As I mentioned in my exploration of my uncle’s “experience” with those enigmatic Men in Black, a related incident occurred with my cousin and his second wife a few days later. The alleged happening occurred on September 24th, 1976, and at face value seems even more incredible than that of my uncle’s, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, encounter.
My cousin’s name was John, his wife’s name Maureen (we called her Moo for short, but I won’t go into the reason…hey, at least she didn’t have three of ‘em like another relative I know…) and they lived on an apartment on the property. The apartment was on the second floor, over the garage, about a hundred yards from the main house, separated only by a large wide driveway. John was the older of two boys, Herb, Jr. being the youngest and much less fantasy prone. He and I got along pretty well and he was always starting this band or that. He was a talented bass guitar player. Maureen was talented at things the adults didn’t really speak of around us kids.
Anyway, the story goes something like this: On that fateful night of the 24th, Maureen received a mysterious phone call from a chap who claimed to know John. This man asked if he could visit for a while. John went to a local fast-food place to pick them up, bringing both the man and his woman companion back to the apartment. John did not recognize either. (Ok, stop here. Anyone else think it odd that this fellow supposedly knew John and yet John didn’t recognize him and brought him back home anyway? I’ll explain the reason a bit later.)
Both visitors appeared in their mid-thirties and wore odd, old-fashioned clothes (John never told me how old-fashioned, which decade the clothing came from. I don’t think he really thought it through that far.) The woman was a bit peculiar, with breasts set very low and something wrong with the way her legs joined at the hips. Both strangers walked with short steps while leaning forward, as if afraid to fall.
John and Maureen, being the hosts they were, gave each stranger a Coke, though the visitors never took a sip. They sat awkwardly on a sofa and the man began asking very detailed personal questions (ok, if there are children reading this, go get popcorn and a drink and come back in a few paragraphs.) Some of the questions were mundane: what did they watch on TV? Read? What did they talk about? But all the while the man was, er, fondling his female friend. The man then asked if that was ok and if he was “doing it right”.
Uh-huh.
When John left the room for a moment, the man asked Maureen to sit next to him and asked her “how she was made”. And whether she had nude photos of herself. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Well, as a kid I discovered a curious missing time element in the story and no one would tell me why. I think I’ve got it all figured out by now.
At any rate, the woman announced a bit later she wanted to scram, but when the man stood he made no move to leave. He stood between the woman and the door and it appeared that the only way she could leave was by walking in a straight line to that door. So she asked my cousin to “please move him (her companion). I can’t move him myself.” Then suddenly the man left, followed by miss straight-liner, walking in a perfect line, without even a goodbye.
There you have it. What seemed kinda creepy to a kid now seems…well, no so much. In fact, it is so full gaps and silliness you have to wonder why some of the legitimate journals on paranormal research would even bother to treat it with any validity.
The truth is again pretty obvious and simple. But unfortunately mixed with family sadness. Remember the part I mentioned about John not recognizing the couple but bringing them home anyway? At the time, we kids weren’t privy to what went on there, but later John told me. John and Maureen were swingers (is that term even still used?) It was fairly common for other couples to be coming and going about that place. As I kid I thought, wow, they sure have a lot of, um, “close” friends. Yep, close. Very close. So that they might have brought home an alien or two…not such a big surprise.
Anyhoooo…John was unfortunately addicted to a number of narcotics and, like his father, alcohol. Maureen was into recreational drugs and booze as well…and a particularly friendly gal. Both imagined all sorts of things on a nightly basis. And did all sorts of things that are unmentionable here.
John was basically a good guy, but in desperate need of affirmation and attention. Especially from his father. Unfortunately he never got it. And things happened past that point that get rather murky. They all up and moved a thousand miles way from Maine to Florida. A short time later I got a call from John, asking to come stay with us for a few days so he and his mom could come back to visit the old beach ‘hood. He had terminal liver damage from all the drugs, which he had finally kicked. We expected him and his mom the next week.
And never heard from him again. Maureen—in a story I don’t really know all the reasons for—shot and killed him in their backyard. The last I knew, she was still in jail, but that was quite a while back.
It’s funny the way life goes sometimes, isn’t it? How the outrageous can in a heartbeat turn to the tragic. Well, at least in my family the mysterious Men in Black can be put to rest, if not the memory of my cousin.
