תקרית העב״ם בבית הספר אריאל: זימבבואה, 1994 · 2026

2:18could it have been? Those among them who were astronomically inclined thought that it could have been a meteor breaking up or perhaps a faraway comet. Others opines it may have been an aircraft that had crashed and burnt. And of course, there were those that were convinced that they'd spotted an alien spaceship come down to Earth. I'm always surprised when people assume that because it's like surely, you know, what's that Sherlock Holmes thing where it's like uh once all rational explanations are exhausted, the one irrational one must be the truth or something. But it's like, oh boy, we definitely haven't exhausted the rational ones. Like we've just listed two of them being a comet or a or a plane or something. [snorts] Sorry, I'll save it. Let's carry on. And that was the state of mind the people of Zimbabwe had throughout

3:04the week. By the 16th, everyone in the country had heard of the giant fireball in the sky. And yet the staff at the aerial school in Ruwa had no reason to expect that the day would be anything other than just another regular Friday. The one notable event they had penciled in was a big meeting they all had to attend, which they sensibly scheduled during the mid-morning break while all the pupils would be outside playing. It was only supposed to take 15 minutes. I mean, what could possibly happen in that time? Now take 15 minutes is quite a lot of time especially with kids. Like if I left my kids alone for 15 minutes, I'd probably be described as a bad parent because they're like five and six years old. 15 minutes, I don't know. If I mean, if they're playing upstairs, fine. [snorts] But like outside or something, no. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., the meeting

3:49started. Soon after the bell rang, around 250 children between the ages of six and 12 began filling up the playgrounds while the adults were indoors taking care of adult stuff. It was no concern of theirs. They wanted to play. It always a mystery like at school, what goes on in the staff room? I remember like a couple of times I went into the staff room for one reason or another and you're like, oh, this is so weird. This is where the teachers hang out. But not long into their break, something happened. Something appeared in the thick bushes outside of the school. At first it was a mere glint, the same kind the sun would reflect off a shiny piece of sheet metal. But it didn't simply disappear the way that you would expect a glint to do. Instead, it remained in the same place catching the eye of some of the pupils who were near the fence.

4:35As these children turned their gaze to see the mysterious shining object, it finally appeared in full. It looked like a large silver saucer settled in the tall grass about 100 yards away, maybe more. I have just realized why I'm familiar with this. It's not because of another UFO thing, it's because I've actually talked about this before, but not on this channel. I believe it was an ITS video. It's in the Shadows, another channel I do. It's an ITS ITS is what we refer to it like in the office. No one else would be expected to know that or even that I have a YouTube channel called Into the Shadows, but if you'd like the non chit-chatty version of this, you could go check that out, but just stay here, why not? Some of the children later said it had a dome on it. Some said it was glowing, others that it had legs sticking out of it, but they all agreed that it was a

5:20silver disk staying low to the ground. Some children heard it make a noise, although again, they didn't all hear the same thing. One little girl described it as the sound of a flute. Others said it was like a hum or the buzzing of bees, and some didn't hear anything at all. As more and more pupils became aware of the strange object in the distance, those among them with a more daring and inquisitive nature started walking towards it, wanting to get closer. Those children were not just a spacecraft, but also an alien figure standing next to it. As the kids approached, the figure became aware for the first time that it had an audience. It turned around and looked at them. The creature was small, about the size of the children, maybe even smaller. It was thin and wearing a close-fitting

6:05suit that covered its entire body. The head, however, did not look like a human head. It was much larger than you'd expect for the small frame. It almost looked like the creature's thin neck was too frail to support it. The skin on its head was pale with a peculiar texture. [snorts] Other than the peculiar texture, got a pale skin head myself. And its mouth was nothing more than a narrow slit. But the one thing that immediately attracted everyone's attention were the eyes. The figure had a pair of huge, dark, almond-shaped eyes. They were shining and they didn't blink at all, staring fixedly at the children who dared to approach. The creature didn't do very much. It didn't try to speak. It didn't try to chase the children away or to touch

6:50them. It mostly just watched. It did move a bit, coming slightly toward the pupils before withdrawing. The eyewitness accounts described its movements as wrong, although they struggled to find the words to explain why. It was floaty, more so than a regular walk, but not quite as much as a glide. It almost sounded like the creature was experiencing a different kind of gravity than everyone else. Now it's hard to tell exactly how long the experience lasted. Everyone involved seemed to have lost track of time, completely unnerved, some of them frozen in fear by the unrelenting stare of the creature. Well, it was the stare that was scary rather than it being a an alien. The final minutes of recess were the most chaotic as the pupils took in the scene in front of them and began reacting.

