Smile, and the world smiles with you

In the menagerie of weird creatures from urban legends we have such entities as the Men in Black, Slender Man, the Black-eyed Children, not to mention older creatures of the night such as the Evil Serial Killer With A Hook For A Hand that has been scaring the absolute shit out of kids around campfires for generations.

I just ran into a new member of the zoo yesterday, thanks to crypto-maven Nick Redfern over at Mysterious Universe.  Called "Grinning Man," he's a tall guy in an old-fashioned suit and fedora, with a creepy smile on his face.  His skin is supposedly "plastic-like," so believers think he's only masquerading as a human.  Redfern says he's an operative of the Men in Black; me, I'm thinking more of The Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

But Grinning Man isn't followed around by guys with long, flailing arms who rip your ribcage open and steal your heart.  Apparently, Grinning Man just kind of stands there... grinning.  Thus the name.  Redfern tells the tale of a California family who saw a UFO while out driving, and the following day had a visitor.  He writes:

It was while one of the teenage children was sat [sic] on the porch and playing music that she caught sight of a man on the other side of the road.  He was dressed completely in black, aside from a white shirt.  He even wore black gloves, on what was a bright, summer day.  The girl was particularly disturbed by the fact that the man sported a weird grin and was staring right at her.  So unsettled was she that she went back into the home and told her father of what had just happened.  He quickly went to the door but – no surprise – the smiling MIB was gone.

John Keel, of "Mothman" fame, describes another encounter, this one near Point Pleasant, West Virginia (home of the original Mothman story):

[A] sewing machine salesman claims to have been stopped on a highway by a strange looking automobile.  A man appeared from a hatch on the side of the vehicle, and a tall, bald man wearing a blue metallic suit approached the man.  He could see the "man" had "slightly elongated" eyes and a demented grin that could be seen glinting in the cars headlights.  The grinning man identified himself as Indrid Cold, and the two had a bizarre telepathic conversation before the entity left, saying they would see each other again.

"Indrid Cold," eh?  A cousin of Mr. Freeze, perhaps?

Now that I think of it, the resemblance is pretty striking.

But unlike Mr. Freeze, "Indrid Cold" was a true alien, Keel said:

The salesman, Woodrow Derenberger, would go on to claim that Indrid Cold would visit him, and would reveal that he was an alien from a planet called Lanulos, situated in another galaxy.  Derenberger claimed to have visited Cold on his homeworld, and met many other beings like Indrid Cold in his travels.  He would write a book about his experiences, but would lose his job, his wife and some say his sanity in the years after, dying in 1990, some saying his obsession with his grinning friend cost him his life.

So that's kind of unfortunate.

Once again, we have the common thread that Grinning Man doesn't seem to do anything.  He doesn't freeze people, he doesn't abduct their children (like Slender Man), he doesn't threaten to kill them if they talk to the authorities (like the Men in Black), etc.  So as extraterrestrial villains go, he's pretty lame, although I have to say in all honesty that if I looked out of my window at night and saw a creepy, pasty-faced guy in a fedora grinning back at me, I'd probably have an aneurysm, so I guess that counts for something, evil-wise.

Anyhow, that's latest member of the Pantheon of Creepiness.  As I've mentioned before, it's kind of amazing that given how long I've been writing Skeptophilia (twelve years as of last November), I still run into weird beliefs I'd never heard of before.  I still think for pure terror, you can't beat the Black-eyed Children, which is why I wrote a trilogy of novels based on the legend (Lines of Sight, Whistling in the Dark, and Fear No Colors).  Whether I did the Children justice is up to you to decide.

But maybe I'm thinking about this wrong.  Maybe Grinning Man is grinning because he is planning something he hasn't carried out yet.  If so, he'd better get at it, because Derenberger's encounter with "Indrid Cold" happened back in the 1960s.  If he wants people to keep being scared of him, he probably should wipe the silly smile off his face and get on with it.

****************************************

Smile, and the world smiles with you

In the menagerie of weird creatures from urban legends we have such entities as the Men in Black, Slender Man, the Black-Eyed Children, not to mention older creatures of the night such as the Evil Serial Killer With A Hook For A Hand that has been scaring the absolute shit out of kids around campfires for generations.

