Ariel School Sightings: Update

In March 2013, we published a post about the Ariel School sightings that occurred in Zimbabawe in 1994. It’s one of the most compelling mass sightings ever and involved 62 elementary school kids. John E. Mack, author and professor of psychiatry at Harvard, investigated the incident. Here’s a recap of what happened:

The morning of September 16, 1994 probably started like any other morning at the Ariel School, a private elementary school in Ruwa, a rural farming community in Zimbabawe. But by mid-morning, when the kids broke for recess, the lives of 62 children and their teachers would be forever changed.

During the recess, most of the teachers were inside the building at a meeting and the kids, ranging in age from five to twelve, were outside. The only adult supervisor at recess was the mother of one of the children, who  operated a snack bar that sold soft drinks and snacks.

At around 10:15, some of the children saw three silver balls in the sky over the school.  These balls suddenly vanished in a flash of light, then reappeared elsewhere in the sky. This pattern was repeated three times before one of the UFOs began to move down toward the school. The craft either hovered just above the ground or landed in an area about three hundred feet from the recess field. The ground here was densely wooded with trees, thorn bushes, and shoots of bamboo. The only path through the area had been carved by tractors when they tried to clear the land.

A “small man” about three feet tall appeared on top of the UFO, then walked a ways across the rough ground. According to the children interviewed by Cynthia Hind, a South African UFO researcher, the man wore a tight-fitting, shiny black suit, had long black hair, and a “scrawny” neck.  His face was pale, his eyes immense. When the man became aware of the children, he allegedly disappeared. He or someone similar to him reappeared at the back of the UFO, which then took off.

Some of the children ran in terror toward the woman who was operating the snack bar, telling her what they had seen, but she didn’t believe them.

Hind arrived at the school the next day. She had already asked the headmaster to have the children make drawings of what they had seen so she reviewed the sketches and then began interviewing the children.

In Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, John E Mack,  wrote about his involvement in the investigation of the Ariel School sightings.  He and his research associate, Dominique Callimanopulos, had already scheduled a trip to Zimbabwe that was unrelated to the Ariel sightings. So when the BBC bureau chief faxed Mack and his associate  the drawings the children had done at Hind’s request,  Mack decided to investigate and he and Dominique arrived at the school in early December and stayed for two days.

Mack’s background in child psychiatry was apparently a powerful asset. He met with twelve of the children, interviewed the headmaster,  and met with most of the teachers. Each child they interviewed told a similar story, “that at 10:15 on that Friday morning, a large spacecraft and several smaller ones, from which one of more ‘strange beings’ had emerged, were seen hovering just above the ground or had ‘landed’ in their schoolyard.” At one point, Mack played devil’s advocate  with one of the kids and suggested the possibility that she had made up the story and gotten the other kids to tell the teachers this story as a prank.  Her reply was that she could understand how an adult might think that, but “that’s not what happened.”

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Fast forward. Mack died in 2004. But in 2007, Dominique Callimanopulos and filmmaker Randall Nickerson began production of a non-commercial, edited video program presenting John Mack’s interviews with the schoolchildren and faculty. A year later, Randall Nickerson left for Africa to cull additional information about the Ariel sightings. He stayed for nine months and interviewed many of the now-adult witnesses.  Click here for his findings.

Today, we received an email from Anne, a production assistant for “Ariel Phenomenon,” a documentary that’s being made about the sightings. She provided us with an update about the film and a link to the movie trailer. The trailer runs about five minutes and it’s fantastic.

From Anne:

I am working with Randall (Nickerson) on this film and would like to post an update for your readers. There is a website for the film now which is www.arielphenomenon.com and also a Facebook page “Ariel School Documentary” and Twitter account @arielschoolfilm for people to follow. The film website has an exclusive trailer for the film. We are also conducting a fundraiser through the film website to raise much needed funds to finish the final interviews and complete the film this year. Can you please share this important information with your readers? People are welcome to contact me at arielschoolfilm@gmail.com with any questions. Thank you for your help and support! Anne Krzanowski Production Assistant, “Ariel Phenomenon”