Ariel Phenomenon - Ruwa Zimbabwe

originally posted by: TheAlleghenyGentleman

A few months back I was listening to archived episodes of star talk with Dr. Tyson. They were discussing the Faber incident. The most interesting take I took from the conversation on the show is a detail they discussed about the tic tack hovering above the ocean. Tyson is not a believer but what he said was intriguing. He hypothesized that the tick tic was not hovering frantically above the ocean darting about but actually emitting a frequency or energy that causes the human brain or eye to perceive the object is darting about while it is actually still.

Was this on a podcast with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and was the discussion on Commander David Fravor's encounter near the USS Nimitz in 2004 ?

Can you share a link to the episode this was discussed?

The connection between sightings of UAPs and potential manipulation/alteration of observers' perceptions is quite astute and fascinating. I had never heard the account of so much uncertainty and variation in the Zimbabwe school childrens' testimony from that day, but that is intriguing. Could it just be a function of shock or stress, just a byproduct of having one's mind blown by what they are witnessing, ~OR~ is it the inverse, that the "mind blowing" the actual reality that's transpiring, and the sightings are the byproduct of some phenomenon involving neurological/sensory control, i.e. a kind of hallucination.

This idea is very much reinforced by the investigation done by those at Skinwalker ranch. Folks standing right next to one another would recount drastically different stories of what they thought they'd seen, or they thought had transpired. IIRC this idea has been brought up by Dr. Jacques Vallee as well.

Wow $20 hope they all get paid! But I will never forget when someone on ATS said they might have saw a wired looking person....

Probably the top close encounter of all time....

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

I will search for it. It was on his podcast startalk radio.

Think this was from last night. The Zim sighting discussed with Randall Nickerson. To watch please fast forward to around the mark 1.22:50

From a new TV show in UK called TalkTV with Howard Hughes basically a live version of the old TalkRadio..............

watch.talk.tv...

I have watched it and I second your recommendation!
Best case known to me. These children DID see something and some of them HAD an experience that was very unusual.
NONE of them has ever said they all lied. After such a long time... impressive!

a reply to: SacredLore

After such a long time... impressive

It's a very intriguing case whatever the reality is regarding it all.

The director/filmmaker Randall Nickerson is no stranger to UFOs/aliens. Here he is in a recent interview about the new documentary, but he's reluctant to discuss his own encounter.



However, for those who are curious, here he is in 1994 on the Oprah show with his sister who was a co-experiencer. Note John Mack is present (1994 was of course the year of the Ariel incident).



Notably, Nickerson seems very disturbed by his encounter and wishes it were NOT real. Interestingly, his sister had read Whitley Strieber's late-80s book, 'Communion' - it seems she was not influenced or inspired by it, rather she was surprised that it concurred with experiences she'd had herself throughout her young life.


Ariel is one of only a handful of cases that still make me scratch my head, despite allegations that John Mack may have 'contaminated' the investigation, unwittingly or otherwise.

The children themselves are the true stars of this fascinating case that completes a trio of school stories to tickle our imaginations - the others being Westall (1966) and Broad Haven (1977).

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Spot on Confused. Nice post.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Here he is in a recent interview about the new documentary, but he's reluctant to discuss his own encounter.

That really left me curious as to what Nickerson has experienced himself. This may be the most we ever hear about it...

“I had gone to bed that night, when four of these beings came into my house, and I was still awake lying down in my bed. I don’t know when they came from or how, but they came in very fast into the room heading towards me and then they were all down the side of my bed”, he declared. “I turned to face them and I literally thought I was going to die”, he continued.

Mr Nickerson affirmed that the entities “measured 3ft 11 and appeared to be very cold”. “It’s very, very disturbing to be in a room with something that isn’t supposed to exist”, he commented.

However, in reference to the details of the experience, the filmmaker could not describe it because “it’s too personal”. “I was taken on the craft to some very contained room, and I can’t talk about what was done there because it’s too personal”, he said with tears in his eyes.

www.agoracosmopolitan.com...

a reply to: ConfusedBrit


Nice Oprah clip there mate, hadn't seen that one - Randall also pops up here in this new interview and thought Salma Siddick's comments were rather interesting.

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit

The children themselves are the true stars of this fascinating case that completes a trio of school stories to tickle our imaginations..

Remember this presentation - looks like school UFO encounters may be more prevalent than most people realize.


'Some lesser known reports taken from newsclipping archives, MUFON / APRO / NICAP files and other research sources - many countries involved including North America, Canada, France, Scotland, England, Ireland, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, New Zealand and China.'

