I was a little taken aback, and asked him how he knew I had thrown the apple core on the ground. He told me that these whole premises were under video surveillance, including not only all sides of the building, but even the grassy areas around it. It was then that I suddenly realized this building had really unusually tight security. Even when I went inside to deposit the mail, the mail room was open to me, but the rest of the building was inaccessible. I could only go into the main room, deposit the mail, and leave. I had to ring a buzzer to be let into the building each time I delivered.

Anyway, a few weeks later, I was on my way to deliver mail, as usual, to the building. And as I was nearing the building, I saw three figures crossing the street on their way towards the building. At first glance, I thought they were normal. But as I looked closer, I was shocked at how strange they were. They were extremely thin, and they didn’t walk by putting one leg in front of the other, but sort of waddled by moving their whole bodies from side to side, lifting one foot off the ground and then the other foot in a sort of whole body, side to side waddle.

It’s hard to explain what I mean, but it was not the way any normal person would walk, unless they were unable to move any joint in their legs. But as strange as this was, this was not what frightened me. What frightened me was that they were absolutely thin. It was like they were as flat as a set of clothes that had been ironed. Their faces and bodies were entirely flat, no contours. The nose did not jut out, nothing. And they were also extremely thin. The best I could describe is if you saw a suit hanging from a clothes hanger, that would be about the same thickness.

It was like no thickness at all. Just clothes hanging from a hanger. All three were dressed in black suits. They all had black sunglasses. I saw them walk up, ring the buzzer, and be led into the building. I was absolutely scared shitless, as I had just been about to enter that very same building. I really wasn’t sure what to do. But I kind of steeled myself and slowly forced myself to ring the buzzer and enter the building, figuring, hey, I might have imagined this in any case. I should force myself to go through my routine until I can think this thing out.

When I entered the main room, there were like ten normal men standing there, just looking at me. It was really intimidating. They asked me if I had seen anything. I was kind of speechless for a second, not knowing how to respond. And then one of them walked right up to me from the side and from slightly behind me. I could tell it was one of the same types of things that I had seen crossing the street. It walked right up to me, and I was too afraid to turn my head to the side and look at it.

I am very scared just typing this right now, remembering it. It didn’t say anything. It just got right up close to me, and I had a feeling of fear so intense. I felt as if my heart had just frozen and was going to fall out of my body onto the ground. Again, they asked me, did you see anything? What did you see? I just shook my head and stambered no, I didn’t see anything. Unless they were all retarded, there is no way they couldn’t have noticed my extreme fright. I’m sorry. I thought they might hold me there and not let me go.

But finally they said, okay, leave now. The men in black that was to my side and a little behind me kind of took a step back to make way. And I had to steal myself to actually walk past it on my way to the door. And I was out of the building. It is the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life. At the time, I had never heard of the men in black. I had no idea what this thing was or what the government was doing. All I knew was that I was dealing with something far more powerful than me.

I thought maybe it was some new type of robot, and the government was doing test runs on them. But why that would be done in broad daylight, I could not and still do not understand. To give you an understanding of how frightening it was, the first thought that came to mind was that I needed to leave the country, to find some way to get the hell out of the country and go somewhere else. But then it occurred to me that if I started to act strangely, they might get suspicious and kill me or something. I realized the best thing I could do was act as normally as possible and pretend nothing had happened.

Later that week, my supervisor was at the post office, told me I had been suddenly reassigned from my old route to a new one. Something that was unexpected. He asked me if I had encountered any problems on the route. I think even he may have been a little confused at why I was being reassigned. But I said I had no problems, and I was very quiet about it. So eventually I got reassigned. After what I thought was an appropriate amount of time, continuing to work at the post office, I quit my job, and now I work at an airport.

I am telling this story now because five years later, I need to get this off my chest. I doubt they will come after me now, but if they do, I can’t avoid my fate. I’ve never seen any sort of alien or had any sort of unusual life event of any other kind. Nor do I believe that there is such a thing as a devil or demons or anything. So I really don’t know what to believe. There is no doubt whatsoever the building was under the control of the government, with normal human beings. I still think it was some sort of cyborg experiment, and on occasion I still am tempted to just leave the country to get away from all this.

Note. This is not the only time I have read A Men in Black and described as thin and having a strained side-to-side gait. I went through some notes and found the notation of an incident that occurred in the early 1990s, when I lived in Baltimore, Maryland. There had been an automobile accident on I-95, not far from downtown near the Washington Boulevard exit, where a witness described a similar-looking person, thin, dressed in a black suit, fedora, and sunglasses, who waddled back and forth like a penguin, away from a black crown vic that was stopped in the scene.

