Speaker 1: You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Speaker 1: Season seven, episode seventeen, What Lies in the Long Grass.
Speaker 1: British journalist Tim Leech moved from London in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties to study journalism at the University of Rhodesia renamed
Speaker 1: the University of Zimbabwe in nineteen eighty. By nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: with almost twenty years experience as a reporter and camera operator,
Speaker 1: he'd risen to become the BBC's bureau in chief of
Speaker 1: Southern Africa. He'd covered some of the most devastating events imaginable,
Speaker 1: from war in Angola to genocide in Rwanda. In the
Speaker 1: afternoon of September sixteenth, nineteen ninety four, Tim receives a
Speaker 1: call regarding a strange incident that has just occurred at
Speaker 1: the aerial school in Rua. Tim immediately calls his friend
Speaker 1: and UFO researcher, Cynthia Hind. Recognizing the potential for a
Speaker 1: great story, the pair agreed to investigate it, with that
Speaker 1: day being a Friday. However, they have to wait until
Speaker 1: the following Monday to scope it out. Never want to
Speaker 1: sit on her hands. Within minutes of the call, Cynthia
Speaker 1: is back on the phone. After making a few more calls,
Speaker 1: she tracks down a number for Allison, the parent who
Speaker 1: is staffing the tuck shop in the playground when the
Speaker 1: children claimed the incident occurred a moment later, and Cynthia
Speaker 1: is talking directly to Allison and then her ten year
Speaker 1: old daughter Fifi. As Cynthia listened with a war and
Speaker 1: patience that few of the other adults had given her,
Speaker 1: Fifi slowly opens up, carefully, filling Cynthia in with as
Speaker 1: many details as she could remember, like how a strong
Speaker 1: wind had swept across the playground just as the bright
Speaker 1: light had dropped into the trees. She also tell Cynthia
Speaker 1: about the peculiar little men in black suits, although she
Speaker 1: hadn't seen them herself. Eleven year old Barry and twelve
Speaker 1: year old Fungui, however, whom Cynthia also spoke to that night,
Speaker 1: both attested to having seen the beings. The boys described
Speaker 1: them as having large black eyes shaped like rugby balls.
Speaker 1: Both also claimed to experience a weird slowing down of
Speaker 1: time when they drew close to what they referred to
Speaker 1: as the ship. When Cynthia finally got off the phone
Speaker 1: late that evening, it was hard for her to resist
Speaker 1: the thought that she was quite possibly sitting on one
Speaker 1: of the most extraordinary close encounters of the third kind
Speaker 1: the world had ever known. The following Monday, Tim and Cynthia,
Speaker 1: accompanied by Gunter Hoffer, a friend of Cynthia's and also
Speaker 1: a fellow UFO researcher, drive east out of Harari, heading
Speaker 1: deep into the pale grass and farmlands of the surrounding countryside.
Speaker 1: They arrive finally at Aerial School after being greeted by
Speaker 1: head teacher Colin Mackey. They are promptly led into the
Speaker 1: staff room, where some of the teachers have assembled to
Speaker 1: take them through the events of the previous week. None
Speaker 1: of the teachers want to believe for a second that
Speaker 1: a ufooh really landed in the school playground, but neither
Speaker 1: can they answer the question of how sixty young school
Speaker 1: kids could even begin to coordinate a hoax like this
Speaker 1: if that's what it is. Then Cynthia is handed the drawings.
Speaker 1: Tim films her. As she examines them one by one.
Speaker 1: She is instantly struck by the level of detail, but
Speaker 1: also the subtle differences in each one. This, she believes,
Speaker 1: is strong evidence that the children haven't concocted the story together.
Speaker 1: A short time later, six children from seventh grade, the
Speaker 1: oldest group in the school, are brought into the small
Speaker 1: whitewashed room to speak with Cynthia. Mister Mackie instructs them
Speaker 1: to take a seat along the back wall. Cynthia waits
Speaker 1: for them to settle, then asks each of them if
Speaker 1: they I had definitely seen something, to which they all
Speaker 1: reply yes and nod enthusiastically. The following exchanges with Cynthia
Speaker 1: are taken verbatim from Tim Leach's film of the interviews.
