THREATENED INTO SILENCE: ET, Reagan, and the Shadow Men – What Are We Not Being Told?

When witnesses see UFOs, it’s not the aliens that come knocking—it’s the mysterious men in black, and they don’t ask questions… they give warnings.

In 1982, Steven Spielberg screened his film E.T. at the White House for President Ronald Reagan and guests, including astronaut Neil Armstrong. After the movie, Reagan stood up, thanked Spielberg, and remarked, “And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.” Whether Reagan was joking remains unclear, but he wasn’t shy about connecting himself to alien concepts, having publicly shared two personal UFO sightings and speculated how a “threat from outer space” would unify nations.

Such comments from powerful figures have fueled beliefs that governments conceal information about extraterrestrial encounters. Central to these beliefs are men in black — shadowy figures in black suits who threaten those who publicly discuss UFOs and aliens. Witnesses describe them wearing all-black suits and hats, exhibiting behaviors ranging from odd to menacing. Theories about their identity vary from government agents keeping extraterrestrial secrets hidden to aliens themselves observing those connected to alien activity.

These mysterious Men in Black existed long before Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones donned the iconic suits and sunglasses. Encounters with these strange men have occurred for decades — sometimes unnerving, often bizarre, and almost always chilling for those approached.

“Mysterious men dressed in Air Force uniforms or bearing impressive credentials from government agencies have been silencing UFO witnesses. We have checked a number of these cases, and these men are not connected to the Air Force in any way. We haven’t been able to find out anything about these men. By posing as Air Force officers and government agents, they are committing a Federal offense. We would sure like to catch one — unfortunately the trail is always too cold by the time we hear about these cases, but we are still trying.” — Colonel Freeman, U.S. Air Force

Wytheville UFO Sightings

In early October 1987, Danny Gordon, a radio journalist in the small town of Wytheville, Virginia, reported a UFO sighting by police officers. After broadcasting the segment, similar reports flooded in.

Three months later, Wythe County had over 1,500 UFO reports. Something inexplicable was clearly happening. Intrigued, Danny and his friend Roger Hall investigated further, capturing sky anomalies on camera several times.

Danny’s investigations came at a cost. He received anonymous phone calls warning him to stop, claiming “the CIA and the Federal government were very much interested in Wythe County UFOs.” His house was also broken into.

Months later, after publicizing his research, Danny received a call from a self-identified retired military intelligence officer. The man asked Danny to record their conversation, then warned that his investigations might endanger his family. The caller claimed Danny’s son had been targeted:

“What I’m telling you, is they will try to hit you if they think it’s advisable for their purposes to keep you from further investigating this thing, and then most likely it’d be done through skin contact chemicals. It’d be something on the door knob of your car, or on the steering wheel. They could also come up with something, or do something to your children.“

Chilled but determined, Danny continued his work.

Less than a month later, two strange men in black visited his home, claiming to be journalists writing about Danny and the UFOs. They stayed about forty-five minutes — one interviewing Danny while the other wandered around taking photos.

They promised to send Danny a copy of the published article, but when it never arrived, Danny contacted their supposed newspaper. The paper had no record of these journalists:

“So, who they were I don’t know, but they were in my house, saw my pictures, saw my negatives, talked to my family, took pictures, and then left, and they were not with the newspaper,” Danny said.

Later, Danny discovered some of his UFO photo negatives were missing, presumably stolen.

Eventually, Danny abandoned his research as his family life and health deteriorated. A stress-induced heart attack was the final straw. By the time Danny left the county, UFO reports totaled 3,000. For Danny and his family, uncovering the truth had become too costly.

The Robertsons’ Case

A certain photograph is reportedly of a notorious “man in black.” It was taken outside UFO researchers John and Mary Robertson’s apartment by Tim Green Beckley, a friend and fellow researcher who visited after the couple reported being stalked by a strange man in black.

What began as an interest in UFOs turned sinister around 1968, when John and Mary experienced bizarre activity. Returning home one evening, it appeared someone had been through their UFO files.

One day while home alone, Mary noticed a strange man in black standing rigidly by the doorway of the building next to their apartment. He had an unsettling expression and seemed emotionally detached. After witnessing this strange man for four days, Mary told her husband. After showing John where the man had been, he too began noticing the figure. They described him as looking “dark and swarthy, always possessing a nerve-jangling expression.”

Around the same time, Mary and John noticed strange clicking noises on their phone lines, suggesting they were being tapped.

The couple became troubled by this persistent stalker, believing he was surveying the building and examining everyone who entered and left. With their UFO files disturbed, they claimed the mysterious man had entered their home to copy their research.

After the photograph was taken, the man in black was never seen again.

“Jack Smith” and the Men in Black

In 2014, a man in his 50s using the alias “Jack Smith” spoke about being menaced by men in black most of his life. An encounter that year in New Orleans, Louisiana, prompted him to finally discuss his traumatic experiences. He claimed these encounters resulted from multiple childhood alien abductions.

On Sunday, April 13, 2014, Jack was meeting his friend “Jane” for sightseeing and lunch in New Orleans. While waiting for a streetcar at the French Quarter’s Bienville Street station, they noticed two strange-looking men watching them.

