Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heard Radio and
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild from Aaron Meckley. For the best experience,
Speaker 1: listened with headphones. The interesting thing was that they had
Speaker 1: seen a ball of light rolling across the lawns. It
Speaker 1: had rolled up a wall and burst into flame, and
Speaker 1: Clifford Machanna, who was one of the more responsible workers,
Speaker 1: had run to ring a bell which was kept there
Speaker 1: for an emergency. While he was ringing the bell, this
Speaker 1: ball of flame gathered together climbed down the wall. They
Speaker 1: used the expression walked down the wall when past behind him,
Speaker 1: and burst into flame again in another place. When this happened,
Speaker 1: he was aware of three figures standing there. The three
Speaker 1: figures turned around in unison, but slowly, and when they
Speaker 1: faced him, he saw this brilliant light emanating from their
Speaker 1: heads and it was upper power. Because he fell to
Speaker 1: the ground. And I said, but they were three meters
Speaker 1: away from you, about ten feet. How came you fell
Speaker 1: to the ground, And he said their power was so strong.
Speaker 1: Now when he described them to me, he said they
Speaker 1: had shiny suits. And you might remember that I told you.
Speaker 1: There's no word in Shona mis Shona, which is their
Speaker 1: language for the words silver. So when I wanted him
Speaker 1: to be more explicit, he took a coin out of
Speaker 1: his pocket, silver coin, and he said that was what
Speaker 1: they were wearing. And then I said, Clifford, who did
Speaker 1: you think they were? And he said, I knew they were.
Speaker 1: They were my ancestors, the ghosts of my ancestors. And
Speaker 1: I said, for Joe, ancestors wore fur and monkey skins
Speaker 1: and lions teeth. They didn't wear silver suits. And he
Speaker 1: thought for a better and then he said, well, times change.
Speaker 1: I'm Toby Ball and this is strange Arrivals Episode two
Speaker 1: Excited and scared at the same time. In episode one,
Speaker 1: we took a look at a UFO encounter in Papua
Speaker 1: New Guinea. Aside from the details of the event, what
Speaker 1: stood out to me was the matter of fact attitude
Speaker 1: taken by Father William Gill, one of the witnesses and
Speaker 1: the main chronicler. He reported what he saw, expressed his
Speaker 1: sense of wonder, conceded that he might be mistaken in
Speaker 1: thinking it was something alien, and understood if people didn't
Speaker 1: believe him. But what happens when people with specific beliefs
Speaker 1: about UFOs become involved in the reporting of an encounter.
Speaker 1: In the next two episodes, we'll take a look at
Speaker 1: an event similar to the one in Papua New Guinea,
Speaker 1: but in this case, the investigations undertaken by UFO researchers
Speaker 1: and journalists may have changed the narrative to a degree
Speaker 1: that it is now hard to discern what actually happened
Speaker 1: on the day of the sighting a setting that took
Speaker 1: place at a dusty schoolyard in Zimbabwe. The summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight saw the first edition of a newsletter,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was a zine titled UFO Afrinews, published
Speaker 1: out of Harari, Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. The cover had
Speaker 1: the title and date of publication in a no frills font.
Speaker 1: In the middle of the page was a fairly rough
Speaker 1: outlined sketch of the African continent, flanked on the right
Speaker 1: by a drawing of a classic flying saucer with a
Speaker 1: single antenna and either five windows or five heads looking
Speaker 1: out of a window running the length of the craft.
Speaker 1: To the left of the continental outline was a drawing
Speaker 1: of what I think is an antelope. Anyway, the cover
Speaker 1: is very basic and sets the tone for the rest
Speaker 1: of the presentation. Which is by today's standards almost comically
Speaker 1: bare bones. But the content of the UFO Afrinews is
Speaker 1: another story. It is the testament to the efforts of
Speaker 1: a woman named Cynthia Hind, along with a small group
Speaker 1: of correspondence, to document UFO encounters in Africa. The very
Speaker 1: first paragraph of the first article, headlined comment, reads like this,
Speaker 1: Like most investigators, over long period twenty years, my terms
Speaker 1: of reference have changed subtly. Where isolation, disrespect, and ridicule
Speaker 1: were at one time paramount, I've recently begun to notice
Speaker 1: a change, the grudging acceptance of the possibility of life
Speaker 1: out there, even from the most conservative member of society,
Speaker 1: a laid back support, however hopeless, and current terms of
Speaker 1: what ufologists are doing. Over the next twelve years, UFO
Speaker 1: AFRINUWS published twenty two editions featuring stories with headlines such
Speaker 1: as UFO crash on Botswana, South African Border, Bus in
Speaker 1: the Sky and UFO in the fields of afrom Planes.
