In this episode I will look into the Ariel School Sighting where 62 students witnessed a UFO land and occupants get out and communicate with them telepathically.
In this episode I will look into the Ariel School Sighting where 62 students witnessed a UFO land and occupants get out and communicate with them telepathically.
Ep 30 Ariel School Sighting
Hello and welcome back to the UFO and Aliens Podcast. I’m your host Rick Black. I hope all is well with you. This is the last episode in 2023. I hope you’ve been enjoying listening. I would like to thank you for listening and I’m going to take a minute to share some of the stats from my platform. UFO and Aliens Podcast has been listened to in 55 countries. The city with the most downloads is Seattle followed by Los Angeles, New York, Charlotte and Adelaide South Australia. My home state didn’t make the top 5. The most popular episode is Episode 8, UFO whistleblower and it wasn’t even close. And finally, UFO and Aliens was in the top 25% of all podcasts on the platform for 2023. I didn’t start doing this until April, so I think that stat is pretty good. The numbers are growing fast and I think that 2024 is going to be really good. I’d like to see this podcast get into the top 10. Thank you all for your interest, please help me spread the word and this podcast will explode next year.
This episode I will be talking about a sighting in Ruwa, Zimabwe Africa. Back in Episode 11 I covered the Westall School sighting, where just about everyone in the school saw a group of flying saucers flying around and a few students saw one land. Well, this is another school that had a similar incident. Only in Africa, not Australia. Not only did they see flying saucers, they saw the occupants of the flying saucers.
At the time that it happened, it wasn’t well known. It was more of a local story. Now, with the way media is, it is very well known. It is very easy to find a large amount of information on this incident. So, what happened?
The area in Africa where this happened is farm land. The school was for the children of the local farmers. There were a few sightings of UFOs a few days before the main sighting at the school. Then on September 16th 1994 at the Ariel school, while the children were outside all of the teaching staff were in a meeting. They normally did their meetings during the student’s recess. They had prefects, some of the older, more mature students watching the younger ones. The students saw some lights flashing in the sky. One of the witnesses said the objects would flash and then move so fast that you couldn’t see it then it would flash again about 500 meters away, but it would be a different color. This happened three times and it happened in the middle of the day in broad daylight. It was 10:15 a.m.
All of the students, there were about 62 student witnesses, ran to the fence to see what was going on and the craft started hovering right in front of them. Then the objects land about 50 yards from where the children are watching. They land in an area that was rough ground made up of trees, thorn bushes, and some brown-grey cut grass with bamboo shoots sticking up out of the ground. The children are not allowed in this area although it is next to their playing field and is not fenced off, because of snakes, spiders and perhaps other harmful creatures. One can soon disappear from view while walking there, and there is only one very rough track used by tractors in an attempt to clear this area. and entities emerge from the craft. And during broad daylight, about 50 yards from where the students were, the creatures started walking around.
One of the students ran into the school to tell the teachers what was going on outside. The teachers didn’t take him seriously and sent him back outside. Then another kid went in to tell the teachers what was going on. Same result. Then one of the prefects, one of the older kids went in to tell the teachers. Finally, one of the teachers went outside to see what all the fuss was about. And this teacher caught a glimpse of the flying saucers as they were taking off.
One witness described a small man appearing on top of the object. He walked a little way across the rough ground, became aware of the children and disappeared. He, or someone very like him, then reappeared at the back of the object. The object took off very rapidly and disappeared. The little man was dressed in a tight-fitting black suit which was 'shiny' according to one observant girl (11 years of age). He had a long scrawny neck and huge eyes like rugby balls. He had a pale face with long black hair coming below his shoulders.
Other witnesses described the aliens as wearing tight fitting black uniforms, their eyes were quite large and black and their noses and mouths were very small. What is incredible about this experience is that the children, well some of them, not all of the children saw the little men. But some of them claimed that they communicated with the children telepathically. That’s not how they explained it of course. They said that they were told that technology was doing the planet harm and that humans needed to stop and start taking care of the Earth. Something to that effect. They were shown images in their minds of the Earth with no trees and people not being able to breathe.
