WEBVTT - Puppets 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:04.840 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heard Radio and 0:00:04.960 --> 0:00:08.680 Grim and Mild from Aaron Mackey. For the best experience, 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:21.160 listen with headphones. It's around a year and a half 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.919 ago now. My kids at the time were six and eight, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.920 and this was during the lockdown restrictions in the UK, 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:33.120 so no parents could go into school grounds. Coincidentally, at 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:37.080 the school did this exercise. It's an English language exercise 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:42.080 where schools will present some kind of intriguing mystery and 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:44.879 they will have the children view the mystery and then 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.040 write about it later. I think they did another one previously, 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:51.000 which was a detective story. So the kids would arrive 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:53.159 at school and they'd go into a classroom and there 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:57.840 would be police tape and upturned chair and maybe some 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.480 documents scattered on the floor or something like. They said 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.720 of this kind of crime scene. They'd take the Georgian in, 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:06.160 they'd let them view it in a kind of structured way, 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:08.640 and then they'd take them away and ask them to 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:10.960 write about what they had seen, and to try and 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:13.720 kind of infer from what they had seen what they 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:16.360 thought might ha happened. The thing that got me thinking 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.520 about the Aerial School was when they staged this crashed 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.240 u e volte because it was during the restrictions on Luvelent. 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:25.960 None of the parents, apart from the parents who were 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:28.840 in on the hoax, if you like, had seen the 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.560 actual crash. Side kind of fascinating because I couldn't verify 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.600 anything of what they were saying, and none of the 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:37.880 other parents could tell me about it because no one 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.559 else knew about it. It It was just something that school did. 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:43.280 It was all very confusing like that. All of the 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:45.360 stories that I got back from both of them, because 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.000 they were slightly different ages six and eight, I saw 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.480 like a variation in how they reported it back to me. 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.520 They had all of these stories about this device that 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.559 had crashed in the school grounds. There was talk about 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.720 green goop charred like wreck, like a trail where the 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.280 thing had come into the playground. The younger one, my daughter, 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.360 was talking about an alien. Apparently there was like a 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:10.400 ruler that there was an alien going around the school, 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.320 but she hadn't actually seen it. My son give a 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.359 much more kind of detailed description and drawing, But when 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.639 I talked to him and asked him to describe it, 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.160 I hadn't seen the actual photograph of the object. I'd 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:26.280 only found that picture afterwards, and it was interesting to 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:28.440 see what he got right about it and what he 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:31.600 didn't get right about it, But just got me thinking 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:35.600 about how children recall things, like how perceptive they are, 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.120 like my son's in articulate bride kid, but he still 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.120 got some things wrong about what he'd seen, and they 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.679 really just made me think, because I had heard about 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.920 the Aerial School story previously, and I would read something 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:50.920 about it every now and again, but there wasn't any 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.080 very good solution. There wasn't very many good arguments about 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.480 what it was. It just always seemed like too shrouded 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:08.600 in mystery. I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals, 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:30.600 Episode three Puppets. In season two of Strange Arrivals, we 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:35.000 examined how UFO folklore is created through a process involving 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:39.320 competing explanations of a UFO event, and it seems to 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:42.160 me that the Aerial School encounter is currently in the 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:46.360 early phase of this dynamic. Though the encounter occurred thirty 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.240 years ago, the details are just now reaching a large audience, 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:55.200 mostly through James Fox's twenty twenty film The Phenomenon. They 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.640 were trying to communicate trying to tell us something. Randal 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:05.200 Nick since twenty two film Aerial Phenomenon. This journey is 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.240 literally to pick up to pieces and put them back 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:12.160 together in any number of podcasts. So as we look 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.960 at the aerial school students accounts of their encounter, keep 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:19.720 in mind that the process of proposing and evaluating alternative 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:25.920 explanations for what the student saw is just underway. Basically, 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.000 what we're trying to do is we're trying to establish 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:31.040 a standard of evidence for UFO cases so we can 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:33.960 find ones that stand up to scrutiny and separate out 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.520 the ones that don't. And this one was among the 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.839 vast majority of cases that are supported only by horrible, 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:46.400 horrible evidence and no decent evidence. I'm Brian Dudding. I'm 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.400 probably best known as the host of the Skeptoid podcast. 