to have to change it again a few weeks later. He finally removed his name from the phone book in favor of listing just his wife’s name. That didn’t stop strangers from showing up at his door, begging him to reveal his “UFO secret” — those that did not beg issued veiled and overt threats.
Even worse — Bender became the subject of frequent newspaper and magazine articles, many of which sensationalized, distorted facts and sometimes cruelly portrayed Bender as a nut job, con man, government disinformation agent, cult leader, scammer — and the list goes on.
Bender became a favorite topic on a late-night AM paranormal radio talk show out of WOR in New York City. It was hosted by the 1950s version of Art Bell of Coast-to-Coast AM fame. The radio show host was Long John Nebel. His audience was huge, reaching millions of listeners across America.
Very often, a friend called Bender and told him he “better tune into Long John on WOR” because they were talking about him again. Sometimes the guests were positive about Bender, but most often they spewed nonsense theories about Bender’s “big UFO secret” and dragged his name and reputation through sundry conspiracy theories. Bender mostly avoided listening because it was so painful for him to hear people telling lies about him or offering bizarre opinions about “what his “UFO secret” might be.
To his credit, Bender soon learned to let most of this noxious media attention roll off his back. After deep-sixing the IFSB, he left the UFO investigation field for good and opted to just get on with his life — even though friends and enemies alike used every mind game and trick in the book to lure him back in.
THE DAY FINALLY ARRIVED TO REVEAL ‘THE SECRET’
However, Bender finally did reveal his “big UFO secret” almost a decade after his encounter with the Men In Black and “the flying saucer people.” He “opened the vault,” so to speak, and poured forth the complete story in his 1962 book titled Flying Saucers and the Three Men.
But why did he come out of the closet in 1962?
It was because he believed the aliens he had interacted with in 1953 had completed their mission to mine the oceans of Earth for the vital substance they needed. Thereafter, the flying saucer people left Planet Earth for good, never to return. Bender’s agreement with the aliens was that he could tell his story after the aliens left — and so he did.
After publishing his book, Bender once-and-for-all washed his hands of anything to do with flying saucers, aliens and ufology. He went on to live a normal life with his beloved British-born wife, Betty Rose, and eventually moved to California, where he finished out a successful career in business.
He turned away countless media invitations for an interview and also summarily rejected the many requests he received to speak live at UFO conferences and other such venues.
Albert K. Bender lived to the grand age of 94 and died in 2016. He never recanted his sensational story of Men In Black, his interaction with aliens and his personal visit to an underground UFO base in Antarctica.
But the questions that remain for the rest of us are:
“If the Men In Black and the aliens who visited Bender in 1953 left Earth for good around the year 1961, why, then, has the MIB phenomenon remained a persistent element of the UFO realm ever since? Why do so many other people continue to report encounters with these strange beings?”
I have a good answer to that question — but that is a story for another day.
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