This person got to the guardrail and hopped over it with ease and disappeared. And now for a second account. This is related to the Gray and Stevens abduction case. This is particularly related to their hypnotherapist, a fellow named Hopkins. On the evening of Saturday, September 11th, 1976, Hopkins was at home alone when he received a call from someone claiming to be the Vice President of the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, asking if he could drop by and speak to Hopkins about the Stevens case. Hopkins found this odd, given that the case had occurred almost eight months prior, but for reasons he was later unable to identify, he agreed.

He hung up the phone and went into the hallway to turn on the light and was startled to see that his visitor was already climbing the back steps. Extremely puzzled, Hopkins opened the door and invited the gentleman inside. Hopkins was immediately struck by the oddness of the visitor, who entered and took a seat inside his living room. His attire was in impeccable condition. Entirely black shoes, socks, pants, shirt, tie, jacket, and the round, polished derby hat he wore. The other thing that bothered him was that the man was completely bald. Lacking hair on his head, he was also missing eyebrows and eyelashes.

The man’s skin was dead white, except for his lips, which were bright red. His facial features were odd. His nose was disproportionately small and set low and far back. He had a receding chin, and instead of having a neck, his head appeared to meld with his shoulders. His eyes, though not glowing, were unusual in a way that Hopkins had difficulty describing. In a mechanical voice, completely devoid of intonation or inflection, the visitor explained his understanding of the Stevens case, which Hopkins confirmed is accurate. He continued to discuss the case, with Hopkins doing most of the talking.

He realized the stranger seemed more interested in finding out what Hopkins knew about the case than actually learning anything about it for himself. Things grew gradually more bizarre with each passing minute. At one point, the stranger, who was wearing what appeared to be gray suede gloves, brushed his lips with the back of his hand, and when he put his hand back down, his face and glove were smeared red. Hopkins examined the mouth more closely and realized the thing had no lips. Just a slit mouth, doctored with lipstick to give the most general impression of lips.

Further, Hopkins could discern no teeth in its mouth. Apparently satisfied with the information gathered from Hopkins, the visitor changed the subject, informing the doctor that there were two coins in Hopkins’ pocket, which was correct, and asked him to remove one. Hopkins complied and held the coin, a shiny new penny in the palm of his hand. Then the visitor told Hopkins to watch the coin closely. After a few moments, it took on a silvery appearance and then appeared to be going in and out of focus, and then began to fade, and eventually disappeared altogether.

The dark-suited stranger informed Hopkins that the coin would never be seen on this plane again. He then inquired as to whether Hopkins was familiar with the alleged UFO abductee Barney Hill. Hopkins replied that he had heard of Hill, but was under the impression that he had died in the not-too-distant past. The stranger informed Hopkins that he was correct, but added, Barney didn’t have a heart, just like you no longer have a coin. The visitor suggested that Hopkins destroy any material he had related to the Stevens case. Hopkins noticed that the visitor’s speech was slowing down considerably.

He unsettlingly rose to his feet and Hopkins saw him to the door. He watched him slowly descend the stairs, placing both feet on each step before attempting to negotiate the next one. He finally made it to the bottom and disappeared. These are two of my absolute favorite men in black stories. I think because they are two of the strangest. You know, a lot of them involve strange speech, strange dress, strange appearance, but in these two, it’s really weird. A flat man. I love that image. I think in a lot of ways, it really feels emblematic of the terrifying nature of not only the men in black, but what they represent, the government bureaucracy.

People reduced of all depths. You know, you’ll often hear this idea of I don’t want to be a number. I don’t want to be a statistic. The flat man in black is reduced entirely into that. He is paper thin. He barely exists. This is the ideal of the men in black. You may have heard them called spooks. Government officials, intelligence operatives are called spooks. They look like ghosts. It’s just black and white monochrome. They’re not real. This is taken to that absolute extreme. You know, they are literally flat. They’re paper thin. Very scary. Very scary. Then the next one.

The intimidation is really scary. Again, in conspiracy, you’ll often hear about the heart attack gun or the suicidings and such. But that’s not really that scary when compared to, you know, a magic trick. To the magic trick that a man in black is doing. Of course, the appearance here is also really important. He has no lips. He has no hair. He has no teeth. They’re not real. It’s not a real thing. It’s not a real person. It’s an emblem. It’s a symbol. It’s an egregore, a tulpa of some great and immense and terrifying force that simply briefly appears and then is gone forever.

Men in black, I’ve always found rather scary. I forget where it is that I read it, but that the same thing would happen to, you know, old alchemists. So rather than someone seeing a UFO or dealing with strangeness and then being visited, if an alchemist got too close, to creating the Philosopher’s Stone, men in black cloaks would come and take their work. Really fascinating phenomena. There’s plenty more stories, but I thought I would just read you these two. Two of my favorites, two of the strangest. As always, remember, screams matter. [tr:trw].