Albert Bender and the first Men in Black
In 1953 Albert K. Bender abruptly shut down his International Flying Saucer Bureau, hinting at orders from a higher source, and later said three men in dark suits had warned him off.
1953 CE · 41.18, -73.19 · status: claim
The account
Bender, a factory clerk and war veteran from Pennsylvania who had moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, ran the bureau and its magazine Space Review. Friend Gray Barker turned the episode into the 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, and in 1962 Bender's own Flying Saucers and the Three Men said the visitors were aliens. Earlier, in 1947, Harold Dahl had claimed a man in a dark suit warned him about the Maury Island sighting.
The sceptical view
Folklorist James R. Lewis compares Men in Black tales with older stories of meeting the Devil. Bender's later version, with aliens, contradicted the government-agent reading many readers took from Barker.
Connections in the atlas
- Black-eyed children
- ? What was the Mothman, and did it foretell the Silver Bridge collapse?
- They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956)
- Indrid Cold, the 'Grinning Man'
- Flatwoods monster