121: The UFO Incident That Shocked Ariel School: Telepathic Extraterrestrials
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

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you to hurry up with this stupid commercial. I got a packed calendar today. I'm sorry about him. Anyway, check out Spotify for Podcasters. It's free, no catch, and you can start today. Are we done? We're done, but you need to check your attitude. Excuse me, but I don't have all day to sit here and talk about Spotify. Look, this would go a lot faster if you would just let me get through it without...

September 14th, 1994 was a quiet night in Zimbabwe. Then suddenly what sounded like an explosion startled people all over the country. Windows rattled and doors shook.

Shocked and confused, people nervously stepped out of their homes to see what happened. But everything looked fine. They went back inside to bed. But one woman wasn't satisfied. Cynthia Hind drove around the capital city of Harare looking for the source of the sound, but nothing seemed unusual. But back at home, Cynthia's phone rang relentlessly. She was a UFO investigator, and witness reports were coming in one after the other.

The news claimed that the sound was a sonic boom caused by a meteor shower, but Cynthia wasn't so sure. Eyewitnesses near Lake Kariba described bizarre lights in the sky earlier that week. Lights in a row that moved erratically. Fast, then slow. First north to south, then east to southwest. Meteors don't do that. Cynthia suspected there was much more to the story. And two days later, she'd find out she was right.

The town of Ruah is located about 14 miles southeast of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. Surrounded by farmland, Ruah is a small agricultural community, but not poor. The more affluent families in the area sent their children to Ariel School, a private academy for grades 1 through 7 or ages 6 through 12. Oh, wait a minute. They named the school after that redhead chick with the purple pasties? No, the archangel Ariel. Did she wear purple pasties? He. Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I use the wrong pronouns? 2023 is so annoying. September 16th was a quiet, sunny day at Ariel School, and the students were at morning recess. Some kids were kicking soccer balls. Others were playing tag or hanging out under the trees. Watch the beat!

The teachers were in a meeting, so the kids had the yard to themselves. A few minutes after 10, the children noticed a strange buzzing noise. At first, it seemed to come from everywhere. It sounded like a swarm of bees or faulty electrical lines. The children were nervous, but then the sound stopped. But a few minutes later, the sound was back and much louder than before. The kids looked around for the source, and there, hovering above the trees, was an object.

Witness accounts vary, but some saw a bright streak, others saw a glowing disc. But all agreed, a mysterious object with flashing lights was descending beyond the treeline. Naturally, the children drifted toward the woods for a closer look.

Through the brush, they saw a metallic saucer-shaped craft slowly land in a rocky field just beyond their play area. Then the buzzing stopped. Other children in the yard became aware of the commotion, hearing shouts of, I see it, and there it is. Subconsciously, the children gathered together, pooling their bravery, and walked slowly toward the object. Then they stopped, frozen with fear. Two figures were standing outside the craft, and those figures weren't human.

The craft sat silently in the brush beyond the fence line.

Alien pit crew, nice. Then the creature stopped...

turned and looked right at the group of kids waiting by the fence. The younger children ran screaming back toward the school, but the older students stood there watching, staring. Salma, a fifth grader, wanted to run and protect her younger siblings, but she couldn't move. She was doing everything in her power to escape, but something about the big black eyes of the visitors kept her in place. Big head and big black eyes and was dressed in a black bodysuit.

Then, completely against her will, she felt herself take a step forward. At the same time, one of the beings took a step toward her. She felt like this being was probing her mind, looking for something. Mind control! Something like that, yeah. That's why I wear this hat. It protects me from government spying and alien mind control. It also happens to be tricked on knots. Google it.

Twelve-year-old Liesel was frozen in place. She felt the space and time around her distort as ringing in her ears grew louder and louder. Then, like frames of a movie, images flashed through her mind. Images of some kind of catastrophe on Earth. She saw people screaming and cities burning. Then an image of millions of trees burned to cinders and of the oceans boiling.

I shouldn't go. Yeah.

