Alternate Perceptions Magazine, December 2021
Dr. Peter Rojcewicz and the MIB
by: Brent Raynes
Dr. Peter Rojcewicz described in a report for the MUFON UFO Journal (Mar. 1990, #263) a case that took place near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1983 wherein an MIB character unexpectedly appeared, as if out of thin air, in a bookstore. After police arrived, he vanished. The main witness, Robert Yates, complained of suddenly becoming nauseated, light-headed and weak for no apparent reason. A store clerk, he had been transcribing several audiotapes of MIB narratives for a local ufologist. He felt that his MIB was in fact an “earthly military man in a possession state.”
Yates was disturbed as to how the man could inexplicably appear and disappear from the store. The mystery man reportedly left behind various papers that indicated that he held a governmental intelligence and security background. Rojcewicz noted that unlike “other MIB narratives,” he had reliable information on this so-called MIB’s name, occupation, phone number, and post office box.
“The Men in Black are part of the extraordinary encounter continuum – fairies, monsters, ETs, energy forms, flying saucers, flying crosses,” Rojcewicz was quoted in 1995, then 37, when he first went public about the reason for his strong convictions about such unusual phenomena. He had his own MIB encounter in 1980, before he became a noted professor of humanities and folklore at New York's Juilliard School. He was in the University of Pennsylvania library minding his own business and quietly reading a UFO book recommended by a professor when he suddenly noticed a pale, gaunt man, about 6-1, standing before him, dressed in a loose black suit with black tie and a bright white shirt. The man plopped down “like he had dropped from the ceiling” into a chair across from Rojcewicz, all in one peculiar single movement, folded his hands on top of a stack of books before him, and asked Rojcewicz what he was doing. Rojcewicz replied that he was reading about flying saucers, to which the odd stranger asked if he'd ever seen one. Rojcewicz answered that he didn't know that much about the subject and wasn't that sure he was interested. “Flying saucers are the most important fact of the century and you are not interested!?” the stranger screamed. He stood up, again in a single odd movement, placed a hand on Rojcewicz's shoulder and stated: “Go well on your purpose.” Then he left.
“I had a sense that this man was out of the ordinary and that idea frightened me,” Rojcewicz later recalled. “I got up and walked around the stacks toward where the reference librarians usually are. The librarians weren't there. There were no guards there – there was nobody else in the library...I was utterly alone and terrified.” Rojcewicz returned to his seat to pull himself together. “It took me about an hour,” he stated. “Then I got up and everything was back to normal; the people were all there.”
The Minneapolis Star Tribune (06-17-1995), where his story first appeared, stated: “He didn’t talk about his experience in public because he was concerned about how people might react to his story, he said. Was he dreaming? He doesn’t think so. He said he suspects he was in an ‘altered state.’
“Rojcewicz said he thinks his experience – and that of others who have been exposed to the Men in Black – are somewhere ‘in the crack’ between real life and fantasy.”
Reference:
Casebook on the Men in Black by Jim Keith (1997, IllumiNet Press).
