This Paranormal Life - #200 Men in Black

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

If you witness the paranormal first-hand, it should be the single strangest experience of your life. However for many it is only the beginning of a rollercoaster of paranoia, harassment, and political intrigue.For their 200th episode special Rory and Kit dive into the shadowy depths of the Men in Black.Patreonhttps://patreon.com/ThisParanormalLifeYouTubehttps://youtube.com/thisparanormallifeTwitterhttps://twitter.com/ThisParaLifeInstagramhttps://instagram.com/thisparanormallifeSecret Society Facebook Pagehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/thisparanormallife/Edited by Kami Tomanhttps://tomanedits.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music: https://www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you know if your loved ones are in the Illuminati? Are you safe from ghosts underwater? Answer to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Welcome back to a very special episode. It is episode 200! It is our final episode. It's been a great run my friends uh we've been here four years i can't believe it um but it is time to end it is sadly it's been a fun journey while it lasts um we didn't think we'd make it to episode two let alone 200 so it's it's a monumentous occasion it really is sadly there are only 200 cases in the world so we finished

and we're done we're wrapping up yeah tonight with our last can you believe two of them were jeff the mongoose i'm on it's not the final episode but it is episode 200 and you know rory that we had to uh come at the listeners with a huge investigation for episode 200 oh yeah you know we've been giving you starters for a while now we've been giving you little little bowls of soup little slices of bread little yeah shrimp hors d'oeuvres olives yeah little tiny things like that it's time for us to deliver the main course yeah and you better not tell me that you're full from the starters all right because you promised me you would save room for this there's no backing down from this investigation folks we gotta face it head on i'm just gonna dive right in uh thank you so much to everyone who suggested

this probably too many to mention but off uh the top of our email ali shand coriel pondy alice Ali Shand, Coriel Pondy, Alice Cott, John Smith, and probably many others. Rory, our story today starts with a man called Albert Bender. He was a factory worker in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It's 1953, and the town's manufacturing industry is booming. Okay, I just want to say for everyone listening at home, I've had a couple beers before the show today. I don't usually do that, so I just want to make sure i'm getting all the information correct right at the start 1953 yep bender working in a factory yeah awesome kind of messed up that you you actually told me

i said you it's the big day do you want to celebrate with a couple drinks you said no can do my friend doing dry february so it's pretty up then you would actually turn up buzzed, apparently. Well, I was a little nervous. I thought I could do this thing sober, and I was wrong. I was wrong. I needed a little boozy jacket. You stink as shit of whiskey, so I don't think it was just a couple beers either.

Well, sure. I had a little pre-party. I pre-gamed with some of my friends. Because you were nervous? Because I was nervous. You had a party because you were nervous? It was Super Bowl weekend. I wanted to actually have a couple of drinks.

That was, what, two days ago? Yeah, and it's been a long party, my friend. Hence the shades. Bender, age 32, lived in his parents' attic and worked as a timekeeper at the Acme Shear Company. What's a timekeeper? I actually don't know. Like a wizard?

Right, if he dies time is time stands still bernard's watch style uh is that an old-timey job i don't know about you know i don't know what it is but when i picture it in my head i imagine someone who maybe um you know clocks the employees coming in and out and maybe manages people's schedules i don't know though and at 5 30 you know like pulls the steam whistle it's like all right folks clear out for the day it's a different time the products his company made were all stamped with a set of initials that all of america recognized and they showed this product had been made in Bridgeport. M.I.B. But to Albert's co-workers, all wasn't what it seemed. Albert Bender wasn't just a simple factory worker. When it clocked 5pm and he got into his car to return home, the real work began. At his front door, he unlocked the latch, then the padlocks,

then the bolt lock, then the numerical keypad, then the eye scanner, and the retinal detector before entering his hallway. A retinal detector in 1953? That's cutting edge technology. He's a very advanced guy, yeah. Well, he's a Time Lord, so he's been everywhere. You see, Albert's home was also the headquarters of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, or IFSB. An organization that he started.

Okay. It was also, of course, his parents' house. Did you put new locks in that door again? Albert Bender, we've been through this. There hasn't been a burglary in this street in 15 years. Will you cut it out? I'm not worried about the TV, Dad. I'm worried about the fate of the galaxy. I don't give a rat's ass about the galaxy. You will respect that TV and cut it out with that Star Trek crap. If you will excuse me, I have thousands of credible UFO reports to review before dinner. The International Flying Saucer Bureau group had 600 members around the world, and their aim was to further mankind's knowledge of UFOs. Although that term wouldn't actually be coined until later the same year,

by no less than the US Air Force. president bender published a quarterly newsletter called space reviews it's impressive that they have 600 members in 1953 i mean that's even before popular use of the internet so how word of mouth got around is like how did he spread that's amazing it is isn't it i guess it's a weird little crossover you, there's less ability to get the word out there, but more people are sitting on their asses with nothing to do. Right, right. So I guess, but yeah, maybe he just got out through the local newspapers or something like that. Fair play. That's a big organization.