7:35The younger children started to cry. Many pupils fled inside the school. Others simply ducked for cover to escape the penetrating gaze of the mysterious figure. And some of them didn't move at all as if the stranger was somehow holding them in place. It was, by all accounts, pure panic. And nobody knows exactly how the figure made its exit. A few children said they saw the craft lift off into the sky and fly away. Others that it simply disappeared. But most did not dare to look at all. They had their backs to the flying saucer and were fleeing in terror for the safety provided by the school building. Recess was over. As the pupils made their way back into the classrooms, the teachers could tell immediately that this wasn't the typical

8:21commotion following the end of a break. The kids weren't just animated, they were panicked and they were scared, and the regular demands for everyone to settle down and get out their books were not working. With some gentle cajoling, the teachers managed to get a semi-coherent account from their students. They heard that a spaceship landed next to the school and an alien with giant eyes came out of it. Now, unsurprisingly, none of the adults believed them. After all, who would? They reasoned that the most likely scenario was that some of the older kids saw something slightly out of the ordinary and taking advantage of the alien paranoia that had gripped the country, turned it into something far more fantastical than it actually was, and the smaller children's imagination did the rest. Indeed, with the teachers on this one, eventually with an authoritative voice

9:07and a firm hand, the teachers managed to calm the children down and get on with class, assuring everyone that by the following day, they would have all forgotten about it. That's not what happened though. By the time classes were over and the children boarded the buses home, their unearthly experience was still the number one thing on their minds. So the predictable happened. When they got home, they told their parents. This prompted various reactions as you would expect. Some parents simply didn't believe their children. I'll be one [snorts] of those. I mean, I asked a nice story, Romulus. Why don't you tell me it again? [snorts] Just like you know that feigning interest in something that they find super interesting, but is actually incredibly boring or just made up. Tell it again, Romulus. Please. [snorts] Others thought that they probably did

9:52see something, but that it was something innocuous which they mistook for a spaceship. And a handful of them were inclined to believe that their children witnessed an unexplained event, an experience which left them disturbed and uneasy. Since this happened on a Friday, the school had the whole weekend to spread about town. You know how it goes. Parents talked with a neighbor or a relative or some acquaintance they met at the supermarket. They told everyone else and that someone passed it along as well and before you know it, word of mouth had spread throughout all of Ruwa and the nearby towns and cities. On Monday morning, the parents descended on the school wanting to know exactly what the hell had happened. Some of them were angry and blamed the school staff for leaving the pupils unattended. Although if it really was an alien, I'm not

10:37exactly sure what the geography teacher could have done about it. Maybe offer it directions or some such. Others were confused, still unsure of what exactly had transpired and wanting to get the full story from the staff members who were just as perplexed as they were. But most parents were simply concerned for their children. However, [snorts] if any of them were hoping to receive reassurance or answers from the school, they were left severely disappointed because there were none to be had. After all, an alien sighting isn't the kind of scenario that any school on Earth is trained to deal with. The one good idea that their headmaster enacted was to ask the pupils to draw what they saw. This way, they would not be impeded by a limited vocabulary or by using words that they'd heard from others. They would present to the best of their ability the image that

11:23was in their minds as uncontaminated as possible by external influences. Oh boy, but those external influences have already done a hell of a lot of work, headmaster. A few dozen students did so. Their ages varied between six and 12 years old, so obviously the quality of their drawings varied too. [snorts] Some of the ones done by the younger children were simple, crude shapes, but even the ones done by the older children with artistic inclinations were still just some kids' drawings. This was not an official exercise. They were not being graded on it. Nobody made their drawings expecting them to become evidence in a highly publicized UFO case. Although to be honest, this is one of the things that ufologists like most about this case, the innocence of the eyewitnesses. Their testimonies and their evidence might be basic, but they

