Season 07 Episode 17: What Lies in the Long Grass (Pt.2 of 2)

Southern Africa. He'd covered some of the most devastating events imaginable, from war in Angola to genocide in Rwanda. In the afternoon of September sixteenth, nineteen ninety four, Tim receives a call regarding a strange incident that has just occurred at the aerial school in Rua. Tim immediately calls his friend and UFO researcher, Cynthia Hind. Recognizing the potential for a great story, the pair agreed to investigate it, with that day being a Friday. However, they have to wait until

the following Monday to scope it out. Never want to sit on her hands. Within minutes of the call, Cynthia is back on the phone. After making a few more calls, she tracks down a number for Allison, the parent who is staffing the tuck shop in the playground when the children claimed the incident occurred a moment later, and Cynthia is talking directly to Allison and then her ten year

old daughter Fifi. As Cynthia listened with a war and patience that few of the other adults had given her, Fifi slowly opens up, carefully, filling Cynthia in with as many details as she could remember, like how a strong wind had swept across the playground just as the bright light had dropped into the trees. She also tell Cynthia about the peculiar little men in black suits, although she

hadn't seen them herself. Eleven year old Barry and twelve year old Fungui, however, whom Cynthia also spoke to that night, both attested to having seen the beings. The boys described them as having large black eyes shaped like rugby balls. Both also claimed to experience a weird slowing down of time when they drew close to what they referred to

as the ship. When Cynthia finally got off the phone late that evening, it was hard for her to resist the thought that she was quite possibly sitting on one of the most extraordinary close encounters of the third kind the world had ever known. The following Monday, Tim and Cynthia, accompanied by Gunter Hoffer, a friend of Cynthia's and also a fellow UFO researcher, drive east out of Harari, heading deep into the pale grass and farmlands of the surrounding countryside.

They arrive finally at Aerial School after being greeted by head teacher Colin Mackey. They are promptly led into the staff room, where some of the teachers have assembled to take them through the events of the previous week. None of the teachers want to believe for a second that a ufooh really landed in the school playground, but neither can they answer the question of how sixty young school kids could even begin to coordinate a hoax like this

if that's what it is. Then Cynthia is handed the drawings. Tim films her. As she examines them one by one. She is instantly struck by the level of detail, but also the subtle differences in each one. This, she believes, is strong evidence that the children haven't concocted the story together. A short time later, six children from seventh grade, the oldest group in the school, are brought into the small whitewashed room to speak with Cynthia. Mister Mackie instructs them

to take a seat along the back wall. Cynthia waits for them to settle, then asks each of them if they I had definitely seen something, to which they all reply yes and nod enthusiastically. The following exchanges with Cynthia are taken verbatim from Tim Leach's film of the interviews. The first to give their account is Nathaniel. Did it have a shape? Asks Cynthia. Nathaniel thinks for a moment, it had a long top and a platform coming round the sides, he says, as he draws a saucer like

shape with his hands in the air. Then twelve year old Luke, sitting on Nathaniel's left, breaks in. I didn't see the spaceship, but I saw the little guy. He was all in black and looked like he had long hair. Could you see his face, asked Cynthia, No, he says softly, And why was he among the trees? It was just like a shadow. Says one of the other boys jumping in Now. And what's your name, says Cynthia. Trevor, and you also saw this, this creature? Yes, we were all there.

Did you see it? Land? I just saw flashes on the side of my eye. That's really all I saw. You didn't see anything on the ground, No, he says quietly. As Cynthia continues to engage with the pupils, One boy, Daniel, who's been close to bursting with excitement as he waits for his chance to speak, goes next. I saw this silver thing in the trees, with this one thing sitting on the side and another running up and down the top. It almost looked like a real person, except it was

a bit more round, he says, squeezing his waist. Then it was Emily's turn. At first I thought it was a boy from the compound, just playing. They had longish hair and it was all black, and they had big black eyes. They kind of turned around and stared. Then they went back to a kind of ship. There was one big one, with a few little ones scattered about. Cynthia asks her to show her how big exactly were

the eyes. Emily brings her hands up to her face and pinching her fingers and thumbs together, holds them over her eyes. They were oval like this, she says. Were you afraid, asks Cynthia. Yes, she says, smiling anxiously. And what did you think it was? Well, everybody was saying they were ufoes. Were you influenced by what the other children said? Asks Cynthia. Emily thinks for a moment. She dips her head down to the side, then looks back at Cynthia. Sort of, but I did definitely see what

I saw. Finally, Cynthia turns to Charity, who has stood to the side of the others. And what did you see? She asks? I saw something silver on the ground among the trees, and a person in black. That's all I saw. And what did the silver thing look like? Asks Cynthia. It looked like a saucer, but the shape wasn't really round. Had you heard about UFOs before this? No? Were you afraid? Yes, she says quietly, and turns her eyes to the ground.

