Everyone remembers the Men in Black (MIB) film franchise featuring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. Dressed in matchy black suits, the men in black would fight aliens and erase the memories of civilians who had encountered extraterrestrials. However, the lore behind the men in black dates way before the release of the comic book and movie. This begs the question: were there actual men in black who helped keep the stories about aliens a secret? Let’s find out!
Men in Black According to Pop Culture
According to pop culture, the Men in black is a secret government organization who are tasked with preventing UFO witnesses from sharing their stories. While their signature look is a black suit, they can sometimes appear dressed in different types of clothing. The key factor is that they always appear whenever a UFO sighting occurs. This has prompted some versions of pop culture to claim that the MIB are aliens posing as humans.
The Origin of Men in Black
The theory of the men in black is believed to have been started on June 27th, 1974, by a man called Harold Dahl. While picking wood on the eastern shore of Washington’s Maury Island, Dahl, alongside his son and dog, saw six UFOs. One of the donut-shaped spacecraft dropped closer and released metallic debris that hit his son and dog (who died).
Surprised by these strange objects, Harold Dahl took several pictures that he showed his colleague, Fred Crisman. Not believing the images shown to him, Fred went to the same spot and saw the UFOs.
In a book titled They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, written by Gray Barker and published in 1956, Dahl claims he was visited by an MIB the next day who took him to a local diner for some minor interrogation.
The agent explained to Dahl his exact experience with the UFO encounter. After that, the man in black asked Dahl Harold never to talk about this experience again, as doing so would lead to bad things. Dahl’s encounter fueled the theory of a men in black organization amongst UFO enthusiasts. This is despite Dahl and Fred recanting their stories after the government dubbed it as fake news.
From there, comic books and films took over the narrative of the men in black. Both platforms portrayed the MIB as a well-funded organization with advanced technology. It even portrayed these agents forming friendships with some aliens to show that not all of them are bad. Members drive black cars and always walk around in twos or threes.
Men in Black, According to Author Gray Barker
As much as Harold’s story contributed to the theory of UFOs, we probably wouldn’t have a theory of men in black in the UFO analogy without Gray Barker’s book and his ability to connect the dots. In his book, Barker talks about serious officers with threatening facial expressions. Barker also claimed that the men in black didn’t just operate in the US. They would go as far as New Zealand and Australia.
Another man who played a massive role in the theory of the men in black is Albert K Bender, who formed the International Flying Saucer Bureau. During the 50s, this organization was welcomed with a lot of enthusiasm. However, he shut it down after claiming he was visited by three men in black who turned his life into a nightmare after sharing with him the horrific stories of UFOs.
Later, in 1962, after Bender’s nine-year silence, he narrated that the men in black who visited him were monsters from a planet called Kazik.
All these theories led to the creation of the Men in black comic by Lowell Cunningham in 1990. The comic talked about mysterious officers who would keep alien stories a secret by wiping out the witnesses’ memories.
Things are a bit exaggerated in the comic version. Lowell, alongside other writers such as Ed Solomon, released the Men in Black movie in 1997 featuring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and it was a huge success.
Conclusion
Overall, the theory about extraterrestrial life is yet to be proven. So far, there is no scientific evidence of aliens or UFOs. This obviously makes the story about men in black a conspiracy theory. Without aliens, what business would the men in black have in society? Also, memory erasure is a field that’s yet to be experimented on. Unless the MIB can access alien technology, it should be difficult to erase witness memories using their “neuralyzer.”