12:08lack any hidden intent or prejudices, something which cannot be said for most other alien encounters. There was variation in what the images depicted. Some pupils drew more than one spaceship, others drew more than one alien. Sometimes the shape of the flying saucer was different. But again, according to ufologists, this is a point in their favor because it shows that the children did not agree beforehand on what to draw. Similar images would have suggested that the pupils had all seen the same picture and were trying to recreate it. But their illustrations were not only varied, they were also made from differing points of view. The playground was a big place and some pupils got right up close to the fence line to see the unusual object while others stayed farther back. Now, since we're talking about young children here, their defenders argued

12:53that they would not have been able to account for the geography if they were trying to copy the same image. Instead, looked at together, this collection of drawings suggested strongly that a group of children saw the same thing from different perspectives. Cynthia Hind gets involved. Now, the story surrounding the Ariel school was too big to remain confined to just Ruwa. It didn't take long before outsiders came to investigate the supposed alien sighting and there are three important ones that we need to mention. The first was Tim Leach, a BBC journalist who was the broadcaster's correspondent in Zimbabwe. [snorts] He was a seasoned reporter who had covered wars, famines, and coups. He had thought that he'd seen everything, but this was a new one even for him. Leach arrived on the scene on Monday, September the 19th, three days after the

13:38event. He was the first investigator to look into the case and was instrumental in getting the news out to an international audience. He interviewed multiple children for his piece for the BBC and they all stuck to their story, describing the scene like we already mentioned, a silver disc that glinted in the trees and one or more figures with big black eyes standing near it. Leach also asked the Ariel school headmaster, Colin Mackey, what he thought of all of this, to which he replied, I feel sure that the children feel they did see something. We asked them to draw pictures of what they saw on Friday and after looking at these, I definitely they did see something. I agree that it could be something that we're not common with, but to actually say it was a UFO, I would be reluctant to make a decision

14:24like that. End quote. Although Leach's interviews became an integral part of the case, the fact of the matter is that he was just doing his job. Leach had received the assignment from the higher-ups at the BBC. He went on location, pointed his camera, and filmed until he had enough footage for his report. After that, he went on his merry way to his next assignment, but that was when the second investigator arrived on the scene. Her name was Cynthia Hind, and she was one of the most prominent ufologists in Africa. A former member of the South African Women's Air Force, she emigrated to Zimbabwe during the '70s, back when the state was still known as Rhodesia. Hind did a bit of investigative reporting. That's how she stumbled onto her first UFO case and decided to pursue the subject for the rest of her life. She became a field investigator for the

15:10US-based Mutual UFO Network, aka MUFON, one of the largest organizations of its kind, and later became a coordinator and point of contact for them, looking into most reports throughout Southern Africa. Hind had published a book during the 1980s detailing all the major UFO sightings that had occurred in Africa, plus she had a UFO newsletter that she published twice a year. She had the experience to tackle the case, but it is unlikely that she was expecting the attention that this sighting would receive globally. She arrived at the aerial school on September the 20th, one day after Tim Leach after hearing about it on the radio and speaking with the headmaster the day prior. She was the one who had suggested that the children make drawings of what they had seen, which admittedly was a good idea. But other than that, the way Cynthia Hind

15:56handled this investigation earned her a lot of criticism from both sides of the fence. Now, we'll get more into that during the second part, but for now, suffice to say that she acted more like a way too eager true believer, oh, with stars in her eyes as she saw that she'd finally stumbled onto the biggest case of her life rather than a professional investigator with the slightest hint objectivity. Shocking, I know. Ultimately, her greatest contribution to this tale was reaching out and securing the involvement of our third and final investigator, American psychiatrist John Mack. The John Mack Interviews. John E. Mack, MD, was by far the biggest name that got mixed up in this case. He was the head of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and