Pretty damn cool, though. I think the U.S. government at that point was like six people. So this is pretty impressive. They're in the hundreds. It was basically the president and his three sons. They were also all members of this UFO society. Much to the president's chagrin.

By the way, I absolutely love the title Space Review for your newsletter. You know, lots of magazines are out there trying to cover maybe only what happened in the world of fashion or fly fishing that month. But Albert's like, nah, I'm going to cover everything that's not on Earth.

Where do I begin? Here's a list of five trillion stars that supernovaed this week. It's also expanding. Every week we don't narrow things down they get bigger every week the magazine gets bigger that's pretty up don't you think it started as a postcard and it ended up as the encyclopedia of britannica but by now the space review and the bureau had reached such an audience that he knew it was time to try something big. He called on all his followers to join him in sending a telepathic message out to alien life forms on March 15th, 1953 at 6pm Eastern Standard Time.

Which he called Contact Day. Whoa. Eastern Standard Time, which he called Contact Day. Whoa! Countless other members around the world marked it in their calendars as they lay in their parents' basements and eagerly awaited the big day. And when it did, literally dozens of believers chanted as one. Calling occupants of interplanetary craft. Calling occupants of interplanetary craft Calling occupants of interplanetary craft That have been observing our planet Earth

We of the IFSB wish to make contact with you We are your friends Calling occupants of interplanetary craft Calling occupants of interplanetary craft That have been observing our planet Earth We of the IFSB wish to make contact ifs we are your friends we are your friends this is what i love you know whenever we think about making contact with extraterrestrials or intelligent species out in faraway galaxies nasa the eggheads at nasa are like oh we need a big

telescope we need a way to send a signal to the distant corners of the universe. You ever tried to just believe? You ever tried to just believe a little harder? This is me in my first day at the internship at NASA. Do you sons of bitches ever just think with your heart instead of your brain? They're like, didn't you learn anything at your Chex Notes master's degree of astrophysics from oxford university i didn't study one goddamn day i sat down slipped the reviewer a 20 and i believed you need to get on i slipped him 100 bucks and i said mr examiner of the space examine board mr examiner of the

space examine board i'm here he's like i'm two away from you. You don't need to yell at me. Also, you're still speaking. This isn't telepathic. So you can hear me. You're absolutely right. So often we're trying to reach outer space by going out. But what about going in? That's right.

Maybe the secrets of the universe are closer. It's like your friends, right? Wait, no, your enemies. They're're inside you isn't that the old saying something like that you know these these male scientists with their dick-shaped telescopes and their dick-shaped rockets trying to just fling dicks out into space all right you're getting a little off topic here i didn't that wasn't quite the point i was trying to make but how are you supposed to reach aliens using a giant dick right i think we were what if they don't like them we were almost on the same page at one point but now i feel like this is a different you need to start thinking of other type of shapes i'm talking

to security i'm not i'm not with him i'm not with him i'm here for a separate thing he's got his own agenda but instead of the cosmic orgasm of interplanetary communication Albert was expecting, right after contact day, he felt awful. In fact, he felt ill. Bizarrely, he started receiving strange phone calls from numbers he didn't recognize. Whoa. And his head thumped from headaches, and with what felt like telepathic messages invading his thoughts.

Messages that he should stop trying to contact UFOs. Were the aliens talking back, after all? Sadly, Albert's bedroom wasn't a very relaxing place to try and regain your health. He called the attic his, quote, chamber of horrors. Oh boy. Because it was decorated with shrunken heads and skulls. And after contact day, it became even more horrifying, as it filled with a yellow mist and began to smell of burning sulfur.

What? Either Albert was losing his mind or he was going to hell. By July, he was preparing the next edition of Space Review when he heard his mother calling from the floor below. Albert, darling, there are some men here to see you. Shall I send them up? And just so you know, there's no pressure to keep on living here. Your stepfather and I will be just fine on our own. My God, shut up, Mom. You're ruining my life. Oh, don't be silly, Albert. You're ruining your own life. Have fun with your friends, sweetie. Let me know if I can bring you some juice.

God, Mom! Just leave me alone! Yes! Obviously bring the juice! Bender heard a flurry of footsteps climbing the stairs. Three men appeared in his doorway, identically dressed in black suits and black trilby hats. They were tall and intimidating, and when they entered the room, the sulfur smell intensified. Their faces were cold and expressionless, and Bender was struck by fear when he looked in their eyes. Whoa, what do you fellas want? Bender would later describe his visitors. They floated about a foot off the floor.

Their faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them. The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs. They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable. The men didn't speak, but were somehow able to communicate with Bender telepathically. Stop publishing. Stop publishing. Stop publishing. Stop publishing. Bender was absolutely terrified. He could only watch in horror. Why did she let them in?