During an exclusive interview with UFOGrid.com, Jane described the men as looking like “identical twins”:

“They were slim, and much taller than the average person. They were dressed in identical black suits, white shirts, skinny black ties, fedoras, and black sunglasses. They were pale, they were stiff, and they moved eerily in unison. They had oblong faces with a thin line for a mouth.”

Jane initially thought they were dressed for a performance, as their clothes seemed inappropriate for the hot weather. As minutes passed, the two men continued watching Jack and Jane. This tense encounter lasted until the streetcar finally arrived. The two men left the station — despite having waited at least twenty minutes — and got into a black car across the street.

Jack managed to film the encounter on his cell phone, something he’d never been able to do before. This was also the first time he’d seen men in black with someone he trusted. He expressed relief that someone had witnessed them with him.

Despite having filmed the strange men, all attempts to share the video have failed, with files mysteriously vanishing. Jack has, however, shared still images of the men in black from that day.

Maury Island Incident

On June 21, 1947 — the same month as the infamous Roswell incident — two unofficial harbor patrolmen, Harold Dahl and his son, were salvaging wood from Puget Sound in Washington state when they noticed something strange in the sky.

High above them, five saucer-shaped aircraft made of reflective material circled around a sixth unidentified flying object of the same description. Slowly, the sixth object descended over the men’s boat, stopping an estimated 500 feet above the water. Fearing the saucer might crash into them, Dahl and his son moved their boat to the shore of nearby Maury Island.

Once safely ashore, Dahl photographed the six unidentified flying objects. As he did, one of the circling aircraft began to descend. It hovered over the sixth object for several minutes until suddenly, a loud thud was heard and thousands of pieces of lightweight white and dark material sprayed from the craft. Most debris landed in the water, but a piece of hot black material burned Dahl’s son’s arm and another killed their dog.

Dahl rushed his son to the hospital and told his supervisor, Fred Crisman, about the incident. Crisman didn’t believe Dahl, and since the photo negatives had been damaged, there was no visual proof. Regardless, Crisman went to Maury Island to collect samples of the material Dahl described — metallic, some white and lightweight, the rest like lava rock. While collecting samples, Crisman claimed he too witnessed a UFO.

Dahl claimed that the morning after seeing the UFOs, a man dressed in a black suit appeared at his doorstep. The stranger suggested breakfast, so Dahl followed the man’s new black Buick to a restaurant.

While eating, the stranger asked no questions. Instead, he gave a detailed account of what had happened to Dahl the previous day. The man in black then warned Dahl not to disclose anything about what he had seen, or bad things would happen to him and his family.

Ignoring the warning, Dahl spoke about the incident to UFO investigators, even sending them material samples. As the man in black had warned, this endangered his family. Dahl claimed that after speaking out, his son disappeared, only to be found one week later in Montana waiting tables with no recollection of how he got there.

Continuing to discuss his sighting publicly, Dahl communicated with UFO researchers and two USAF officials who wanted to question him further. After the two air force investigators died mysteriously in a plane crash, the FBI got involved. Dahl and Crisman were ordered to admit their story was a hoax or face legal prosecution for fraud. Not wanting more trouble, Dahl agreed but carefully worded his statement. He wouldn’t admit his sighting was a hoax but assured the FBI that “if questioned by authorities he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want any further trouble over the matter.”

The Maury Island Incident has stirred much controversy. Many accept the FBI’s hoax conclusion, while others believe it was a cover-up of extraterrestrial activity, pointing to the man in black’s appearance and the bizarre disappearance of Dahl’s son.

MIBs and the Rendlesham Forest Incident

Described as the United Kingdom’s equivalent of Roswell, the Rendlesham Forest incident occurred in December 1980, when American air force personnel allegedly saw a UFO visit RAF Woodbridge, an airbase in Suffolk, England.

In the decades since, the area has attracted many UFO enthusiasts who claim the UK government suppressed information about the 1980 sightings. There is some truth to these claims, with information released in 2002. One released document was a memorandum by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, the base’s deputy commander, to the Ministry of Defence. In it, Halt described how three USAF patrolmen “reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest,” which was “metallic” and “triangular in shape.”

One UFO researcher claims she personally became a target of the Ministry of Defense’s efforts to silence discussion of the incident. In 1984, Brenda Butler and two co-authors wrote “Sky Crash,” questioning why UK authorities concealed the incident. During her research, she believes she attracted the attention of men in black — suited officials who tried to intimidate her to stop her investigations.

Speaking at a UFO conference in 2015 marking thirty-five years since the famous sightings, Brenda described how the MoD once tried to make her and a fellow investigator sign a silencing contract about their findings.

Another time, she was supposedly chased by an “army jeep” down country roads at 80mph. Even so, she returned to the forest that night and captured strange photographic anomalies. All while a police car and helicopter observed. As she left, she was told not to return.

Brenda also revealed that people had come to her home and stood in her driveway, trying to intimidate her, and that her phones had been tapped. She stated that her co-authors received anonymous phone calls warning that if they didn’t stop researching the alleged UFO incident, they might “end up at the bottom of the ocean.”

(Source: Paranormal Scholar)