The Ariel School, Zimbabwe UFO sighting - has it ever been debunked?

[Giddierone]

I recently learned that prior to Mack's interviews some of the children were shown a "tape" about UFOs and aliens which contains references to "UFOs kidnapping farmers."

I wonder what it was. One researcher I consulted suggested it could have been Visitors from Space: The Evidence (1992) and that the farmer reference relates to the famous Antonio Vilas-Boas case.

I wonder if there are other candidates?

 

[JMartJr]

One researcher I consulted suggested it could have been Visitors from Space: The Evidence (1992) and that the farmer reference relates to the famous Antonio Vilas-Boas case.

The Vilas-Boas tale is a bit racy to be showing to a bunch of kids!

 

[Giddierone]

The Vilas-Boas tale is a bit racy to be showing to a bunch of kids!

It's a fairly tame retelling of the story. I'd included the wrong link above but have fixed it now and it points the Vilas Boas case, timestamped [49:10]

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I recently learned that prior to Mack's interviews some of the children were shown a "tape" about UFOs and aliens which contains references to "UFOs kidnapping farmers."

About 18 months ago I was contacted by a family member of a couple of the Ariel kids after one of them passed away, which was causing the other to relive the trauma. She wanted to show him my website "to help him understand that this is more PTSD than reality".

She was angry about how the whole thing was handled, especially that the children were shown a film about aliens:

One fact that might be of interest to your readers is that the school decided to play Sci-Fi movies that portrayed aliens, after the event. This further traumatized the kids, as they became fearful they would be taken away. It's one of their most fearful memories.

I asked her why the school did that, especially since the head master seemed skeptical of the whole thing. She replied:

As for the scary movies, it's a fact that never seems to be talked about, but it is one of the most traumatic parts of the event from the first-hand accounts. And it's been a consistent detail from all accounts over the years.

What I hear is that they played the movies as follow up to the event. To help the kids deal with it. They never played such movies beforehand... From my understanding of the timeline, it would have certainly influenced the kids understanding before they spoke to John Mack.

It's hard not to wonder what the Headmaster was up to!

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

An often repeated claim, which I think was boosted by an episode of The Why Files, is that several other "John Mack"s were killed that day. There's no evidence of this.

Several other Sarah Conners, yes.

 

[John J.]

I asked her why the school did that, especially since the head master seemed skeptical of the whole thing.

My impression might be subjective, but I'm not sure I'd describe the headmaster (Mr Colin Mackie) as skeptical.

Maybe he didn't know what to make of the children's accounts (from a minority of those present), but he did allow- and presumably facilitate- access to his pupils for Celia Hind and John Mack. Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist, was already a controversial figure for his belief in the reality of alien abductions and his use of hypnosis to investigate such claims.

In May 1994, the Dean of Harvard Medical School, Daniel C. 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).

Wikipedia, John E. Mack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Mack*

In early 1994, before the Ariel events, Mack's Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens was published; a review in New Scientist said

...the Pulitzer jury won't be out long on Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, which could rank as one of the most credulous books ever written, primarily because there is so little in the way of follow-up investigation and physical corroboration.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14219203-800-review-space-age-shamans-or-shysters/, New Scientist 1920, 9 April 1994, Dennis Stacy
(The same review also covers Jim Schnabel's Dark White: Aliens, Abductions, and the UFO Obsession, which also describes Mack's UFO-related work; the author is sceptical of Mack's claims and suggests possible more mundane reasons for abduction accounts.)

Mr Mackie presumably thought Hind and Mack were UFO experts, which might imply he thought there was an established field of study that had experts- Hind, more importantly Mack- who could shed light upon what had reportedly happened. Why else allow them access to the children at the school?

Quick off-topic muse;

She was angry about how the whole thing was handled, especially that the children were shown a film about aliens:

One fact that might be of interest to your readers is that the school decided to play Sci-Fi movies that portrayed aliens, after the event. This further traumatized the kids, as they became fearful they would be taken away. It's one of their most fearful memories.

Coincidentally, a couple of days ago I watched a review of 1984 docudrama Threads on YouTube. Threads attempted to realistically portray the effects of nuclear war. It was low budget, but horrific and deeply disturbing. Bleak in the extreme, parts of it are hard to forget.
A couple of YouTube commenters said they were shown the film in school at age 10 (IIRC), and were (understandably) upset.
I couldn't help think, "What were the teachers thinking?" Threads is a serious piece of work, but imposing it on young children seems cruel to me.
I guess many teachers want to share what they think is important, but sometimes they misjudge things. I expect the Ariel teachers thought they were being helpful in some way.


*After the investigation's conclusion, Mack was allowed to continue researching whatever he wished, although censured for methodological errors. He had received very substantial legal support from well-wishers.

His professional reputation, however, was severely damaged. "He's not taken seriously by his colleagues anymore", Arnold Relman, Emeritus Professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. Mack also faced fierce criticism from outside the academic community: journalist Donna Bassett posed as a so-called abductee, and made public details of a session during which Mack apparently believed her story of being kidnapped by aliens during the Cuban missile crisis, and witnessing a conference between Khrushchev and Kennedy held aboard a spaceship.

The Lancet, vol. 380 is. 9848, "The psychiatrist who wanted to believe", Niall Boyce 29 September 2012 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61655-9/fulltext