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:53.520 Since two thousand and six, you've heard Brian on each 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.840 of the first two seasons of Strange Arrivals on a 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.560 Skeptoid podcast. He has covered hundreds of cases of the 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:07.680 mysterious and allegedly paranormal. Generally, the conclusion from the scientists 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.200 in Africa is that this was one of a very 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:15.479 common phenomenon in African schools. Of mass hysteria. And you know, 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.719 mass hysteria is a very unfortunately named phenomenon because it 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.880 sounds like it means people running around screaming and waving 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:26.120 their arms and acting hysterically, but it's not. In a 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:31.080 twenty eleven article for the Malawi Medical journal Research Psychologists, 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.520 Demobili Kukota includes the aerial school incident in a list 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:39.920 of cases of mass hysteria in African schools. He defines 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:44.599 mass hysteria as quote, a situation in which various people 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:49.440 all suffer from similar, unexplained symptoms. He also talks about 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:55.560 hysterical contagion, which he writes quote consists of quick dissemination 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.599 within a collection of people of a symptom or a 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:02.560 set of symptoms which no physical explanation can be found. 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:10.640 The article lists cases that occurred in South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.359 and Uganda, but there's a difference between the aerial encounter 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:18.040 and the others described in the article. The other occurrences 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:22.080 all involve either physical effects such as itching, fainting, or 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:27.719 uncontrolled laughing, or strong psychological effects such as aggression and hallucinations. 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:33.719 Here's an example, also from Zimbabwe. In two thousand and nine, 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.120 a suspected case of mass hysteria struck Namanua Primary School 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:43.279 in Massavingo, Zimbabwe, where pupils were reportedly screaming wildly and 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:48.679 complaining of visions of strange snakelike creatures and lions. Teachers 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.599 said on average six pupils were affected every day. Some 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.320 of the pupils would collapse, scream or tell of visions 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:01.120 of snakes, lions, hyenas and crocodiles. Well others would behave 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.320 as if they were in a trance. The development forced 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:08.400 the authorities to dispatch passers to conduct prayer sessions at 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:13.120 the school. A reverend involved with this effort blame the 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:17.640 hysteria on quote evil spirits and demons and reported that 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.560 all had returned to normal. In the case of the 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:26.160 aerial school, I'm not entirely convinced by the mass hysteria hypothesis. 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.480 It really stands out in the articles being quite different 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.800 from the other examples. The aerial students don't have the 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.760 same psychological or physical reactions as the children in the 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:41.280 other cases. But as we explored last episode, the way 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:45.040 that the investigation was conducted into what did happen was 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.760 not conducive to getting to the truth. They had some 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:55.000 very deeply motivated UFO writers come and do this group 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.040 story sharing among the kids and sort of form this 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.000 narrative as a group, and kind of why we have 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.880 these recorded stories. There's no worse way to collect evidence 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:07.400 than to do kind of a group story sharing session 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.560 where everyone starts bringing up their recollections and then the 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.360 UFO author was acting as sort of a moderator and 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.360 collecting the story and forming it as it went. That's 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:20.640 not how you collect evidence to find out what actually happened, 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.760 and so we're left really only with the UFO author's 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.120 sort of interpretations and their preferred version of what they 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:32.400 think happens to these kits. Dunning points out that who 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:37.080 is doing the investigation is also important. With any investigation, 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:40.400 the ideal is to have someone who is objective and 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.800 interested only in determining the facts of the incident. This was, 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:49.400 of course not the case at Aerial School of Cynthia Hind. 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:53.640 He says, you would do it by someone who is objective. 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.480 You certainly wouldn't do it by someone who's actively writing 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.120 a book about how aliens are visiting the Earth. So 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.000 I mean They had the worst possible person interviewing the kids, 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:04.880 and they did it in the worst possible way. So 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:06.800 I mean, really, there's no way to go back and 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:10.920 find out if anything did happen. Another issue that Dunning 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.480 seizes on is that most of the students on the 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.079 playground that day did not, in fact see anything unusual. 