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Sunday, November 9, 2014

Remembering Africa's The Most Famous Mass UFO Sightings - 20 Years Later
Remembering Zimbabwe's Mass UFO Sighting - 20 Years On
Twenty years ago, 62 pupils at Ariel School said they saw an alien spaceship. It's still
regarded as one of the most compelling events in UFO history.
Students drawings done shortly after the incident occurred
Tracking down one of the Ariel School experiencers took some doing, but eventually I
connected with Sarah* in what she referred to as a most stubborn old Rhodie [white
Rhodesian] bar in downtown Harare.
Of the more than 110 children and staff who had been at the school, which sits just outside the
small agricultural centre of Ruwa, when the aliens landed in 1994, she thought she was
probably the only one still in the country.
Everyones fucked off to Canada or the UK, she said. Or died.
When it became clear to her drinking buddies that we were going to talk UFOs, eyes began to
roll.
Christ, S, not ET again, someone muttered.
She ignored him.
Whaddya wanna know? Actually, itll be simpler if I just shoot. It happened, OK. Sixty-two
kids between the ages of about six and 12 saw the aliens land and get out of their little ships.
When the kids returned to class they were completely freaked and couldnt stop nattering
about little men who looked a bit like Michael Jackson. The teachers told them to shut up, as
teachers are wont to do, and classes proceeded.
But the next day the school received a bunch of calls from parents wanting to know why
their kids were spooked. It got so that the teachers started to freak out, too, and a local UFO
expert called Cynthia Hind was invited to speak to everyone. It was via her, I think, that we
heard about a famous shrink who was coming from the US to assess the children. What was
his name now Mack, Dr John Mack, who I heard was killed by a drunk driver a few years
back.
Dedicated investigator
Hind, who died in 2000, had publicly acknowledged her own experiences with otherwordly
beings in the past, and had dedicated the past decade and a half of her life to investigating
UFO sightings on the African continent on behalf of the Mutual UFO Network, and then
publishing her findings in the very collectable newsletter, UFO Afrinews.

I had brought along a printout of Issue 11, which I opened on the bar counter before Sarah on
Hinds article UFO flap in Zimbabwe: Case No 95. It begins:
Wednesday, 14th September, 1994, was an exciting night for Southern Africa. Round about
20:50 to 21:05 hours, a pyrotechnic display of some magnificence appeared in the almost
clear night skies of this part of the continent.

Students describing their experience

Astronomers across the region soon reported that the pyrotechnic display, seen as far afield
as Zambia and Botswana, had been a meteor shower. Hind, though, recorded receiving dozens
of reports of a capsule-like fireball, trailing fire and flanked by two smaller capsules.
She also received several reports of alien sightings around the same time: a young boy and his
mother reported a daylight sighting; a trucker who had seen strange beings on the road at
night. And then, on September 16, Hind received the report from Ariel School, which she
records as Case 96, and describes as one of the most exciting UFO stories of this or any
year.
Childhood recollection

Cynthia Hind UFO Investigator

Hinds narrative closely mirrors Sarahs recollection. At 10am, Hind writes, on a hot day, the
children were let out for their mid-morning break. They were drawn to an area beyond their
playing field of long grass with thorn and other indigenous bushes, trees growing higgledypiggledy fashion, and undergrowth thick and heavy enough to hide a child should he venture
there.
The teachers had all entered the staff room for a meeting and the only adult outdoors was the
tuckshop mistress, who was soon swamped by children claiming they had seen three or four
objects coming into the rough bush area disc-like objects coming in along the power lines
and finally landing in the rough, among the trees. The children were a little bit afraid,
although they were also curious.
The UFO investigator goes on to record the testimonies of several of the children, who she
says represented a cross-section of Zimbabweans: black African children from several tribes,
coloured children (a cross-breeding of black and white), Asian children (whose grandparents
were from India) and white children, mostly Zimbabwean-born, but whose parents were either
from South Africa or Britain.
Although they all came from wealthy families (tuition at Ariel School was expensive), Hind
believed their cultural differences gave rise to differing interpretations of the event, and that
the differences in interpretation made the details that were common to all accounts very
compelling indeed.
One of the white students, for example, thought at first that the little man in black might have
been Mrs Stevens gardener, but then he saw that the figure had long, straight black hair, not
really like [a] black [persons] hair, so he realised he had made a mistake!
Some of the black children thought the short little beings were zvikwambo, or tokoloshes
the evil goblins of Shona and Ndebele folklore and burst into tears, fearing they would be
eaten.
Guy G said: [I] could see the little man (about a metre tall) was dressed in a black, shiny suit;
that he had long black hair and his eyes, which seemed lower on the cheek than our eyes,
were large and elongated. The mouth was just a slit and the ears were hardly discernible.
Parents disbelief
Hinds account ends with her outrage at the disbelief of the childrens parents.
What a frightening indictment of our society that when we are confronted by something we
dont understand, we dont even attempt to open our minds to the event.
After reading the article, Sarah ordered another Castle and said: To be perfectly honest, I
dont think you would be here talking to me now if it wasnt for that woman [Hind].
What happened at Ariel was certainly weird, so many kids coming back from break with
such similar stories, but I doubt many people would have heard about it if Hind hadnt made
such a fuss. She was the first person to interview the kids, and got the news out to all sorts of
important people, Mack included, as if, you know, finally here was some vindication.
Hinds descriptions of Mack from this time do indeed suggest she regarded him as something

