Linda Godfrey - the author of such acclaimed titles as The Beast of Bray Road; Hunting the American Werewolf; and The Michigan Dogman - reviews my The Real Men in Black book. Here it is:
Men in black, mysterious figures in black suits that pop up at UFO sighting scenes like mushrooms after a spring rain, have become so solidly entrenched in pop culture that very popular – and imaginative – movies have been made about them. Nick Redfern’s new book tracks their history from the days when MIB were esoteric lore known only to UFO geeks, to today’s guys with cool shades who show up on your local theater screen. The real Men in Black are far more sinister than I had guessed.
The book was especially persuasive to me personally since it includes the experiences of colleagues I’ve come to know and trust over the years including Brad Steiger, Marie D. Jones and Raven Meindel. The terror they and many others experienced was subtle – compared to sightings of, say, Bigfoot or werewolves -- yet very traumatic.
Sporting black suits and hats some have compared to those of the Blues Brothers, Men in Black started showing their pale and unexpressive faces in the middle of the 20th Century, around the same time flying saucers entered the public consciousness. Witnesses and researchers of the UFO phenomenon found themselves threatened and harassed – often in unexplainable ways – by the lurking strangers who usually drove shiny black cars. Scarily, MIB continue these terror tactics to present day, sometimes updating their transportation to black helicopters or other vehicles.
In my book, Strange Wisconsin; More Badger State Weirdness, I reported an incident told me by a farmer in western Wisconsin who was deer hunting with his children when the three saw a UFO rise from a nearby tree top and then shoot off over a field. They were so terrified they decided to forget hunting and just leave, but as they exited the woods they saw a convoy of shiny black pickup trucks heading single file across the field in the same direction the UFO had gone. Just the sight of so many new trucks in the sleepy area was strange enough, but where did they suddenly come from and why would they all take off across someone’s field in mid-November? What was their connection to the silver, discoid craft and how did they know it was there?
Readers will discover similar weird anomalies in every tale in Redfern’s book. And after grounding readers in many frightening examples of the MIB mystery, Redfern spends the second half of the book wrestling with possible explanations for the creepy figures. Redfern notes that strange people clad in black have appeared to those dabbling in occult studies and practices throughout history. If this is true, perhaps the MIB are not connected to aliens from space at all. Redfern explores such disparate possible origins for them as elaborate thought- forms created by human imagination, time cops from far in the future and perfectly human secret agents.
Author and MIB researcher Colin Bennett is quoted extensively in the book, and he comes to the conclusion that the MIB entities appear to “eat” human energy generated by the fear they provoke. This was interesting to me because I have often said the same thing about the unknown, upright canines I have studied and written about for the past 19 years. Are strange creatures, MIB, UFOs and other scary phenomena part of some massive, unknown entity that exists just one step above us on the psychic food chain? Perhaps unreality bites.
Whatever MIB may be, Redfern and the many experts he consults agree they are not desirable company. There is one simple weapon that seems to work against them but I won’t give that away here. I’ll just say that to be forewarned is to be fore-armed, and that you will want to read this book to know what to do before the MIB come calling on you.
And to find out more about Linda, see the following:
Linda S. Godfrey, author of The Michigan Dogman, Werewolves and Other Unknown Canines Across the USA and Monsters of Wisconsin (June 2011)
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NEW BOOK http://www.amazon.com/Michigan-Dogman-Werewolves-Canines-U-S/dp/0979882265/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291303535&sr=1-1
http://twitter.com/lindasgodfrey
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http://lindagodfrey.wordpress.com
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