Speaker 1: But the biggest story covered by UFO Afrinews ran in
Speaker 1: its eleventh edition, released in February of nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: Spanning several articles. It began with a report on an
Speaker 1: object that was seen across Southern Africa traversing the night
Speaker 1: sky the evening of Wednesday, September fourteenth, nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: According to Hind, the first reports came from Johannesburg, South Africa,
Speaker 1: where people called into a local radio show to report
Speaker 1: seeing lights in the sky. Over the next ten to
Speaker 1: twelve minutes, the light were seen by people in South Africa, Botswana,
Speaker 1: Southern Zambia and Zimbabwe. Hind wrote the general consensus of
Speaker 1: opinion was that the lights were preceded by a ball
Speaker 1: of fire which seemed to have a point to it
Speaker 1: with a long tail of sparks. It was white or
Speaker 1: goldish color and lit up brilliantly in the sky. Some
Speaker 1: people saw three huge lights at the front, with smaller
Speaker 1: lights varying from eight to twenty. Many reported that the
Speaker 1: objects were traveling very fast from north to south, others
Speaker 1: that had moved slowly. Her article went on to relate
Speaker 1: in detail the reports of a number of individuals about
Speaker 1: what they had witnessed that night. She concluded that there
Speaker 1: were three possibilities for what was seen. A plane flying
Speaker 1: the Johannesburg to Bulawayo to Harari route that was running
Speaker 1: late putting it in the right place and time to
Speaker 1: be the object an unknown craft not of this Earth,
Speaker 1: or anticipating what is now considered the fact of the matter.
Speaker 1: A Russian satellite that had been launched on the twenty
Speaker 1: sixth or twenty seventh of August had jettisoned its nose
Speaker 1: cone on September fourteenth. The nose cone had broken up
Speaker 1: as it entered the atmosphere over southern Africa. She mentioned
Speaker 1: pieces of the cone being retrieved northwest of Harari and
Speaker 1: from a river in Mozambique. It was in this atmosphere
Speaker 1: of concern about the lights in the sky above southern
Speaker 1: Africa that the events behind the most consequential revelations of
Speaker 1: this edition of UFO Afrinows occurred. On Friday September sixteenth,
Speaker 1: thirty six hours after the lights in the sky, sixty
Speaker 1: two children at the Aerial School in Rua, Zimbabwe had
Speaker 1: an encounter with an object and non human beings in
Speaker 1: the fields beyond their school yard. The Aerial School is
Speaker 1: a private elementary school in the town of Rua, which
Speaker 1: is about twelve miles east of the capital city of Harrari.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, the school was racially diverse, and
Speaker 1: it's more than two hundred. Students were pulled largely from
Speaker 1: middle class and upper class families. They came from as
Speaker 1: far away as Harrari, reportedly about a thirty minute drive.
Speaker 1: The boys at the school wore uniforms of khaki shorts
Speaker 1: and matching button up Safari shirts. The girls wore square
Speaker 1: collared dresses of light blue with white piping on the
Speaker 1: collars and sleeves. At ten fifteen that warm spring morning,
Speaker 1: they were outside at recess. No adults were present. There
Speaker 1: was a staff meeting inside. Older students had been left
Speaker 1: in charge. In all, there were about two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty students. Outside of those, sixty two would reports seeing
Speaker 1: a craft and some number of beings. The basics of
Speaker 1: the encounter were fairly straightforward. What complicates matters was that
Speaker 1: all all of the witnesses were children who were interviewed
Speaker 1: again and again in whose stories could not help but evolve.
