Man In Black

by Priscilla Garduno Wolf

One night I woke up to a feeling like someone was watching me. I was 13 years old. I had gone to bed real tired after school classes and my Catholic classes that evening with Sister Bedd. It was snowing and it was very cold outside, but Grandpa and Grandma kept the farm house warm. They would warm old red bricks in the oven and wrap them up in old towels and put them on the bed to keep us warm.

I watched the street light from my bedroom window. I could see the snow falling and the sight was just beautiful. I have always loved winter and the snow. It is my favorite season. Suddenly, out of no where, there was a man in black at my window staring at me! He wore all black clothes and a black hat. I screamed so loud that it scared my grandparents. They came in the room real quick like and I told them, “There’s a man at my window!” He just stood there watching me. Grandfather Antonio grabbed his shotgun and went outside. Around the house the snow was high and there was no one around. Grandpa went toward my window, and to his surprise, there by the window were footprints in the snow, but none leading toward the window or away from the window.

Grandpa came back in and told us what he had seen. “It must be a ghost around here,” he said. I told him it was a man dressed all in black. He remembered his friends speaking of the man in black in the valley. It would appear to them from out of no where. I remember how one of the sheepherders in the area, Don Juan, a Ute Indian, had seen silver disks before at his camp by Los Sauces, Colorado and how several days later he would see a man in black walking around. The Shadow Men they were called. Some people said that they were evil while others said that they were only ghosts walking around their burial ground.

Editor’s Note: Priscilla’s intriguing account again addresses the historical parallels of the modern MIB phenomenon of ufology with similar variations of apparitional appearances described in stories that actually span centuries of folklore and tradition. Years ago (1970), the noted UFO and MIB expert and author John A. Keel wrote me: “History is crammed with MIB-type manifestations. A band of ‘phantom Indians’ attacked the colony in Gloucester, Mass. in 1692. MIB apparitions are a classic and traditional offshoot of witchcraft and black magic. That lore is filled with reports of MIB incidents. Even the fascinating details of the events following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln are loaded with MIB material. Read the transcript of the trial of John Surrat (one of the ten conspirators). It’ll curl your hair.”

“As with all aspects of this business, we are dealing with two things: the real and the unreal, the material and the hallucinatory. There are doppelgangers (did you ever read The Other Oswald by Popkin?), there are phantom cars and phantom planes. There are marvelous mimics who can imitate any voice on the telephone. It is all so damned unbelievable that most people finally throw up their hands and quit the whole business.”

“It may be vain to hope that we can ever pin everything down and make something rational out of it.”