Next time, maybe I’ll a touch on the psychic church and aunt with three ta-tas…
Showing posts with label Alien abduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alien abduction. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Truth About a Man in Black
I got a phone call the other day, from an interviewer for an Internet show dealing with unusual occurrences and the supernatural. The person I spoke with was interested in a member of my family who’d passed away a couple years back and a certain experience that relative had reported. I hadn’t thought about the story in ages, but it was an interesting conversation and dispelled something that probably had gone on for too long.
My uncle’s name was Dr. Herbert Hopkins. Most of you will say “huh?” and rightly so. A few of you, who are, like me, interested in studying legitimate unusual phenomena may recognize the name, and a handful really into investigating strange occurrences may know exactly who I am talking about. Those who don’t, stayed tuned and I’ll fill you in.
First, a bit of background in a couple areas, on my uncle himself, and on the peculiar phenomena known as the Men in Black (no, not the movie with Will Smith or Johnny Cash clones with bad attitudes).
My uncle was well-known locally and somewhat nationally for a couple reasons. He was a renowned allergist and made WHO’S WHO for his pioneering work with MS. He had a genius level IQ, and knew it, and as is the case sometimes with folks like that (nothing I’ll personally ever have to worry about) had trouble relating to people he thought beneath him in intellectual ability (though conversely he constantly craved an audience, no matter what level). He was often very cold and distant, clinical, the exact opposite of my aunt, who was a lovely, caring woman, if easily deluded. I spent nearly an entire summer living with them while my mother was going through a number of operations, and for the most part I loved every minute of it. Some of my best memories are of the holiday times we spent there, at least with my aunt and cousins, because relating to Uncle Herb was difficult on the best of days (God forbid you did something stupid because you would be belittled for it, and at times I was stupidity-prone). He was vehement in his opinions, strident in expressing them, and unforgiving of those who dared to disagree. And if he caught you, you were in for literally hours of enduring those opinions. Then usually a neck brace from nodding the whole time (if you knew what was good for you). But he could build an electronic organ from scratch, damn near cure the common cold sometimes and his house was a child’s wonderland of passages and an entire wall of speakers (and believe me once those were fired up the whole house shuddered with sound.) He was brilliant and the world was better for him. But sometimes that brilliance has its price, or takes its toll.
He also, for a time in the 1970s, ran a psychic “church”. I have some stories about that, but I’ll save those for another day.
Men in Black. Those enigmatic dudes dressed in, um, black, who show up after a UFO encounter to give some poor soul a bucket load of grief. Them of pasty faces, no lips and all the warmth of Martha Stewart.
And unfortunately the second thing my uncle is known for.
The story originally appeared in the tabloid rag The Star (though I clearly recall the night he first told it. I had just entered high school and my grandparents were up from Florida. They were the ones who my aunt was out with that fateful night and who brought the story back to me.) It was later picked up, with minor variations (or embellishments) in Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, the excellent encyclopedia set Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time and Jenny Randles’ book, The Truth Behind the Men in Black, among others.
The story goes like this: On a balmy September night in 1976 here in Old Orchard Beach, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, then 58, was home alone (he rarely went anywhere at that point) when he got a mysterious phone call from somebody purporting to be from the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, asking to stop by and discuss a recent case my uncle had been working on. My uncle was a fairly well-known hypnotherapist who had been assisting with the David Stephens abduction case (somewhat famous for the Oxford, Maine, sighting and abduction incident. Stephens and a friend had encountered floating lights on a night drive, experienced hallucinogenic after-effects and missing time.) This person from the NJ-UFO-RO wanted to discuss the case, so my uncle agreed. No sooner did he hang up and switch on the living room light (there were three doors to this place, one from the street, two from the side, one of those entering the shed leading to the kitchen and the other leading directly into the living room. A fourth door actually lay between those, leading to the underground doctor’s office and waiting room. So why the Man in Black (MIB) picked the living room instead of the front door is unknown.) than did this MIB appear at the door. The man had said he was calling from a phone booth, but the distance to the closest booth was many blocks away. (In one version I personally got from my uncle they had a big black car. The story grew quite a bit over time.)
