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On September 16, 1994, there was a
UFO
An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...
sighting
Discovery is the act of detecting something new, or something previously unrecognized as meaningful. With reference to sciences and academic disciplines, discovery is the observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and providing ne ...
outside
Ruwa
Ruwa is a town in Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe, situated 22 km south-east of Harare on the main Harare-Mutare highway and railway line.
Overview
It serves as a small administrative and trading centre for the surrounding mixed farming area. In r ...
,
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...
.
62 pupils at the Ariel School aged between six and twelve
claimed that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school.
One or more creatures dressed all in black then approached the children and
telepathically
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
communicated to them a message with an
environmental
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
theme.
The
Fortean writer
Jerome Clark
Jerome Clark (born November 27, 1946)"Jerome Clark". ''Contemporary Authors Online''. June 12, 2002. Retrieved on April 11, 2012. is an American writer, specializing in unidentified flying objects and other paranormal subjects. He has appeared ...
has called the incident the “most remarkable
close encounter of the third kind of the 1990s”.
Skeptics have described the incident as one of
mass hysteria
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria, or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for c ...
.
Not all the children at the school that day claimed that they saw something.
Several of those that did maintain that their account of the incident is true.
Background
Ruwa is a small agricultural centre located 22 km south-east of the capital
Harare
Harare (; formerly Salisbury ) is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 940 km2 (371 mi2) and a population of 2.12 million in the 2012 census and an estimated 3.12 million in its metropolitan ...
. At the time of the incident, it was not a town but only a local place-name, "little more than a crossroads in an agricultural region".
Ariel School was an expensive private school.
Most of the pupils were from wealthy
white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...
families in Harare.
Two days prior to the incident at Ariel there had been a number of UFO sightings throughout
southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number o ...
.
There had been numerous reports of a bright fireball passing through the sky at night.
Many people answered
ZBC Radio's request to call-in and describe what they had seen.
Although some witnesses interpreted the fireball as a
comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
or
meteor
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...
,
it resulted in a wave of UFO mania in Zimbabwe at the time.
According to skeptic
Brian Dunning, the fireball "had been the re-entry of the Zenit-2 rocket from the Cosmos 2290 satellite launch. The booster broke up into burning streaks as it moved silently across the sky, giving an impressive light show to millions of Africans."
Local UFO researcher Cynthia Hind recorded other alien sightings at this time, including a daylight sighting by a young boy and his mother and a report of alien beings on a road by a trucker.
Incident
The sightings at Ariel occurred at 10am on September 16, 1994, when pupils were outside on mid-morning
break
Break or Breaks or The Break may refer to:
Time off from duties
* Recess (break), time in which a group of people is temporarily dismissed from its duties
* Break (work), time off during a shift/recess
** Coffee break, a short mid-morning res ...
.
The adult faculty at the school were inside having a meeting at the time.
The entire incident lasted about fifteen minutes.
When the children returned to class they told the teachers what they had seen but were dismissed.
When they returned home they told their parents.
Many of those parents came to the school the next day to discuss what had happened with the faculty.
The sighting was reported on ZBC Radio, from where Cynthia Hind learned about it.
The
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
's correspondent in Zimbabwe, Tim Leach, visited the school on September 19 to film interviews with pupils and staff.
After investigating this incident, Leach claimed "I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this".
Hind visited the school on September 20 1994.
She interviewed some of the children and asked them to draw pictures of what they had seen.
She reported that the children all told her the same story.
That November
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
professor of psychiatry
John Mack visited the Ariel school to interview witnesses.
Throughout the 1990s Mack had investigated UFO sightings and had a particular interest in the
alien abduction
Alien abduction (also called abduction phenomenon, alien abduction syndrome, or UFO abduction) refers to the phenomenon of people reporting their experience of being kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings and subjected to physical and psychologica ...
phenomenon.
In May 1994 the Dean of
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
, Daniel C. Tosteson, appointed a committee of peers to confidentially review Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of the people who had shared their alien encounters with him (some of their cases were written of in Mack's 1994 book ''Abduction''). The issue was that Mack had communicated to these people that their experience may have been real. After fourteen months, Harvard issued a statement stating that the Dean had "reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment."
According to the interviews of Hind, Leach and Mack, 62 children between the ages of six and twelve claimed to have seen at least one UFO.
Dozens more children who were present stated they had not seen any UFO or anything unusual.
The basic details of the sightings were quite consistent although not all the details were.
One or more silver objects, usually described as discs, appeared in the sky.
They then floated down to a field of brush and small trees just outside school property.
Between one and four creatures with big eyes and dressed all in black, exited a craft and approached the children.
At this point many of the children ran but some, mostly older pupils, stayed and watched the approach.