Video 1 / 2


All across the world, schools are being targeted by UFOs. More than 100 documented cases are on record. These are typically long lasting, low level, daylight encounters viewed by large groups of witnesses.

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit
The children themselves are the true stars of this fascinating case that completes a trio of school stories to tickle our imaginations - the others being Westall (1966) and Broad Haven (1977).

If what you seek is entertainment, perhaps they are the stars. If what you seek is truth, I would suggest that you would find more truth by studying the drawings the children made. Some eyewitness to eyewitness variation is indeed expected when different witnesses experience the same event, but there are limits on how much variation is reasonable to expect, limits which in my view are exceeded when the students can't agree on the simplest aspects of the alleged encounter.

Was there one saucer or five? This is not something that should be a matter of such discrepancy.

Were the humanoids bald or did they have long dreadlocks and how many were there?

Ariel School UFO landing 1994


This drawing by Tara from 1:16 in the video looks like a human man or woman with dreadlocks, and it's just one humanoid:

This other drawing from 2:02 in the video doesn't show any dreadlock-like hair, and it shows two humanoids instead of one. So no they did not all see the same thing when the number of humanoids drawn isn't even the same, and they don't look the same. By the way both these drawings look rather human to me.

So don't these drawings bust the myth they all saw the same thing? Why does one drawing show only one humanoid and the other drawing shows two humanoids?

Here's a drawing from 3:02 showing what looks like one big silvery object on the ground, and 4 other smaller silvery objects on the ground, all sort of saucer shaped.


So first, none of them look like they are flying, and 5 objects and one humanoid, is this what all the other children described? No, it's not, here's another drawing showing only one object, again on the ground:

That looks more like a RV trailer than a flying saucer to me.

They did not all show the same thing in their drawings though improper questioning methods may have poisoned the investigation when Cynthia Hind and John Mack showed up, but I think the drawings might have been made before those two researchers had a chance to poison the investigation with their bad methods, discussed here:

25th UFO congress

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I noticed Christopher Mellon is very interested in this case on Twitter. I have no idea myself re this case except it's intriguing but with many questions. Clearly you are not a fan of the late Dr Mack and Cynthia. It will be interesting to see what is spun out re this one.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit
The children themselves are the true stars of this fascinating case that completes a trio of school stories to tickle our imaginations - the others being Westall (1966) and Broad Haven (1977).

If what you seek is entertainment, perhaps they are the stars. If what you seek is truth, I would suggest that you would find more truth by studying the drawings the children made. Some eyewitness to eyewitness variation is indeed expected when different witnesses experience the same event, but there are limits on how much variation is reasonable to expect, limits which in my view are exceeded when the students can't agree on the simplest aspects of the alleged encounter.

Hi Arby! Yes, there are indeed problems with this case, and you have done some admirable research on it over the years. Like you, I was intrigued by an ATS post from one woman who claimed to be a pupil at the school (and one of those photographed/filmed in 1994), confirming the entire incident was a hoax - she provided an email address to discuss the matter, but nobody seems to have followed up on the offer. Which is frustrating! I wasn't an ATS member at the time, so perhaps that line of enquiry has closed.

The biggest problem was the intervention of Cynthia Hind (the day after the incident) and John Mack (two months later). Mack was later killed in a road accident shortly after delivering a lecture on Ariel (one for the hardcore CTs out there!), but it's erring that a staunch enviromentalist such as he had spoken to the kids who then miraculously began telling tales of alien warnings to Save Our Planet (tm) - which they hadn't mentioned before Mack had gotten his claws into them.

Hind's mistake was to interview all 62 witnesses in one room, divided into separate groups, albeit with the others within earshot. What a mess. Beforehand, the two days of concentrated reports of UFOs in the region (later attributed to the Zenit-2 rocket) didn't help matters, either.

So what are we left with? If the 62 kids had conspired to concoct a fake story, they failed miserably, considering how different so many of their accounts and drawings turned out - ironically one of the main reasons you are so sceptical about the case. However, is this not a strong aspect in support of an anomalous event? If a hoax, why did so some kids go to such great lengths to to describe the bizarre movements of the 'aliens', almost as if they were transitioning in and out of reality?

We have accounts of one to four beings; startlingly different descriptions of the 'craft'; and conflicting stories of the sounds accompanying the incident. These witnesses seem to be 'over-egging' a story if it was intended to be a hoax, ie why elaborate so surreally rather than keeping things simpler? The overriding agreement between the kids is of at least one being (alternatively two beings) dressed in black clothes, with over-large eyes, staring at the group. Some claim there was a second long-haired suspect seen 'running' across the length of the craft in a bizarre manner, flitting back and forth, whilst the more 'traditional' alien watched the kids. Does this sound like a coordinated hoax? Perhaps, but many of these kids seem to be relating a real event as it was perceived - even more so 20+ years later.