of a redeemer figure, a man who was not only open-minded and prepared to listen, but an
academic of some standing. And one who has risked his credibility with his colleagues to
come out and say he believes the experiences of abductees are very real indeed.
Who was this man, Mack, whose interest transformed a local curiosity into a study that
continues to animate UFO chat rooms to this day?
Id been told a little of his biography by a relative of mine called Nicky Carter, who after
hearing of the incident from a brother at Ariel School had been the first media respondent,
covering it as a producer for an SABC current affairs program called Agenda.
Prize-winning author

Pulitzer Prize Winning Dr. John Mack

Dr John E Mack, she said, had been a Pulitzer prize-winning author (awarded for his 1977
study of Lawrence of Arabia, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of TE Lawrence) and a
professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School.
Highly regarded, Mack had nevertheless been having a tough year professionally when Carter
met him. His problems stemmed from his interest in the alien abduction phenomenon, which
he had begun researching in the early 1990s and about which he had written the bestselling
book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.
Carter sent me Macks own account of the fallout. In the spring of 1994, he writes in his
second book on the alien abduction phenomenon, Passport to the Cosmos, one of the deans
at the Harvard Medical School handed me a letter that called for the establishment of a small
committee to investigate my work [on the alien abduction phenomenon].
After explaining vaguely that concerns had been expressed to the university about what I
was doing (although he told of no specific complaint, nor was any offered in the letter), he
added pleasantly for he had been a friend and colleague that I would not have gotten into
trouble if I had not suggested in the book [Abduction] that my findings might require a
change in our view of reality, rather than saying that I had found a new psychiatric syndrome
whose cause had not yet been established.
Another peer, Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins Medical School, was less delicate, describing
Mack in the Los Angeles Times as a brilliant fellow who occasionally loses it, and this time

hes lost it big time.

Macks standard rejoinder was to point out that, although alien encounters were not possible
according to the science of the times, they might nevertheless turn out to be real in some
way that we do not yet understand as the bizarre reports of rocks we now call meteorites
falling from the sky seemed [impossible] in the 18th century.
Attempted ouster
By mid-1994 Mack had overcome attempts at an ouster by some of his Harvard colleagues,
and was planning to expand the scope of his research to include African alien encounters and
abductions. A flight was booked to South Africa, where Mack had organised to meet with
experiencers such as the well-known traditional healer and author Credo Mutwa (who was to
tell Mack, according to Carter, who covered the interview for the SABC, about his rape by a
golden-haired, blue-eyed alien female.)
As he was preparing to depart for Africa, news of the Ariel School encounter broke, and
Mack adjusted his travel plans accordingly.
Extraordinary Coincidences
These were the extraordinary coincidences by which the worlds most newsworthy
psychiatrist happened to land, meteorlike, in Zimbabwe. Hind recorded how he appeared on
two radio shows and one TV programme before driving the 35km from Harare to Ruwa.
These days were filled with exciting revelations for him, wrote Hind.
John was able to get through to parents and teachers and convince them that, even if they did
not believe the children, it was counterproductive to accuse them of lying.
What interested Mack was how the childrens accounts connected to things hed been told by
other of his experiencer participants, namely that the aliens had communicated an urgent
environmental message.

In Passport to the Cosmos, Mack records that after some years of research he was astonished
to discover in case after case, powerful messages about the human threat to the Earths
ecology were being conveyed to the experiencers in vivid, unmistakable words and images.
He personally deemed it quite possible that the protection of the Earths life is at the heart of
the abduction phenomenon.