According to Mack's interviews the creature or creatures then
telepathically
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
communicated to the children an
environmental
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
message, before returning to the craft and flying away.
According to Dunning, this telepathic message aspect of the story was not included in Hind or Leach's reports, only Mack's, although Hind reported it later.
In Mack's interviews one fifth-grader tells how he was warned "about something that's going to happen," and that "
pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...
mustn't be".
An eleven-year-old girl told Mack "I think they want people to know that we're actually making harm on this world and we mustn’t get too techno."
One child said that he was told that the world would end because they are not taking care of the planet.
The children were adamant that they had not seen a
plane
Plane(s) most often refers to:
* Aero- or airplane, a powered, fixed-wing aircraft
* Plane (geometry), a flat, 2-dimensional surface
Plane or planes may also refer to:
Biology
* Plane (tree) or ''Platanus'', wetland native plant
* ''Planes' ...
.
Hind noted that the different cultural background of the children gave rise to different interpretations of what they had seen and they did not all believe that they had seen
extraterrestrials
Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might ...
.
She noted that some of the children thought the short little beings were
tikoloshe
In Zulu mythology, Tikoloshe, Tikolosh, Tokoloshe, Tokolotshe, Thokolosi or Hili is a dwarf-like water sprite. It is a mischievous and evil spirit that can become invisible by drinking water or swallowing a stone. Tokoloshes are called upon ...
s, creatures of
Shona
Shona often refers to:
* Shona people, a Southern African people
* Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today
Shona may also refer to:
* ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing
* Shona (given name)
* S ...
and
Ndebele
Ndebele may refer to:
*Southern Ndebele people, located in South Africa
*Northern Ndebele people, located in Zimbabwe and Botswana
Languages
* Southern Ndebele language, the language of the South Ndebele
*Northern Ndebele language
Northern ...
folklore.
Aftermath
The Ariel School UFO incident quickly became one of the most famous UFO cases in Africa. On a June 2021 episode of the BBC's ''Witness History'', the event was described as "one of the most significant events in UFO history".
Ufologists
This is a list of notable people who are Ufology, ufologists (UFO researchers).
Argentina
* Juan Posadas, (1912–1981), Trotskyist theorist who blended together Trotskyism and Ufology. Posadas' version of Trotskyism is regarded as its ...
continue to cite the case as providing compelling evidence of extraterrestrial visits to Earth.
Skeptics
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
have dismissed the incident as one of mass hysteria
or even a prank.
In December 2020 Brian Dunning devoted an episode of his ''Skeptoid'' podcast to the incident.
In it he noted that some children in the school claimed that they had not seen anything unusual that day.
He challenged the often-repeated claim that as rural schoolchildren in Zimbabwe, the witnesses would not have had exposure to modern media and so would not have been familiar with the concept of UFOs and alien visitors.
He also criticised the interviewing techniques of Hind and Mack.
Hind interviewed the children in groups of four to six with every other child allowed to listen and so their stories were cross-contaminated.
Mack only interviewed the children two months after the alleged sighting and Dunning says that Mack, a known environmentalist, "prompted and suggested" the telepathic communication angle, which was not present in Hind's previous report.
Several of the witnesses maintain that what was reported is true.
In 2014 the ''
Mail & Guardian
The ''Mail & Guardian'' is a South African weekly newspaper and website, published by M&G Media in Johannesburg, South Africa. It focuses on political analysis, investigative reporting, Southern African news, local arts, music and popular cult ...
'' spoke to one witness who said that she fears that the creatures will return and that she can sense when they are back in the
atmosphere.
In 2016 witness Emily Trim exhibited paintings that she described as a "manifestation of the messages she received" from the beings that day.
In June 2021
Barstool Sports
Barstool Sports is an American blog website and digital media company headquartered in New York City that produces content on sports and pop culture. Founded by David Portnoy in 2003 in Milton, Massachusetts, the company's two primary owners a ...
writer Zah spoke in an interview about being a pupil in Ariel that day.
He recounted that he saw a bright light come down from the sky and aliens exit it.
Other witnesses were interviewed for the 2020 documentary ''
The Phenomenon
"The Phenomenon" is the twenty ninth episode of the American television series '' Smash''. It was written by Jordon Nardino and executive producer and showrunner Joshua Safran and directed by Roxann Dawson. The episode premiered on NBC on May ...
'' and spoke about how the experience has affected them.
See also
*
List of reported UFO sightings
*
Westall UFO, a similar UFO sighting by school students
References
External links
Photo album showing drawings made by children in the school and photographs of the school and surrounding area.Ariel Phenomenon, a documentary by Randall Nickerson (2022).
{{UFOs
1994 in Zimbabwe
UFO sightings
Events in Zimbabwe
Mashonaland East Province