Speaker 1: The first to give their account is Nathaniel. Did it
Speaker 1: have a shape? Asks Cynthia. Nathaniel thinks for a moment,
Speaker 1: it had a long top and a platform coming round
Speaker 1: the sides, he says, as he draws a saucer like
Speaker 1: shape with his hands in the air. Then twelve year
Speaker 1: old Luke, sitting on Nathaniel's left, breaks in. I didn't
Speaker 1: see the spaceship, but I saw the little guy. He
Speaker 1: was all in black and looked like he had long hair.
Speaker 1: Could you see his face, asked Cynthia, No, he says softly,
Speaker 1: And why was he among the trees? It was just
Speaker 1: like a shadow. Says one of the other boys jumping
Speaker 1: in Now. And what's your name, says Cynthia. Trevor, and
Speaker 1: you also saw this, this creature? Yes, we were all there.
Speaker 1: Did you see it? Land? I just saw flashes on
Speaker 1: the side of my eye. That's really all I saw.
Speaker 1: You didn't see anything on the ground, No, he says quietly.
Speaker 1: As Cynthia continues to engage with the pupils, One boy, Daniel,
Speaker 1: who's been close to bursting with excitement as he waits
Speaker 1: for his chance to speak, goes next. I saw this
Speaker 1: silver thing in the trees, with this one thing sitting
Speaker 1: on the side and another running up and down the top.
Speaker 1: It almost looked like a real person, except it was
Speaker 1: a bit more round, he says, squeezing his waist. Then
Speaker 1: it was Emily's turn. At first I thought it was
Speaker 1: a boy from the compound, just playing. They had longish
Speaker 1: hair and it was all black, and they had big
Speaker 1: black eyes. They kind of turned around and stared. Then
Speaker 1: they went back to a kind of ship. There was
Speaker 1: one big one, with a few little ones scattered about.
Speaker 1: Cynthia asks her to show her how big exactly were
Speaker 1: the eyes. Emily brings her hands up to her face
Speaker 1: and pinching her fingers and thumbs together, holds them over
Speaker 1: her eyes. They were oval like this, she says. Were
Speaker 1: you afraid, asks Cynthia. Yes, she says, smiling anxiously. And
Speaker 1: what did you think it was? Well, everybody was saying
Speaker 1: they were ufoes. Were you influenced by what the other
Speaker 1: children said? Asks Cynthia. Emily thinks for a moment. She
Speaker 1: dips her head down to the side, then looks back
Speaker 1: at Cynthia. Sort of, but I did definitely see what
Speaker 1: I saw. Finally, Cynthia turns to Charity, who has stood
Speaker 1: to the side of the others. And what did you see?
Speaker 1: She asks? I saw something silver on the ground among
Speaker 1: the trees, and a person in black. That's all I saw.
Speaker 1: And what did the silver thing look like? Asks Cynthia.
Speaker 1: It looked like a saucer, but the shape wasn't really round.
Speaker 1: Had you heard about UFOs before this? No? Were you afraid? Yes,
Speaker 1: she says quietly, and turns her eyes to the ground.
Speaker 1: Tim who's been filming the entire exchange, does his best
Speaker 1: to keep the camera steady as all the hairs rise
Speaker 1: up on the back of his neck. As a veteran
Speaker 1: journalist of some of the worst and complex human conflicts imaginable.
Speaker 1: He thought he'd seen it all, he knew what deception
Speaker 1: looked like, But as he watches the children's faces closely
Speaker 1: through the lens of the camera, he sees only honesty
Speaker 1: and sincerity. Whatever it was that happened, he thinks they
Speaker 1: really did see something out there. After meeting with the children,
Speaker 1: Cynthia suggests they venture out to the playground and examine
Speaker 1: the apparent landing area for any radioactive traces. Mister Mackie
Speaker 1: asks twelve year old Guy and Fungi, who Cynthia had
Speaker 1: spoken to on the Friday evening, to lead them out,
Speaker 1: as Tim follows them all with his camera. The group
Speaker 1: make their way into the playground while behind them, faces
Speaker 1: cram into the classroom windows as the children fight for
Speaker 1: a glimpse of the TV crew stepping from the sheltered
Speaker 1: area into the wider dirt flat. Twelve year old Guy
Speaker 1: recounts his experience of the event. He says he first
Speaker 1: noticed a small group of children pointing at something in
Speaker 1: the tall grass at the edge of the playing area.
Speaker 1: He thought they were messing around or that someone had
Speaker 1: been hurt. Being one of the taller children he was
Speaker 1: able to push to the front easily, which he said
Speaker 1: as the group neared the spot was when he saw it.