Why did she let them in? He said they're floating they were they're probably punching their fists at the door we're looking for your son man this is nuts he could only watch in horror as the man started turning over the apartment and collected his research and all of his copies of space review even those containing the details of the results of contact day which bender had promised his followers was pretty juicy once they had all bender's ufo materials they headed for the door they left a thick cloud of yellow fog as they marched back downstairs and out through the front door these could have just been regular men

there was nothing that these men did that needed to be done by other than the floating i don't know why they're not regular man no i'm saying why wasn't this task executed by three normal men oh rather than the supernatural entities gas people all they kind of did was just like come in and wreck you know typical kind of uh intimidation wreck up the laboratory and leave sort of thing he didn't have to say that telepathically from outside the house with flashlight eyes that burn into your soul bender was scared to death and could barely eat for days after the experience. He had lost everything that he was going to share with his readers, so he sat at his typewriter and started writing his final newsletter.

Dearest readers, the mystery of flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by order from a higher source. We would like to print the full story in Space Review, but because of the nature of the information, we are very sorry that we have been advised in the negative. He ended it with, We advise those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious. Bender immediately stopped circulating space review and even dissolved the entire international flying saucer bureau too scared to face another visit from the men in black that was a very um a very measured and mild-mannered response

because you know that could have gone either way it could have been that you know hey this is the last issue of space review we were all in danger i can't do this any longer or the flip side could have been y'all f***ers won't believe what just happened to me i saw gas people enter my home not the man in black coming to my door not the guys floating one foot off the ground yeah it could he could have tried to blow the lid on this even further that's why i thought it was kind of um kind of crazy that they went they went defcon one with the response to this instead of doing the subtle you know guys maybe show up and say hey maybe you don't uh maybe you don't do space review anymore you know they got a little baseball bat or something like maybe you keep a little little f**k i'll shut about those aliens huh little son of a b**ch but instead they came in beaming sentences into his head smashing laptops

floating in gas they really it was a real real dramatic response to this it's a great point there's many layers to this you know i want to say on the one hand maybe they've done this many times before they know how human beings react they know what shock does to a person i mean i have it on good authority from albert's family from the 60s and so on that he wasn't the same after this he He was a reserved, worried, paranoid guy because he was always worried that they were going to come back. You know, another side might be, maybe you do float one foot off the ground

because no one will ever believe you. Got it, yeah. This is kind of like being scared straight. Yeah. You know when you get a prisoner to go to a high school and talk to a bunch of kids and just being like, y'all little little pussy ass

fuckers want to end up like me excuse me we agreed no swearing shut the fuck up little prison bitch actually where do we get this guy do we was he vetted before he got here clear you little mother he's got a knife the actual x-con is on his way, walking to the school at this very moment. We found this guy at a bus stop at 3am. He said he was on his way to prison. We assumed it was to serve time, not to hand himself in. Are you here to give the talk today? Oh, I'll talk.

You want me to talk? I'll talk. I did it. I did it all. It's the same idea. They've got some mibs they're rolling them out to scare him straight yeah don't mess with ufos unless you're ready to get burned gassed but it is you know you make a great point this is zero to a hundred stuff i really would have expected a telephone call. Yeah. Just a simple stop publishing would have done. Yeah, yeah.

That's spooky enough. We get that all the time, you know, called up, stop podcasting. Sure. That's what we get. We get that, you know, daily. Sure. Not even from the government, just sometimes from Spotify. Yeah.

Apple Podcasts. Sometimes my parents. Yeah. Just said, you're saying a lot of incriminating shit. You're embarrassing the family. Stop podcasting. And I'm like, mom? And then she just hangs up. Yeah, it says no caller ID, but I can recognize the voice.

Sometimes it's a FaceTime, so I can see her. I don't think she knows how to work the phone. Yeah, exactly. Just pointing up at her. Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing. What happened to Albert Bender is a mystery in itself, but a clue to what happened would appear a few years later. In 1967, a UFO researcher named Jack Robinson and his wife were finding strange and incredible

paranormal evidence and experiences of UFOs in their research. But unfortunately for them, weird things started happening in their own lives too. They would come home from a UFO research trip to find their house had been ransacked and their files disturbed. Not only that, they noticed that a strange man in a black suit started hanging out near their apartment building, just standing outside. They told a friend about it, Timothy Green Beckley, and he wanted to see for himself so he drove around and captured this photograph i'm gonna have to take my shades off that's how serious this is getting it's so dark that mib suit is wow so this is an actual photograph taken at the time 1967 folks i mean we're looking at an old black and white picture of the side of a street here.

And in one of the doorways leaning against the side is a man in a very dark suit with what appears to be a hat trying to kind of, it does look like, conceal himself in the doorway of this building. Interesting in a number of cases, I suppose. Definitely could just be a passerby. But at the same time, this does accurately match our description of the men in black from 1953, the black suit and the black trilby hat. Yeah.