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.480 Only sixty three of the more than two hundred students 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:25.240 reported seeing the UFO or the strange beings. You never 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:28.360 hear about the vast majority of the kids in the 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:33.000 playground who said nothing happened, and who wouldn't say that, no, 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.439 there was no spaceship. I'm sorry, I'm not going to 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:39.920 go on board with that story. Finally, Dunning mentions that 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:44.120 some biases and misconceptions about Africa are sometimes used to 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:48.199 bolster the case. An element that's often reported is that 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:52.520 this is some rural African school and these were poor 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.240 African children in the middle of the country and they 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.520 had no prior knowledge of aliens or UFOs or anything 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.120 like that, and that woudn't be further from the truth 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.800 at all. Aerial School was, as we have seen, an 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:10.400 expensive private school that largely catered to wealthier Zimbabweans. Many 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:15.160 from Harari, which was a large modern African city, and 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.240 of course they'd seen all the movies with UFOs, and 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:20.719 it's been pointed out that that's why the drawings that 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.559 they made of the spaceship, why they all looked just 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.960 exactly like the stereotypical flying saucer with the footpads and 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.200 the little bump on top and the little aliens getting 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.280 out and standing on it. The pictures all look very stereotypical, 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.679 and that's because these kids had the same modern experience 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:40.000 as anyone else with UFOs and aliens in the media. 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.320 So if we agree with dunning strong misgivings about the 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.960 investigation and have doubts that the aerial students saw an 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:53.320 actual alien craft, what did they see? As I said before, 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:57.760 UFO researchers are still in the early stages of developing 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:02.800 alternative theories about what happened, But an especially interesting theory 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.320 has been put forward by researcher and writer Gideon Reid, 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.280 who you heard of the opening of this episode, and 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:14.400 it involves puppets. Trust me, it's more compelling than it sounds. 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:21.960 After the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.920 It's a very difficult encounter to kind of unpack, And 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:43.320 what I was trying to do was to look at 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:45.920 what the most spontaneous things were that are in the 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.720 testimony and try and see them as clearly as possible 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:55.120 through all of the confusion and possible outside bias from 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.440 the people that were interviewing the children, and to just 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.520 try and imagine in a way while they could have been, 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.760 and then to try and find a real world clausibility. 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:11.000 This is Gideon Read on his blog gideer one dot com. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.400 He's put forth a theory about the truth behind the 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:18.920 aerial school encounter that is both unusual and compelling. So 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:20.920 you know, I'm not saying that I think that this 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.040 is definitely what happened, but I found it really interesting 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:26.760 that when I was researching this, it seemed like a 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.800 fairly novel idea that no one else had really gone 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:32.880 down the root of the same degree that I had. 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:38.240 Unlike Brian Dunning and Demobili Kakoda, Read starts with the 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:42.280 assumption that the students did in fact see something, that 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.920 this was not simply a case of mass hysteria. They 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:52.040 all seemed really bright, really articulate, really self possessed, really truthful. 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.680 There's nothing in what I could see of those entries 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.640 that indicates any kind of prank they're playing, and it 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.199 he just got me thinking, what is it that these 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:07.000 kids saw them? Because they obviously saw something, but I 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.360 think the narrative or the interpretation of what they had 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.880 seen has been affected by outside voices, if you like. 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:18.480 Reid was doing his research while England and the rest 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.480 of the world was under COVID restrictions. During this time, 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.840 he became interested in making puppets for his kids to 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.240 play with, so he was doing research into puppet making 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.520 and watching them engage in creative play with the puppets. 