Tim who's been filming the entire exchange, does his best to keep the camera steady as all the hairs rise up on the back of his neck. As a veteran journalist of some of the worst and complex human conflicts imaginable. He thought he'd seen it all, he knew what deception looked like, But as he watches the children's faces closely through the lens of the camera, he sees only honesty and sincerity. Whatever it was that happened, he thinks they

really did see something out there. After meeting with the children, Cynthia suggests they venture out to the playground and examine the apparent landing area for any radioactive traces. Mister Mackie asks twelve year old Guy and Fungi, who Cynthia had spoken to on the Friday evening, to lead them out,

as Tim follows them all with his camera. The group make their way into the playground while behind them, faces cram into the classroom windows as the children fight for a glimpse of the TV crew stepping from the sheltered area into the wider dirt flat. Twelve year old Guy recounts his experience of the event. He says he first noticed a small group of children pointing at something in the tall grass at the edge of the playing area. He thought they were messing around or that someone had

been hurt. Being one of the taller children he was able to push to the front easily, which he said as the group neared the spot was when he saw it. Guy points toward a place in the shade of some gum trees where he claimed he saw the large, silvery round object and another smaller object just to the right of it. Some of the children had started walking towards the larger one, he explains, when the being climbed out

of it. Cynthia listens intently as Guy takes his time between questions, seemingly still wrestling with what exactly it was that he'd seen that day. At some point, Guy continues, he noticed that two of the younger girls had started to cry. He watched as they grew increasingly frightened, before running away to the back of the playground. He noticed others, however, who were also crying that seemed rooted to the spot

with fear. Then someone said the word tokoloshi. Before long, it was spreading around the group, murmured on the lips of the tear streaked and trembling children. It wouldn't be until later that day that Guy found out what it meant. In Zulu mythology, the tokoloshi is a short, malicious water demon with long hair and glowing eyes that can be

summoned to inflict grave harm on its victims. One local story has it that many years ago, a young woman wearing nine bracelets on her arm was bathing in a river a few hundred miles east of Ferrari when she was attacked by a Tokoloshi. The creature tore off her arm and threw it into the water. Although most doubt the existence of the tokoloshi in nineteen twenty four, so the story goes, a prospector named Captain Valentine was searching a stretch of river east of Ferrari when he discovered

the remains of a human arm. When he apparently pulled it from the silt, he was amazed to find there were nine metal bracelets wrapped around it. When Young Guy finishes his account, Fungi leads Cynthia and the others to the exact spot where the craft had supposedly landed. There he explains how after the event, some of the students examined the area with one of their teachers. They apparently found what looked like six burnmarks on the grass, and strangely,

hundreds of dead ants scattered about. Cynthia's friend Gunter, pulls out a Geiger counter and directs the probe towards the ground, but finds no evidence of radiation. Over the next few weeks, news that the peculiar event at the little rural school in Zimbabwe spreads across the globe, with reporters from the Netherlands, the UK's BBC, and South African TV flocking to the region to meet with the children. At first, the children welcome the attention, but they soon grow weary of having

to repeat themselves over and over again. Mostly it's because they know perfectly well that they're being made fun of, but also because every reporter and interviewer, with the exception of Cynthia, tries to talk them out of believing what they'd seen. There are others, however, that, like Cynthia, don't dismiss their reports so easily, perhaps none more interesting than

Harvard Professor of psychology doctor John Mack. In the early nineteen nineties, Dr Mack, a well respected child psychologist, became interested in reports from people who claimed to have been contacted by aliens, a fascination that would eventually lead to a decade long study on the subject. Initially, Mack wasn't concerned with whether the subjects had been abducted or not. What interested him was simply the sheer scale of the phenomenon.

His first assumption was that the so called witnesses were suffering from some kind of psychological disorder. However, he found that many of his subjects exhibited no sign of this whatsoever. What Mack found especially interesting was how often it seemed that the subject's perspective of the world was completely changed after their apparent encounters. Although often ridiculed for his new obsession, Mack was encouraged by his good friend and pioneering philosopher

of science Thomas Kuhn to pursue his investigations. Regardless, Kuhn had himself been at the center of some controversy years before with the nineteen sixty two publication of his groundbreaking treaties The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. At the time, it was commonly believed that scientific progress was achieved through a

steady accumulation of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn, however, believed instead that periods of epistemic continuity were frequently interrupted by complete revolutions of thought, such revolutions, he argued, opened up new perspectives from which to explore ideas. Kuhn famously described

these moments as paradigm shifts. In May nineteen ninety four, doctor John Mack, in his capacity as a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, published his first set of findings in his book Abduction Human Encounters with Aliens. The Dean of Harvard Medical School was troubled by Mac's subject matter. Shortly after the book's publication, he appointed a committee to investigate Mac's work for potentially bringing the institution

into disrepute. Mack was staggered by the decision, but took solace in his good friend Thomas Kuhn's work. He reasoned that although accounts of apparent alien encounters were incompatible with our current scientific knowledge, we might yet discover them to be real in a way that we don't presently understand. Doctor Mack was ultimately undeterred and vowed to carry on his research. With the investigation into his work ongoing, doctor Mack decided to expand his research by looking into cases