A week after the event the school was swarmed with TV crews and reporters and they even got a visit from John E. Mack, M.D. Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. He spend a large amount of time interviewing the children one at a time and asking them about what happened. He concluded that in his opinion the children were all telling the truth about what happened.
All of the children were held in isolation and told to draw what they saw on that day. You can actually find these pictures on-line of what they children drew. And they all drew exactly the same thing.
There is a line of electricity pylons and according to one boy, the object followed along this line prior to landing. There is also some controversy as to whether the object landed on the ground or hovered above it. There were some people that went out the area with a Geiger counter, a metal detector and a magnetometer, to try and see if the object left any traces behind. Soil samples were sent to the University of Zimbabwe. No evidence was found of anything unusual.
The headmaster of the school is Mr. Colin Mackie, who was most co-operative, and although he had never been involved with UFOs or a believer in them, said that he believed the children had seen what they said they saw.
The smaller children from 5-7 years were very frightened at the time and ran shouting 'Help me, help me.' When the older children asked why they were saying this, the reply was, 'He is coming to eat us.' I should think this applied more to the black African children who have legends of tokoloshies eating children.
Their teachers were in a meeting and did not come out. When I queried the headmaster about this he said the children always shouted and yelled during their playtime and no-one thought there was anything unusual going on. The only other adult available at the time was one of the mothers who was running the snack bar. When the children came to call her, she did not believe them and would not come out: she was not prepared to leave the snack bar with all the food and money. Gunter and the men thoroughly examined the ground around where the children had seen the object, but could get no reaction on the geiger counter or any other equipment. If the object was hovering perhaps nothing would show.
There was no evidence found on the ground where a craft could have landed. The area was full of thorn bushes and bamboo stumps and if a craft had landed there, it should have left evidence.
A few days after the event, the school was inundated with calls from parents asking what happened at the school that had made their children so upset.
None of the witnesses have changed their stories even after 25 years.
There were some two hundred students on the playground that day, but only 62 of them witnessed the UFOs and aliens.
Why didn’t more of the students see the UFOs? Well, according to Salma Siddick, who was a witness “I think it’s possible that more kids saw something, but never spoke about it. I also think there are those, like my brother and sister who were on another side of the playground, who did not see anything, though I cannot speak to why. I initially thought the area of the playground had something to do with which students saw something, but now I’m not sure that was a determining factor at all.”
Randall Nickerson says “The schoolyard at Ariel is huge, and on field is elevated which would have obscured the view of a lot of students. As for those who were nearby and didn’t see it—I’m not sure what that’s about. I really don’t know—what’s interesting is that those who didn’t see anything still believe their classmates.”
There is some discrepancies about how many entities there were. Some of the students say they saw one, some say that they saw two and three. Some claim that the being was on top of the craft, some say that it was walking around the fields. Some reported that it had long hair, others reported that it had no hair at all.
They did all agree where the craft was, that they were spoken to telepathically and that the craft emitted some kind of light.
French skeptic Gils Fernandez pointed out that in Cynthia Hines initial interviews with the children, the ecology or environment wasn’t even mentioned by the children. However, in John Mack’s interviews it was mentioned. Fernandez suggested that Mack was very passionate about the environment and that he may have implanted that in the children that they were communicated with telepathically. The children all deny that.
There are some skeptics that claim that the whole event was mass hysteria. There is no physical evidence to support that this actually happened. So, the case is a clear fabrication from the children’s minds.
So what is mass hysteria? People commonly use the term “mass hysteria” to describe a rapid spread of panic and fear. But the actual definition is a bit more complex.
Experts largely consider mass hysteria a type of conversion disorder, or mental health condition that involves physical symptoms prompted by emotional or mental tension.
In terms of sociology, it falls into the category of collective behavior, or the mostly spontaneous actions of a large group of people who influence each other.
Many experts recognize two distinct types:
Mass anxiety hysteria. This type tends to show up among people who belong to the same, close, often isolated, group or community. It involves sudden tension and other symptoms of anxiety, which spread and resolve fairly quickly.
Mass motor hysteria. This type tends to show up among people experiencing long-term stress and tension. It involves irregular motor movement symptoms that move from person to person gradually and often linger for weeks.