Definitely suspicious that he's in the periphery of a UFO researcher's apartment. It's always going to be a little bit difficult talking about MIBs when you're talking about the era periphery of a ufo researcher's apartment it's always going to be a little bit difficult talking about mibs uh when you're talking about the era when it was very popular for men to wear black suits and black hats you know maybe when we get into cases in modern day that's maybe not as common a thing for just everyday men to walk around in groups with sunglasses on and earpieces but uh definitely you know it's it's a little less exceptional uh

in these cases it's a great point though because it raises the question the mibs are so iconic these days they've been immortalized in film and everything and they would stand out in today's society but maybe that's the point back then they were supposed to look like your average joe yeah so it wasn't a weird thing at all. It was just a businessman. But I suppose still different enough that these researchers thought it was weird and that this photographer, Timothy, thought it was weird. Yeah.

So we're getting a picture here, Rory. We've talked about them many times over the years, but never in detail. Who or what are these men in black? In short, we're talking about beings that dress in black and drive black cars. Their mission in life is to silence anyone that knows too much, specifically about UFOs and aliens. They have popped up in a lot of cases that we've done so far on this podcast. And despite that, I'm proud to say I know very little about these people.

I refuse to learn about them. I mean, aside from the fact that, yeah, as we said, they are agents working for some sort of organization that are there to silence the truth. I mean, I didn't even know concretely whether they were known to be otherworldly. You know, sometimes they just seem like they could be the government. Yeah. I didn't know about floating and gas and flashlight eyes. Welcome to the murky world of MIBs, Rory. And the thing is, it doesn't matter what you saw.

It could be as little as you saw some lights in the sky, or you could be Travis Walton and you're telling the world about your abduction story. If you're talking too much, they're coming. They'll intimidate you, threaten you, and, like Albert Bender in our first story, potentially redact your entire life. They might even call ahead and pretend to be a journalist, or law enforcement, or members of the same clubs as the witnesses that they're targeting. And it's over these crucial years of the 50s and 60s that evidence for Men in Black begins to mount. Wow.

Again in 1967, Ohio native Robert Richardson was out driving at night. He came around a blind corner and was horrified when he saw something in the middle of the road, except there were no headlights. Was someone on the wrong side of the road with no lights or broken dawn there? Either way, he couldn't stop before he hit it violently. Except the moment he hit it, it disappeared. Whoa! Not in like a burst of blood.

It just disappeared, like vanished. Yeah, he didn't vaporize a deer. Right. It seemed like a car and it disappeared. Oh, okay, okay. The police came and they inspected the scene, but all they could find were Robert's skid marks. So they decided he must have fallen asleep or hallucinated it or something. And so Robert got home, feeling confused and frustrated. He couldn't understand what had

happened. He returned to the scene as soon as he could, a few days later, and had a look around. Big mistake, buddy. He thought there must be some clue as to what happened that night. He thought there must be some clue as to what happened that night. It was then he found it. A strange chunk of metal, just lying there in the grass, that Robert knew must have come from whatever he hit that night. He took it home to examine it and then, I guess, send it somewhere for analysis. But just three days later, he heard a knock at the door. It was 11pm and two men dressed in black stood outside.

They began to question Robert as soon as he opened the door. Something about them felt different, but he couldn't put his finger on it. The men didn't identify themselves and Robert felt compelled not to ask who they were. They asked him about his accident and exactly what he'd seen. After 10 minutes the men in black left in their black 1953 Cadillac. He even noted down their license plate but later found the plates weren't in circulation. But two weeks later two more different MIBs showed up. Good evening Robert. Oh god again. Look, you're gonna have to tell me who you are if you want me to talk. Are you with the police?

Wait, are you friends of Jimmy's? You tell that son of a bitch I won that waffle iron fair and square. He ain't getting it back. What? No. Did you bet a waffle iron? That's so weird. That's besides the point. We have to ask you a few questions.

Oh, yeah? What do you want to know? Actually, it's not a question. I'm just telling you something. You didn't hit anything with your car that night. What? You heard me. You didn't hit anything that night. Got it? Now hand over the metal object. How do you know about that? I mean, what metal? The men were furious when they heard he'd already handed it over to the authorities How do you know about that? I mean, what metal?

The men were furious when they heard he'd already handed it over to the authorities and threatened him. If you want your wife to stay as pretty as she is, then you'd better get the metal back. They never darkened his door again, even though he couldn't get the sample back from the police. God knows what the MIBs did to get it back. Probably murdered the entire police force. As you can see, people are frightened of MIBs for a reason. They're like 007, licensed to kill. They use hyper-aggressive tactics to get the job done. But for all of the stories that are out there, we still don't know exactly what they are. Obviously, look human but the theories about their real identity span from androids from the future all the way to literally the devil in a disguise. Wow. But by far the most popular theory is that they are in

fact aliens themselves. Okay okay I can get on board with this. Who better to keep the UFO secret than the people driving the ufos yeah it makes more sense than the devil i would give a horse in the race i think he's big into secrets secrets and lies are kind of like his his whole thing but i feel like you know if he's i don't know if you're in the business of fighting with God, you don't really concern yourself with the petty politics of humans and aliens. Yeah, I just feel like, go ahead, take the medal. I literally do not care. Do you know how f***ing hot it is down here?

