So Supernatural - CONSPIRACY: Men in Black

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Most people recognize Men in Black from the movie franchise, but this mysterious organization originated as a real-life alien conspiracy theory. It began in 1947: After Harold Dahl saw UFOs over the Puget Sound, he was visited by a suited agent with an uncanny warning… 

Starting in the 1940s, mysterious men known as the Men in Black apparently showed up on the doorsteps of people who'd recently seen UFOs. At first, they were laughably nondescript, just men in black suits. But over the years, more and more stories have made it clear. The men in black are less harmless than that plain man-in-a-suit image would have you believe. They're willing to intimidate, threaten, they know far more than they should, and they might not even be human. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're looking at the Men in Black, a mysterious organization of threatening, perhaps even alien men, whose purpose seems to be keeping UFO sightings quiet. But if that's their aim, they haven't been very successful. In fact, they've become a central part of UFO lore. We'll have all that and more coming up. Stay with us.

Alien conspiracy theories. These are fun. They can be difficult to prove since they often rely almost exclusively on firsthand testimony. But they can be just as difficult to disprove, especially in cases where you keep getting more sightings, like with the men in black. Since this huge amount of sightings is what makes the men in black so compelling, we're going to be doing something a little different today. We're going to look at a couple of the most famous and interesting stories around these guys. So, of course, that means starting with the first ever man in black sighting back in 1947. It all begins with a guy named Harold Dahl. And you may have heard that name before because Dahl is famous as one of the first people to claim he had an encounter with a UFO, or actually six UFOs.

As Dahl tells it, it was June 21st, 1947. He was working as a lumber salvager on the waters south of Seattle, along with two other men, his teenage son, and his family dog. Their boat is cruising along. It's a lovely, peaceful summer day, calm waters, nothing to raise anyone's hackles. That is until around 2 p.m., when the boat rounds the east side of a small peninsula called Maury Island. And just then, Dahl's eyes are hit by a strange bright light.

He peers upward, trying to find the source, and is shocked to see six metallic objects flying in the sky. The sun is reflecting off their shiny gold and silver surfaces, as he puts it, like a Buick dashboard. Dahl squints into the bouncing beams of light, and as his eyes adjust, he realizes these are definitely not run-of-the-mill planes or helicopters. Dahl has never seen anything like it. They're big, about a hundred feet in diameter, but with a strange shape, almost like donuts with a hole in the middle. Then there's little circular portholes spaced out around the sides, perhaps like little doors. On the bottom and the inner walls of the hole are what look like blacked out windows of some kind. But the strange crafts aren't just odd-looking. They're also behaving strangely.

Like, they're doing some kind of dance, almost. Like, five of them are circling around the sixth, and they're just hovering up there, high up, maybe like 2,000 feet above his boat. Planes don't look like this, and they don't act like this either. Dahl is baffled. He turns to his crew, mouth wide open. As he tells it, they're naturally in shock too, but things just keep getting weirder from there. Suddenly, the shiny glazed donut in the middle begins to descend. Dahl suddenly regains control and flies into motion, trying to mobilize his boat towards shore.

He has no idea what this bizarre object is up to, but he doesn't want to stick around to find out. Unfortunately, he doesn't get too far before the UFO reaches maybe 500 feet above sea level and then abruptly stops and hovers again. And just then, an ominous, dim thud rings out over the water. Dahl can't help it. He stops trying to move the boat and turns up to stare as one of the ship's portholes slides open. He can almost see inside the dark hole, but then some kind of debris starts pouring out, shrouding the opening in a blaze of reflected light. Whatever's falling looks like some kind of super lightweight,

shiny white metal. Most of the debris sinks into the water, but not all of it. Some of it is heading right towards the boat. The men run for cover, but not all of them make it. One piece of this bizarre metallic material brushes Dahl's son on the arm, severely burning him. Another strikes an even harder blow to Dahl's dog, killing him instantly. Obviously, Dahl is terrified. On top of that, he's feeling like he's losing his mind. Like, is this really happening? So he whips out his camera, snaps some pictures, and grabs one of these strange metal bits of debris.

At least he'll have proof of whatever he's witnessing. Which turns out to be especially relevant considering that after the debris dump, all six of the flying donuts whip off into the air and disappear, unseen by anyone else. And when I say anyone else, I mean anyone else. No one reported seeing these flying donuts that day, despite the fact that the six large objects hovering 2,000 feet in the air should have been visible to people within quite a wide radius. As far as we can tell, not even the other men in the boat reported the incident. While none of them came forward to deny Dahl's story, they didn't really support it either. But Dahl had his proof. First, the photos.