The man had a bald head, drawn-on lips (he wore some sort of lipstick that rubbed off on his glove) and the usual deadpan, monotoned attitude associated with MIBs. I won’t go too deep into the actual story because you can read about it in numerous places, but in a nutshell, this MIB made a coin dematerialize to another “plane”, claimed to have done the same to the heart of another abductee nearby (he was referring to Barney Hill, whose heart, is indeed still intact) and threatened to do the same to my uncle if he did not erase all the tapes from the hypnotic session interviews of David Stephens (anyone wonder why a being who can makes hearts and coins vanish didn’t just simply make the tapes vanish? Tapes that were already public knowledge, incidentally, so why bother?)
At the end of the meeting the MIB’s voice slowed like a battery running down and he staggered away. Which is a pretty intimidating thing to do when you are threatening someone…
There is a related incident a bit later with my uncle’s oldest son and wife (who lived in an apartment on the property), but I will leave that one alone for now. Suffice to say, take it with a huge grain of salt. (As an aside, my cousin was later murdered by that very same wife, so that probably tells you something of the family dynamics there.)
Anyway, like I said, the whole thing was sold to the Star and propagated throughout many legitimate journals devoted to psychic and unusual phenomena investigation. Mostly based on a Dr.’s reputation, despite the obvious inconsistencies of the tale and inherent 50s paranoia overtones (which was exactly where the tale came from. My uncle was an avid reader of 50s horror and sci fi comics, paperbacks and old pulps and minimal research will turn up the parallels.)
My uncle was, unfortunately, a fantasy-prone individual, craved the center of attention and limelight and on a base level he sometimes just made things up—no matter how hyperbolic—to top everybody else. As brilliant as he was in many areas, however, he was unskilled at fiction.
And for much of the ‘70s and 80s, he was an alcoholic. Every night was spent alone with a magnum of wine (he made his own wine, too, in a still in the basement). He would stumble up the stairs at about 5am, tripping over the “invisible dog”. How did I know about the invisible dog? Well, a handful of times when I was sleeping over I would be awake and hear that tripping and the inevitable curse, “goddamn dog!” The real dog, incidentally, was next to me on the bed, staring out at the hall, wondering what the hell the thud had been.
The bottom line for this particular Man in Black tale is unfortunately pretty mundane. This mysterious being in black, inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol, probably less of malicious intent and more from some sad need for attention, was, alas, a simple lie, one that needs to be corrected for those into serious research in this area.
And y’all thought your relatives were weird?
My uncle’s name was Dr. Herbert Hopkins. Most of you will say “huh?” and rightly so. A few of you, who are, like me, interested in studying legitimate unusual phenomena may recognize the name, and a handful really into investigating strange occurrences may know exactly who I am talking about. Those who don’t, stayed tuned and I’ll fill you in.
First, a bit of background in a couple areas, on my uncle himself, and on the peculiar phenomena known as the Men in Black (no, not the movie with Will Smith or Johnny Cash clones with bad attitudes).
My uncle was well-known locally and somewhat nationally for a couple reasons. He was a renowned allergist and made WHO’S WHO for his pioneering work with MS. He had a genius level IQ, and knew it, and as is the case sometimes with folks like that (nothing I’ll personally ever have to worry about) had trouble relating to people he thought beneath him in intellectual ability (though conversely he constantly craved an audience, no matter what level). He was often very cold and distant, clinical, the exact opposite of my aunt, who was a lovely, caring woman, if easily deluded. I spent nearly an entire summer living with them while my mother was going through a number of operations, and for the most part I loved every minute of it. Some of my best memories are of the holiday times we spent there, at least with my aunt and cousins, because relating to Uncle Herb was difficult on the best of days (God forbid you did something stupid because you would be belittled for it, and at times I was stupidity-prone). He was vehement in his opinions, strident in expressing them, and unforgiving of those who dared to disagree. And if he caught you, you were in for literally hours of enduring those opinions. Then usually a neck brace from nodding the whole time (if you knew what was good for you). But he could build an electronic organ from scratch, damn near cure the common cold sometimes and his house was a child’s wonderland of passages and an entire wall of speakers (and believe me once those were fired up the whole house shuddered with sound.) He was brilliant and the world was better for him. But sometimes that brilliance has its price, or takes its toll.
He also, for a time in the 1970s, ran a psychic “church”. I have some stories about that, but I’ll save those for another day.