And yet I want to go. Emily, a fifth grader, felt like all the air around her was gone. She had to remind herself to breathe. She thought she might pass out. She was aware of the other children next to her, but they seemed so far away. The only sound she could hear was the blood pumping in her ears. She knew she needed to run, but there was something about those big black eyes. She couldn't look away. Salma took another step forward. Then she heard a message in her mind.

No words, but she still understood. The being wanted her to come closer, so she took another step. At that moment, she sensed the beings wanted her to go with them. Now, though it seemed only like a minute or two, 15 minutes had passed. Suddenly, the school bell rang, indicating recess was over. The creatures glanced at the school, and the children snapped out of their trance.

Then reality came crashing in and the children panicked. They ran screaming back to the school. They burst into the hallway, yelling their story to anyone who would listen. The teachers came out of their meeting and it was chaos. When the children finally calmed down, they explained what happened. The teachers ran out to the yard, but they were too late. Around 10:00 AM on September 16th during recess, 62 students from Ariel School saw one or more shiny silver craft descend into a brushy field near the playground.

Sitting on the spaceship. How do you know it was a spaceship? Wasn't it a helicopter or something like that? Well, it looked like it was like a disc, like a round. And whereabouts was it? In the trees over there, between the third pole.

And did you girls see that as well? Several students said the craft was surrounded by smaller objects zipping around the sky. These objects had flashing colored lights. They were moving slowly and would disappear, then reappear somewhere else. It seemed like the objects and the beings were guarding the saucer or maybe trying to fix some kind of malfunction. We asked them to draw pictures of what they saw on Friday. And after looking at those, I definitely feel that they did see something. What did you think it was?

I don't know. I just thought it was some kind of alien from a different planet. I was playing in the playground and then we just saw something silver and then we quickly ran to the logs and we saw a silver thing and we saw a man standing next to it.

Immediately after the incident, the headmaster of the school, Colin Mackey, told the children to draw what they saw and write down everything they could about what happened. This would prove very helpful in future investigations. Reports varied, but all shared poor similarities. A number of beings emerged from the craft. The beings were humanoid with large heads, small mouths, and large, dark oval eyes wearing tight black suits. Some of the children said there was a being walking or running around the top of the craft.

Others said it was moving around on the ground. But the way the beings moved was strange. We saw this black figure running in a slow motion. The strange thing was it seemed to be in very slow motion.

The way the beings moved spooked some of the younger children and they began to cry and scream. This drew even more attention from the other students nearby. It also drew the attention of the beings. Then the children noticed the being in front of the craft was looking back. And even though its mouth didn't move, the children heard it in their minds. How did those thoughts come to you? Did they come to you from the craft or from... From the man. The man.

And the man, did the man say those things to you? How did he get that across to you?

The adults at Ariel's school didn't know if the children had seen a UFO and aliens, but they believe they saw something. I agree that it could be something that we are not common with.

The event happened on a Friday, and over the weekend, some parents were searching the field behind the school, looking for physical evidence. They did find some flattened brush, but that could have been caused by anything. When Colin Mackey got to work on Monday morning, his desk was covered with letters and messages from parents, demanding to know what terrified their children. If we're going to keep discussing this, the parents are going to be knocking on my door every single day.

Some students were so traumatized they wouldn't return to school for a few days. A couple of students wouldn't return at all. Colin Mackey knew that he had to get to the bottom of whatever this was. He had to make sense of it to solve it. But to do that, he would need help.

There were roughly 100 kids in the playground, broad daylight, aerial school, Rue Zimbabwe, 1994, and they got within arm's length of these beans. But those kids, the way they were talking about it, the way they were drawing it, you're like, wow, it really does seem like something happened to them. I get goosebumps still to this day after spending over six years investigating this case. It just gives me the goosebumps when I see that because you know those kids aren't lying.

