Excited and Scared at the Same Time

ball of flame gathered together climbed down the wall. They used the expression walked down the wall when past behind him, and burst into flame again in another place. When this happened, he was aware of three figures standing there. The three figures turned around in unison, but slowly, and when they faced him, he saw this brilliant light emanating from their heads and it was upper power. Because he fell to the ground. And I said, but they were three meters

away from you, about ten feet. How came you fell to the ground, And he said their power was so strong. Now when he described them to me, he said they had shiny suits. And you might remember that I told you. There's no word in Shona mis Shona, which is their language for the words silver. So when I wanted him to be more explicit, he took a coin out of his pocket, silver coin, and he said that was what they were wearing. And then I said, Clifford, who did

you think they were? And he said, I knew they were. They were my ancestors, the ghosts of my ancestors. And I said, for Joe, ancestors wore fur and monkey skins and lions teeth. They didn't wear silver suits. And he thought for a better and then he said, well, times change. I'm Toby Ball and this is strange Arrivals Episode two Excited and scared at the same time. In episode one, we took a look at a UFO encounter in Papua

New Guinea. Aside from the details of the event, what stood out to me was the matter of fact attitude taken by Father William Gill, one of the witnesses and the main chronicler. He reported what he saw, expressed his sense of wonder, conceded that he might be mistaken in thinking it was something alien, and understood if people didn't believe him. But what happens when people with specific beliefs about UFOs become involved in the reporting of an encounter.

In the next two episodes, we'll take a look at an event similar to the one in Papua New Guinea, but in this case, the investigations undertaken by UFO researchers and journalists may have changed the narrative to a degree that it is now hard to discern what actually happened on the day of the sighting a setting that took place at a dusty schoolyard in Zimbabwe. The summer of nineteen eighty eight saw the first edition of a newsletter, or maybe it was a zine titled UFO Afrinews, published

out of Harari, Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. The cover had the title and date of publication in a no frills font. In the middle of the page was a fairly rough outlined sketch of the African continent, flanked on the right by a drawing of a classic flying saucer with a single antenna and either five windows or five heads looking out of a window running the length of the craft. To the left of the continental outline was a drawing

of what I think is an antelope. Anyway, the cover is very basic and sets the tone for the rest of the presentation. Which is by today's standards almost comically bare bones. But the content of the UFO Afrinews is another story. It is the testament to the efforts of a woman named Cynthia Hind, along with a small group

of correspondence, to document UFO encounters in Africa. The very first paragraph of the first article, headlined comment, reads like this, Like most investigators, over long period twenty years, my terms

of reference have changed subtly. Where isolation, disrespect, and ridicule were at one time paramount, I've recently begun to notice a change, the grudging acceptance of the possibility of life out there, even from the most conservative member of society, a laid back support, however hopeless, and current terms of

what ufologists are doing. Over the next twelve years, UFO AFRINUWS published twenty two editions featuring stories with headlines such as UFO crash on Botswana, South African Border, Bus in the Sky and UFO in the fields of afrom Planes. But the biggest story covered by UFO Afrinews ran in its eleventh edition, released in February of nineteen ninety five.

Spanning several articles. It began with a report on an object that was seen across Southern Africa traversing the night sky the evening of Wednesday, September fourteenth, nineteen ninety four. According to Hind, the first reports came from Johannesburg, South Africa, where people called into a local radio show to report seeing lights in the sky. Over the next ten to twelve minutes, the light were seen by people in South Africa, Botswana,

Southern Zambia and Zimbabwe. Hind wrote the general consensus of opinion was that the lights were preceded by a ball of fire which seemed to have a point to it with a long tail of sparks. It was white or goldish color and lit up brilliantly in the sky. Some people saw three huge lights at the front, with smaller lights varying from eight to twenty. Many reported that the objects were traveling very fast from north to south, others

that had moved slowly. Her article went on to relate in detail the reports of a number of individuals about what they had witnessed that night. She concluded that there were three possibilities for what was seen. A plane flying the Johannesburg to Bulawayo to Harari route that was running late putting it in the right place and time to be the object an unknown craft not of this Earth, or anticipating what is now considered the fact of the matter.