Men in Black. Those enigmatic dudes dressed in, um, black, who show up after a UFO encounter to give some poor soul a bucket load of grief. Them of pasty faces, no lips and all the warmth of Martha Stewart.
And unfortunately the second thing my uncle is known for.
The story originally appeared in the tabloid rag The Star (though I clearly recall the night he first told it. I had just entered high school and my grandparents were up from Florida. They were the ones who my aunt was out with that fateful night and who brought the story back to me.) It was later picked up, with minor variations (or embellishments) in Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, the excellent encyclopedia set Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time and Jenny Randles’ book, The Truth Behind the Men in Black, among others.
The story goes like this: On a balmy September night in 1976 here in Old Orchard Beach, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, then 58, was home alone (he rarely went anywhere at that point) when he got a mysterious phone call from somebody purporting to be from the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, asking to stop by and discuss a recent case my uncle had been working on. My uncle was a fairly well-known hypnotherapist who had been assisting with the David Stephens abduction case (somewhat famous for the Oxford, Maine, sighting and abduction incident. Stephens and a friend had encountered floating lights on a night drive, experienced hallucinogenic after-effects and missing time.) This person from the NJ-UFO-RO wanted to discuss the case, so my uncle agreed. No sooner did he hang up and switch on the living room light (there were three doors to this place, one from the street, two from the side, one of those entering the shed leading to the kitchen and the other leading directly into the living room. A fourth door actually lay between those, leading to the underground doctor’s office and waiting room. So why the Man in Black (MIB) picked the living room instead of the front door is unknown.) than did this MIB appear at the door. The man had said he was calling from a phone booth, but the distance to the closest booth was many blocks away. (In one version I personally got from my uncle they had a big black car. The story grew quite a bit over time.)
The man had a bald head, drawn-on lips (he wore some sort of lipstick that rubbed off on his glove) and the usual deadpan, monotoned attitude associated with MIBs. I won’t go too deep into the actual story because you can read about it in numerous places, but in a nutshell, this MIB made a coin dematerialize to another “plane”, claimed to have done the same to the heart of another abductee nearby (he was referring to Barney Hill, whose heart, is indeed still intact) and threatened to do the same to my uncle if he did not erase all the tapes from the hypnotic session interviews of David Stephens (anyone wonder why a being who can makes hearts and coins vanish didn’t just simply make the tapes vanish? Tapes that were already public knowledge, incidentally, so why bother?)
At the end of the meeting the MIB’s voice slowed like a battery running down and he staggered away. Which is a pretty intimidating thing to do when you are threatening someone…
There is a related incident a bit later with my uncle’s oldest son and wife (who lived in an apartment on the property), but I will leave that one alone for now. Suffice to say, take it with a huge grain of salt. (As an aside, my cousin was later murdered by that very same wife, so that probably tells you something of the family dynamics there.)
Anyway, like I said, the whole thing was sold to the Star and propagated throughout many legitimate journals devoted to psychic and unusual phenomena investigation. Mostly based on a Dr.’s reputation, despite the obvious inconsistencies of the tale and inherent 50s paranoia overtones (which was exactly where the tale came from. My uncle was an avid reader of 50s horror and sci fi comics, paperbacks and old pulps and minimal research will turn up the parallels.)
My uncle was, unfortunately, a fantasy-prone individual, craved the center of attention and limelight and on a base level he sometimes just made things up—no matter how hyperbolic—to top everybody else. As brilliant as he was in many areas, however, he was unskilled at fiction.
And for much of the ‘70s and 80s, he was an alcoholic. Every night was spent alone with a magnum of wine (he made his own wine, too, in a still in the basement). He would stumble up the stairs at about 5am, tripping over the “invisible dog”. How did I know about the invisible dog? Well, a handful of times when I was sleeping over I would be awake and hear that tripping and the inevitable curse, “goddamn dog!” The real dog, incidentally, was next to me on the bed, staring out at the hall, wondering what the hell the thud had been.
The bottom line for this particular Man in Black tale is unfortunately pretty mundane. This mysterious being in black, inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol, probably less of malicious intent and more from some sad need for attention, was, alas, a simple lie, one that needs to be corrected for those into serious research in this area.
And y’all thought your relatives were weird?
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