Subject: MIBs, Laughing Matter.                                 June 26, 
2012.

  It seems that the subject of the MIB is a laughing matter as
we have the third fictional movie called MIB III, being shown.
I'll have to admit that Will Smith does a great job in these
movies and it is a laughing matter.
I like these fictional movies very much and go to see them in
movie theaters.  I think there are or were actual MiBs that
did harass people who saw UFOs and there are actually a type
of MIB who were working for our g-vernment to try to harass
people who see UFOs and talk about them.

  Thus with that being said, we now hop in the discussion of MIB.

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From: Terry W. C-lvin <fortean1@mindspring.com>
Subject: Happy Birthday, MIB! (1947-2012)
Date: Sunday, 24, June, 2012

*Friends, Forteans, Listmates!*

* Yesterday, June 22, was the 65th birthday of the sinister
Men in B-ack (MIB), the mysterious visitors, often
dark-complexioned, dressed in dark clothing and claiming to
be go-ernment agents, who allegedly harass and threaten
UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have
seen. The MIB began to be frequently reported in connection
with UFO sightings (and occasionally also with encounters
with other unusual phenomena) in the 1950s and 1960s
though researchers like the late John A. Keel have pointed
out similarities between Men in Bl-ck reports and older
stories of d-monic or s-pernatural encounters. Thus,
w-tchcraft and bla-k magic accounts for centuries have
described a sinister Bla-k Man, dark-skinned or dressed in
blac-, identified with the D-vil or his messengers (and
having nothing to do with men of African origin or
appearance). However, many UFO researchers believe
that the first known modern UFO-related Men in -lack
appeared 65 years ago, in June 1947, in connection with
the Maury Island Incident of a UFO allegedly spewing
vast quantities of hot slag and molten metal onto an
island in Puget Sound near Tacoma, Washington, and a
nearby boat. *

* In 1947, Harold L. Dahl (1911-1982) and Fred Lee
Crisman (1919-1975) were commercial lumber salvagers
in Tacoma Harbor, often incorrectly described as
Tacoma harbor patrolmen. Crisman, usually described as
Dahls supervisor (sometimes as just his business partner),
also seems to have been a F-deral undercover agent,
using his business to keep an eye on suspicious
goings-on in Tacoma Harbor and Puget Soundand perhaps
help cover up s-cret or illegal gov-rnment activities in
the area.
On the afternoon of June 21, Dahl (so he claimed) was
on his boat near Maury Island, 3 miles from Tacoma, with
his 15-year-old son, their dog, and two crewmen. Dahl
claimed to see six huge doughnut-shaped metallic craft
far overhead. One seemed to be in some sort of trouble,
lost altitude, and discharged tons of hot dark lava-like
slag and light white aluminum-like metal before flying
off West over the sea with the other UFOs. Most of the
debris fell on the Maury Island beach but some hit
Dahls boat, damaging the boat, k-lling his dog, and
burning his sons arm. Dahl and his crew retrieved some
of the slag and metal fragments supposedly spewed
by the saucer, and Dahl also tried to take some
photographs of the retreating UFOs. When Dahl returned
to his Tacoma dock, Crisman at first refused to believe
his bizarre story, accusing Dahl and his crew of drinking.*

*Crisman, however, supposedly changed his mind the
next morning after taking the boat out to Maury Island,
seeing the piles of slag and metal on the beach, and
himself sighting a UFO hovering over the island! That
same morning, June 22, Dahl allegedly breakfasted
with a mysterious visitor wearing a b-ack suit and
driving a 1947 Buick sedan, who knew everything about
the previous days sighting, told Dahl he had seen
something he should not have seen, and warned him
not to discuss his experience with anybody if he
loved his family. Dahl, however, at first disregarded this
Man in Bla-k as a crackpot. However, with his
uncanny knowledge of Dahls experience and his
ominous threats, the visitor anticipated the behavior
(including the dark clothing and dark late-model cars)
of the Men in Bla-k so notorious in subsequent UFO
lore. Dahls visitor, like the typical MIB of the 1950s,
1960s, and later, **seemed to have detailed information
on Dahls experience the previous day, as if he had
kept Dahl under surveillance for a long period of time.
The visitors threats against Dahl and his family if he
should tell anyone about his sighting are likewise all
too typical of post-1950s MIB behavior. **Dahl also
found the photographs he had taken of the saucers
inexplicably fogged, as if exposed to radiation. *

