For this Sci-Friday, let’s chase down a science fiction-related historical event: When African kids saw the UFO. On September 16, 1994, students in Ruwa, Zimbabwe claimed that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school. (Here’s an Imgur album of pictures and information) One or more creatures dressed in black approached the children, telepathically communicating a message about protecting the environment.
Some call the incident the “most remarkable close encounter of the third kind of the 1990s”. Skeptics describe the incident as ‘mass hysteria,’ but several of those kids maintain that their account of the incident is true. Take a look at this video – their sincerity is goosebump-inducing:
John Mack reported that the event was genuine, the children were telling the truth, and aliens actually came to Zimbabwe. But here’s the thing – did the Ariel School UFO incident really happen that way? Skeptics, as much as I love to disagree with them, present compelling reasons to say ‘no.’
Skeptoid did a whole run down of the case against the Ariel School incident being proof of alien existence. You can read the whole thing but here are the highlights:
- The interviewer, John Mack, arrived in Harare two months after the incident. It’s worth mentioning, Mack, who died in a 2004 car crash, ‘attracted controversy at Harvard University for his work with purported UFO abduction reportees like Nickerson.’ When multiple witnesses are involved in something, they should be interviewed as soon as possible and separately, to avoid any cross contamination between their stories. Mack did the opposite: giving the students two months to converse among themselves.
- UFO writer Cynthia Hind’s own interviews were even worse. She interviewed the children in groups of two to six, while other children were allowed to watch and listen to each group. Every single child’s story was necessarily cross contaminated with the others. There is little wonder that she always reported that all the students told exactly the same story.
- When comparing Mack’s interviews to those obtained by Cynthia Hind, we see another important point: the whole theme of a telepathic message to protect planet Earth was not found in the stories collected by Hind at all. In fact, this part of the story did not exist at all until Mack’s interviews. Skeptoid goes as far as saying Mack prompted and suggested it, according to his existing beliefs; in addition to being an alien visitation advocate, Mack was an anti-nuclear and environmental activist. (Hind ultimately did report this angle extensively, but only after Mack’s interviews.
And when you think about it, the entire story has a Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibe. Researchers arrive in an obscure corner of the world to find local population reeling at the extraterrestrial experience they just had. I’m not saying that there’s a connection, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.
So there you have it, an interesting and potentially real experience. Or maybe not. We’ll have to see. My personal take on extraterrestrials remains pretty simple: If they exist, let them come down here and tell us.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on a scifi topic. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 🙂