I just ran into a new member of the zoo yesterday, thanks to crypto-maven Nick Redfern over at Mysterious Universe.  Called "Grinning Man," he's a tall guy in an old-fashioned suit and fedora, with a creepy smile on his face.  His skin is supposedly "plastic-like," so believers think he's only masquerading as a human.  Redfern says he's an operative of the Men in Black; me, I'm thinking more of The Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

But Grinning Man isn't followed around by guys with long, flailing arms who rip your ribcage open and steal your heart.  Apparently, Grinning Man just kind of stands there... grinning.  Thus the name. Redfern tells the tale of a California family who saw a UFO while out driving, and the following day had a visitor.  He writes:

It was while one of the teenage children was sat [sic] on the porch and playing music that she caught sight of a man on the other side of the road.  He was dressed completely in black, aside from a white shirt.  He even wore black gloves, on what was a bright, summer day.  The girl was particularly disturbed by the fact that the man sported a weird grin and was staring right at her.  So unsettled was she that she went back into the home and told her father of what had just happened.  He quickly went to the door but – no surprise – the smiling MIB was gone.

John Keel, of "Mothman" fame, describes another encounter, this one near Point Pleasant, West Virginia (home of the original Mothman story):

[A] sewing machine salesman claims to have been stopped on a highway by a strange looking automobile.  A man appeared from a hatch on the side of the vehicle, and a tall, bald man wearing a blue metallic suit approached the man.  He could see the "man" had "slightly elongated" eyes and a demented grin that could be seen glinting in the cars headlights.  The grinning man identified himself as Indrid Cold, and the two had a bizarre telepathic conversation before the entity left, saying they would see each other again.

"Indrid Cold," eh?  A cousin of Mr. Freeze, perhaps?

Now that I think of it, the resemblance is pretty striking.

But unlike Mr. Freeze, "Indrid Cold" was a true alien, Keel said:

The salesman, Woodrow Derenberger, would go on to claim that Indrid Cold would visit him, and would reveal that he was an alien from a planet called Lanulos, situated in another galaxy.  Derenberger claimed to have visited Cold on his homeworld, and met many other beings like Indrid Cold in his travels.  He would write a book about his experiences, but would lose his job, his wife and some say his sanity in the years after, dying in 1990, some saying his obsession with his grinning friend cost him his life.

So that's kind of unfortunate.

Once again, we have the common thread that Grinning Man doesn't seem to do anything.  He doesn't freeze people, he doesn't abduct their children (like Slender Man), he doesn't threaten to kill them if they talk to the authorities (like the Men in Black), etc.  So as extraterrestrial villains go, he's pretty lame, although I have to say in all honesty that if I looked out of my window at night and saw a creepy, pasty-faced guy in a fedora grinning back at me, I'd probably have an aneurysm, so I guess that counts for something, evil-wise.

Anyhow, that's latest member of the Pantheon of Creepiness.  As I've mentioned before, it's kind of amazing that given how long I've been writing Skeptophilia (seven years as of last November), I still run into weird beliefs I'd never heard of before.  I still think for pure terror, you can't beat the Black-eyed Children, which is why I'm writing a trilogy of novels based on the legend (the first, Lines of Sight, is coming out in 2019).

But maybe I'm thinking about this wrong.  Maybe Grinning Man is grinning because he is planning something he hasn't carried out yet.  If so, he'd better get at it, because Derenberger's encounter with "Indrid Cold" happened back in the 1960s.  If he wants people to keep being scared of him, he probably should wipe the silly smile off his face and get on with it.

The Gospel according to Mr. Eyes

In today's news, we have yet another story that illustrates a variety of truisms, to wit:

• You can't argue with a woo-woo.
• If you try, your arguing makes their belief stronger.
• It's damn hard to tell if someone is an actual woo-woo or is parodying woo-woos.

This whole thing started because of a website called "The Men in Black Suits Are Real," which on April 24 got the woo-woo equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, which was a mention in HuffPost's Weird News.  (Read the article here.)  This resulted in the owner of the MIB site, who (because of security reasons) is known only as Bugeyes126 and lives in a Small Town In The Middle of Nowhere, don't try to find him because you won't succeed, to write an article crowing about how huge this is.  This began a back-and-forth between Bugeyes126 and the writer of the original article, Briony Westinghouse.