Dahl got his film developed immediately after the incident and was relieved to find that the pictures did show unusual objects. But it wasn't very clear proof. While you could see some strange shapes in the pictures, it was hard to tell what exactly they were because the film had been damaged. But Dahl isn't entirely deterred. There is something there. And he has that piece of the metal debris

the craft dropped in the water. Unfortunately for Dahl, however, the real deterrent is about to arrive. It's the early morning, less than 24 hours after the incident. Harold Dahl is still shaken and confused, but a little, honestly, excited about his experience too. That's when he hears a knock at the door. Standing in front of his house is a nondescript man in a black suit, maybe 40 years old. This is not too unusual for a lumber salvager.

Businessmen sometimes arrive at his house early in the morning looking to purchase some of his lumber. In fact, in comparison to the drama of the day before, this couldn't be more normal. So he opens his mouth to ask what kind of deal they're looking at, but before he can say anything, the visitor starts talking. And what he says astounds Dahl. He describes yesterday's bizarre sighting blow by blow. The donuts, the descent, the debris that poured out into the water, and Dahl's boat. He knows all the details, as if he had been there with Dahl himself. All this despite the fact that Dahl has only told one close friend about the incident so far. Then, allegedly, the visitor concludes,

what I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe. Dahl listens, struggling to compute what's happening? How does this man know so much? And who is he? Dahl doesn't get any answers. Before he can push through his shock and try to get a word in edgewise, the stranger warns him to never speak of the incident to anyone, or bad things would happen. Dahl takes this as a threat against his son. When the suit abruptly ends his monologue and leaves, Dahl is left shaking. Suddenly, he's wondering, was yesterday only the beginning? Is he safe? And exactly who or what is he dealing with here? In fact, he's so distressed by this visit that he got rid of every photograph he took of the flying donuts. So, the threat works at first.

But it doesn't take long for Dahl to start talking. First to his friend and work supervisor, Fred Christman, and then to the press. He might not have any photos anymore, but he brings forward his metal fragment as proof, and the reporters eat it right up. This is the kind of bizarre, fascinating encounter that sells papers like hotcakes. But it wasn't only the media that took an interest in Dahl's story. Later in the summer, a joint Air Force and FBI team looked into his claims and concluded that Dahl had fabricated the story of the six flying donuts. Dahl's only proof, his metal fragment, turned out to match the slag from a local metal smelter. He'd probably

made it all up for a little bit of fame. Or so the feds concluded. Obviously, it's pretty easy to follow the government's lead and dismiss Dahl's story. There are plenty of unconvincing elements to it, like the fact that no one else ever reported seeing flying donuts that day. But that man in black does sound a fair bit like a classic 1940s fed, right? And if the government was trying to cover up something around Maury Island in June 1947, alien or otherwise, it would be in their interest to discredit anyone who saw it. This possibility gets more compelling considering what happened after Dahl's story went public. UFO sightings ramped up and Dahl's mysterious, intimidating, alarmingly knowledgeable men in black kept showing up after those sightings, silencing witnesses.

But some of those men in black didn't just show up after UFO sightings. They actually seemed extraterrestrial themselves. Coming up, the men in black return, this time looking a whole lot less human. Now back to the story. Albert Bender is a fascinating character. In the 1960s, he founded the Max Steiner Music Society, a respected international music group. It counted industry heavyweights like John Wayne and Fred Astaire amongst its members. But first, he was a UFO researcher or ufologist.

And in that capacity, he founded another organization, the International Flying Saucer Bureau. The Bureau collected information on UFO sightings and then published them in a magazine called Space Review. In 1952, the Bureau and its magazine launched and were going surprisingly well during their first few months. Bender was receiving tons of enthusiastic reports from ufologists and curious citizens who were coming out of the woodwork with their sightings in the wake of Harold Dahl's well-publicized UFO encounters.

But all that changed on the night of July 30th, when according to Bender himself, he received a call. The line was silent, but like eerily silent. Bender felt something on the other end, although he couldn't say what. As he stood there at the phone, waiting for someone to speak, that strange, eerie feeling got increasingly tense. So intense, it felt physical. Suddenly, his head exploded in pain, as if some kind of dangerous vibrations had raced through the power lines and right into his brain. Immediately, Bender hung up the phone. He'd never had a headache like this. He felt like he might collapse, but he made it to bed and the strange