Speaker 1: That's not a criticism of the children. In fact, because
Speaker 1: adult interviewers generally did not exercise proper precautions in interviewing
Speaker 1: the children, it is almost inevitable that the children's perceptions
Speaker 1: would change. With that in mind, let's take a look
Speaker 1: at the basic story that comes out of the encounter
Speaker 1: before examining how the students were questioned in the days, weeks,
Speaker 1: and months that followed. I'm not going to spend time
Speaker 1: on a few issues tangential to the main story, such
Speaker 1: as whether a small number of students saw lights in
Speaker 1: the sky either that morning or the day before at
Speaker 1: the time of this recording. Charlie Wiser's excellent and comprehensive
Speaker 1: website three Dollar Kit is a great source for a
Speaker 1: detailed look at all of the issues in this encounter.
Speaker 1: With all that being said, there are essentially two elements
Speaker 1: to the encounter, the sighting of the craft at a
Speaker 1: distance beyond the playground amongst some trees, and then the
Speaker 1: appearance of some figures around the craft. It began with
Speaker 1: some children noticing an object glinting in the sun, maybe
Speaker 1: a hundred meters past the edge of their schoolyard from
Speaker 1: the February nineteen ninety five edition of UFO Afronows. Shortly
Speaker 1: after ten o'clock, a few of the children noticed something
Speaker 1: strange beyond their playground, which was dotted with several clumps
Speaker 1: of trees, the rest being mostly cleared ground there was
Speaker 1: bush area. The ground there belonged to the school, and
Speaker 1: though attempts had been made to clear it and level it,
Speaker 1: it really was still rough land, long grass with thorn
Speaker 1: and other indigenous bushes, trees growing in higgledy piggledy fashion,
Speaker 1: and undergrowth thick and heavy enough to hide a child
Speaker 1: should they venture there. Besides which no one knew what
Speaker 1: dangerous small animals such as snakes, jackals, and identified spiders, scorpions, etc.
Speaker 1: Might be lurking in the grass. The following are clips
Speaker 1: of aerial students taken from interviews conducted by Zimbabwean radio
Speaker 1: and television personality Jill Dark in the weeks following the encounter.
Speaker 1: Here they described seeing the craft. We start with a
Speaker 1: student named Candice, Me and my friend Play Hailey and
Speaker 1: kamal Up. We were just walking and then we saw
Speaker 1: this maroon color just waving about and it was disappearing
Speaker 1: and disappearing, and we started to follow it. And then
Speaker 1: we stood over there on one of the logs and
Speaker 1: we saw like this silver thing and we decided that
Speaker 1: we should go down there and see. But Play said
Speaker 1: we're not allowedly, so I said that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: let's just go and see. And we got closer and closer,
Speaker 1: and we saw this silver thing just shining it and
Speaker 1: we thought that it was just a house of glass
Speaker 1: and reflecting in the sun and shining here. We thought, no,
Speaker 1: it can't be that, because there's no houses up to
Speaker 1: play on the rocks. And then we waited for a
Speaker 1: few minutes and we just stared at it, and we
Speaker 1: heard this flute, sort of like a flute. Louise, this
Speaker 1: is Muna Rodzy. He mentions a touch shop, which is
Speaker 1: more or less a snack shop at the school. Well,
Speaker 1: I was at the touch shop of the year, and
Speaker 1: then I shook with the pros at the year the slight,
Speaker 1: so I wanted and I looked and I saw this
Speaker 1: shot and he had the slide like a patten um
Speaker 1: yellow pole and me, this is another aerial student named Guy.
Speaker 1: So I went down to think know what was happening,
Speaker 1: and I actually saw this school of trees and it
Speaker 1: was like in a multi way pattern like silver and
Speaker 1: green and that sort of colors. And then there was
Speaker 1: this little boy crying. So I went up to him
Speaker 1: to see what was wrong with him, and he said
Speaker 1: he was quite afraid of it. And then that actually
Speaker 1: made me quite afraid of it, because then somebody's afraid
Speaker 1: like it to see interviews conducted by Tim Leach of
Speaker 1: the BBC and Cynthia Hind on the Monday and Tuesday
Speaker 1: after the sighting, so a few weeks before the clips
Speaker 1: we just heard provide additional information. Guy who we heard
Speaker 1: from earlier described the craft as quote roundabout like a disk.
Speaker 1: A student named Nathan said, quote it had a round
Speaker 1: top and it was flat like that around the sides.