In the few days after the loud sound was heard all over Zimbabwe, Cynthia Hind would continue to study witness reports of the supposed meteor shower. Professor Ewan Nesbitt, who worked at the Greenwich Observatory in London, told her that a Russian satellite had entered Earth's atmosphere. As the satellite burned up,

It caused strange lights in the sky and what sounded like an explosion. Some pieces of the satellite were actually recovered in the city of Karoi, outside of Harare. But a disintegrating satellite didn't match the descriptions given by the witnesses. We saw this like a silver thing down there. It was a silver oval thing.

that flew past really slowly. I saw the bigger one and the spaceship, like four or five of them. It was red, green, and yellow. There was this big ship. It had these lights, these patterns, and it flew. The news outlets had encouraged witnesses to call with any information they had about the mysterious object. Hundreds of people called the local television station and the BBC station in Harare. What they reported did not resemble a meteor shower. These things were flying in a pattern.

and there was no sound. No wind, no nothing. Shiny over thing.

As the continental coordinator for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, Cynthia had her own theories about what might have been seen in the sky that night, but she needed more evidence. Two days later came an electrifying call from Tim Leach, the BBC bureau chief for Zimbabwe. Hello. Hello, my name is Tim Leach from BBC Television News. I understand that you had some strange experience. Yes, that's right.

He was a respected journalist, a seasoned reporter who covered war zones. Yet on this call, he sounded rattled. Tim told Cynthia that 62 students at the aerial school in Rua had seen a UFO. He invited her to join him at the school to talk to the children. Of course, she agreed. But even after 20 years as a UFO investigator, she'd never seen anything like this.

Tim Leach was a cameraman and producer who had covered war-torn parts of Africa like Angola, Rwanda, and Nigeria for the BBC. He was familiar with gunfire and tense situations. He even witnessed the deaths of several colleagues. Despite his experience, Tim was unsure about how to proceed. The BBC is known for fact-based reporting.

If you think the media is reporting facts, I have an NFT to sell you. Well, they require multiple sources to run a story. Ha ha! If you count anonymous sources! Tim had over 60 sources, actual sources. Yet the story still wasn't considered credible. Local reporters weren't taking it seriously. Well, unless it's a story about cow farts and global warming. They take that very seriously. Yeah, I don't want to have this conversation now.

Even Tim Leach, a self-proclaimed realist and skeptic, couldn't make sense of the aerial school UFO incident. That's when Cynthia Hines suggested they contact Dr. John Mack. Tim Leach from BBC Television News in Harare, Zimbabwe. Message for Dr. John Mack. This concerns a UFO sighting over a school where it hovered, landed, a black man got out.

but of course we're having difficulty being taken seriously in spite of being the BBC. Please call me as soon as you can. Thank you.

Dr. Mack was a psychiatrist who specialized in child psychology. In the early 90s, he conducted a 10-year psychological study on individuals who claimed to have experienced encounters with aliens. These encounters often recurred and even involved abductions. Dr. Mack believed that society, especially academics, shouldn't dismiss these reports as mere mental or cognitive issues.

Again, the whole thing has made me re-examine all of these notions of happened, didn't happen. For them it is completely real and it is not the product of mental illness. Now whether it happened altogether in this reality, I don't know. But it shows up in their world, they seem to be missing by witnesses at the time, so something is occurring that is entering our world.

So Dr. Mack came to Zimbabwe and began speaking to the school staff to gather information about the incident and what the children might have experienced. Although the teachers didn't witness the event firsthand, most of them, including the headmaster Colin Mackey, believed the children had seen and experienced something. How many of them reported seeing the craft? Something in the region of about 60. More of them could have seen it.

They're just too embarrassed to talk about it. The teachers felt that it was unlikely for 62 students to come up with such nuanced and similar stories together. Cynthia Hind had also noted that if all these kids had told the exact same story, it would suggest that they had conspired and fabricated it. While she acknowledges that some students may have added or embellished details, she believed that the core of what each child claimed to have seen remained the same, and that what they saw was very creepy. What was scary about it?

The figure on the ground approached them and stopped just a few feet away. The children said it stared intently at them, at all of them. And this was unsettling to some kids and downright scary to others.

And Dr. Mack interviewed some students who were visibly upset when recalling the encounter. As if to do what? I know this is hard. I know it's hard. It's hard to put into words what you felt, I'm sure.