I've been alive for five trillion years. Think I care about f***ing earth politics? So many researchers believe that they might be aliens because almost all reports of MIB encounters include details of highly unusual behavior and appearance. Most witnesses describe MIBs as completely hairless. One described an MIB picking up a ballpoint pen and gazing at it in wonder as if he was seeing something extraordinary

he's seen space metal why does he why does a pen he's wearing a suit why is a pen why does that tip the scales huh that's so strange i love it another claims an mib another claims an mib tried to drink jello uh that he had offered the agent to eat right so that's he tried to snort a pop tart what don't you understand so these these uh if they are extraterrestrial creatures they they have been suited up they can look like humans yes but they are still so primitive to the human world that even though they're there to be and they can pretty successfully pass off as at least looking like humans uh there's nothing human really about them exactly it might as well be a meat puppet and on the inside is just like constellations and galaxies like pulling the limbs behind it i mean i feel the will smith men in black movies which we have to talk about at some point of

course yeah uh i feel like they did a good job at nailing this you would have weird looking humans and then will smith would come along and go, I know who you are. 9-7-X-Z-5-0. Escaped convict from the planet Zeta Reticuli. And then they would immediately just shapeshift into an alien. Right. The alien's disguise was very, very surface level. They could barely speak English. They could barely get by.

But in the Men in Black movie, the mibs were all humans right on a on like an american task force to hunt aliens wasn't that it i actually don't know that they were all human oh maybe some aliens didn't but i feel like by men in black two or three they were on some kind of men in black space station where really men in black from all over the galaxy were working together i might be making that up but i remember there was a lot of aliens walking around the headquarters you're thinking of the pitch that you did to netflix for men in black for spielberg it was pretty f***ed up actually i wrote a letter to spielberg pretending to be his son just to get in the door and once he opened the letter it was like surprise it's the screenplay to men in black six

who are you like what did you mean when you wrote the letter interior space station day or night can you imagine how fast you would trash a letter if it began instead of like dear rory it started with interior space station how many letters do you think tarantino gets that it's like dear dear quentin tarantino interior it's all for jesus no get rid of this and some more say that the mibs that they met were wearing makeup to cover their pale alien skin few accounts say that the agents referred to each other by numbers rather than names and others mention telepathic communication like albert bender experienced some people even claim that men in black performed magic in front of their very eyes, including teleportation, making objects disappear and bending the rules of physics to their whim. What does that mean? Bending the rules of physics? Floating a foot off the ground? Yeah, that'll do it.

is how they they go to such lengths and put in such effort to look and and appear like humans and then they're just making pens disappear and floating and calling each other seven and twelve it's so weird yeah i think we've talked about this before you know about aliens blending in if i visit barcelona i want to blend in because i don't want to get mugged by criminals who are trying to uh find tourists yeah and you were mugged in barcelona and i was and i failed this is this is all to prove the point of the story and yet i can't blend in no matter how hard i try no matter how close their culture is to my culture. This is you floating down Las Ramblas, expelling gas.

I am one of you. Cerveza, please, if you will, sir. Everyone's taking your wallet, your phone. Booming voice echoing for miles. No matter how hard I try to blend in, no matter how hard I study my surroundings and try not to look like a tourist, I will always carry an essence of tourist

that is distinguishable to the common petty thief. In the same way, it's going to be pretty f***ing hard for an alien from another galaxy to come over. And he's going to go, great, I can nail the hair, the clothes, the look, the language. But he can't nail walking. Yeah. Or what a ballpoint pen looks like. Or how to drink a cup of jello.

I guess that's it. You know, they might seem like easy things for us. But maybe when you're already trying to master 200 things, you forgot to give yourself a human name. So people call you three now. Yeah. Maybe there's just bits that you forgot. Maybe right at the end, they're like, hey, don't tell anyone what you saw that night.

We're going to go check this out. And you do a bit of magic. And you're like, isn't that cool? And you're like, oh, shit. Wait, you guys, you can do magic here, right? Oh, shit. This isn't a magic planet is it yeah i mean at least they came up with a human number they could have said an alien number as soon as they start calling each other zonk tar you need to get out of there all right i do appreciate that the stories i've told you today about mibs so far are pretty old.

And you're probably in a false sense of security right now at home listening to this thinking that you're safe. Well, here's a disturbingly recent case from an even more believable source. In 2001, Dan Aykroyd was working on a documentary. Here we go. It was a series for the sci-fi network about UFOs featuring a number of high-profile researchers. After a day of filming, he stepped outside the studios to have a cigarette and take a call from Britney Spears. She had an episode of SNL coming up and she wanted him to collaborate on it. He noticed a black Ford across the street and a tall man

in a black suit stepped out of it. He stared Ackroyd down, who nervously glanced away. He looked back after only a second or two and the man and the car had disappeared without a trace. He went back into the studio and was immediately told his show had been cancelled and filming would finish that instant. What? The episodes they made would never see the light of day and he was never told why. Are you kidding me? To this day, he believes the MIB shut it down. And that's Dan Aykroyd.