16:41in 1977 had won a Pulitzer Prize for his biographical study A Prince of Our Disorder about T. E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia. This guy's [snorts] got a wrinkly brain. Harvard and a Pulitzer Prize? Damn, son. His involvement in the Ariel School incident awarded it a certain cachet and made it stand out from all the other UFO sightings that got reported regularly around the globe. Throughout his illustrious career, Mack had tackled many different topics and in the early '90s he became interested in people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens or experiencers, as he called them. He started out as a complete skeptic, saying in an interview, when I heard about this phenomenon in 1990, I was very doubtful. I thought it must be some kind of mental

17:26illness, end quote. But as he interviewed these people, he became convinced that they were being truthful and decided that alien abductions were an authentic mystery worthy of further research. Very cool. A skeptic with a giant brain is going in to investigate this rather than a biased journalist who wants to find what she wants to find. To [snorts] that end, January 1994 he published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, a book in which he presented the cases of multiple experiences who often recovered their memories through hypnotism. Although the book didn't earn Mack another Pulitzer, it did become a bestseller so naturally he was on the lookout for more cases to study. Thus, half a year later, when he heard about what had happened in Ruwa from Cynthia Hind, he wanted to interview the

18:12children. As it happened, he was already getting ready to travel to South Africa for an unrelated case, so the timing worked out wonderfully. Mack and his associate, Dominique Calamanpoulos, arrived in Ruwa in early December. A few months had passed since the incident, but the stories John Mack heard were the same as they were in September. All the main elements were still there. The silver disc shining through the tall grass, the tiny figure with big black eyes, the uncomfortable stare. Mack interviewed 12 children during his stay in Ruwa, plus the headmaster, Colin Mackie. He later used bits from some of those interviews in his follow-up book to Abduction, titled Passport to the Cosmos, Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, published in 1999. In this

18:57book, Mack stated unequivocally that he believed what the children had told him was true. He said, Each of the children with whom we met told more or less the same story, namely that at 10:05 a.m. on that Friday morning, a large spacecraft and several smaller ones from which one or more strange beings had emerged were seen hovering just above the ground or had landed in their schoolyard. When I played the devil's advocate with one of the children and offered the possibility that a child had made up the story and got the others to tell it to the teachers as a prank, she thought this over carefully and replied that she could see how an adult might think that, but that's not what happened. Except for the odd, difficult-to-believe nature of the episode, there was nothing about the way the children talked about it to suggest that anything had happened other than what they said.

19:44End quote. One new notion emerged during these interviews. Several children claimed that the strange figure had communicated with them telepathically by projecting apocalyptic images into their minds full of pollution and dead trees, a natural world on the brink of collapse. Again from Mack's book, quoting, Although there is no evidence that the children at the aerial school were abducted during the encounter, several of the ones I interviewed said that they received information primarily through the black eyes of the beings about the danger to the planet's life. Fifth grader Francis felt drawn to one of the beings, saying, I think those eyes had something to do with it. He said he learned from the being about something that's going to happen and pollution mustn't be. There had been some prior discussion in school about what causes pollution,

20:29Francis told me, but this was the first time that he'd thought about it or spoken of it. He felt that his concern came from him, from the being he saw outside the craft. It just popped into my head, he said. When I asked 11-year-old Emma what she thought these strange beings wanted here, she said, I think they want people to know that we're actually making harm on this world and that we mustn't get too technology to. 11-year-old Lysol also received through a being's eyes the message that we are not taking proper care of the planet. End quote. Now there was one element of the encounter that John Mack focused on, the eyes, something which in his experience had been a recurring point of fixation for many experiences. He wrote, quoting again, the power of connection with the alien beings seems to occur most often

21:15through looking into their eyes. The large eyes of the beings are consistently reported to be by far the most prominent feature of their faces and an important locus of connection. When they actually make contact, the eye-to-eye connection may seem the most compelling dimension of the human alien bond. The children in Zimbabwe were also impressed by the eyes of the being. Emma said, I saw this person and it had big eyes. That's all I saw about it, the big eyes and a black body. He was just staring at me. The eyes didn't have any pupils or color. Despite their fear, experiences may feel themselves inexorably drawn to make contact with the being's eyes. Lysol, an 11-year-old at the aerial school, felt afraid when it seemed that one of the beings was staring at her and the other children for I've never seen such a person before.