experience retreated into the past. That is until November. This time he was at the movie theater, eyes on the screen, when out of the corner of his eye he saw something flicker. A human-like form seemed to materialize out of nowhere in a nearby seat. This form was well-dressed in dark clothes. Bender, as a ufologist, couldn't help but think of the men in black. But what Bender really noticed were his eyes. They seemed to glow like flashlights. He's stunned. He can't help but stare. But then, that same dizziness he'd experienced on the phone struck once again. He has to close his eyes for a moment to fight the nausea, and when he opens them, the strange shadowy figure has vanished. Bender is reeling from the encounter, but he doesn't have time to restabilize and calm down. He keeps

having similar sightings for months. These strange, nausea-inducing men start showing up everywhere he goes, day and night, home, the sidewalk, grocery stores, and he keeps smelling brimstone in his office. The migraines that accompany these encounters start getting worse too. This agonizing state of affairs continues until mid-1953, when the chaos culminates with a visit from three mysterious men in black suits at his house. Bender has just brushed his teeth, he's puttering around his room, getting ready for bed, pleased that he's gotten through the day without any strange occurrences, and hopeful he'll have a nice, peaceful sleep.

But no. As it turns out, the day is not quite over yet. A prickly feeling starts to tingle at the base of his neck. His eyes start to water. Blue lights are suddenly swirling around the room. He's dizzy, his eyes are throbbing, and he throws himself onto the bed and feels his body turning icy cold. Then abruptly, the room goes dark.

Three shadowy figures in black clothing appear, but they're not just standing there. They're floating several feet off the ground. And while their faces are shaded by hats, one feature stands out. Their eyes, illuminated like flashlights in the dark. Those eyes feel like they're boring holes right into Bender's soul. The pain behind his eyes intensifies, and then he realizes they're talking to him in his mind, and they're telling him that he had to stop his UFO research immediately. He was getting too close to their secrets. It would be dangerous to continue. Very dangerous indeed. And then they disappeared.

Bender was left sweaty, exhausted, and terrified, but also a little bit excited. He was obviously on the verge of a major breakthrough with his research if aliens themselves, dressed as men in black, thought they needed to shut down his work to keep their secrets safe. But he couldn't tell his fellow ufologists the details of the visitation or the reason for it. He suspected the men in black wouldn't like that. So he decided to do as the aliens told him, at least on the surface, and shut down his UFO publication with an ominous note reading, We would like to print the full story in space review, but because of the nature of the information, we are sorry that we have been advised in the negative.

We advise those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious. Still, Bender wasn't going to give up on his passions completely. In the wake of his tantalizing final note in space review, an abridged version of his Men in Black story slowly made its way from friend to friend in the ufologist community. These researchers were intrigued. Bender's Men in Black were obviously nothing like dolls. If he was to be believed and he was well respected in the community, the Men in Black couldn't just be some kind of secret government bureau. They were something straight up not from this planet.

Although, as ufologists pointed out, it's possible that the Feds were working with aliens to hide extraterrestrial activity from Americans. So some men in black might be human and others alien. Of course, some skeptics weren't totally ready to hop on board with the idea of alien men in black. They've suggested that Space Review was losing money by the time Bender shut it down with his men in black story, and it was all some kind of ploy to close the magazine with a bang, and maybe make Bender feel a bit more important.

But whatever the skeptics had to say, for the next two decades, more and more men in black stories came out, many of them with alien-seeming black-suited agents. Then, in September 1976, one Dr. Herbert Hopkins had the visitation of a lifetime. It was a quiet fall evening. Dr. Hopkins, a family physician and ufologist, was puttering around his house in Old Orchard, Maine, doing some reading on recent UFO sightings and thinking about dinner. And just then, the phone rings. Hopkins picks it up. He's probably expecting a frantic call from one of his patients about an earache or something, or maybe it'll be an invitation for a late season barbecue, but it's neither. Hopkins listens with surprise as an unfamiliar voice launches into an introduction. He says he's a fellow ufologist, like Hopkins, affiliated with a New Jersey-based UFO organization.

And he has important things to discuss with the good doctor, urgent UFO research to discuss. And it has to be tonight. Hopkins is a bit confused, but certainly intrigued. So he responds politely. The researcher is welcome to come over for a chat. His dinner plans can wait. With that, the call ends and Hopkins goes outside to turn on the porch light for his guest. But when he does, he's treated to a strange sight. The caller is already coming up his front steps. It's impossible that he's gotten here so fast. He could barely have made it that quickly

if he'd been next door. As the caller steps into the porch light, Hopkins doesn't see the regular Joe ufologist he'd expected. Sure, he's wearing a fairly normal black suit, a nice well-fitting one with a crisp white shirt. But his face is something else entirely. There's no hair on it, first of all. I mean, not the head, but also no eyebrows, no eyelashes either. And the skin, it is so smooth, it looks almost plastic. And then there's the color. His skin is just too pale. The only dash of pigment is a pair of almost comically bright red lips. Hopkins stands stock still. He doesn't know who or what this is.