A Russian satellite that had been launched on the twenty sixth or twenty seventh of August had jettisoned its nose cone on September fourteenth. The nose cone had broken up as it entered the atmosphere over southern Africa. She mentioned pieces of the cone being retrieved northwest of Harari and from a river in Mozambique. It was in this atmosphere of concern about the lights in the sky above southern Africa that the events behind the most consequential revelations of

this edition of UFO Afrinows occurred. On Friday September sixteenth, thirty six hours after the lights in the sky, sixty two children at the Aerial School in Rua, Zimbabwe had an encounter with an object and non human beings in the fields beyond their school yard. The Aerial School is a private elementary school in the town of Rua, which is about twelve miles east of the capital city of Harrari. In nineteen ninety four, the school was racially diverse, and

it's more than two hundred. Students were pulled largely from middle class and upper class families. They came from as far away as Harrari, reportedly about a thirty minute drive. The boys at the school wore uniforms of khaki shorts and matching button up Safari shirts. The girls wore square collared dresses of light blue with white piping on the collars and sleeves. At ten fifteen that warm spring morning, they were outside at recess. No adults were present. There

was a staff meeting inside. Older students had been left in charge. In all, there were about two hundred and fifty students. Outside of those, sixty two would reports seeing a craft and some number of beings. The basics of the encounter were fairly straightforward. What complicates matters was that all all of the witnesses were children who were interviewed again and again in whose stories could not help but evolve.

That's not a criticism of the children. In fact, because adult interviewers generally did not exercise proper precautions in interviewing the children, it is almost inevitable that the children's perceptions would change. With that in mind, let's take a look at the basic story that comes out of the encounter before examining how the students were questioned in the days, weeks,

and months that followed. I'm not going to spend time on a few issues tangential to the main story, such as whether a small number of students saw lights in the sky either that morning or the day before at the time of this recording. Charlie Wiser's excellent and comprehensive website three Dollar Kit is a great source for a detailed look at all of the issues in this encounter.

With all that being said, there are essentially two elements to the encounter, the sighting of the craft at a distance beyond the playground amongst some trees, and then the appearance of some figures around the craft. It began with some children noticing an object glinting in the sun, maybe a hundred meters past the edge of their schoolyard from

the February nineteen ninety five edition of UFO Afronows. Shortly after ten o'clock, a few of the children noticed something strange beyond their playground, which was dotted with several clumps of trees, the rest being mostly cleared ground there was

bush area. The ground there belonged to the school, and though attempts had been made to clear it and level it, it really was still rough land, long grass with thorn and other indigenous bushes, trees growing in higgledy piggledy fashion, and undergrowth thick and heavy enough to hide a child should they venture there. Besides which no one knew what dangerous small animals such as snakes, jackals, and identified spiders, scorpions, etc.

Might be lurking in the grass. The following are clips of aerial students taken from interviews conducted by Zimbabwean radio and television personality Jill Dark in the weeks following the encounter. Here they described seeing the craft. We start with a student named Candice, Me and my friend Play Hailey and kamal Up. We were just walking and then we saw this maroon color just waving about and it was disappearing

and disappearing, and we started to follow it. And then we stood over there on one of the logs and we saw like this silver thing and we decided that we should go down there and see. But Play said we're not allowedly, so I said that it doesn't matter let's just go and see. And we got closer and closer, and we saw this silver thing just shining it and we thought that it was just a house of glass

and reflecting in the sun and shining here. We thought, no, it can't be that, because there's no houses up to play on the rocks. And then we waited for a few minutes and we just stared at it, and we heard this flute, sort of like a flute. Louise, this is Muna Rodzy. He mentions a touch shop, which is