That's someone who doesn't just get things shut down. No. That's insane. This is Dan Aykroyd of Ghostbusters fame. He gets to do whatever he wants. You know, it's one thing when it's someone in their parents' attic slash basement sending out newsletters. Gets a newsletter cancelled.

Yeah, exactly. But Dan Aykroyd getting his entire season cancelled. And from what I know, my very limited knowledge in film and television is that something that has made it this far where they have started filming past the pilot episode that thing's in production they need it to go out even if it bombs to just recuperate the losses exactly that's crazy to think they would just shut that down very odd whenever he talks about this as well he he maintains that that car and that guy disappeared faster than anyone could drive away,

which is kind of crazy, because even he believes that they're not human or real or something. But that's where it even gets weirder, because then, like, is the car just fast? Or what happened? Why pretend to be in a car at all? Yeah, why did he need a car

if it was just going to disappear? Oh, it's so strange. Maybe it's symbolism that grounds the experience for the person who interacted with one of these MIBs. It didn't need to be a car. It didn't need to be a guy in a black suit. But these are the kind of imagery that humans can comprehend. Yes. It makes it easier for them to process what happened i love that you brought this up it's like in the movie dogma i haven't seen that is that like a talking dog it said nothing to do with dogs actually it's like

the religious thing dogma so no dogs i thought that was like mother like a mummy mummy dog dogma dog yeah that would be pretty sweet yeah but no no it's a movie about uh like religion angels and devil and stuff like that so jeez uh i guess all dogs go to heaven so that makes a little bit of sense because they're all good boys yeah yeah it means it's a fictional movie anyway so it's not too well i didn't actually believe the dogs could talk, so of course it's fictional. I never said there was a talking dog. I said there weren't any dogs in the movie.

You feel like you're getting hung up on the... Look, never mind. I'll pick a movie that you might relate better to. All right. It's like an air bud. Never seen it. Really? Never seen...

What is that about? Okay. Demons and angels? All right, f***ing hell. Marley and Me and me right it's like in marley and me i haven't seen that either what is that it's a religious but you thought dogma was about dogs it's dog and ma mama as in ma yeah i know what dog i know what ma dog papa dog mama that's quite enough what i'm hearing is no one has made dog mama which is a movie that i should make a sequel to dogma i think it's in dogma that one of the angels comes down he's got the wings he's got the whole deal and they're like hey why do you look like

an angel and he's like well your head would fucking explode if i showed you my true form right is that what the men in black are doing are they bad power for an angel to have by the way that's pretty demonic well it's not a power it's just his true form is far too powerful for a mortal to gaze upon right like freaking ryan gosling's abs you can't look at those things in real life yeah ever seen his abs? Don't think so. Nah, they have to cover them up. Yeah, you're seeing CGI on top of it.

Your face would melt. And if you did see his abs, that was a body double. It was. It was. What do you think, Roy? We're pontificating about all these different things that a MIB could be. But if you had experienced them in the way that some of these people have what would you be thinking i mean this is crazy i like i really like the idea of a task force just set up

to stop people from doing something you know it must be there must be so few things in life that you can start doing or trying to make that require a team to come and shut shut it down right after drugs it's a short list right yeah crystal meth i think if you probably tried to brew your own coca-cola probably the coca-cola people would come in one day and smack with a bat you know and smash up all your stuff that's probably how it went down in the olden days you know if you were trying to like i might i might try to make my own coca-cola like oh cool do you mind if i see how you do yeah smash it up and they'll be like mr cola sends his regards same thing with the 11 herbs and spices if you even dare oh yeah try to season chicken with 11

different herbs the colonel's gonna come knocking three men in white suits and kentucky bow ties if you hear your door and knock at the door and you hear why now you better run the scent of fried chicken wafting into your attic you better just run because the colonels are coming the man in w the colonel himself the mibs of the kfc yeah it does seem funny i mean we're so used to the idea of okay you're not allowed to make drugs i get that but it is sort of a funny sort of thought crime how many things are a crime just by googling it yeah i wonder like how far nowadays how far you'd have to get into making your own mickey mouse cartoon before disney you know kick down the door when you're not home and like rip up all of your your illustrations and stuff oh that feels so old school doesn't it. Like rival gangs kind of going in and feels like f***ing prestige.

Yeah. Where magicians are going into each other's warehouses and trashing it. It's so weird. You know, it's this idea of forbidden knowledge. Yeah. That just the knowledge of something is already a danger. It's too much. Yeah.

There's something quite scary about thinking the task force that are restricting this information aren't even from a government they're not even from a country the fact that if you had a complaint to make against them there's nowhere to send there is no complaint you might as well put it in a rocket to the moon because it's not no one's going to answer it they don't care they answer to no one it's quite scary to think that anyone in this world holds that kind of authority. What are your thoughts, Kit? I mean, you were the one that was looking into all these cases. I think what we're getting to the crux of here is, you know, what are they on this paranormal life?