Speaker 1: Guy points toward a place in the shade of some
Speaker 1: gum trees where he claimed he saw the large, silvery
Speaker 1: round object and another smaller object just to the right
Speaker 1: of it. Some of the children had started walking towards
Speaker 1: the larger one, he explains, when the being climbed out
Speaker 1: of it. Cynthia listens intently as Guy takes his time
Speaker 1: between questions, seemingly still wrestling with what exactly it was
Speaker 1: that he'd seen that day. At some point, Guy continues,
Speaker 1: he noticed that two of the younger girls had started
Speaker 1: to cry. He watched as they grew increasingly frightened, before
Speaker 1: running away to the back of the playground. He noticed others, however,
Speaker 1: who were also crying that seemed rooted to the spot
Speaker 1: with fear. Then someone said the word tokoloshi. Before long,
Speaker 1: it was spreading around the group, murmured on the lips
Speaker 1: of the tear streaked and trembling children. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until later that day that Guy found out what it meant.
Speaker 1: In Zulu mythology, the tokoloshi is a short, malicious water
Speaker 1: demon with long hair and glowing eyes that can be
Speaker 1: summoned to inflict grave harm on its victims. One local
Speaker 1: story has it that many years ago, a young woman
Speaker 1: wearing nine bracelets on her arm was bathing in a
Speaker 1: river a few hundred miles east of Ferrari when she
Speaker 1: was attacked by a Tokoloshi. The creature tore off her
Speaker 1: arm and threw it into the water. Although most doubt
Speaker 1: the existence of the tokoloshi in nineteen twenty four, so
Speaker 1: the story goes, a prospector named Captain Valentine was searching
Speaker 1: a stretch of river east of Ferrari when he discovered
Speaker 1: the remains of a human arm. When he apparently pulled
Speaker 1: it from the silt, he was amazed to find there
Speaker 1: were nine metal bracelets wrapped around it. When Young Guy
Speaker 1: finishes his account, Fungi leads Cynthia and the others to
Speaker 1: the exact spot where the craft had supposedly landed. There
Speaker 1: he explains how after the event, some of the students
Speaker 1: examined the area with one of their teachers. They apparently
Speaker 1: found what looked like six burnmarks on the grass, and strangely,
Speaker 1: hundreds of dead ants scattered about. Cynthia's friend Gunter, pulls
Speaker 1: out a Geiger counter and directs the probe towards the ground,
Speaker 1: but finds no evidence of radiation. Over the next few weeks,
Speaker 1: news that the peculiar event at the little rural school
Speaker 1: in Zimbabwe spreads across the globe, with reporters from the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: the UK's BBC, and South African TV flocking to the
Speaker 1: region to meet with the children. At first, the children
Speaker 1: welcome the attention, but they soon grow weary of having
Speaker 1: to repeat themselves over and over again. Mostly it's because
Speaker 1: they know perfectly well that they're being made fun of,
Speaker 1: but also because every reporter and interviewer, with the exception
Speaker 1: of Cynthia, tries to talk them out of believing what
Speaker 1: they'd seen. There are others, however, that, like Cynthia, don't
Speaker 1: dismiss their reports so easily, perhaps none more interesting than
Speaker 1: Harvard Professor of psychology doctor John Mack. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, Dr Mack, a well respected child psychologist, became
Speaker 1: interested in reports from people who claimed to have been
Speaker 1: contacted by aliens, a fascination that would eventually lead to
Speaker 1: a decade long study on the subject. Initially, Mack wasn't
Speaker 1: concerned with whether the subjects had been abducted or not.
Speaker 1: What interested him was simply the sheer scale of the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: His first assumption was that the so called witnesses were
Speaker 1: suffering from some kind of psychological disorder. However, he found
Speaker 1: that many of his subjects exhibited no sign of this whatsoever.
Speaker 1: What Mack found especially interesting was how often it seemed
Speaker 1: that the subject's perspective of the world was completely changed
Speaker 1: after their apparent encounters. Although often ridiculed for his new obsession,
Speaker 1: Mack was encouraged by his good friend and pioneering philosopher
Speaker 1: of science Thomas Kuhn to pursue his investigations. Regardless, Kuhn
Speaker 1: had himself been at the center of some controversy years
Speaker 1: before with the nineteen sixty two publication of his groundbreaking
Speaker 1: treaties The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. At the time, it
Speaker 1: was commonly believed that scientific progress was achieved through a
Speaker 1: steady accumulation of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn, however, believed
Speaker 1: instead that periods of epistemic continuity were frequently interrupted by
Speaker 1: complete revolutions of thought, such revolutions, he argued, opened up
Speaker 1: new perspectives from which to explore ideas. Kuhn famously described
Speaker 1: these moments as paradigm shifts. In May nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: doctor John Mack, in his capacity as a professor of
Speaker 1: psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, published his first set
Speaker 1: of findings in his book Abduction Human Encounters with Aliens.