more or less a snack shop at the school. Well, I was at the touch shop of the year, and then I shook with the pros at the year the slight, so I wanted and I looked and I saw this shot and he had the slide like a patten um yellow pole and me, this is another aerial student named Guy. So I went down to think know what was happening, and I actually saw this school of trees and it was like in a multi way pattern like silver and green and that sort of colors. And then there was

this little boy crying. So I went up to him to see what was wrong with him, and he said he was quite afraid of it. And then that actually made me quite afraid of it, because then somebody's afraid like it to see interviews conducted by Tim Leach of the BBC and Cynthia Hind on the Monday and Tuesday after the sighting, so a few weeks before the clips we just heard provide additional information. Guy who we heard from earlier described the craft as quote roundabout like a disk.

A student named Nathan said, quote it had a round top and it was flat like that around the sides. Charity described it as quote like a saucer, but the shape wasn't really round. The students also saw figures by the craft. As we will see later, there was some inconsistency in their descriptions of these figures. Here's Muna Rodzi again, there was something running across in something the shop that didn't when I looked more dumb, when I looked like

strength and strength to some like million things. He had big guys like once guy was saying, here, Guy, I saw this person and his eyes were like in a slant like say like so, and his life was just like a line like this. And then at the time the teachers were in a starting team, so nobody actually went have to go and call the teachers, because I think there were two phrases and everything. This is Candice.

I saw this black figure running in slow motion, and then I didn't want to see it, so I looked away, and I looked again. Wasn't there anymore? Candice's friend Claire, this figure like Candace Seed running in slow ocean and when clicked, its hit and looked at me onto the grass, and me and Canvas were really scared. We nearly screamed. We were so scared, and we were running back and forth because we were excited and scared at the same time.

In their interviews with the students, Tim Leech and Cynthia Hind also elicited descriptions of the figures around the craft. Some examples, Oriana said, quote, I don't know what it was, but it was very thin. All I saw was a long thing on a silver thing. Kayley saw three figures, stating we saw some people, a white one, a red one, a black one. The black one was sitting on the spaceship. Luke recalled that the figure he saw seemed to have long hair, quote, I didn't see the spaceship, but I

saw the little black guy. He was all black, and it looked like he had long hair, Daniel said, quote, it almost looked like a real person, except it was fairly plump. He continued, his hair was it looked more like our hair. It wasn't curly. That thing almost looked like a hippie. Big eyes, slanted eyes, very thin, fairly plump,

long hair, red white, black, almost like a hippie. The descriptions aren't consistent and are occasionally contradictory, and more detail was to come when they were asked to draw pictures of what they had seen, but we'll get to that in a minute. BBC correspondent Tim Leech heard about the encounter on Friday, the day had occurred. He called Cynthia Hind, a friend of his, to tell her about the event.

Hind began her investigation that weekend. She called Alison Kirkman, who was volunteering at the Touch shop when the sighting occurred, as well as three student witnesses. It's not clear which three students those were. The most interesting thing about the aerial school encounter is that there is this kind of

unfortunate weekend like it happened on a Friday. There's a weekend where possible contamination of testimony could occur, like the kids apparently broke up from school at one o'clock on the Friday afternoon, and then people were talking about it for presumably the rest of that day. This is researcher and writer Gideon read and then, as I understand it,

Cynthia and spoke to some people by telephone that weekend. Now, if those telephone conversations have been recorded and can be published, that would be fascinating because that would kind of go a long way toward countering any arguments the testimonies were hopelessly corrupted. What Gideon is talking about here is that hind through her four conversations could have affected the way that people, particularly the students, understood what they had seen.

We'll see how this can work in a minute. School went back into session on Monday morning. The headmaster, Colin Mackie, asked each of the students who had seen the craft and the figures to draw a picture of what they had seen. There was a wide range in the students artistic ability, owing largely to the difference in their ages.