You know, there's something more going on here than what met the eye. The children also felt the being was trying to send them a specific message and even put images into their minds. Punggay, what do you imagine is his reason for visiting the earth? I think it's about something that's going to happen. Something that's going to happen? Like what? Pollution or something. Pollution? Yes. They want people...

to know that we're actually making harm on this world and we mustn't get too technologued. It was like in the world all the trees would just go down and there would be no air and people would be dying.

Dr. Mack found it interesting that the message sent to the children didn't offer any solutions, only a warning. There was no suggestion as to how to address pollution. What, did Greta Thunberg go to this school? She wasn't even born yet. How dare you! Dr. Mack felt this lack of agenda made the children's stories about the encounter more sincere. One girl tried to explain what the being was telling her about humans' impact on the planet. I think that in space there's no love.

Dr. Mack was encouraged. He asked if there's anything we as a people can do with that love to help the Earth. Unfortunately, the answer was no.

In the days and weeks following the encounter, Ariel's school became inundated with UFO fever. The media swarmed, locals speculated, but authorities clung to conventional explanations. The official story was a meteor shower from two nights before seeded mass hysteria. A few students concocted an elaborate imaginary tale that caught on with the rest of the school. Parents were divided.

Some refused to believe their children, but others took the story more seriously. Many locals chalked it up to mischievous spirits, like the Shona Tukoloshe, a dwarf from Zulu mythology with a large head and pointed ears. Holy men suggested ancient shrines nearby had drawn the craft. They claimed that mysterious events had been happening in the area for years. Either way, most residents believed something supernatural had occurred.

Whether it was aliens or not, the teachers and investigators believe the children had some kind of experience. And similar reports were made before and after the school sighting. - What the hell is that?

Two days before the aerial encounter, 100 students at the Pier House School, only 25 miles away, saw a flying object flying very low to the ground as if it was going to land. At the same time, the school and bus radio systems stopped working. That same day, during daylight, a mother and her young child said they saw a UFO in the area, and a truck driver reported seeing strange beings on the roadside that night when he was driving. But the story of the aerial school UFO incident isn't perfect.

Many students agreed on some details, but the stories had a lot of variations and contradictions. Some students saw the beings, but not the craft. Some described the object in detail, but don't remember any beings or entities of any kind. Some students playing in the yard at the very same time saw nothing at all. The students that did see the object couldn't decide if it was one or more.

Most students thought the object was a ship or a craft, but they couldn't agree on how it looked. Some kids drew windows and doors. Other children saw lights and landing gear. Two boys said the ship wasn't silver. It was black with green stripes. One child said it was red. At least two students heard a loud noise in the sky. Some said it was a buzzing sound like bees. Another said it sounded like a flute. As for the beings or pilots or aliens or whoever they were, some students said they had long black hair, while others saw no hair at all.

And that's plenty of time for the story to evolve. And

Vagina.

Before Dr. Mack brought up the idea that aliens were communicating telepathically, the children never mentioned it. Same with the telepathic message that the children allegedly received about how the Earth was in danger because of pollution. The students didn't mention that before Dr. Mack joined the investigation.

Dr. Mac was an environmentalist who was very worried about climate change. Oh, you believe in UFOs, but not climate change? Of course. One's a real thing, and one isn't. For the most part, the teachers believed the students. So did Cynthia Hind. I believe them.

I believe they saw what they said they saw. I think that perhaps some have been influenced by others and they've added a little bit here and a little bit there. But basically, they put, drew in their drawings many things that I don't think that they could know about.

Cynthia Hind wasn't just a UFO researcher. She was the MUFON Continental Coordinator for Africa. And the purpose of MUFON is to investigate UFO sightings and gather data. MUFON is not a group of UFO nerds posting on Reddit. I do like those nerds, though. I do, too.

And this case elevated Cynthia Hines' career.

But Dr. Mack, on the other hand, saw his career suffer. He wasn't just a child psychiatrist who dabbled in UFO research. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor and head of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. But his colleagues didn't like Harvard being attached to his UFO research. We're very embarrassed and embarrassed for the profession and a little worried about John himself. What has gone off the rails with him?