Speaker 1: Charity described it as quote like a saucer, but the
Speaker 1: shape wasn't really round. The students also saw figures by
Speaker 1: the craft. As we will see later, there was some
Speaker 1: inconsistency in their descriptions of these figures. Here's Muna Rodzi again,
Speaker 1: there was something running across in something the shop that
Speaker 1: didn't when I looked more dumb, when I looked like
Speaker 1: strength and strength to some like million things. He had
Speaker 1: big guys like once guy was saying, here, Guy, I
Speaker 1: saw this person and his eyes were like in a
Speaker 1: slant like say like so, and his life was just
Speaker 1: like a line like this. And then at the time
Speaker 1: the teachers were in a starting team, so nobody actually
Speaker 1: went have to go and call the teachers, because I
Speaker 1: think there were two phrases and everything. This is Candice.
Speaker 1: I saw this black figure running in slow motion, and
Speaker 1: then I didn't want to see it, so I looked away,
Speaker 1: and I looked again. Wasn't there anymore? Candice's friend Claire,
Speaker 1: this figure like Candace Seed running in slow ocean and
Speaker 1: when clicked, its hit and looked at me onto the grass,
Speaker 1: and me and Canvas were really scared. We nearly screamed.
Speaker 1: We were so scared, and we were running back and
Speaker 1: forth because we were excited and scared at the same time.
Speaker 1: In their interviews with the students, Tim Leech and Cynthia
Speaker 1: Hind also elicited descriptions of the figures around the craft.
Speaker 1: Some examples, Oriana said, quote, I don't know what it was,
Speaker 1: but it was very thin. All I saw was a
Speaker 1: long thing on a silver thing. Kayley saw three figures,
Speaker 1: stating we saw some people, a white one, a red one,
Speaker 1: a black one. The black one was sitting on the spaceship.
Speaker 1: Luke recalled that the figure he saw seemed to have
Speaker 1: long hair, quote, I didn't see the spaceship, but I
Speaker 1: saw the little black guy. He was all black, and
Speaker 1: it looked like he had long hair, Daniel said, quote,
Speaker 1: it almost looked like a real person, except it was
Speaker 1: fairly plump. He continued, his hair was it looked more
Speaker 1: like our hair. It wasn't curly. That thing almost looked
Speaker 1: like a hippie. Big eyes, slanted eyes, very thin, fairly plump,
Speaker 1: long hair, red white, black, almost like a hippie. The
Speaker 1: descriptions aren't consistent and are occasionally contradictory, and more detail
Speaker 1: was to come when they were asked to draw pictures
Speaker 1: of what they had seen, but we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. BBC correspondent Tim Leech heard about the
Speaker 1: encounter on Friday, the day had occurred. He called Cynthia Hind,
Speaker 1: a friend of his, to tell her about the event.
Speaker 1: Hind began her investigation that weekend. She called Alison Kirkman,
Speaker 1: who was volunteering at the Touch shop when the sighting occurred,
Speaker 1: as well as three student witnesses. It's not clear which
Speaker 1: three students those were. The most interesting thing about the
Speaker 1: aerial school encounter is that there is this kind of
Speaker 1: unfortunate weekend like it happened on a Friday. There's a
Speaker 1: weekend where possible contamination of testimony could occur, like the
Speaker 1: kids apparently broke up from school at one o'clock on
Speaker 1: the Friday afternoon, and then people were talking about it
Speaker 1: for presumably the rest of that day. This is researcher
Speaker 1: and writer Gideon read and then, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: Cynthia and spoke to some people by telephone that weekend. Now,
Speaker 1: if those telephone conversations have been recorded and can be published,
Speaker 1: that would be fascinating because that would kind of go
Speaker 1: a long way toward countering any arguments the testimonies were
Speaker 1: hopelessly corrupted. What Gideon is talking about here is that
Speaker 1: hind through her four conversations could have affected the way
Speaker 1: that people, particularly the students, understood what they had seen.
Speaker 1: We'll see how this can work in a minute. School
Speaker 1: went back into session on Monday morning. The headmaster, Colin Mackie,
Speaker 1: asked each of the students who had seen the craft
Speaker 1: and the figures to draw a picture of what they
Speaker 1: had seen. There was a wide range in the students
Speaker 1: artistic ability, owing largely to the difference in their ages.
