Albert K. Bender and the original Men in Black (Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1953)

Bridgeport, Connecticut. 784 Broad Street. Albert K. Bender lived here with his mother and stepfather. He was chief timekeeper at Acme Shear Co. His attic room was a "Chamber of Horrors," full of fake skulls, shrunken heads and sound-effect records.

In 1952 he founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau and its quarterly, Space Review. It has been called "the first major civilian UFO club in the world." On March 15, 1953, at 6:00 PM EST, the bureau held "World Contact Day." Its message began: "Calling occupants of interplanetary craft."

Summer 1953. On September 16, Bender told his West Virginia representative, Gray Barker, to stop accepting memberships until the October issue arrived. To August Roberts he gave the reason. Three men had visited him and "in effect shut him up completely as far as saucer investigation is concerned!"

On October 4, Roberts and Dominick C. Lucchesi pressed him. Who were they? Usually: "I can't answer that." What did they look like? "They wore the same type of clothes and hats. Dark clothes and black hats." Friends said he was "scared to death." He "actually couldn't eat for a couple of days." One associate said: "Bender was a changed man after the MIB visited him. It was as if he had been lobotomized."

That October, Space Review spoke for the last time. "The mystery of the flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by order from a higher source." Then a warning: "We advise those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious." The bureau closed.

In 1956 Barker published They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. It was the first book to describe the Men in Black. In his version, one visitor says: "I suppose you know you are on your honor as an American. If I hear another word out of your office you're in trouble."

In 1962 Bender told his own story in Flying Saucers and the Three Men. He saw "three shadowy figures floating about a foot off the floor." "They looked like clergymen but wore hats similar to Homburg style." Then: "The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs." They spoke by telepathy. The message: "Stop publishing." Their true form, he wrote, resembled the Flatwoods Monster. They gave him a small piece of metal like a coin and the password "Kazik." He described headaches, a sulphur smell that lingered even in locked rooms, and their base in Antarctica.

Some suggested it was only a dream. Critics noted that the magazine was losing money and would likely have shut down anyway. David Halperin observes that Bender's loss of interest coincided with his 1954 romance with Betty Rose. On August 4, 1954, he called saucers "non-sensical."

John C. Sherwood, writing in Skeptical Inquirer in 1998, found a grain of truth. Agencies in the 1950s did discourage public interest in UFOs, and an FBI agent visited Barker on August 28, 1953, about an IFSB business card. But Barker, he said, "greatly embellished" the facts. In 1957 Barker and James W. Moseley forged the "Straith letter" to George Adamski. In 1958 the FBI told a Scottsdale man it had nothing on any "Bender affair."

The Men in Black "quickly became a staple of UFO folklore," feeding The X-Files and the Men in Black comics and films. Klaatu turned the Contact Day message into "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," later recorded by the Carpenters. Bender died in Los Angeles on March 29, 2016.