But what about the multitude of kids outside the 62 who saw nothing at all? At least one teacher interviewed in 1994 was convinced it was all a deliberate hoax; and with Hind and Mack sticking their noses in, we are certainly in a conflicted position 28 years later.

The story is certainly more 'alien' than the Australian Westall school sighting (1966), although the 1977 Broad Haven UK sighting perhaps wins the prize in the overall 'school UFOs' league. All of these cases have big problems, and we'd love to know whether that aforementioned ATS poster was genuine with her claim of a hoax, but, as it stands, Ariel remains one of the more intriguing cases for alien visitation. The grown-up witnesses in the new Ariel documentary (in the works since 2009) are either genuine, or superb actors.

Someone has put an awful lot of work into collecting all the various photos related to incident over on Imgur.

Ariel School UFO Incident - All Known Photos In Rough Chronological Order

For me the jury is still out on this one. Because ultimately it rests almost entirely on the testimony of a bunch of kids some 3 decades ago.

The earliest report I could find is UFO AFRINEWS 11 Feb 1995.

It states that the adult teachers were all inside the school in a meeting. Except for Alyson Kirkman running the school tuckshop. But even she wasn't technically 'outside'.

She was the first to hear from the kids reporting a 'small man running around with a band around his head and one-piece suit'. Her own daughter FIfi later reported a white turning golden object landed about 100m away. Other children saw " ..one large object and two or three smaller ones". Then Hind and Mack arrived....

Now perhaps those kids were all lying and still are as adults. The embarrassment factor meaning they don't want to admit they overreacted and were then led on by credulous ufologists. When all they saw was some weird looking human being(s).

Or maybe the truth is that they did see something unexplainable to young minds and the passage of time has left them puzzled and confused. But the answer to what exactly triggered the events remains somewhat elusive.

a reply to: mirageman

But the answer to what exactly triggered the events remains somewhat elusive.

And will not become less so. There is the rub.

"UFOlogy" thrives on a lack of evidence and seems to wither with availability to it. It seems.

originally posted by: mirageman


She was the first to hear from the kids reporting a 'small man running around with a band around his head and one-piece suit'. Her own daughter FIfi later reported a white turning golden object landed about 100m away. Other children saw " ..one large object and two or three smaller ones". Then Hind and Mack arrived....

Thanks for the info. Interesting that those initial accounts before the Hind/Mack intrusion seem to sum up the frustrating contradictions in this case from the start. But yes, SOMETHING triggered this event - whether a local bizarrely-dressed loon was performing his own brand of eccentric gymnastics, or something more sinister. Or benign.

Now perhaps those kids were all lying and still are as adults. The embarrassment factor meaning they don't want to admit they overreacted and were then led on by credulous ufologists. When all they saw was some weird looking human being(s).

What happened to the other FIFTY kids who have not spoken out in public?

And then we have the suspicious story last month in which new photographs of ground markings were unveiled - except the photographer insists they occurred the day BEFORE the infamous Ariel landing, and that kids at Ariel told him they'd seen two separate landings over the two days. News to me! And probably to most of us. Who's lying there?

Like most popular UFO cases, it has become a swirling mess, no thanks to the eager researchers.


(PS: The embarrassment factor probably applies to the Travis Walton case, too - now dead in the water after the inevitable in-fighting and Rogers' confession. The 'Arrest Factor' probably played a part too for some time, although I doubt most of Walton's group were aware they were being hoaxed that night by Walton and Rogers.)

[Pedant mode]
Ariel was an angel.
[/Pedant mode]

a reply to: Phage

You are perfectly right. If we are to trust kids, then we need to trust the kids who saw the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima (Portugal) in 1913 (six times, no less); and those kids who saw the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes (France) in 1858 (twenty three times, no less). What's the difference between the Ruwa (Zimbawbe) 1994 kids and those in Fatima and Lourdes? Perhaps that the kids in Ruwa were protestants and the kids in Fatima and Lourdes were catholic?

Accepting the kids in Ruwa saw aliens is tantamount to accepting the kids in Fatima and Lourdes saw Virgin Mary. All three cases are identical.

a reply to: Direne

So, those black-eyed little big head aliens are a version of the Virgin Mary?


Many UFOlogists, Vallee included do believe Fatima was a UFO phenomenon.

One has to finally realize that whatever this phenomenon is, it clearly is playing some high-tech version of hide and seek with the world and particularly its military establishments.