*A few weeks later, in July, Crisman and Dahl wrote
Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer a letter describing
Dahl's sighting, and mailed Palmer some of the alleged
"saucer" fragments. Palmer was a brashly
sensation-mongering editorial hustler notorious in
science-fiction circles for promoting Richard Shavers
(JW  During that time I contacted Richard Shaver and
read his information called "The Shaver Mystery" and
he sent me some examples of the mysterious picture
on rocks, of maremaids and sharks.  I believe he was
telling the truth, but I've lost that material or given it
away.) lurid fantasies of the e-il underground dero
responsible for all the worlds ills as alleged fact.
Crisman, who was an Amazing Stories fan, had already
written Palmer a year earlier, describing his own alleged
World War II battle with aggressive underground
humanoids with ray-guns in a cave in India! Crismans
underground battle supposedly corroborated Shavers
wild tales of the fiendish subterranean dero, ballyhooed
by Palmer as fact. Palmer asked Boise, Idaho
businessman and private pilot Kenneth Arnold,
already famous for his own June 24 Mt. Rainier sighting
of the "saucers," to fly to Tacoma and investigate the
Maury Island incident, offering him $200 in expenses.
Palmer, too, had already written to Arnold, and
encouraged Arnold in the belief that the flying saucers
were spacecraft from other planets. John A. Keel later
called Palmer the man who invented flying saucers for
his early role in popularizing the extraterrestrial theory
of UFOs (though few people outside science-fiction,
Fortean, and ufological circles have ever heard of Keel).
Keel himself abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis
of UFOs for his own ultraterrestrial theory that UFOs,
aliens, and MIBs were other-dimensional visitors whose
interactions with humans in previous centuries had
given rise to traditional r-ligious, mythological, and
folklore beliefs in g-ds, demons and fairies.*

*Arnold flew to Tacoma on July 29th to find a complex,
mystifying web of seeming cloak-and-dagger intrigue
and skullduggery with apparently p-ranormal aspects
while playing amateur detective for Palmer. He had not
told anyone about his exact plans, yet found his
mission and presence uncannily anticipated. Arriving
in Tacoma, he called several hotels, to find all of
them full with no vacancies. Finally, however, when
he called Tacomas fanciest hotel as a last resort, he
found that a room had been reserved there in his
name by an unknown benefactor! From July 29 to 31,
Arnold met several times in Tacoma with Dahl, who
seemed fearful and reluctant to discuss the affair,
and Crisman, who acted like the more dominant and
assertive of the two Maury Island witnesses. He
examined Dahl and Crismans alleged saucer debris,
which looked like ordinary lava rock and scrap aircraft
aluminum. He was called several times by a local United
Press stringer, who had been repeatedly called by a
mysterious informant who accurately knew everything
done and said in Arnolds hotel room, as if it had been
bugged, though Arnold was unable to find any listening
devices despite a diligent search of his room! *

*Suspecting a hoax but feeling out of his depth, Arnold
called for assistance. He first summoned a friend,
United Airlines pilot Cap. E.J. Big Smithy Smith, who
had also seen a UFO, to Tacoma. On the 31st, he also
called two Army Air Force Intelligence officers,
Lieutenant Frank Brown and Captain William Davidson,
who had debriefed Arnold a few days earlier about his
own Mt. Rainier sighting and told him to contact them if
he saw or heard anything more unusual. Arriving on
the afternoon of July 1, Brown and Davidson
interrogated Crisman (the diffident Dahl had left Arnolds
hotel room, as if reluctant to have anything more to do
with the matter), examined the debris, and also called
the whole thing a hoaxwhile, however, insisting on
taking the allegedly worthless debris back with them
to their base. They left early on the morning of August 1
to return to Hamilton Field in California, to participate
in Air Force Day ceremonies marking the official
inauguration of the Air Force as a full-fledged separate
branch of the Armed Forces. Shortly after takeoff, the
plane crashed, killing both Brown and Davidson, though
a military hitchhiker managed to parachute to safety.*

Part 1.

John Winston. johnfw@mlode.com