Eventually Bugeyes was asked to write an article for the HuffPost, which he did (here), and included some audio clips from people who were amongst the tens of thousands who left voicemails for him.

Okay, this is when my problem started, because as I was reading all of this I was working from the assumption that Bugeyes is serious, but I listened to the clips -- and one of them claims that Florida ice cream truck drivers are aliens.  My first thought was, "Okay.  Now I get it.  This is parodying conspiracy theorists.  Bugeyes is making fun of the whole MIB phenomenon."  But I felt kind of uneasy about that conclusion; nowhere was that moment when his commentary went so far over the top that I was certain that it was parody.  There was something awfully... earnest about him.  So I kept reading.

And eventually, Bugeyes somehow decided that not all Men in Black were Men in Black, because he accused Arianna Huffington herself of being an alien:

You're an extraterrestrial. I know it. You know it.

I'm not trying to expose you, but you have information I can't get from anyone else. I know you work with the Men in Black Suits. And I want to work with them, too. Please help me.

How did I find out? Last night, I received a call into my Men In Black Suits Are Real hotline from someone who asked that I conceal his identity "for the sake of the shareholders." The caller had specific information about The Huffington Post that nobody else could possibly know. And his message was clear.

It all makes sense now. With all you're involved with across the world, I've certainly had my suspicions.

This resulted in Arianna Huffington responding, in what may be one of the funniest video clips I've ever seen (starting with her referring to Bugeyes as "Mr. Eyes"), and you all need to watch it (here). Make sure you watch the whole thing, because the best part is at the end.

So, okay, Skeptophiliacs: what do you think?  Is Bugeyes126 serious?  Or is he a smart guy who is engaged in an elaborate parody?  In the conspiracy theorist column, we have the following evidence:

• Nowhere does he ever break from the True Believer Persona.
• The people who called in to his "hotline" sound pretty serious.
• He has over 43,000 followers on his Facebook page, many of whom (to judge by their comments) are True Believers to the point where they should be medicated. 

In the it's-a-parody column, we have:

• Neither does Stephen Colbert.
• Ice-cream trucks?  Really?
• He appears to be fourteen years old.

So, anyway, I'm not sure, which is a scary development, because it means I'm losing the ability to tell what's real from what's not, which is the very thing I always rail at the woo-woos about.

Whichever it is, I'm thinking that if what he's doing has attracted the attention of HuffPost, I may be approaching this blog writing thing the wrong way.  It has been a continual source of pain to me that ridiculous ideas have a much greater cachet than critical thinking does, which explains why astrology and fortunetelling and homeopathy are so much more popular than, say, classes in formal logic.  Maybe I need to get a little flashier.  Maybe I need to install a Woo-Woo Hotline.  Maybe I need to start featuring audio clips from people who have seen Bigfoot.  Maybe I need to make a mock-up, as Bugeyes126 did in a recent post, of my face featured on The Weekly World News.

Or maybe I just need to calm down and go have another cup of coffee.

Men in black, men in brown

It is a curious feature of woo-woo that the purveyors of such ideas feel driven to add layer upon layer of complexity to their theories, as if slathering more craziness upon an idea that was kind of ridiculous to begin with will make people sit up and say, "dear god, you're right!"  It's almost like some kind of strange parody of the scientific process, where experimentation, analysis, and insight lead to clarification.  Here, there's a sense of adding more mud to already muddy waters.

Our first example of this comes from the world of the conspiracy theorists.  I've devoted a number of posts to such issues as the Illuminati, HAARP, the Bilderberg Group, and secret societies, and how some subset of the above is responsible for (1) controlling world governments, (2) spying on innocent citizens with nefarious ends in mind, and (3) causing natural disasters.  The individuals running the conspiracy are always portrayed as evil, superpowerful arch-villains, who are untouchable by normal means, and who pull everyone else's strings for their own mysterious purposes.

Basically, the worldview is that we live inside a David Lynch movie.