Speaker 1: While the drawings are not all consistent, there are some
Speaker 1: basic details that the majority of the drawings hint at
Speaker 1: a craft more or less like what you would think
Speaker 1: of when you think of a flying saucer, short and wide,
Speaker 1: either a disk or a rectangular shape, often with windows
Speaker 1: or lights. A number of the drawings have the craft
Speaker 1: situated within a group of trees. Many of the drawings
Speaker 1: depicted a being or beings, some looking like the classic
Speaker 1: alien with the big angled eyes in the barely their
Speaker 1: nose and mouth, and critically bald heads. Others showed a
Speaker 1: figure with long, straight hair, as we heard described earlier.
Speaker 1: Over the next two days, Tim Leech and Cynthia Hind,
Speaker 1: along with a BBC camera crew and Hind's assistant and
Speaker 1: cameraman Gunter Hofer, visited Aerial School. Mackie, the headmaster, found
Speaker 1: himself in a difficult situation. His school was suddenly thrust
Speaker 1: into the spotlight, with both an international news organization and
Speaker 1: the most prominent UFO researcher in Southern Africa converging on RUA.
Speaker 1: His thoughts on what happened in the schoolyard were complicated.
Speaker 1: I feel sure that the children feel that they did
Speaker 1: see something. I don't believe or disbelief to be perfect honest,
Speaker 1: but I do feel that they definitely saw something. We
Speaker 1: had a number of children say they did. We asked
Speaker 1: them to do a pictures of what they saw this morning,
Speaker 1: what they saw on Friday, and after looking at it
Speaker 1: as I definitely feel that they did see something. I
Speaker 1: agree that it could be something that we are not
Speaker 1: common with, but to actually say that it was a UFO,
Speaker 1: I would be reluctant to make a decision like that.
Speaker 1: I personally did not see it. No adult had. Leech
Speaker 1: came to the school and conducted his interviews for the
Speaker 1: BBC on Monday. On Tuesday, Cynthia Hind arrived with Gunter Hofer.
Speaker 1: Hind reviewed the children's drawings and then began to question
Speaker 1: the children. And here we begin to see the problem
Speaker 1: that plagues accounts of this event. After the break, strange
Speaker 1: arrivals will return in a moment. Cynthia Hind, the most
Speaker 1: prominent UFO researcher in Southern Africa, arrived at the Ariel
Speaker 1: school on the Tuesday following the Friday encounter. During the
Speaker 1: intervening weekend, she had talked to an adult who hadn't
Speaker 1: seen anything, but had been the nearest adult to the
Speaker 1: students who did, as well as three students who were witnesses.
Speaker 1: She came to Ariel School to gather more information from
Speaker 1: the other students who had seen the craft and its occupants.
Speaker 1: Questioning witnesses is a difficult endeavor. A good questioner wants
Speaker 1: to obtain the subject's information, not influence it, and this
Speaker 1: requires training and skill. Questioning children is even more difficult
Speaker 1: because they are more susceptible to influence, whether intentional or not.
Speaker 1: On his blog Skeptic versus the Flying Saucers, Jille Fernandez,
Speaker 1: a writer and lecturer with a PhD in cognitive psychology,
Speaker 1: identifies two critical mistakes that Hind makes while interviewing this students. First,
Speaker 1: she not only interviews the children in a group where
Speaker 1: other children form an audience to watch the interviews. This
Speaker 1: allows for students to influence each other's accounts. We heard
Speaker 1: an example of this dynamic earlier when in an interview
Speaker 1: with Jill Dark Muna Rodzy said, the guys like what
Speaker 1: guy would say. He says he had big eyes, like
Speaker 1: one guy was saying. Here, he's referencing the account that
Speaker 1: he's just seen his classmate Guy give and confirming its accuracy.
Speaker 1: Here's another example, again with Jill Dark I saw this
Speaker 1: black figure running in slow motion. And then I didn't
Speaker 1: want to see it, so I looked away, and I
Speaker 1: looked again, and I wasn't there anymore, This figure like canvacy,
Speaker 1: running in slow motion, and one pluck, it hit up
Speaker 1: and looked at me onto. Here Candice and her Frank
Speaker 1: Claire are telling the story together. They can't help but
Speaker 1: influence each other's accounts. Second, Hind doesn't allow the children
Speaker 1: to freely tell their story for Nandez explains that interviewers
Speaker 1: should not interject or ask specific questions. Children should be
Speaker 1: allowed to tell their story without prompting and less rephrasing
Speaker 1: what they had just said is necessary to get them
Speaker 1: back to talking. Fernandez writes, of a generic interviewer quote,
Speaker 1: he absolutely must not interrupt him nor ask him specific
Speaker 1: and precise questions. On that Tuesday, Hind began by interviewing
Speaker 1: a group of children together with the headmaster and other
Speaker 1: children watching. They brought in the oldest children. Randall Nickerson,
Speaker 1: creator of the documentary The Aerial Phenomenon, all those children
Speaker 1: in that first interview. She brings in the Actually the
Speaker 1: headmaster did was to bring in all the older kids,
Speaker 1: who are much more responsible and were more experienced, and
Speaker 1: that's what you see there. Addressing the same point, Gideon
Speaker 1: Read references film taken and posted by Hine's assistant Gunter Hofer.