22:01Emma saw a being at what she estimated to be a distance of 3 to 4 yards. She felt a mixture of fear and excitement. His eyes looked at me like I wanted to come with me. Did you go with him? I asked. Only my eyes went with him and my feeling, she replied. The tug to go with the being was strong but accompanied by the feeling I shouldn't go. Much of the fear that the alien's eyes seem to inspire comes from the fact that they are so apparently different or unfamiliar. When I asked Kaylee, age nine, what made the being so scary, she said, "The eyes looked real." End quote. UFO Afra News. So, once John Mack had finished his interviews, he packed up his bags and moved on to find his next experience.

22:46Coverage of the incident continued, but subsequent programs and people who wanted to report on the aerial school UFO event generally relied on the other interviews done by Leech, Hint, or Mack. There was a limit to how much global attention the parents wanted to expose their children to. Plus, the school would have preferred it if they could resume their regular schedule and put the whole thing behind them. A few months later, in February 1995, Cynthia Hind published issue number 11 of her newsletter, UFO Afra News. Case number 95 detailed the light show that blazed through the night sky on September the 14th, visible throughout Southern Africa, which she labeled a pyrotechnic display of some magnificence. She included testimonies from a dozen or so people who saw it while concluding that, quote, "The general consensus of opinion was that

23:32the lights were preceded by a ball of fire which seemed to have a point to it with a long tail of sparks. It was of a white or goldish color and lit up brilliantly in the sky. Some people saw three huge lights in the front with smaller lights behind them, the count of the smaller lights varying from eight to 20." End quote. Hind ended [clears throat] by including her own opinion that it was, unsurprisingly, a UFO, while simultaneously giving a shout-out to her new BFF John Mack. She wrote, quoting, "My third conjecture, and I know it's one which will all too readily be dismissed by the majority, is that it was an unknown craft and not of our earth. I know that whatever UFOs are, they seem to have an insatiable curiosity about what we're doing when

24:17it's something they do not understand. I'm convinced there are many more incidents of such a nature and of which we are not aware. The message from the aliens appears to be that we are destroying earth and its environment and that this is laying us open to some considerable danger regarding the future of the Earth. Dr. John Mack of Cambridge Hospital attached to the Harvard Medical School feels that we are part of an overall cosmic involvement and that the aliens or whoever they are cannot accept our destroying Earth part of the overall cosmic picture. Isn't it time we listened to what we're being told? End quote. And then of course the worst case number 96 the one that Cynthia Hind heralded as one of the most fascinating UFO stories of this or any year.

25:03Simply titled The Children of Ariel School, it contained mainly information that we've already mentioned, a rundown of the events followed by descriptions of the children's drawings and testimonies from the pupils. There was one tiny tidbit that we'd not heard before and it's worth mentioning here. Apparently not all of the adults were inside attending the meeting during the encounter. There was one woman, a volunteer named Alison Kirkman, who was outside manning the tuck shop. The children came up to her screaming that there was some strange man in a black suit running around, but she was dubious of their claims. Kirkman thought it might be some sort of trick to get her out of the tuck shop thus leaving her treasure trove of delicious sweets and snacks unprotected, so she refused to leave her post and she never saw the spaceship.

25:49Life after. Following the interviews performed by Mack and Hind and the subsequent works they published, the legend of the Ariel School has been firmly established. Most other forms of media that followed relied on their original material to relay the story of what happened on that fateful day at the school in Zimbabwe for better or worse. But nothing stays in the spotlight forever. All stories have valleys and peaks and general interest in the Ariel School slowly diminished in the years that followed. It certainly became a unique and cherished episode for true believers in the annals of UFO law, but for everyone else it had become just one of those quirky stories from a place far far away that they vaguely remembered reading about once. Things were pretty quiet over the following two decades as the children

26:35who were involved grew up and moved on with their lives. Both Cynthia Hind and John Mack passed away in 2000 and 2004 respectively, so there weren't that many people left from the event to keep it alive in the public consciousness. It wasn't until the last few years that interest in what happened in Ruwa back in 1994 seemed to have experienced a resurgence. Since 2020 the Ariel School incident has been the topic of multiple documentaries as well as an episode in the Netflix docuseries Encounters. The one notable thing about these new shows is that some of them featured the children of Ariel, now all grown up and ready to tell their story again. And it was, by and large, the same one as before. If people were expecting retractions, apologies, or confessions, they were not forthcoming.

