First hand account of the mysterious Men in Black excerpted from Nick Redfern’s forthcoming book.
May 2011
by Nick Redfern
Raven Meindel, a cryptozoologist, writer, radio host, and Wiccan priestess who resides in Michigan and, in 2010, was featured on the History Channel’s Monster Quest series pursuing bloodthirsty werewolves, says, “I’ve been interested in paranormal things and UFOs for years, but when I got involved in doing it more seriously, with research and writing, and in a career-like manner, that’s when really strange things started to happen, including a Men in Black experience in April 2008.”
Meindel’s experience was preceded by a decidedly unusual occurrence in the family home: A week before she had her Men in Black confrontation, her husband, Adam, felt a rush of wind go past him inside the apartment, while the pair was standing there, talking. Meindel is sure that the air-conditioning was not on, and no windows were open. It felt, said Adam, just like someone had brushed by, walking briskly past him. Whatever the cause of the odd event, it was an uncanny precursor to the mayhem that was soon to follow, as Meindel makes graphically clear: “On April 16, about 5:30 p.m., two men, dressed all in black, came out of the apartment across from where we were living at the time. The odd thing about this is that no one was living in that apartment then. They walked away and got into a black Lincoln. And when they walked past, I was outside playing with a Frisbee with a neighborhood kid. The Frisbee was called an Alien Flyer, which had an alien face on it, which I thought was a very odd synchronicity.”
Feeling somewhat unsettled by the off-putting presence of the pair, Meindel tried her best to lighten the situation. Her efforts were to no avail, however. Indeed, no one, I am sure, needs to be told that the Men in Black are hardly known for their fine sense of humor or jollity: “We smiled at the guys, and made a joke about something, but they were like totally stone-cold, chiseled, hard features, no emotion, nothing. One of them looked like he was in his late 20s or early 30s, and the other one was probably late 40s, early 50s. They were all in black and they were both carrying briefcases.”
At first, says Meindel, she wondered if the two men were Mormons, or perhaps representatives of some other religious group. As there was nothing to indicate that, however, Meindel attempted to move closer to see the license plate of the pair’s car as they got inside their black vehicle. Meindel developed a deep suspicion that the pair knew exactly what she was doing, and “they backed out real quick and took off. You could tell it was a deliberate maneuver.”
It was in the immediate wake of this chilling MIB experience that a reign of paranormal terror descended upon the Meindel family: The telephone would ring, but—surprise, surprise—no one was there. On the night of April 19, only three days after her encounter with the MIB, and while trying valiantly to fall asleep (which was hardly easy, given the nature of the odd activity in the family home), Meindel developed an overwhelming feeling that she should not be undertaking any type of UFO research whatsoever. In her own words, “It was like a terrifying feeling that came on from nowhere. I even felt kind of shaken by it. And I actually said, out loud: ‘Okay, I won’t do it.’”
Despite her reluctance to dig further into the complexities of the UFO jigsaw, the Men in Black were far from finished toying with, and terrifying, Meindel and her family. Two days later, while Meindel was out walking her dog, something even stranger and scarier happened: a black, luxury-type car, maybe a Cadillac, appeared on the scene and seemed to be shadowing her. She says of this new development: “There was an older man driving and a younger man in the passenger seat. I got a strange sensation. I felt something very strange. They pulled up right next to me. It was like the older man was deliberately stopping to let me know they were stopping for me, because of me—maybe only a foot from me, right at the edge of the sidewalk.”
Meindel’s fear levels rose dramatically when one of the men took off his seatbelt and appeared ready to get out of the car. At that point, Meindel had an idea: She pulled out her cell phone, so that the pair would clearly understand she was calling someone, and began to walk away from them and towards a nearby clubhouse. “I looked over my shoulder, and finally they did leave, but they were very deliberate in their movements. There’s no doubt in my mind they were trying to scare me.”
The scare tactics were working, and they showed no signs of stopping either. A couple of weeks later, Meindel recalls, her husband, Adam, distinctly heard, on several occasions, whispered voices throughout the apartment. Most disturbing of all was the occasion when, to their horror, the family found what appeared to be very strange handprints on the bathroom mirror: “One was huge, where the fingers had kind of drawn down the mirror,” Meindel says. She adds something even more sinister: “My daughter, when she came out of the shower that day, had bruises on her arm that looked exactly like the fingerprints on the mirror.”
Meindel explained to me that she faithfully recorded all of this undeniably disturbing anomalous activity—that plagued the family for months—in the pages of a journal that she had the keen foresight and presence of mind to purchase. Shortly after 2 a.m. on February 11, 2009, Meindel penned the following passage that clearly illustrates the level of high strangeness that had descended upon them:
Night Terror—I’m still very shaken from something that just happened. I’m terribly upset and can’t get back to sleep. 1:21 was the last time I looked at the clock before having fallen asleep. The next thing I know I was awake again, and was staring at my bedroom curtain. All of a sudden, this harsh tingling feeling started in my legs and worked its way up my torso and into my head until my whole body was being crushed; lots of pressure and a loud noise was humming in my ear. I was trying hard to scream: ‘Adam!’ But, I couldn’t. I remember looking back toward the curtain and saying to whoever, or whatever, was there: ‘I hate you, you son of a bitch! I hate you!’ Then I came out of it, or woke up. I lay there wondering if I had the start of a stroke or an aneurysm. I looked at the clock again and it read 1.42 a.m. I’m still woozy and foggy and cannot completely focus my eyes. They feel dry and irritated. I’m really scared and I know I won’t sleep anymore tonight.
Did something foul and unspeakable come calling in the early hours of that terrifying morning? And was it linked with the sinister presence of the two Men in Black? Looking back on what occurred, Meindel believes that is precisely the nature of what occurred: “I have the feeling that when you investigate these things—UFOs—they become aware of it, and of you. And why I think that is because when we moved to our new house, where we live now, I thought it would be all over. I thought it would leave us alone, because we weren’t at the old apartment where it had all happened. But on day two of being here, Adam and I saw this strange red ball of light come right down over us—in the sky, I mean—while we were outside. It felt like someone, or something, was saying, I’m watching you.”
Today, Meindel reflects with trepidation upon the horrifying series of experiences that began with the Men in Black and that took a hold of her life for a significant period: “Since this all happened, I have stayed away from the UFO thing. I do still dabble in it a bit, but I’m not really researching it deeply anymore. It scared me from going into it any deeper. I got the message, and I’m not going to mess with the UFO thing anymore.”
Meindel concludes, in a fashion to which surely the many unfortunate witnesses of the Men in Black can relate, “The fear is still with me.”