Speaker 1: So the video that you see on gafa's YouTube channel
Speaker 1: sank behind and spearing the children. She's kind of going
Speaker 1: along the line of children in the room and there's
Speaker 1: like a crowd of children in the doorway. I think
Speaker 1: that was filmed on the Tuesday, and to leach when
Speaker 1: the BBC was there on the Monday. So by the Tuesday,
Speaker 1: the children have already probably been asked the same question
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of times. There's just so much unknown
Speaker 1: about that whole little period. This section of the transcript
Speaker 1: of Hinds interview with Candice read by actors shows that
Speaker 1: far from allowing the student to tell her story, Hind
Speaker 1: guy the telling. While she doesn't seem to intentionally elicit
Speaker 1: certain answers, the questions that she asks indicate what she
Speaker 1: thinks is important about the story. She also asks either
Speaker 1: or questions that limit possible answers. Would you say it
Speaker 1: was like an ordinary suit? Was it like what mister
Speaker 1: Mackie's wearing, No? Or what would you call the type
Speaker 1: of clothing. I'm not sure, but he was really Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen the divers going in the sea? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: like that? Was it like that or was it like
Speaker 1: an overall or tight fitting suit? It was tight fitting.
Speaker 1: It was tight fitting, yes, and it was shiny. Yes.
Speaker 1: Could you see his face? Well, I only saw a
Speaker 1: glimpse of it, and you don't remember any individual features.
Speaker 1: I only remember that his eyes were quite big. Eyes
Speaker 1: were big? And were you afraid? I was a little afraid. Here,
Speaker 1: Hind has introduced the idea that the students might be afraid.
Speaker 1: Candice can answer either in the affirmative or negative, and
Speaker 1: actually kind of splits the difference by saying she was
Speaker 1: a little afraid. What do you think it was? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just thought it was some kind of
Speaker 1: alien from a different planet. She asks for Candice's opinion,
Speaker 1: moving the conversation away from the student's experience and to conjecture.
Speaker 1: And given who Hind was, the answer that she is
Speaker 1: looking for is probably clear to Candice. So you knew
Speaker 1: about UFOs, Yes, you've watched on television. Yes, you think
Speaker 1: that influenced you? Or you weren't thinking about that? When
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about it? And then, talking in front
Speaker 1: of a group of students and Headmaster Mackie Hind speculates
Speaker 1: that although people may have seen the breakup of a
Speaker 1: Russian rocket on August twenty seventh, it doesn't explain the
Speaker 1: figures they saw. She continues, we don't know what it
Speaker 1: is and it could be just there was a Russian
Speaker 1: satellite breakup on the twenty seventh of August, and it's
Speaker 1: a possibility something came down, but it would not account
Speaker 1: for the figure you saw. And I think it's time
Speaker 1: the world woke up that something's going on. And they
Speaker 1: don't all think I'm a kookie character, a weird lady
Speaker 1: as they call me. In this one extraordinary statement, Hind
Speaker 1: seems to confirm to the students that they have seen
Speaker 1: something of great importance. Quote, It's time the world woke
Speaker 1: up that something's going on end quote and given the
Speaker 1: students the power to rehabilitate her image as, in her words,
Speaker 1: a koukie character. Over the next month and a half,
Speaker 1: the students at Aerial School were interviewed by a zimbabwe
Speaker 1: In tevision and radio personality named Jill Dark and by
Speaker 1: Nicole Harter of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. On November
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, the South African television show Agenda ran a
Speaker 1: piece on the sighting, which included mention of Harvard psychology
Speaker 1: professor and UFO researcher John Mack, who was due to
Speaker 1: arrive in Africa. In the February nineteen ninety five edition
Speaker 1: of UFO Afrinews, hind expressed the excitement in having Mac
Speaker 1: visit Zimbabwe. Here then, is a man who is not
Speaker 1: only open minded and prepared to listen, but an academic
Speaker 1: of some standing and one who has risked his credibility
Speaker 1: with his colleagues to come out and say he believes
Speaker 1: the experiences of abductees are very real. Indeed, when he arrived,
Speaker 1: it was a read lay to day for Zimbabwe. New
Speaker 1: York Times reporter and John Mac biographer Ralph Blumenthal. John
Speaker 1: Mack went there to Zimbabwe, recorded the interviews on camera,
Speaker 1: questioned the children. He was very good with children, by
Speaker 1: the way, because child psychology was always one of his
Speaker 1: fields of interest, and he knew how to talk to