27:20It seems that even now 30 years after the event there remains little doubt in their minds that on that day, September the 16th, 1994, back when they were pupils at the Ariel School in Ruwa in Zimbabwe, they had an encounter with beings from another planet. And that wraps up the first section where we kind of talk about it and seems fairly convincing all in all. Like plenty to go on here, lots of people and all of that, but um there's going to be plenty to to take part here for sure. So I think we should have a look at that in part two where we try and work out the reality of what happened. I'll just chime in and say at the start the idea of the children all drawing similar things and such several days later. I mean they've all had a good chance to have a chit-chat about it and all of this and

28:06I I don't believe they're lying. I mean maybe some are. I believe most of them are just believing that they saw something or believing that other kids saw something and they didn't want to miss out being a part of it or something like that. I mean just because it's just the requirement for it to actually be a UFO from another planet is just so high. The Light Show. Okay Simon, we just finished presenting the account of a supposed UFO sight that occurred at a school in Zimbabwe back in 1994. Numerous children claimed to have seen first a flying saucer and then one or more aliens. Could they have been telling the truth or could there be some other explanation for the strange event? Let me guess, there's going to be another explanation for the strange event.

28:52But before we get to that, let's talk about the bizarre light show that was seen throughout Southern Africa two nights before the encounter at the school. Ah, yes, the seed that put aliens in everyone's minds. Some thought it was a meteor shower, but true believers such as Cynthia Hind had little doubt that it was a UFO, perhaps even the same UFO that showed up at the Ariel School on September the 16th. Well, didn't they say that it burst into a massive ball of flame? [snorts] And it just magically pieced itself back together? Uh, the simple truth is that we know what the fiery object placing across the sky was. Oh, okay, excellent. You know, solve a mystery. And we've known it ever since it happened. It was a Zenith 2 booster rocket burning up on re-entry into the atmosphere. It had been used to launch the Cosmos 2290 satellite on the 26th of August 1994. While the locals in

29:37Zimbabwe might not have known what it was, scientists were well aware that it was due to make an appearance as it crashed back to Earth. Cynthia Hind should have known better if she was the investigator she purported herself to be. Now, Cynthia Hind is a ufologist who wants to prove that or or, you know, suggest that UFOs are real. It it's just not impartial. Remember that the newsletter came out in February 1995, 5 months after it happened. There was definitely plenty of time for her to find out the truth if she wanted, but dare I say that she preferred to stick to her own version. You don't need to dare you say it, Radu. It's that's that's Yeah. Going through her newsletter where she covered the incident, she goes into detail to explain why the object could not have been a meteor shower like some

30:23people were suggesting. Okay, she was right about that, but I couldn't help but notice that she did not make the same effort to debunk the idea that it was a rocket [snorts] because she has a narrative that she wants to go through, and the narrative is aliens. The case, which she dubbed UFO flap in Zimbabwe, takes up 15 pages of the newsletter consisting mostly of eyewitness accounts and drawings of what they supposedly saw. Of those 15 pages, the Zenith II debris gets a blink and your miss it mention right at the end in just two sentences. In fact, here they are. On the 26th and 27th of August, the Russians sent up a satellite, and the nose cone was jettisoned on the 14th of September, its trajectory taking it over Southern Africa. We've since heard that a piece of this came down over Caroi,

31:09northwest of Harare, and a second story to say the portions came down over a river in Chokwe, Mozambique. End quote. Skeptics argue that it was important that the fireball in the sky was perceived to be a UFO in Zimbabwe because it acted as a primer, setting the stage for the sighting at the aerial school two days later. Exactly. It got them all thinking about UFOs, like their lecture on pollution got them all thinking about pollution. Children have vivid imaginations. So, if they spent that week hearing all the adults talking about how aliens had come to Earth, then they were going to see a UFO sooner or later. How many kids witnessed the event? Ooh, interesting, because in the story, you kind of imagine like an entire playground full of like dozens or