Speaker 1: The Dean of Harvard Medical School was troubled by Mac's
Speaker 1: subject matter. Shortly after the book's publication, he appointed a
Speaker 1: committee to investigate Mac's work for potentially bringing the institution
Speaker 1: into disrepute. Mack was staggered by the decision, but took
Speaker 1: solace in his good friend Thomas Kuhn's work. He reasoned
Speaker 1: that although accounts of apparent alien encounters were incompatible with
Speaker 1: our current scientific knowledge, we might yet discover them to
Speaker 1: be real in a way that we don't presently understand.
Speaker 1: Doctor Mack was ultimately undeterred and vowed to carry on
Speaker 1: his research. With the investigation into his work ongoing, doctor
Speaker 1: Mack decided to expand his research by looking into cases
Speaker 1: outside of the US. He just arranged a trip to
Speaker 1: South Africa when news of the aerial School incident first broke.
Speaker 1: Deciding it was too good an opportunity to miss, Mack
Speaker 1: adjusted his plans and made a visit to the school.
Speaker 1: Over the course of two days. He brought his considerable
Speaker 1: academic experience to bear on the case. He discovered there
Speaker 1: was nothing short of extraordinary. At first, the children were
Speaker 1: reluctant to go through everything again for doctor Mack, but
Speaker 1: the amiable and charismatic professor soon won them over. He
Speaker 1: began by pulling up a small classroom chair to sit
Speaker 1: beside them on their level, then questioned them with a
Speaker 1: clear enthusiasm for the subject. For the children, it seemed
Speaker 1: as though they recognized something of themselves in him. He
Speaker 1: was someone they could trust time and again. Doctor Mack,
Speaker 1: like Cynthia, is astonished at how much detail the children
Speaker 1: apparently remember as they recount their stories to him. Each account,
Speaker 1: as the teachers later attested, rarely deviated from the accounts
Speaker 1: the children had first given on that strange Friday morning
Speaker 1: back in September. Doctor Mack was particularly interested in the
Speaker 1: reports of those who'd found the event traumatic and for
Speaker 1: whom the trauma had evidently stayed with them. The following
Speaker 1: exchanges are taken verbatim from Doctor Max's recorded interviews with
Speaker 1: the pupils. Asking one child what scared the most about
Speaker 1: the incident, she replies it was the noise. What noise,
Speaker 1: asks doctor Mac gently. The noise we heard in the air,
Speaker 1: replies the young girl. As she speaks, Mac can almost
Speaker 1: see the memory spreading across her face, the fear of
Speaker 1: it growing from somewhere within her. What was it like
Speaker 1: a roar or a buzz? He asks? It was like
Speaker 1: someone was blowing a flute, she replied, eyes enigmatically. To
Speaker 1: another young girl, Doctor Mack asks where were the eyes,
Speaker 1: just like many others had done before. The girl responds
Speaker 1: by making that same circular shape with her hands and
Speaker 1: holds them up to her face. And what was the
Speaker 1: feeling when he looked in the eyes? The eyes looked evil,
Speaker 1: said the girl. What was evil about them? It was
Speaker 1: just staring at me as if it wanted to come
Speaker 1: and take me. Did you want to go with it?
Speaker 1: The girl shakes her head as tears begin to well
Speaker 1: up in her eyes. For doctor Mack, it's certainly nothing
Speaker 1: like talking to psychiatric patients who would often seem desperate
Speaker 1: for him to believe them or be obviously distorting reality
Speaker 1: in some way. The minds of the aerial school children,
Speaker 1: he believed were completely sound in their answers, he can
Speaker 1: hear a reticence in their voices, suggesting a concern at
Speaker 1: how what they are saying might be received, and a
Speaker 1: constant doubt of their own recollections. Dr Mack is left
Speaker 1: feeling totally convinced that at the very least, the children
Speaker 1: genuinely believe what they are describing had truly happened to them.