While the drawings are not all consistent, there are some basic details that the majority of the drawings hint at a craft more or less like what you would think of when you think of a flying saucer, short and wide, either a disk or a rectangular shape, often with windows or lights. A number of the drawings have the craft situated within a group of trees. Many of the drawings depicted a being or beings, some looking like the classic alien with the big angled eyes in the barely their

nose and mouth, and critically bald heads. Others showed a figure with long, straight hair, as we heard described earlier. Over the next two days, Tim Leech and Cynthia Hind, along with a BBC camera crew and Hind's assistant and cameraman Gunter Hofer, visited Aerial School. Mackie, the headmaster, found

himself in a difficult situation. His school was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, with both an international news organization and the most prominent UFO researcher in Southern Africa converging on RUA. His thoughts on what happened in the schoolyard were complicated. I feel sure that the children feel that they did see something. I don't believe or disbelief to be perfect honest, but I do feel that they definitely saw something. We

had a number of children say they did. We asked them to do a pictures of what they saw this morning, what they saw on Friday, and after looking at it as I definitely feel that they did see something. I agree that it could be something that we are not common with, but to actually say that it was a UFO, I would be reluctant to make a decision like that. I personally did not see it. No adult had. Leech came to the school and conducted his interviews for the

BBC on Monday. On Tuesday, Cynthia Hind arrived with Gunter Hofer. Hind reviewed the children's drawings and then began to question the children. And here we begin to see the problem that plagues accounts of this event. After the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. Cynthia Hind, the most prominent UFO researcher in Southern Africa, arrived at the Ariel

school on the Tuesday following the Friday encounter. During the intervening weekend, she had talked to an adult who hadn't seen anything, but had been the nearest adult to the students who did, as well as three students who were witnesses. She came to Ariel School to gather more information from the other students who had seen the craft and its occupants. Questioning witnesses is a difficult endeavor. A good questioner wants to obtain the subject's information, not influence it, and this

requires training and skill. Questioning children is even more difficult because they are more susceptible to influence, whether intentional or not. On his blog Skeptic versus the Flying Saucers, Jille Fernandez, a writer and lecturer with a PhD in cognitive psychology, identifies two critical mistakes that Hind makes while interviewing this students. First, she not only interviews the children in a group where other children form an audience to watch the interviews. This

allows for students to influence each other's accounts. We heard an example of this dynamic earlier when in an interview with Jill Dark Muna Rodzy said, the guys like what guy would say. He says he had big eyes, like one guy was saying. Here, he's referencing the account that he's just seen his classmate Guy give and confirming its accuracy. Here's another example, again with Jill Dark I saw this

black figure running in slow motion. And then I didn't want to see it, so I looked away, and I looked again, and I wasn't there anymore, This figure like canvacy, running in slow motion, and one pluck, it hit up and looked at me onto. Here Candice and her Frank Claire are telling the story together. They can't help but influence each other's accounts. Second, Hind doesn't allow the children to freely tell their story for Nandez explains that interviewers

should not interject or ask specific questions. Children should be allowed to tell their story without prompting and less rephrasing what they had just said is necessary to get them back to talking. Fernandez writes, of a generic interviewer quote, he absolutely must not interrupt him nor ask him specific and precise questions. On that Tuesday, Hind began by interviewing a group of children together with the headmaster and other

children watching. They brought in the oldest children. Randall Nickerson, creator of the documentary The Aerial Phenomenon, all those children in that first interview. She brings in the Actually the headmaster did was to bring in all the older kids, who are much more responsible and were more experienced, and that's what you see there. Addressing the same point, Gideon Read references film taken and posted by Hine's assistant Gunter Hofer. So the video that you see on gafa's YouTube channel

sank behind and spearing the children. She's kind of going along the line of children in the room and there's like a crowd of children in the doorway. I think that was filmed on the Tuesday, and to leach when the BBC was there on the Monday. So by the Tuesday, the children have already probably been asked the same question a whole bunch of times. There's just so much unknown

about that whole little period. This section of the transcript of Hinds interview with Candice read by actors shows that far from allowing the student to tell her story, Hind guy the telling. While she doesn't seem to intentionally elicit certain answers, the questions that she asks indicate what she thinks is important about the story. She also asks either or questions that limit possible answers. Would you say it was like an ordinary suit? Was it like what mister

