According to Dunning, this telepathic message aspect of the story was not included in Hind or Leach's reports, only Mack's, although Hind reported it later. According to Mack's interviews the creature or creatures then telepathically communicated to the children an environmental message, before returning to the craft and flying away. At this point many of the children ran but some, mostly older pupils, stayed and watched the approach. īetween one and four creatures with big eyes and dressed all in black, exited a craft and approached the children. They then floated down to a field of brush and small trees just outside school property. One or more silver objects, usually described as discs, appeared in the sky. The basic details of the sightings were quite consistent although not all the details were. Not all of the children at the school claimed a sighting.
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Mack remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine."Īccording to the interviews of Hind, Leach and Mack, 62 children between the ages of six and twelve claimed to have seen at least one UFO. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment," concluding "Dr. After fourteen months, Harvard issued a statement stating that the Dean had "reaffirmed Dr. The issue was that Mack had communicated to these people that their experience may have been real. Tosteson, appointed a committee of peers to confidentially review Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of the people who had shared their alien encounters with him (some of their cases were written of in Mack's 1994 book Abduction). In May 1994 the Dean of Harvard Medical School, Daniel C. Throughout the 1990s Mack had investigated UFO sightings and had a particular interest in the alien abduction phenomenon. That November Harvard University professor of psychiatry John Mack visited the Ariel school to interview witnesses. After investigating this incident, Leach claimed “I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this”.
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The BBC’s correspondent in Zimbabwe, Tim Leach, visited the school on September 19 to film interviews with pupils, staff and Hind. She reported that the children all told her the same story. She interviewed the children and asked them to draw pictures of what they had seen. The sighting was reported on ZBC Radio, from where Cynthia Hind learned about it. Many of those parents came to the school the next day to discuss what had happened with the faculty. When they returned home they told their parents. When the children returned to class they told the teachers what they had seen but were dismissed. The entire incident lasted about fifteen minutes. The adult faculty at the school were inside having a meeting at the time. The sightings at Ariel occurred at 10am on September 16, 1994, when pupils were outside on mid-morning break. The booster broke up into burning streaks as it moved silently across the sky, giving an impressive light show to millions of Africans.” Local UFO researcher Cynthia Hind recorded other alien sightings at this time including a daylight sighting by a young boy and his mother and a report of alien beings on a road by a trucker. Īccording to skeptic Brian Dunning the fireball “had been the re-entry of the Zenit-2 rocket from the Cosmos 2290 satellite launch. Although some witnesses interpreted the fireball as a comet or meteor, it resulted in a wave of UFO mania in Zimbabwe at the time. Many people answered ZBC Radio's request to call-in and describe what they had seen. There had been numerous reports of a bright fireball passing through the sky at night. Two days prior to the incident at Ariel there had been a number of UFO sightings throughout southern Africa. Most of the pupils were from wealthy white families in Harare. Īriel School was an expensive private school.
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At the time of the incident, it was not a town but only a local place-name, “little more than a crossroads in an agricultural region”. Ruwa is a small agricultural centre located 22 km south-east of the capital Harare.