The Man Who First Saw "The Men in Black" Dies
The man who brought the ufo silencers, the men in dark clothing, into modern consciousness, Albert K. Bender, 94, died on March 29, 2016, in California.
"Men in Black" (MIBs) are what appear to be male humans dressed in black suits who claim to be government or paramilitary (or even alien) agents and who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen.
From portrayals in
The X-Files, appearances in movies, references in popular culture and points of debate in UFO conspiracy theories, the MIBs have become part of our 21st Century culture.
In April 1952, Albert K. Bender, a factory worker from Bridgeport, Connecticut, announced the formation of International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB), whose purpose was to "gather flying saucer information" and to "get all Flying Saucer minded people acquainted with each other...."
At the time he established the IFSB, Bender was a 31-year-old bachelor who lived with his stepfather. He was obsessed not only with UFOs but with occultism, horror movies, and science fiction. Bender transformed his part of the house into what he called a "chamber of horrors." Jerome Clark,
The Emergence of a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning through 1959 ~ The UFO Encyclopedia - Volume 2 (Chicago: Omnigraphics, 1992: 73)
Ufology historian Jerry Clark told of how Bender took "out-of-body trips into deep space," but also worked hard on the IFSB's publication,
Space Review. Bender built up the 1952-1953 membership to 1500 people from around the world. "One of the most active was a West Virginia man named Gray Barker."
In early September 1953, Bender, who is acknowledged as one of the first pioneers of UFO research, was visited at his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by three men dressed in black who warned him in threatening terms to cease his investigations or else. ...
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