Speaker 1: kids in a non threatening way to get them to
Speaker 1: open up to him. So he got them really to
Speaker 1: tell what they had seen. Mack interviewed the arial students
Speaker 1: on December second and third, nineteen ninety four, two and
Speaker 1: a half months after the sighting. If you've heard of
Speaker 1: the Ariel sighting before this podcast, you've probably heard about
Speaker 1: the messages that the student said they had received through
Speaker 1: some kind of telepathy from the alien figures, messages about
Speaker 1: how the Earth's environment was in peril. We'll take a
Speaker 1: closer look at Mack's career as a UFOE investigator in
Speaker 1: upcoming episodes, but for now, it is important to understand
Speaker 1: that Mac was an ardent environmentalist and anti nuclear activist
Speaker 1: and perceived that the purported alien abductees that he worked
Speaker 1: with were given messages from their abductors about the need
Speaker 1: to protect the planet. Here is Mac in an interview
Speaker 1: with philosopher Terrence McKenna at the International Transpersonal Conference in
Speaker 1: Prague in June nineteen ninety two, two years before the
Speaker 1: aerial school encounter. The clip begins with McKenna asking a question,
Speaker 1: and then Mac answers, then, do you think of it
Speaker 1: as an ecological danger signal that it's a message from
Speaker 1: an Earth intelligence, perhaps the Earth? There are telepieces of
Speaker 1: evidence that suggests that that's true. One is that the
Speaker 1: abductees themselves on the ships, receive intense messages about ecological destruction,
Speaker 1: annihilation of whole forest systems, pollution of the water system,
Speaker 1: visions of the planet dying, and they see that on
Speaker 1: television like screens. They get it through telepathic community. And
Speaker 1: these are not environmentalists, these people. They are people who
Speaker 1: are very simple, ordinary people, unremarkable except that they are
Speaker 1: getting this extraordinary information and they actually become intensely passionately
Speaker 1: concerned about the Earth and what's happening to the earth
Speaker 1: and their children do because their children may be abducted
Speaker 1: as well. So, given his thoughts about the message that
Speaker 1: aliens are trying to impart, it's striking that when mac arrives,
Speaker 1: some of the children he interviews mentioned the alien figures
Speaker 1: concerned with the environment. Researcher and writer Gideon Read, you know,
Speaker 1: there was no mention of anyone receiving telepathic communication until
Speaker 1: John mckinsfeed the children seventy seven days later, which is
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time for something so distinct and
Speaker 1: so mind changing for someone to have received helepathic communication
Speaker 1: and for it to not be heard about until they're
Speaker 1: sat in an interview two and a half months later
Speaker 1: and then the things that they say that they had
Speaker 1: received in those interviews just happened to be perfectly aligned
Speaker 1: with the concerns and interests of the academic that they're
Speaker 1: talking to. On the website Three Dollar Kit, Charlie Wiser
Speaker 1: lays out transcripts of interviews of the aerial student witnesses
Speaker 1: chronologically prior to Max's appearance. The environmentalist message coming from
Speaker 1: the alien figures was not mentioned. Mac interviewed twelve children
Speaker 1: on film, but most of the films and transcripts are
Speaker 1: embargoed by the John Mac Institute until sometime in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. But what is available of his interviews include
Speaker 1: student Emma Ka stating during a conversation about why she
Speaker 1: was afraid of the strange visitors, I think they want
Speaker 1: people to know that we're actually making harm on this
Speaker 1: world and we mustn't get too technologed. When asked by
Speaker 1: Mac what he quote imagines is the aliens quote reason
Speaker 1: for visiting Earth, a student named Francis replies, quote, I
Speaker 1: think it's about something that's going to happen. Mac asks him, like,
Speaker 1: what Francis says? Pollution or something in this case, Francis
Speaker 1: doesn't state that this is a message he received from
Speaker 1: the aliens. Instead, he responded to Mac asking him what
Speaker 1: he quote imagines. His answers flowed from that request to imagine,
Speaker 1: not his relating what actually happened. It's worth taking a
Speaker 1: slightly closer look at another interview, this time with a
Speaker 1: student named Lisel. The important part for our purposes comes
Speaker 1: after an edit in the film, so it's not clear
Speaker 1: what question Mac asks, but Lisel's response is, what I
Speaker 1: do is maybe the rule is going to end. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're telling us the rules going to end. Well, why
Speaker 1: do you think they might want us to be scared? Because?
