UFO Sighting on September 16, 1994
Drawn by one of the witnesses. Both images are taken from an Imgur gallery containing multiple student drawings.
Outside of Ruwa, Zimbabwe, 62 children between the ages of six and twelve reported seeing one or more silver, disc-shaped craft(s) descend from the sky, and land in the forest near the school.
The students were outside for morning recess when they saw the craft land. All the teachers were inside the school, and did not witness the event. The students say the entire encounter lasted about 15 minutes, and the craft descended from the sky, moved over the playground, and landed in a field behind the playground.
Some of the children ran away as soon as they saw the silver objects, but those who remained had a chilling encounter: black, humanoid creatures exited the craft, and some students say they communicated with them telepathically. Ariel School is a diverse school with mostly white, black, and Asian students, and the students' accounts of the event varied somewhat based on racial lines.
One student says the beings looked "a bit like Michael Jackson." A few of the black students thought the short little beings were zvikwambo, or tokoloshes – the evil goblins of local folklore – and burst into tears, fearing they would be eaten. A white student “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 [person’s] hair’, so he realized he had made a mistake!”
A fifth-grader named Francis told Dr. John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist evaluating the students, that he was warned “about something that’s going to happen,” and that “pollution mustn’t be”. Eleven-year-old Emma says, “I think they want people to know that we’re actually making harm on this world and we mustn’t get too technologed [sic].”
After speaking with the children, Dr. Mack said he found their reports credible.
This sighting is particularly notable due to the sheer number of witnesses who all say they saw the same thing. Almost 30 years later, many students still maintain their reports were true.
Click the button below to see drawings the kids made of what they saw.
UFO Ariel Phenomenon
A new documentary has been released, which takes a closer look at the events of that September day in 1994. The now-adult witnesses were interviewed on their experiences both back then and now. The director of the documentary, Randall Nickerson, told The Sun that the witnesses deserved to have their stories heard and not be dismissed.
Nickerson said: "We have to be able to be truthful about people's experiences and say 'well, maybe we don't understand what is going on... It is necessary at this point, we are seeing more and more as our technology develops."
“It is something we have to have a conversation about and explore — and Ariel is a big part of that.”