Mackie's wearing, No? Or what would you call the type of clothing. I'm not sure, but he was really Have you ever seen the divers going in the sea? Oh? Yes, like that? Was it like that or was it like an overall or tight fitting suit? It was tight fitting. It was tight fitting, yes, and it was shiny. Yes. Could you see his face? Well, I only saw a glimpse of it, and you don't remember any individual features. I only remember that his eyes were quite big. Eyes

were big? And were you afraid? I was a little afraid. Here, Hind has introduced the idea that the students might be afraid. Candice can answer either in the affirmative or negative, and actually kind of splits the difference by saying she was a little afraid. What do you think it was? I don't know. I just thought it was some kind of alien from a different planet. She asks for Candice's opinion, moving the conversation away from the student's experience and to conjecture.

And given who Hind was, the answer that she is looking for is probably clear to Candice. So you knew about UFOs, Yes, you've watched on television. Yes, you think that influenced you? Or you weren't thinking about that? When I wasn't thinking about it? And then, talking in front of a group of students and Headmaster Mackie Hind speculates that although people may have seen the breakup of a Russian rocket on August twenty seventh, it doesn't explain the

figures they saw. She continues, we don't know what it is and it could be just there was a Russian satellite breakup on the twenty seventh of August, and it's a possibility something came down, but it would not account for the figure you saw. And I think it's time the world woke up that something's going on. And they don't all think I'm a kookie character, a weird lady as they call me. In this one extraordinary statement, Hind seems to confirm to the students that they have seen

something of great importance. Quote, It's time the world woke up that something's going on end quote and given the students the power to rehabilitate her image as, in her words, a koukie character. Over the next month and a half, the students at Aerial School were interviewed by a zimbabwe In tevision and radio personality named Jill Dark and by

Nicole Harter of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. On November twenty fourth, the South African television show Agenda ran a piece on the sighting, which included mention of Harvard psychology professor and UFO researcher John Mack, who was due to arrive in Africa. In the February nineteen ninety five edition of UFO Afrinews, hind expressed the excitement in having Mac

visit Zimbabwe. Here then, is a man who is 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, when he arrived, it was a read lay to day for Zimbabwe. New York Times reporter and John Mac biographer Ralph Blumenthal. John Mack went there to Zimbabwe, recorded the interviews on camera,

questioned the children. He was very good with children, by the way, because child psychology was always one of his fields of interest, and he knew how to talk to kids in a non threatening way to get them to open up to him. So he got them really to tell what they had seen. Mack interviewed the arial students on December second and third, nineteen ninety four, two and

a half months after the sighting. If you've heard of the Ariel sighting before this podcast, you've probably heard about the messages that the student said they had received through some kind of telepathy from the alien figures, messages about

how the Earth's environment was in peril. We'll take a closer look at Mack's career as a UFOE investigator in upcoming episodes, but for now, it is important to understand that Mac was an ardent environmentalist and anti nuclear activist and perceived that the purported alien abductees that he worked with were given messages from their abductors about the need

to protect the planet. Here is Mac in an interview with philosopher Terrence McKenna at the International Transpersonal Conference in Prague in June nineteen ninety two, two years before the aerial school encounter. The clip begins with McKenna asking a question, and then Mac answers, then, do you think of it as an ecological danger signal that it's a message from an Earth intelligence, perhaps the Earth? There are telepieces of

evidence that suggests that that's true. One is that the abductees themselves on the ships, receive intense messages about ecological destruction, annihilation of whole forest systems, pollution of the water system, visions of the planet dying, and they see that on television like screens. They get it through telepathic community. And

these are not environmentalists, these people. They are people who are very simple, ordinary people, unremarkable except that they are getting this extraordinary information and they actually become intensely passionately concerned about the Earth and what's happening to the earth and their children do because their children may be abducted