outside of the US. He just arranged a trip to South Africa when news of the aerial School incident first broke. Deciding it was too good an opportunity to miss, Mack adjusted his plans and made a visit to the school. Over the course of two days. He brought his considerable academic experience to bear on the case. He discovered there was nothing short of extraordinary. At first, the children were reluctant to go through everything again for doctor Mack, but

the amiable and charismatic professor soon won them over. He began by pulling up a small classroom chair to sit beside them on their level, then questioned them with a clear enthusiasm for the subject. For the children, it seemed as though they recognized something of themselves in him. He was someone they could trust time and again. Doctor Mack, like Cynthia, is astonished at how much detail the children

apparently remember as they recount their stories to him. Each account, as the teachers later attested, rarely deviated from the accounts the children had first given on that strange Friday morning back in September. Doctor Mack was particularly interested in the reports of those who'd found the event traumatic and for whom the trauma had evidently stayed with them. The following exchanges are taken verbatim from Doctor Max's recorded interviews with

the pupils. Asking one child what scared the most about the incident, she replies it was the noise. What noise, asks doctor Mac gently. The noise we heard in the air, replies the young girl. As she speaks, Mac can almost see the memory spreading across her face, the fear of it growing from somewhere within her. What was it like a roar or a buzz? He asks? It was like someone was blowing a flute, she replied, eyes enigmatically. To another young girl, Doctor Mack asks where were the eyes,

just like many others had done before. The girl responds by making that same circular shape with her hands and holds them up to her face. And what was the feeling when he looked in the eyes? The eyes looked evil, said the girl. What was evil about them? It was just staring at me as if it wanted to come and take me. Did you want to go with it? The girl shakes her head as tears begin to well

up in her eyes. For doctor Mack, it's certainly nothing like talking to psychiatric patients who would often seem desperate for him to believe them or be obviously distorting reality in some way. The minds of the aerial school children, he believed were completely sound in their answers, he can hear a reticence in their voices, suggesting a concern at how what they are saying might be received, and a

constant doubt of their own recollections. Dr Mack is left feeling totally convinced that at the very least, the children genuinely believe what they are describing had truly happened to them. Ten year old Lisa was one of the first pupils to apparently spot the object and ran across to it with some friends. I felt scared, she says, and what was scary about it? Asks Doctor Mack, perched low on a small chair beside her. I felt scared because I'd

never seen a person like that before. Doctor Mack asked Lisa to draw her memory of the event on a blackboard. He watches as she outlines the craft a bulbous saucer shape with two landing feet and antenna on the top, and next to that she draws a stick figure with wrap round eyes on the head. What she said next was most astonishing. What I thought was maybe the world

is going to end. Maybe they were telling us the world is going to end, just as doctor Mack had found in the accounts of many other so called experiences people who believe they have experienced some kind of encounter with an extraterrestrial entity. Ten year old Lisa appears to have taken some kind of message from the encounter. And why do you think they would want us to be scared? Because maybe we don't look after the planet and the air properly. Is this an idea that you've had before,

that we don't look after the planet properly? Or did this idea come to you when you had this experience? When I had this experience, she says, how, asks doctor mac I just felt all horrible inside. It was like in the world, all the trees will just go down and there'll be no air and people will be dying. And how did he get these thoughts across to you? He never said anything, just through the face and the eyes. Would you like to see him again? Yes? Do you

think you might see him again? I don't know, she says. And if you did see him again, what would you do? I'd ask him what you were doing on Earth? And what do you want from us? She pauses before adding emphatically, I did see it. Young Lisa isn't the only child to have apparently received messages from the being. Emma, who was with her friend Salma at the time, also reports something very similar as the creature stared at her. She recounts her heart began beating faster and faster until a

thought started to emerge in her mind. I think they want people to know that we're actually making harm on this world, and we mustn't get too technowledged, explains the ten year old girl to Dr Mac. These apparent messages aren't unique to the children of Aerial school. It was something doctor Mack had come across time and time again in his interviews that the so called experiences with striking regularity.

Many of doctor Mac's case studies reported being warned about humanity's destruction of the environment, leading Mack to suspect that, in one way or another, this was central to the abduction experience. Doctor Mack eventually concluded his interviews in Africa

and returned to the US after fourteen months. The Harvard investigation into his academic credibility was eventually brought to an end, resulting in a complete exoneration and reaffirmation from the university dean that Mack had the freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment. As for the pupils of Aerial School, the media interest eventually died down and the children returned to focusing on their studies.

Although the story would eventually drift from the public consciousness, the children never forgot what happened on that peculiar day in September nineteen ninety four. Now adults with jobs and children of their own, with some emigrating to distant corners of the world while others remained in Zimbabwe. Not one of those sixty odd pupils has revealed the story to

have been a hoax. Many continued to speak about it to this day, and some still seemingly suffer from the trauma, and all have watched with increasing horror year on year as those warnings of impending ecological disaster have grown ever more prescient with each passing day. This episode was written by Richard McLain smith. Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me.

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