Men in Black are a distinct variety of jinn mischief.  My worries about them began several years before the comic movie release.

 An entity matching the description of an MIB frequently visited my friend's mother.  He would encourage her to hurry up and die so she could join her deceased relatives.

 DOPPELGANGERS and MEN IN BLACK

The "doppelganger" is a mirror image of someone.  Some jinn create and utilize them for various purposes.  They are like a bio-robot with a temporary existence.

Years before learning about doppelgangers, I dreamt about them in connection with a Man in Black.

I was concerned about "Men in Black" because a friend's elderly mother (Mrs. Johnson) was being harassed by them. A dark suited man would suddenly show up and bother her when she was home alone in the evenings. He would encourage her to "pass over to the other side" because her deceased husband and relatives were waiting for her, and he would list them all by name. He would also do absurd things like insist she had her addition wrong when she was balancing her checkbook.  Mrs. Johnson also insisted that they were "patrolling Third Street" (where she lived) in their large black car in the afternoons.  Everyone (except me) dismissed her experiences as craziness and she was medicated for hallucinations.

I recognized that her experiences were definitely "real" on some level because I'd read about Men in Black and her experiences matched their description.  I was also impressed by her reports of séances which she perceived occurring in her attic --  these séances had actually occurred years earlier!  There was no way she could have had any knowledge about these séances.   I was able to verify that these séances (which had been by a local spiritualist minister,) had been real events. However, they never took place in her attic -- as she was being made to perceive!  She had never participated in any psychic activities and was entirely naive about occult phenomena.  But her deceased husband, on the other hand, was a 32nd or 33rd degree Mason.  I wonder if his activities had anything to do with precipitating the visitations of the MIB -- !

Mrs. Johnson wasn't  especially frightened by all this, but I was.  I had read Beckley's "Mystery of the Men in Black: The UFO Silencers" and Keel's "Mothman Prophecies", and was frightened by the thought of MIB telling her to die and "patrolling" her street on a daily basis.  But my fears were soon calmed by an especially vivid and rather humorous dream.  In it I was visited by an MIB who said I needn't be so concerned.  He said: "We are really more like men in brown".  He then showed me that they created doubles of themselves for various purposes. He showed how this could account for the presence of an MIB standing on a street corner for an extended period of time. ( And also, perhaps, for routine patrols of Third Street.?)

At the time I questioned what meaning this dream had in reality, but was relieved by the humor of calling them "Men In Brown" and was no longer so afraid for Mrs. Johnson. This was the first time I'd been exposed to the concept of the doppelganger.  Now, many years later I can appreciate the wisdom in this dream. 

More about Doppelgangers

The doppelganger is actually a relatively common type of apparition.  (And so, it seems, are visitations from Men in Black if they are dropping in on nice little old ladies like Mrs. Johnson!)

(1.) Robert Kirk wrote the "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies" in 1691. He relates how Doppelgangers appeared in the folk wisdom of the Scotch and Irish who believed they were used by malevolent fairies. They thought of these fairies as being a paraphysical race living among mankind. The clergy denounced them as being satanic. Fairies were euphemistically called "the Good people" or "the Gentry" as part of an attempt to placate them and ward off the danger they posed. It was thought that doppelgangers, which they called co-walkers, were used by the fairies to replace an abducted person, so that it wouldn't be noticed as quickly that the loved one was missing. Co-walkers would weaken, become incoherent, and eventually "die".

(2.) Men in Black, like co-walkers, are often described as being strangely mechanical and inflexible as if unable to adjust to any changes in a scripted scenario. They perform some task, then depart. This seems much the same as the self-created doppelganger effigies of MIBs shown in my dream.

(3.) The book " An Account of Meeting With Denizens From Another World", written in 1871 by a carpenter/contractor named Loosely, contains a vivid description of suddenly being confronted by his own double in the midst of an alien visitation.

(4.) Bilocation
Defined as the appearance of a person in two distant places at once. The double may appear in solid or ghostly form, and usually acts strangely or mechanically and does not respond when spoken to. Bilocation is said to have been practiced by many mystics, monks and other holy figures through the ages, including famous Christian saints such as St. Anthony of Padua, St. Ambrose of Milan and Padre Pio of Italy.  The doppelganger seems like a possible explanation for this baffling occurrence.   A "saint" might not even be aware of the existence his doppelganger!

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