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:35.920 At the same time, he was also thinking about Aerial 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.199 school and what could explain what happened there. Just all 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.720 of a sudden, these two things kind of connected in 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:44.680 a funny kind of way, Like I was thinking about 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:46.840 aerial school in the background, I was thinking about the 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.000 hoax thing and my kids primary school. I was thinking 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:51.760 about in the back of my head, like what these 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:54.360 kids could have seen. And then I started to listen 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:58.000 more intently to the Georgian denities, and I thought, there 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:02.760 are things in the gaps they say that are intriguing, 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:07.120 and there are specific parts of the descriptions of what 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.120 they saw which just seemed completely spontaneous to come out 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:14.280 of nowhere, Like I think Emily mentions that they had 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:18.920 stiff necks. Salas said that she didn't see any facial 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.800 expression movement on the face. There are other kids talking about, 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:24.600 you know, the whole thing about the figures moving in 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:29.359 slow motion or having strange jerky movements, or appearing disappearing. 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:32.640 All of those things just seemed to kind of map 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.560 on to the idea that maybe what they had seen 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.600 from a distance, because from why you understand, the observation 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.440 that they made was from at least a hundred meters away. 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.360 So those things just all side to kind of map 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.120 on to the idea that what these children might have 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:54.480 seen were puppets. That was like my original hunch, this 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.560 is all fining good, But why would there be puppets 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.720 across the field from aerial school and why would the 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:05.680 kids confuse them for aliens? Well, to start off with, 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:08.920 it turns out that during that time there were puppet 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:13.600 programs cropping up in many places in Southern Africa. I 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:18.600 also came across Gary Friedman's work with Public Against Days 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.920 and the Southern African country. Is this kind of huge, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.320 rich program of workshops that he put together, and he 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.360 had all these people kind of traveling around all Africa 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.960 doing these One must have been quite difficult shows to 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:35.400 do it just going to rural community is talking about 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:40.640 public health. Here's Gary Friedman talking about his program to 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:46.640 raise AIDS awareness in the documentary Puppets in Prison. Puppets 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.680 in Prison is a short slice of life encapsulating eight 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.480 weeks of working with these young people. Our group have 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:55.560 really opened themselves up and exposed parts of their lives 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.720 which are very intimate and personal to them. We've taken 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.560 these parts and these mesages and transform them into short performances. 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.800 Freedman's program provided workshops so that local people could create 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.560 their own puppets and put on a public health show 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.720 about the AIDS crisis. Across Southern Africa. A slew of 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.200 puppets were being made. You can find pictures on the internet. 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.800 Some are the size of hand puppets or slightly larger. 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:27.400 Some are simply enormous heads with distinct faces and unblinking 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.480 eyes that were worn by people both in programs and 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:34.560 in public to draw attention to the show. The puppets 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.040 that are put together. As far as I've been able 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:41.200 to kind of find out by research, they have just 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:45.440 like a number of similarities to some of the children's descriptions, 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.520 both how the children describe the figures that they saw 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.680 and the drawings that they made. As in a lot 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.560 of puppetry you get. Most puppets, it seems, are a 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:59.200 lot of puppets have large eyes, because eyes are how 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.920 characters get to communicate with the audiences. A lot of 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.280 the pub is that they happened to make just have 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:09.920 kind of large, compelling eyes and gray skin, and this 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:14.159 is consistent with the testimony of the aerial students. And 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.800 it was all black and they had big black eyes. 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.080 I only remember that his eyes were quite big. A 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:26.600 black man. He was just a black and he had 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:32.440 big eyes. He had a big head and big black eyes, 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.960 and it was raised in a black body. There was 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:39.600 a huge variation in how the children describe what they saw, 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:44.480 and it goes some short, potbellied creatures. It almost looked 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:48.439 like a real person, except it was really plump. It's 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:52.399 like a tall, thin stick figure. I don't know what 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:54.640 it was, but it was rat And all I saw 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:59.440 was like a long thing, and he was very, very 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.480 very thick, you know. I was simultaneously like looking at 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:06.080 the puppetry workshops. All of these descriptions kind of funnel 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.399 into or can be mapped onto this idea of a 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:14.479 puppetry workshop. It makes Gideon wonder, what is more likely 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.080 that a group of unusual looking aliens happened to land 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.040 in this field, or that's something that's certainly out of 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.640 the ordinary but definitely earthly, is what the students saw. 