Speaker 1: And you maybe because we would that look after the
Speaker 1: planet and the air poppery, And I mean this is
Speaker 1: is this an idea that you have had before that
Speaker 1: we don't look after the planet properly in the air
Speaker 1: or did this idea come to you when you had
Speaker 1: this experience? When I had this experience? And how did
Speaker 1: that idea come to you? From this six This is
Speaker 1: a little hard, but try to be with me here, Okay,
Speaker 1: when you how did this idea come to you? When
Speaker 1: you had this experience? I just felt all horrible inside.
Speaker 1: You felt horrible. At what point did you feel that
Speaker 1: when you saw the craft or when you got home
Speaker 1: at night or I got her, you had that horrible
Speaker 1: feeling when you got home. And to say more about
Speaker 1: that horrible feeling? Right, So, what was it like? It
Speaker 1: was like on the all the cheese will just start
Speaker 1: down and a little binner, and people be dying, and
Speaker 1: those thoughts came to you. Had you had those thoughts
Speaker 1: before this experience? No? And did how did those thoughts
Speaker 1: come to you? Did they come to you from the
Speaker 1: craft or from from the man? The man and the man?
Speaker 1: Did the man say those things to you? How did
Speaker 1: he get that across to you? Oh, he never said anything.
Speaker 1: It's just that the face missed the eyes. What was
Speaker 1: the sense you got from those eyes? It was interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no indication that mac talked to the children about
Speaker 1: his environmental concerns, but it is strange that this was
Speaker 1: not part of the aerial story until he arrived to
Speaker 1: interview the child witnesses, and this became part of the
Speaker 1: narrative from there on out. This is a clip of
Speaker 1: two boys talking with Tinica Denuis on the Dutch television
Speaker 1: show Tinica and the Paranormale Vault fifteen months after Max's
Speaker 1: interviews in a year and a half after the sighting.
Speaker 1: Some people say that people are saying that the aliens
Speaker 1: came to warn us whom something's going to happen. This
Speaker 1: something that is going to happen to the oath. I
Speaker 1: think they came here to try and warn us that
Speaker 1: the children left because we're young a long time, We've
Speaker 1: got a long time until we die, to warn us
Speaker 1: that in been we're older, there's something going to happen
Speaker 1: to the earth. Not to pollut can still prevent it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So by the time that Tinka Danui visits Aerial school,
Speaker 1: the students have settled on a narrative that is driven
Speaker 1: by what they saw that Friday morning on the playground,
Speaker 1: but has been inevitably corrupted by poor investigatory practices and
Speaker 1: possibly by the personal beliefs of a premier UFO investigator.
Speaker 1: But even if the details of their stories may not
Speaker 1: be one hundred percent reliable, it seems as though they
Speaker 1: saw something and if it wasn't a landed spacecraft, what
Speaker 1: could it be next time? On Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by Toby
Speaker 1: Ball and produced by Rima l Kaali, Jesse Funk, and Naami,
Speaker 1: with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Mankey
Speaker 1: and supervising producer Josh Thame, with voice acting by Teresa Backer,
Speaker 1: Julianna Thompson and Alexandra Williams, and special thanks to Kay
Speaker 1: Adams of archive dot org. Learn more about the show
Speaker 1: at Grimmanmild dot com, slash Strange Arrivals, and find more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.