Speaker 1: Ten year old Lisa was one of the first pupils
Speaker 1: to apparently spot the object and ran across to it
Speaker 1: with some friends. I felt scared, she says, and what
Speaker 1: was scary about it? Asks Doctor Mack, perched low on
Speaker 1: a small chair beside her. I felt scared because I'd
Speaker 1: never seen a person like that before. Doctor Mack asked
Speaker 1: Lisa to draw her memory of the event on a blackboard.
Speaker 1: He watches as she outlines the craft a bulbous saucer
Speaker 1: shape with two landing feet and antenna on the top,
Speaker 1: and next to that she draws a stick figure with
Speaker 1: wrap round eyes on the head. What she said next
Speaker 1: was most astonishing. What I thought was maybe the world
Speaker 1: is going to end. Maybe they were telling us the
Speaker 1: world is going to end, just as doctor Mack had
Speaker 1: found in the accounts of many other so called experiences
Speaker 1: people who believe they have experienced some kind of encounter
Speaker 1: with an extraterrestrial entity. Ten year old Lisa appears to
Speaker 1: have taken some kind of message from the encounter. And
Speaker 1: why do you think they would want us to be scared?
Speaker 1: Because maybe we don't look after the planet and the
Speaker 1: air properly. Is this an idea that you've had before,
Speaker 1: that we don't look after the planet properly? Or did
Speaker 1: this idea come to you when you had this experience?
Speaker 1: When I had this experience, she says, how, asks doctor
Speaker 1: mac I just felt all horrible inside. It was like
Speaker 1: in the world, all the trees will just go down
Speaker 1: and there'll be no air and people will be dying.
Speaker 1: And how did he get these thoughts across to you?
Speaker 1: He never said anything, just through the face and the eyes.
Speaker 1: Would you like to see him again? Yes? Do you
Speaker 1: think you might see him again? I don't know, she says.
Speaker 1: And if you did see him again, what would you do?
Speaker 1: I'd ask him what you were doing on Earth? And
Speaker 1: what do you want from us? She pauses before adding emphatically,
Speaker 1: I did see it. Young Lisa isn't the only child
Speaker 1: to have apparently received messages from the being. Emma, who
Speaker 1: was with her friend Salma at the time, also reports
Speaker 1: something very similar as the creature stared at her. She
Speaker 1: recounts her heart began beating faster and faster until a
Speaker 1: thought started to emerge in her mind. I think they
Speaker 1: want people to know that we're actually making harm on
Speaker 1: this world, and we mustn't get too technowledged, explains the
Speaker 1: ten year old girl to Dr Mac. These apparent messages
Speaker 1: aren't unique to the children of Aerial school. It was
Speaker 1: something doctor Mack had come across time and time again
Speaker 1: in his interviews that the so called experiences with striking regularity.
Speaker 1: Many of doctor Mac's case studies reported being warned about
Speaker 1: humanity's destruction of the environment, leading Mack to suspect that,
Speaker 1: in one way or another, this was central to the
Speaker 1: abduction experience. Doctor Mack eventually concluded his interviews in Africa
Speaker 1: and returned to the US after fourteen months. The Harvard
Speaker 1: investigation into his academic credibility was eventually brought to an end,
Speaker 1: resulting in a complete exoneration and reaffirmation from the university
Speaker 1: dean that Mack had the freedom to study what he
Speaker 1: wishes and to state his opinions without impediment. As for
Speaker 1: the pupils of Aerial School, the media interest eventually died
Speaker 1: down and the children returned to focusing on their studies.
Speaker 1: Although the story would eventually drift from the public consciousness,
Speaker 1: the children never forgot what happened on that peculiar day
Speaker 1: in September nineteen ninety four. Now adults with jobs and
Speaker 1: children of their own, with some emigrating to distant corners
Speaker 1: of the world while others remained in Zimbabwe. Not one
Speaker 1: of those sixty odd pupils has revealed the story to
Speaker 1: have been a hoax. Many continued to speak about it
Speaker 1: to this day, and some still seemingly suffer from the trauma,
Speaker 1: and all have watched with increasing horror year on year
Speaker 1: as those warnings of impending ecological disaster have grown ever
Speaker 1: more prescient with each passing day. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Richard McLain smith. Unexplained as an AV Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of
Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me.
Speaker 1: Richard McClain smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories
Speaker 1: never before featured on the show, is now available to
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