In any case, it's kind of a dismal way to look at life.  So, it is not any real surprise to me that there has now been a revelation of a new conspiracy, a nice conspiracy, that will sweep down and get rid of the old, nasty, evil conspiracy.  (Source)

This claim states that "very soon" there will be a mass arrest of banking executives by a group of world leaders who are fed up with corporate corruption, removing the "Illuminati banking cartel" and returning "power back to the people."  Plans are already in place to "cut off... international calling" and stop international travel; at that point, "the pro-humanity forces will sweep through and arrest MASS AMOUNTS of bankers and corrupt financial execs as they complete their task to bring freedom to the world from these financial terrorists."

Well, that sounds hopeful enough, as far as it goes, but how do we know it's true?  The writer states:

The part of this story that makes it believable is that it is actually backed by Real Names and Real People who can be researched. The majority of the information comes from Benjamin Fulford.  Benjamin Fulford was Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Forbes magazine for seven years, until 2005 when he quit because of the "extensive corporate censorship and mingling of advertising and editorial at the magazine."

Oh.  Benjamin Fulford, eh?  The originator of the HAARP conspiracy theory?  The man who claimed that "the American government, in cooperation with [the] Federal Reserve, the Rockefellers, and other powerful groups" were going to cause Mt. Fuji to erupt on April 11, 2011, and who has continued to pontificate undaunted despite the lack of cooperation by the actual volcano?  The guy who says Bill Gates is going to be arrested as one of the lead conspirators, and that the pope is going to resign on April 15?  We're supposed to consider this guy a credible source?

It's not only the conspiracy nuts that have this regrettable tendency to elaborate themselves to death; the same is true of other branches of woo-woo.  Take, for example, this recent story from the world of aliens and crop circles.

In case you are understandably reluctant to read the article itself, the whole thing adds a new dimension to the idea that aliens are responsible for crop circles; the author claims that aliens are now being spotted hanging around the crop circles, as if waiting for something significant to happen.  And these are not easily identifiable aliens, i.e little gray guys with enormous eyes; no, these aliens are smarter than that.  They are cleverly disguised as tall blond guys wearing brown clothes.

There are several accounts of contact with these dudes recounted in the article, but the following is my favorite:

(A)n anonymous woman called the operator to the Air Force in the UK... in Suffolk and reported a strange episode that occurred when she was walking with his dog.  She saw a man dressed in a light brown suit... who spoke with a “Scandinavian accent.”  He asked if she had not heard about the large flat circles that appear on the wheat fields.  During the ten-minute conversation the man told me that he was from another planet similar to the Earth, and that his relatives have visited Earth, and made such education.  Guests arrived here on a friendly target, but “they were told not to come into contact with people for fear that their visit can be regarded as a threat.”  Apparently, he did not say who told them not to come into contact with us.  The woman was “very scared”, and while she ran to the house, she heard of a “loud buzzing sound,” and saw the trees soared a large spherical object, glowing orange-white light. BBC statement said the woman told me about an hour and had no doubt that she wrote about a real event.

So, now we not only have the crop circles to puzzle over, we have blond guys with Swedish accents coming up to innocent dog-walkers and saying, "Say, how about that crop circle over there?  Pretty nice one, eh?   Oh, by the way, I'm an alien, but don't be afraid.  Later."  And then they take off in their spaceships.

Then, to make matters worse, the author throws in his two favorite theories for what the crop circles are for.  I reproduce those here, verbatim:

(T)he location of crop circles – referencing a crop circle ‘database’ – near ancient formations indicate a connection between ancient extraterrestrial visitors and modern day crop circles. Crop circles that contain messages that will “help usher mankind into the Golden Age.”  ... Also, crop circles can be used as a reference point for time travel in the source field.  They often appear right next to the ancient monuments of the vortex points, and that to this day can serve as portals for time travel in space.

Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense.  Vortex points and time travel in the source field.  And also, don't forget frequency resonant vibration energy dimensions!  In space!

In any case, that's our dose of woo-woo lunacy for today.  Men in black (or brown, as the case may be), and how they either will be taken down by the People's Revolution or else use messages in corn fields to usher us into the Golden Age.  Either way, I suppose I should be happy that the outlook is good.  It certainly is preferable to some previous forecasts, such as a massive eruption of Mt. Fuji.  That would have sucked.