Mass hysteria usually spreads verbally and visually. So, people who see or hear about someone with symptoms often begin experiencing symptoms themselves.
Here are some examples of mass hysteria: #1. The Tanzania laughing epidemic of 1962. In late January of 1962 at an all girl school in Shasha Tanzania three girls began to laugh uncontrollably. They couldn’t stop, even when disciplined by their teachers. Bizarrely, the laughing kept spreading until roughly 90 students were laughing uncontrollably for no apparent reason. This lasted from a few hours to more than 15 days. Officials tried to find a cause, but were unsuccessful. The laughing caused them to close the school as the laughter spread to other villages nearby. The cause remained unknown and the laughing episodes continued on and off for about one year. And then the epidemic suddenly ceased.
#2. The Salem witch trials of 1692. This is one of the best known incidents of mass hysteria. It began when two small girls in the town of Salem Village began to experience seizures that were not explained by contemporary science. After their seizures, the girls proclaimed that they were begin assaulted by evil entities conjured up by local women. Soon more girls were being afflicted and more towns people, mostly women were being accused. Trials were promptly enacted and those who didn’t confess were sentenced to death. Ironically, those who falsely confessed were not executed. More than twenty people were executed and more than 100 were jailed before common sense was restored. The girls seizures ended and the trials ceased. Later, medical scientists would lay the blame on everything from common stress caused by ongoing warfare with American Indians to fungus on bread products.
#3 The Satanic Panic. In the summer of 1991, the therapist of a three year old child being treated due to her parents divorce alleged that Dan and Francis Keller had sexually abused her. Dan and Francis were operators of a day care center. In the time leading up to the trial two other children at the daycare began telling similar stories from being given blood laced koolaid to being forced to have taped sexual intercourse to being forced to watch and participate in ritualistic killings including animals, humans and babies. The allegations got so out of hand that they even include trips to Mexico to be sexually abused by soldiers all in time to be back to be picked up by their parents that day at the daycare. During the trial one of the kids said that none of this had taken place and that they had been coached to make up the whole thing. There was no physical evidence in the whole case and the Kellers were sentenced to 48 years each. The case was overturned in 2013 but only after they had spent 21 years in prison. All from the false testimony of young children.
But what about schools? Were there any incidents of mass hysteria at any African Schools?
On February 4th 2008 over 100 pupils went out of control in a Primary School in Western Uganda. According to the school head teacher, the students were totally mad. Chasing everybody including teachers and fellow pupils. Throwing stones banging on doors and windows. The authorities termed the incident as demonic attacks and invited a church leader to conduct several special prayers for the pupils. The head teacher admitted that this was the second attack of this nature on this school. In the previous year 210 pupils had been similarly attacked. Following the episode, 4 suspects were charged in court of casting a spell on the school due to a land dispute.
So, was the Ariel UFO sighting a case of mass hysteria or did the students actually see something that day? And what about the other 140 students or is there an alternative to these two options?
There was some political unrest in the country at this time and the U.S. was not happy with the current ruler of Zimbabwe. It is possible that what the children saw that day was a highly advanced U.S. craft that was in the area. Maybe they were off course. There is a plane that can hover and it makes a high pitched sound. And one of the student witnesses said that they heard a sound like someone playing the flute.
There is a lot of material out there on this incident. In most cases where you have a lot of witnesses, at one point, someone comes forward and admits that it was all a hoax. None of the witnesses have done this.
I believe the children saw something. That doesn’t mean that they saw a UFO and aliens that communicated with them telepathically, but I believe they saw something. I don’t believe that this is a case of mass hysteria. If it was, then Dr. Mack who interviewed the children would have picked up on that. He was a psychiatrist after all. But he was also involved in a lot of UFO abduction cases. So….grain of salt.
What do you believe. Do some research. Watch some of the interviews on youtube. Some of them are a little creepy.
Believe none of what you hear and half of what you read.
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Do you have a UFO story that you’d like to share? Is there a UFO story that you’d like for me to look into? Just send me an e-mail at ufoandalienpodcast@gmail.com I’m Rick Black and I’ll talk to you next time.