Original interviews
Snippets of Macks interviews with the children can still be found on YouTube today. A fifthgrader called Francis tells the gentle-eyed psychiatrist he was warned about something thats
going to happen, and that pollution mustnt be. Eleven-year-old Emma says; I think they
want people to know that were actually making harm on this world and we mustnt get too
technologed [sic].
I cued up one of the clips on my phone for Sarah, but she waved it away.
I cant, I cant no, Ive had too much of my own experience to want to relive somebody
elses.
After a long draw on her beer she said: They werent wrong, though, about the
environmental shit, were they? If you go out there now youll see the Miombo forests have
disappeared for firewood.
But during my first visit to the district, what had struck me was not the state of the forests but
the fact that Ariel School had continued to grow in pupil numbers, and looked to be
prospering.
The khaki uniforms, the red floppy hats, the break-time chirring it all matched the YouTube
clips, only there were no longer any white students, the white farming families having all
moved elsewhere as a result of the governments radical land reform policies. The rough
area beyond the playground had been stumped and mown into a second sports field, dusty
for want of rain. I asked a few teachers I bumped into about the events of 1994, but it seemed
that aspect of the schools history had left with the farmers.
There was his documentary being made about it at one point, said Sarah, getting a little
shaky on her stool. An American chap. What was his name now Randall, Randy. Ha!
Anyway, that was about seven or eight years ago now, and I havent heard anything since.
Exploring the frontiers
I knew a little more than she did, again courtesy of my relative, who had provided local
assistance to the documentary-maker. After Mack was killed in a car accident in London in
2004, some of his supporters and family members had founded the John E Mack Institute,
with a mission to explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of
individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we
understand human identity.
In 2007, to further these rather grandiose aims, a young filmmaker called Randall Nickerson
had signed on to do something with the Ariel School footage. Geez, he was sooo handsome,
said Sarah, slapping her palms against her jeans.
I could hardly concentrate when he was interviewing me. Not only that, he understood the
thing on a different level, because he was an experiencer himself, who had been quite open
about his encounter. I think he even appeared on Oprah!
I had contacted Nickerson in 2008, and because he happened to be in Cape Town running

former Ariel students to ground, we arranged to meet and talk about his project. He cancelled
at the last minute, though, saying he didnt feel quite ready.
From time to time I checked the Mack Institute webpage for updates, but after a few years it
seemed the project had run into financial difficulties. Then, in late 2013, two hours of footage
tagged with Nickersons name surfaced on YouTube. I can recognise the carcass of a creative
albatross when I see one, and the amorphous video dump showed every sign of being just
that.
As an accidental historical record, though, it is fascinating: a trove of rural school scenes from
the eve of irreversible societal change; the last generation of khaki uniforms, freckled noses
and colonial English accents; and Cynthia Hind, already an anachronism in a series of preindependence floral print dresses, and wearing what was described to me as a Bulawayo
perm.
Tacked on at the end of the video are some snippets of interviews Nickerson conducted with
former students. It really does stick with me that something happened, something was out
there, says a young man. I think something definitely happened, says a young woman.
Amazing experience
A former teacher says We met up on many occasions after that and hugged and shook our
heads and said that was the most amazing experience of our lives, whereas another former
student says he hasnt talked about the event to anyone, because theyd probably think Im
nuts.
When I told Sarah about the video she became very agitated. Can I see it? Oh God no, I
dont want to. What do they all say? Am I on it? she cried.
Ok, just show me.
We watched the relevant part of the video, Sarah with a hand over her mouth.
God, their accents, she said at one point, of the now American, Australian and English tones
that contrasted so sharply with the voices she had known. It crossed my mind that the truly
galvanic event in all of their lives was not the UFO landing but the policy from upon high that
had turned them into aliens in New York, London, or wherever.
Then again, what did I know? When the clip ended Sarah stubbed out an Everest Menthol and
shook her head.
Sarah's - The Real Message
You want to know the real message here? The real message is that this stuff can brand you
for life. It undermined Macks credibility, became this huge unending thing for others, and it
certainly fucked me up. I mean, try telling people that you live in permanent fear of these
things returning one day. Try telling them that you can actually sense when theyre back in
our atmosphere. Theyll think youre a kook. All this lot do, she said, casting mock-angry
eyes down the bar at a fellow boozer, who raised his glass and said: True, but we love you
anyway, S.

Despite her patently thick skin, a look of extreme sadness entered Sarahs eyes for a moment,
as she pretended to watch her fingers pulling the label from a beer bottle.
Christ, and to think I told the family I was just popping out to Bon Marche.
*Not her real name.
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