Is whether something's paranormal or not. The core of this case is, are these MIB, M, are they men? Okay, I was really confused there. Are they actually human? So, about six or seven years ago, a movie called Mirage Men came out. I haven't watched it. But it is probably the closest we'll ever get to interviewing a real man in black. Wow.

In this movie, they interview a former Air Force special investigations officer, Richard Doty, about his involvement with the UFO community. Basically, special investigations officer Doty, during his career, he would contact UFO researchers and say, hey, how about you give us some of the research you've got and we'll give you a little in return. So we know what you're working on. And as a little thank you, we'll let you know some inside shit. It's a fair deal at the surface. Then he would begin drip feeding them tiny nuggets of the truth mixed in with huge helpings of bullshit. Whoa. He was muddying the waters. Before long, he had these researchers building machines to intercept alien signals,

writing out alien languages, trying to communicate with them through space and time. He was slowly radicalizing them into believing nonsense right as an air force employee how what a weird job one researcher that he contacted was even driven mad and checked into a psychiatric hospital all because the government was f***ing with them that's it discrediting people it is of course impossible to know whether richard doughty in 2014 is telling the truth about Richard Doty in the 80s. But it turns out we've actually talked about him or talked around him before. Really? For better or worse, Rory, he was the anonymous source behind Project Serpo and the Galactic Twelve.

No way! He was the source of the supposed intelligence. It doesn't bode well for the story of the Galactic 12 and Project Serpo. No, it definitely doesn't. But I don't think we said it was a real

case anyway. Do we not? I don't know. Well, we said the Galactic 12 are a real organization. Well, of course. Richard wouldn't be so cruel as to make up a legend. He couldn't do it, by the way. No one could make up a legend that strong. He couldn't invent a team as legendary as that. But yeah, a bit worrying if his job was bullshit merchant of the Air Force.

And then we did a two-part series on one of his lies bullshit merchant i mean if we ever needed uh professional titles that weren't just paranormal paranormal podcaster bullshit merchants are pretty good it would fit the bill we just need to dress like the merchant from resident evil 4 with the big cloaks on the top secret files in our cloaks good lord uh wow yeah that is um it's always a little worrying when the guy who's making these pretty extreme claims one of the claims he's making is that he made extreme lies that he gave to other people it's too muddy it's too it's weird it's weird the evidence for men in black being real is a supposed man in black saying he made everything up over the years which is very confusing that's

that's terrible so it's weird maybe this is the sad reality of what a man in black is an agent of disinformation yeah but i'd like to round off rory with at least a little bit more physical evidence for you this is a video i'm about to show you of supposedly men in black caught on camera oh my god whipping out the big guns at the end. Two unidentified men in black visited the same hotel looking for the two witnesses who saw this UFO. The two witnesses were not there at the time. So the men in black harassed the hotel staff for approximately 30 minutes before leaving. Those who spoke to the men said they were completely bald with no eyebrows or eyelashes. They apparently had relatively big strange eyes and did not blink once whilst talking. What do you think though, bud?

No eyebrows? No hair? Didn't blink once? I mean, have some eyebrows at the very least. They didn't study human life at all. This is nuts. I love that they, when they didn't get what they wanted harassed the staff for 30 minutes as if that was gonna that was gonna fix the problem i mean it's pretty realistic

human behavior yeah yeah very white aliens would do that though yeah i wonder how much of this is you know species from another planet or just very awkward anti-social government agents being told to yell at people and interrogate people who knows we may never know and yet at the end of every episode of this paranormal life even episode 200 we have to decide whether the case we've just discussed is paranormal or not what do you think rory this is a tough one this is a tough head versus heart i think i know i don't and you know that i don't want to be the one to call dan akroyd a liar um look we've had these guys pop up in more stories than freaking project blue book we've talked about them pretty much since the beginning

of the podcast they've crept up in stories sometimes at the end sometimes at the beginning but always at some point getting involved in these paranormal cases today a lot of the cases pretty much everyone that we talked about wasn't just mibs there was also a paranormal factor the fact they were floating that they didn't have any i guess it's not paranormal to not have any eyelids or eyelashes eyebrows any hair any hair um that's not paranormal it's just maybe a little strange um but still a lot of talk of them being extraterrestrials from another planet i think briefly we mentioned robots but it's really difficult i don't know i feel like if i had to decide whether or not they existed over time there probably has been a task force of government agents whose sole mission was to

either interrogate or shut down the investigation of classified material do i think based on today's evidence that those people were from another planet no i do not you hesitated for a while there as if you were tossing it up well i was worried that a red dot site was gonna go on my forehead at any second now why hello there i mean we are one of the people that were mentioned in today's episodes we are the people that are diving too deep we have the space newsletter that goes out weekly to thousands of listeners it's true we should be the people that are getting shut down and yet here we are damn that's a fair indictment i think what we're beating around the bush of here rory that we believe in the men in black we don't believe in the men in black from some sort of