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.560 There are the things that I found really interesting. In particular, 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:33.040 I think Salma's drawing. It's fascinating because she said in 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:35.360 her interviews that this is the one of the kind 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.639 of disembodied head amongst the little grass and the trees, 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.159 and she said in subsequent interviews that that's exactly what 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:44.879 she saw. And I'm looking at that, and then I 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.840 come across one of the larger puppets that are rap made, 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.320 which I think Thomas Richiocano in his article which I 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.679 quote in my first post, he nicknames the Gray Giants 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.639 who wrote this brilliant article about a rap where he 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.520 wrote this britty and kind of literary description of these 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.919 teheet total puppets wandering around the streets, kind of staring 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:09.159 up a crowd in order for them to come and 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:11.680 see the show that a rap we're about to put on. 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:18.280 Here is part of that quote. Shoeless children in tattered clothes, 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.480 scattered helter skelter, running down compact, unpaved, and garbage stone streets. 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.280 Their screaming was a blend of fear and excitement, their 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.720 faces going from shock to beaming smiles as they turned 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:35.360 their runs, alternating between flight and leaps of playfulness. Infants 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:40.439 wailed in spasms of tears. Adults stood curious, amazed, and bemused. 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:43.080 All of the action on the street came to a 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.920 halt as an eight foot tall figure with an enormous, 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:49.439 cartoon like gray head shopped the grim reality of the 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.600 slum into surreal with a perfect equatorial blue sky as 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.479 a backdrop. So Richio gives a description of the public 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.520 reaction to this kind of puppet in a setting where 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.280 it is clear that what they are seeing is a puppet. 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.160 Despite this knowledge, there is a strong and varied reaction 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:12.560 from both children and adults. It's not hard to extrapolate 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:15.640 this to a group of children at a distance, not 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.760 knowing what they were looking at. Then add the UFO 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:23.000 reported over Southern Africa just two days before an adults 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.240 asking if what they saw were aliens, and you very 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:29.000 possibly end up with what we see with the aerial 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.400 school students. As Gideon said at the beginning of this segment, 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.920 he is not himself completely convinced that this theory is 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.760 one hundred percent correct. He's offering it for others to evaluate, 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.400 and he is aware that it may be affected by 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:47.920 his own biases. I really kind of tried to think 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:51.320 about how I might be kind of falling into a 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:56.160 trap of just, oh, delaying all of these coincidenial elements 0:20:56.200 --> 0:21:00.480 of puppetry at this encounter. In a way, it fits 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:04.640 perhaps my bias, which is that I don't particularly think 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.960 that it's likely that they saw something that's out this world, 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:11.719 so very aware that what I might be doing is 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.440 kind of fitting things to a pattern that already exists. 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:19.320 But I think that that is something that is done 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:24.960 frequently suddenly in uphology, where people are looking at different 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:29.160 encounters around the world and saying, well, that's just like this, 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:31.280 and that's just like this, so they must be the 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:35.840 same thing. We saw this in the previous episode with 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:40.919 Cynthia Hind's predisposition to find UFOs and aliens, and we 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:44.159 saw when John Mac arrived and interviewed the students to 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:48.359 find that the aliens seemed to be communicating telepathically with them, 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.399 giving them a message that just happened to dovetail with 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:55.919 Max's own strongly held beliefs. Indeed, Mac had been at 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:59.800 the forefront of alien abduction research, and it theorized that 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:03.160 the phenomenon was also a called to humankind to evolve 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:08.280 spiritually and embrace environmentalism and peace, just as Mac had 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:12.040 in his own life. Not only that, but Mac had 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:16.879 developed a framework for abductions that literally transcended the boundaries 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:32.440 of reality next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:36.720 a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:39.840 This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:44.399 produced by rima Il Kayali, Jesse Funk, and Nawami Griffin, 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:49.600 with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and Aaron Mankey 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:54.359 and supervising producer Josh Thame, with voice acting by rima 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:58.640 Ilkayali and Zachary Volbel. Learn more about the show at 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:02.760 Grimm and mild dot com slash Strange Arrivals. And find 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:08.120 more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:10.640 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.