John is a man of great gift and great intelligence, but he's also a man who tends to take on enthusiasms, and in this time he's gone too far. We're worried about him. We hope he'll

pull himself together. Harvard Medical School actually formed a committee to investigate Dr. Mack. This marked the first time in the school's history that a tenured professor and department head was investigated without evidence of misconduct. After the investigation, which lasted for 14 months, the Dean of Harvard issued a statement that Dr. Mack was allowed to study whatever he wanted. The most fundamental right that any academic has is the right to be wrong.

But the statement was not very positive, and Dr. Mack's reputation never recovered. He continued to investigate UFO encounters and alien abductions for another 10 years. But in 2004, he was in London to give a lecture. On September 27th, Dr. Mack was walking home from dinner with friends when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver. His death was a tragedy, but there are people who believed it was more sinister than that.

Dr. John Mack was, at the time, one of the most famous people researching alien abductions. He appeared on mainstream television shows like Larry King Live and Oprah, and some believe his high visibility put his life in danger. Now, there is no evidence to support foul play, but it is interesting that, on the day John Mack was killed in England,

Three other John Macs were also killed in England, and Dr. Mac's family declined to press charges. Men in black got him. That is the suspicion. But whether his death was an accident or not, Dr. John Mac is just one name in a long list of UFO researchers and whistleblowers who die early. Now, those deaths could all be coincidences, but you know how I feel about those.

The aerial school encounter wasn't the first time a UFO landed near a school, which was seen by multiple people. On April 6th, 1966, in Melbourne, Australia, students from Westall High School and some local residents witnessed a UFO land in an open field.

People described the object as silver and saucer-shaped and about twice the size of a car. After about 20 minutes, five aircraft, probably military, flew over the area. The object then lifted off and disappeared. Authorities tried to cover it up,

But the craft was seen by over 200 people who all told very consistent stories. - A teacher who claimed to see UFOs hovering over a Melbourne school says military officials threatened to have him fired if he ever spoke about the incident. They were threatening him? - Oh, absolutely. I was threatened. - And if he spoke up? - Clearly you were drunk on duty and that will have to be reported to the education department and of course you'll lose your job.

The government had said it was just a weather balloon. Where have I heard this one before? But representatives from the military and government interviewed, interrogated witnesses, and took soil samples from where the object landed. That doesn't sound like something you do when a weather balloon crashes. The following year at Crestview Elementary School in Miami, students and teachers heard a strange whistling sound overhead.

Looking up, they saw four saucer-shaped objects gliding in diamond formation. The craft disappeared for 20 minutes, then returned, changing their direction. The sound they made was so loud, it drowned out the shouts of the teachers. Students ran back inside, terrified. Briefly vanishing again, the UFOs rematerialized for another flyby.

Then, in perfect unison, they flipped onto their sides and flew away at an unbelievable speed. This event was witnessed by 150 people. Nine years later in Wales, over a dozen students and staff at Broadhaven Primary School reported a silver disc hovering over the school. They watched the object for a few minutes until it darted away.

But later that afternoon, it returned, this time witnessed by even more people. Once again, it hovered for a few minutes before vanishing again. The British government said the UFO was actually a meteorological anomaly, a weird weather event.

But in 2017, documents were found that proved not only was the government taking the sighting seriously, the UFO was seen by military personnel and pilots and air traffic controllers. Well, how long are these governments gonna keep lying to their citizens, eh? I don't know. I guess until the citizens get sick of it and do something about it. You sick of it yet?

I couldn't do this without you. I can't thank you enough.

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That's going to do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated. I took a stroll downtown this evening when I heard music echo through the night. The same old songs that I heard the night before. So I started running so I wouldn't be too late.

I didn't think that I would ever see your face again. But I was wrong. I can't believe we're dancing in the street. In your house, but I can't feel my feet. While we're dancing in the street. And when the music stops.

I can't feel my feet while we're dancing in the street.

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