- [Narrator] They're called the men in black,
anonymous government officials all around the country
who help suppress any info about alien encounters.
It's a compelling conspiracy to be sure,
but is there any truth to it?
Could the mysterious men in black be more than just a movie?
Could this conspiracy be real?
Let's find out in today's episode of--
- [Announcer] "Colossal Mysteries."
- [Narrator] The age-old urban legend goes like this:
the men in black, or MIB,
are a super-secret government agency
tasked with preventing the public
from finding out the truth about UFOs.
They always appear unannounced,
wearing plain black suits and ties,
and threaten anyone with any intel about aliens on Earth.
So the men in black are shady gatekeepers
keeping the public from knowing the horrible truth.
In the most extreme versions of this conspiracy,
the men in black might even be aliens in disguise.
According to the conspiracy,
aliens are much more common than we think
and might even be living among us on Earth.
The government believes that if we knew the truth,
there would be panic in the streets.
So is there any truth to this salacious story,
or are the MIB nothing more
than another science fiction fantasy?
The truth is we can't say for certain
if the men in black conspiracy is real,
but we may be able to pinpoint
the moment the mystery started,
right down to the date, June 21st, 1947.
The story goes like this.
Two men named Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman
were working as harbor patrolmen
in Washington's Puget Sound.
They were gathering logs along the shore of an island
when they saw something strange.
(shouting)
They claimed they saw six large donut-shaped objects
floating about a half-mile above them.
Before they knew what was happening,
one of the six crafts dive-bombed about a thousand feet
and dropped some kind of white metal or lavalike substance
all over their boat.
The mystery metal damaged the ship
and broke a crewman's arm.
But Dahl managed to snap a couple of pics
before they were able to get away
by the skin of their teeth.
The very next day, the pair say they were visited
by a mysterious man in black,
who claimed to know all about what happened
and warned them that if they ever told a soul,
terrible things would occur.
A frightening tale to be sure.
The problem?
It was all made up.
After the alleged alien attack, Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman
contacted a reporter named Kenneth Arnold,
who was quite shocked and very interested.
Arnold reached out to the Air Force about the incident,
and they sent two officers to investigate.
But the moment they saw the metal,
they knew it wasn't alien at all.
It was ordinary old aluminum.
After some extensive interrogations
by the Air Force personnel,
Crisman and Dahl finally confessed
that they made it all up.
Even still, there are those who believe
the men were forced to confess,
and that it's all a cover-up.
Lots of other people have come forward over the decades
claiming that they were visited by mysterious men in black
working for shady government agencies related to aliens.
But even so, most experts believe
that the men in black theory is likely nothing more
than a tall tale, and that the government
never deployed anonymous agents
to keep civilians quiet about aliens.
So are the men in black real?
We'll never know for sure,
but signs point to this particular conspiracy theory
being bogus.
But, if there are aliens on Earth,
sharing the planet alongside us,
they're certainly doing a good job
of keeping us in the dark.