But he's sure of one thing. It isn't human. Hopkins is terrified. But the figure is getting closer. And in the panic of the moment, he does something that sounds bananas. He invites this humanoid inside, where he sits right down across from it in his quiet little living room. In a chilling, monotone robotic voice, the strange being launches into discussions of Hopkins' UFO research, particularly the recent sightings he's currently looking into. Hopkins, in some kind of terrified, disoriented thrall, responds honestly. He is completely lost. He has no idea how his visitor knows so much about his

ufology work, but he's going to go along with it. After all, doing just whatever it says seems like his best way for getting through whatever this experience is alive. Meanwhile, the creature isn't giving anything away in terms of whether it's here to do Hopkins harm. It sits oddly, almost impossibly still as it questions him. So when the creature tells Hopkins to take out a penny, put it on the table and watch it, he does. Now, bear with me, people. This ride is about to get even wackier because this is how Hopkins later described what happened next. Quote, the penny started to develop a silver color instead of copper. And then the silver became bluish and the penny was getting quite fuzzy, out of focus, blurred.

And then it simply was gone. It slowly dematerialized. End quote. That was enough to throw Hopkins into a total frenzy. But luckily, the strange man in black left the house soon after with an ominous warning. Hopkins was to destroy all his UFO research immediately. Now, Hopkins had his medical practice going on as well as his ufology research, but ufology was his

passion, the thing that he spent all his free time doing, day, night, weekends, holidays, whatever. So it means a lot that he did what the man in black said. He was so terrified, he destroyed his research, and it never saw the light of day. After that, he never heard from the men in black again. In the aftermath of Dr. Hopkins' strange story in the 1970s, men in black sightings only continued, some of them terrestrial, some extraterrestrial. Explanations for these elusive, inconsistent men in black proliferated amongst the alien curious, some connecting the terrestrial or extraterrestrial varieties, others upholding one or the other as the real men in black. But after over half a century of confusion and conflicting wacky stories, One Last Tale offers a less speculative answer to the mystery.

It's 2012, and a man named Richard Doty is sitting in a hotel room, settling down for an interview. He's a retired Air Force Special Investigations officer. He was active in the 1970s and 80s. And he has a mind-bending story to tell. One about government conspiracy, aliens, and men in black, of which he apparently was one. Coming up, the men in black speak. Now back to the story.

Air Force officer Richard Doty's story begins in 1979 with a successful electronics entrepreneur named Paul Benowitz. Benowitz was big in the ufology community, bigger than Bender. But he was also a successful businessman and scientist. His company, Thunder Scientific, worked with both NASA and the United States Air Force, which was convenient because Benowitz lived just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, right near the Kirtland Air Force Base. But Benowitz doesn't just appreciate his house because it's convenient for his line of work. He's up in the hills and he gets great views, not just of the Air Force Base, but of the Manzano mountain range beyond it too. Naturally, he spends plenty of time up on his

rooftop deck, which is where he is one quiet evening in August 1979 when he sees something odd interrupting his view. Two lights are shooting up from the ground. They hover for a moment, then they fly off through the air around a mountain and disappear. Now, lights out in the desert always stand out. It's too stark a landscape for them not to. But what really catches Benowitz's attention here is how fast those lights are moving. That can't be an aircraft, or at least not any aircraft he's ever heard of anyway, and he knows everything on the market. Benowitz also knows that the desert has a strange way of playing tricks on your eyes. Mirages. Maybe he's just tired.

The lights weren't as extraordinary as they appeared. Or so he tells himself. Until he sees them again the next night. This can't just be a mirage. Not the same one twice. So scientist that he is, Benowitz decides to investigate by building a special radio antenna, which he can use to pick up any unusual chatter on the airwaves between him and the lights.

The investigation proves to be a success, a startling success. The antenna picks up bizarre noises. They're unlike anything he's ever heard. He's thrilled, but he's also no closer to understanding either the radio chatter or the mysterious lights. Everything is in some kind of code, and he has no idea what it means. As someone who's curious about UFOs, he's starting to get suspicious, and it's all making him nervous. So, like a good patriot and government contractor, Benowitz does the logical thing. He goes to the people who might be able to unravel the mystery and are conveniently right across the street, the United States Air Force.