as well. So, given his thoughts about the message that aliens are trying to impart, it's striking that when mac arrives, some of the children he interviews mentioned the alien figures

concerned with the environment. Researcher and writer Gideon Read, you know, there was no mention of anyone receiving telepathic communication until John mckinsfeed the children seventy seven days later, which is a huge amount of time for something so distinct and so mind changing for someone to have received helepathic communication and for it to not be heard about until they're sat in an interview two and a half months later and then the things that they say that they had

received in those interviews just happened to be perfectly aligned with the concerns and interests of the academic that they're talking to. On the website Three Dollar Kit, Charlie Wiser lays out transcripts of interviews of the aerial student witnesses chronologically prior to Max's appearance. The environmentalist message coming from

the alien figures was not mentioned. Mac interviewed twelve children on film, but most of the films and transcripts are embargoed by the John Mac Institute until sometime in twenty twenty three. But what is available of his interviews include student Emma Ka stating during a conversation about why she was afraid of the strange visitors, I think they want people to know that we're actually making harm on this

world and we mustn't get too technologed. When asked by Mac what he quote imagines is the aliens quote reason for visiting Earth, a student named Francis replies, quote, I think it's about something that's going to happen. Mac asks him, like, what Francis says? Pollution or something in this case, Francis doesn't state that this is a message he received from the aliens. Instead, he responded to Mac asking him what he quote imagines. His answers flowed from that request to imagine,

not his relating what actually happened. It's worth taking a slightly closer look at another interview, this time with a student named Lisel. The important part for our purposes comes after an edit in the film, so it's not clear what question Mac asks, but Lisel's response is, what I do is maybe the rule is going to end. Maybe they're telling us the rules going to end. Well, why do you think they might want us to be scared? Because?

And you maybe because we would that look after the planet and the air poppery, And I mean this is is this an idea that you have had before that we don't look after the planet properly in the air or did this idea come to you when you had this experience? When I had this experience? And how did that idea come to you? From this six This is a little hard, but try to be with me here, Okay, when you how did this idea come to you? When you had this experience? I just felt all horrible inside.

You felt horrible. At what point did you feel that when you saw the craft or when you got home at night or I got her, you had that horrible feeling when you got home. And to say more about that horrible feeling? Right, So, what was it like? It was like on the all the cheese will just start down and a little binner, and people be dying, and those thoughts came to you. Had you had those thoughts before this experience? No? And did 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? Oh, he never said anything. It's just that the face missed the eyes. What was the sense you got from those eyes? It was interesting. Now, there's no indication that mac talked to the children about his environmental concerns, but it is strange that this was not part of the aerial story until he arrived to interview the child witnesses, and this became part of the

narrative from there on out. This is a clip of two boys talking with Tinica Denuis on the Dutch television show Tinica and the Paranormale Vault fifteen months after Max's interviews in a year and a half after the sighting. Some people say that people are saying that the aliens came to warn us whom something's going to happen. This

something that is going to happen to the oath. I think they came here to try and warn us that the children left because we're young a long time, We've got a long time until we die, to warn us that in been we're older, there's something going to happen

to the earth. Not to pollut can still prevent it. Yeah, So by the time that Tinka Danui visits Aerial school, the students have settled on a narrative that is driven by what they saw that Friday morning on the playground, but has been inevitably corrupted by poor investigatory practices and possibly by the personal beliefs of a premier UFO investigator.

But even if the details of their stories may not be one hundred percent reliable, it seems as though they saw something and if it wasn't a landed spacecraft, what could it be next time? On Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from

Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Rima l Kaali, Jesse Funk, and Naami, with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Mankey and supervising producer Josh Thame, with voice acting by Teresa Backer, Julianna Thompson and Alexandra Williams, and special thanks to Kay

Adams of archive dot org. Learn more about the show at Grimmanmild dot com, slash Strange Arrivals, and find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.