intergalactic alien agency exactly i think based on what we've seen today i think that's a safe assumption to make everything that was done today aside from teleporting away in an instant could have been done by regular humans that means today I think it's fair to say it's a double no the men in black are not paranormal true

but I would like to tack on as a caveat the men in black are absolutely real of course be afraid be very afraid they're probably watching you right now holy smokes guys can't believe we finally made it to the mibs episode 200 in the bag i've been talking about uh them for a long time i haven't covered it because we've been too damn scared and lord knows i'll probably never release this episode hope you enjoyed it though if i did release it

and i'm now presumably dead rory might have got off because it wasn't his episode to research i'm going to be launching my spin-off pod this government life i'm going to tell you about all the swell things the government have been up to recently which government doesn't matter all of them dear listeners we have absolutely nothing to plug this week and we have only you to thank for getting us all the way to episode 200 wow good lord what a journey it's been that's you know almost four years that's crazy isn't it where does the time go i thought like rory said the beginning, we'd get shut down week two. Yeah.

We've been doing this for a long time. I think the other day we were trying to work out how many places we've recorded the podcast. Yes. Because we've both moved houses like two times, three times. Yeah. Since then. We've done it in studios. We've done it at my work.

We've done it all over the place and the audience never noticed oh it's sad we know you did but you were kind enough not to roast us for it we're like the hulk our secret is the quality was always bad you never noticed at all it's so true um what a crazy journey yeah from being you know professional paranormal investigators with with some some stuff to learn to knowing it all in episode 200 i really think we know it all now i don't think there's any secrets out there left undiscovered i don't know what we're gonna do for 201 whenever uh whenever we started this i think the number one thing people said to us was aren't you going to run out of stories yeah very soon oh yeah um that was a real fear even that i

had i think when we were on when we were on like episode 50 yeah and i was calling toot and cam and a milf i was like we're scraping the bottom of the sarcophagus here my friend we're we're running out real fast little did we know that that digging would bottom out into a hollow earth full of ghostly tales uh i mean if i had told our four year ago selves that in four years you will cover men in black wow what the are we talking about between nine then i still remember when we did the episode on the um the black eyed kids yeah yeah and i think that was maybe the first time where i did a story that involved the men in black i think and i was like i remember researching that at night and thinking like whoa who are these guys

Like who is this and clicking the Wikipedia article and being like whoa they have a huge backstory We should do an episode on these guys Sometime and that must have been I think black eyed kids was like episode 12 or in the 20s or something It was really early on something like it Wow What a journey what a journey what a great show we have fun what how much fun this is to do i love it hope you enjoyed it folks thank you for sticking with us over the last four years we know many of you have been with us since day one which uh warms our cold dead hearts we do have some really cool announcements coming up as well unfortunately

we can't unveil them just yet um as there have been some minor delays but i promise you guys there's some really cool stuff on the horizon we're really excited about hopefully in the next week or two that we'll be able to announce keep your ears open you don't think we drop it in the mib episode no there's enough going on there for sure they're they're listening we don't think we'd drop it in the MIB episode? No, there's enough going on there for sure. They're listening. We don't need them to be listening. So thank you so much to Cammie Toman for editing and Amy Grisdale for research on this week's episode.

We will, of course, be back next week. But to celebrate episode 200, we wanted to round out and let our community have the final word. Please enjoy a few words from them. See you next week. And the winners of the Best Entertainment Podcast is This Paranormal Life!

All right, you ready? Let's do this. Presented by Rory Powers and Kit Greer, This Paranormal paranormal life where two self-styled experts on the paranormal cast the skeptical jokey eye over some of the outlandish claims and other worthy accounts out there rory powers and kit greer an award-winning and frighteningly popular paranormal podcast this paranormal life. They have listeners from all over the world. We love This Paranormal Life. This Paranormal Life. This Paranormal Life.

This Paranormal Life. It's my favorite podcast ever. I love you guys a lot. I listen to you guys every single day. I love everything that you guys are doing, and it's always one of the biggest highlights of my week. I listen to you guys on repeat almost 24-7. I listen to all the episodes multiple times over. I think the show is just so incredibly funny and charming. I just want to say huge thanks for your podcast. It really brought together me and my father during

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Remember, live fast, investigate, and die young, buddy! The best podcast you've ever heard in this paranormal life. Word. We're proud to be a part of the Col- Commune. I've been around since day one, and a proud member of the Commune. Top five Commune that I've been in, definitely very breathable uniforms. I love listening to your podcast when I was trying to hike up hills or just to pass the time. I would put it on speaker at night and the voices would help keep bears out of my campsite.

So you guys definitely really helped me with that one. I think it's really important to have that, you know, Northern Irish representation in the mainstream. I think it's very important that people hear our accent. You know, that's paranormal life. That's pure paranormal life.