The Air Force seems interested in Benowitz's findings, which is where Richard Doty comes in. He's the guy the Air Force connects Benowitz with, and he immediately asks for copies of all Benowitz's findings. After combing through them, Doty stays interested. There's some intriguing information in these files. So he gets the go-ahead from his superiors to start working with Benowitz. And then he asks to come visit Benowitz at his home. First, they do a tour of Benowitz's surveillance operation. Doty scribbles notes as he walks through the sophisticated setup of radios and monitoring equipment. He's impressed.

As he tells Benowitz, this is no amateur rig. Benowitz is flattered and offers Doty a seat as the tour comes to a close. Doty responds with a bit of casual banter, some questions about the equipment and findings, and then the Air Force officer drops a bombshell on his eager host. The feds agree with Benowitz's private suspicions that his strange findings aren't of this world. They're extraterrestrial. From there, the Air Force, primarily through Doty, just continues to encourage Benowitz's interpretations of every strange sighting or radio signal he picks up in the desert, telling him they agree. This has to be the result of alien activity. They even offered to fund his UFO research, with the condition that in the interest

of national security, he keep everything he finds strictly confidential. Over time, with this financial aid and verbal encouragement, Benowitz's conclusions get wilder and wilder. His surveillance equipment is constantly spitting out what seems to be mysterious, alarming readings of radio signals that he's picking up from the desert. In fact, a few years in, his readings have him convinced that aliens are planning to invade Earth. The Air Force keeps peeking in on his equipment to check that it's working correctly, they explain, and telling him he's on to something important. But they don't seem to understand the urgency of the situation. The invasion is imminent. He feels alone. His anxiety spikes. He's monitoring his equipment constantly, and his mental health deteriorates further.

Finally, around 1985, Doty sees how bad things were getting and recommends that Benowitz take a step back from his research. The Air Force withdraws their financial support from his investigation. But it's too late at this point to undo the damage. In 1988, Benowitz's family is forced to check him into a psychiatric hospital. That's where the story seemed to end, until 2012 when Doty, perhaps wracked by guilt, comes forward to admit the truth. According to Doty, when wracked by guilt, comes forward to admit the truth.

According to Doty, when the Air Force told Benowitz he was picking up on alien activity out in the desert, they were lying. They knew exactly what he was picking up on, but they couldn't tell him what it really was, a top-secret military development project. So they decided to take a different approach to the problem of his surveillance. They decided to use him. After all, if he was picking up on this project, then the Soviets might be too. So they let him keep monitoring their activity. It served as a kind of litmus test on how good their security was. Then they tapped into his fascination with

UFOs to make sure he didn't understand what he was picking up by convincing him it was alien. They used all kinds of methods for this, everything from psychological manipulation to tampering with his equipment. Unfortunately, this domestic psychological warfare had dire consequences for Benowitz's mental health. Even more unfortunately, according to Doty, it wasn't an isolated experiment. Doty's entire job consisted of infiltrating ufologist communities. There, he'd offer a carrot, say, information, or mostly what was really misinformation. And in return for this so-called information, ufologists would pass Doty and the Air Force their own research. And Doty knows for

a fact he wasn't the only one doing this kind of work. He, like Benowitz, was one piece of a much larger puzzle. Now, Doty doesn't look like your average man in black. He's a very normal-looking Air Force guy. And his methods are different, confusion and misdirection instead of intimidation. But Doty's purpose is the same as those other agents. He's participating in a scheme that aims to hide what ufologists are labeling

alien activity. So while Doty's stories from the 70s and 80s don't prove that the government was getting involved in apparent UFO sightings back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, it does suggest that at least

some of the men in black may have been real and working for the feds just as their black suits suggested. The more extraterrestrial men in black in that case would likely have been the inventions of some creative minds. They would have had plenty to inspire them. Stories of real human men in black and the vast proliferation of alien sightings that hit the U.S. throughout the Cold War years. Of course, there's another possibility.

That Doty's apparent confession wasn't just another misdirection tactic and that the feds really have been covering up alien activity rather than military secrets. So the mystery continues. But amongst all the what-ifs, one thing is absolutely certain. That iconic image of the enigmatic dark-suited messenger on your doorstep isn't going anywhere. It has become a central part of UFO lore. The Men in Black conspiracy is just too messy and fascinating to resist. After all, it sits at the nexus of government secrets and the secrets of space. In that gray space, anything feels possible because everything is so hard to prove. Which means we get to revel in the wackiest, wildest possibilities out there and live with the knowledge that they just might be true.

Sometimes realizing that the mystery can never be solved is the most satisfying solution of all. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.