31:54hundreds of children running around and seeing this. But how many actually saw it? Without other way, let's talk about the actual sighting. We've already described the event, and it seems fairly straightforward. Children go outside for recess, they see a spaceship in the thick brush outside the school, they spot an alien, alien spots them, children run away screaming, just your typical Friday. But there is one aspect of the story that has bugged me throughout. How many kids actually saw the UFO? Many accounts about the incident quickly breezed past this point. I'd argue that by doing so, they created the impression that a lot more kids saw the UFO than actually claimed. Yeah, in my mind is a lot. Whether they did this on purpose or not, I won't speculate. I did the same thing in the script just to see what impression you would get, Simon. Were

32:40you thinking that all of the school children saw the spaceship or even the majority of them? Because that's not what happened. Yeah, I was absolutely thinking that. Kind of imagine all the school children being like, holy look at that. Because everyone would go look at the UFO. But they didn't, apparently. Now, the number I've seen most often is 62 pupils out of roughly 250 who attended the Ariel School. Where exactly that number came from, I can't say, but I guess it was some local Zimbabwean newspaper or a radio or TV program, and from then on it simply got repeated until it became the accepted truth. In Cynthia Hind's newsletter, she said there were over 60. Now, some people might argue that 62 witnesses to a UFO sighting is pretty damn good. Yeah, I'd say so. It certainly gives us credence, but in this particular case, I think that 62

33:25isn't enough because nowhere have I seen explained what the other 190 saw. If all the children were outside on the playground at the same time, how come only a small part of them saw the UFO? What I would have expected was for each kid to nudge the kid next to them, and then do the same to the next kid, and then the next kid, and before you knew it, most of the pupils would have focused their attention on the UFO. Yeah, because it's a UFO. The others are just like, no, I'm busy playing chase. From what I've seen of groups of kids, whenever they spot something good, they all descend upon it like a horde of locusts. But in this particular case, I guess an alien spaceship only interests about a quarter of them. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? That number is about to get even smaller, by the way. For reasons that have never been made clear, John Mack

34:10only interviewed a dozen children about what they saw that day. Cynthia Hind, around the same, with plenty of crossover between them. And they used even fewer than that for the testimonies in his book and her newsletter, respectively. And all of the coverage on the school that followed generally recycled those same testimonies and interview footage. Can you say selection bias much? What did the other 200 children see? Did they simply not look or, more importantly, did they look and see nothing? If you didn't know anything about the Ariel School incident, hearing the popular accounts would make you think that an entire school of children saw a UFO. It's only when you dig deeper that you discover that not only is this not the case, but that the narrative has mainly been shaped using testimonies from a dozen children or so, guided through their statements by two people

34:55who weren't exactly impartial observers. And speaking of whom, Cynthia Hind. Yeah, Cynthia Hind, like the the the professor or whatever at Harvard, you know, I I still think he's probably like fallen down the UFO hole a little bit. But Cynthia Hind is so far in that hole that she can't see the sky. Most UFO tales have what Brian Dunning, legend from Skeptoid, fantastic, calls the creator of the legend, the person to whom you can trace back most, if not all of the details surrounding the event. In this case, there are two creators, Cynthia Hind and John Mack. It cannot be overstated how much they were responsible for creating and shaping the law surrounding the aerial school incident. So it's only normal that we

35:41take a closer look at their methodologies for doing so. First, we should give an honorable mention to Tim Tim Leach from the BBC. He was the first investigator to document the event, so he too played a part in getting the ball rolling. But he had no more involvement apart from the initial report. He was a man with a job. He came, he saw, he filmed. There's a quote attributed to him that I've seen mentioned multiple times, which is meant to show how greatly he was affected by this story. He supposedly said, I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this. However, I could not find a proper source for the quote, let alone the actual interview where he said it, so I'm hesitant to attribute it to him. It didn't come from his BBC coverage. That's all I can say. And that's what he was doing. That was his BBC coverage. And if we don't have a source for a quote, the chances are that some website

התמלול קוצר כאן. אפשר להמשיך לצפות מהרגע הזה בנגן.