Ariel School UFO - glinting reflections through vegetation how to visualise?
Charlie Wiser
Senior Member.
Dallyn Vico said on Encounters (2023):
It's odd he can no longer see the rock - if it was as big as the one in that picture, not easily moveable - especially as the land is now more cleared than it was then, with presumably fewer obstructions. Have you tried matching up the view to compare the 1994 footage with 2022 (Ariel Phenomenon, filmed 2015) to see if that rock is still there? (The Encounters 2023 footage is probably less useful since the witnesses on-scene were claiming the UFO was in a totally different place.)"At the time, I can’t see it now, but at the time there was a rock, a very very shiny rock, and it was shining in the sun."
Giddierone
Active Member
If only just one of the three film crews to visit Ariel in the past 5-10 years would try to recreate the children's viewpoint!
The big rock in #41 appears to be on the hillside. The diagram that one adult witness drew shows the UFO down in the valley on the far side of the (now) sports field about 100m away where there appear to be some rocks.
(the vegetation is very different obviously)
It's a rocky area. It's known (famed) for it's rocks.
(also note the witnesses said from their pov that the UFO was between the 3rd and 4th utility pole)
The big rock in #41 appears to be on the hillside. The diagram that one adult witness drew shows the UFO down in the valley on the far side of the (now) sports field about 100m away where there appear to be some rocks.
(the vegetation is very different obviously)
It's a rocky area. It's known (famed) for it's rocks.
(also note the witnesses said from their pov that the UFO was between the 3rd and 4th utility pole)
Charlie Wiser
Senior Member.
If only just one of the three film crews to visit Ariel in the past 5-10 years would try to recreate the children's viewpoint!
The big rock in #41 appears to be on the hillside. The diagram that one adult witness drew shows the UFO down in the valley on the far side of the (now) sports field about 100m away where there appear to be some rocks.
(the vegetation is very different obviously)
It's a rocky area. It's known (famed) for it's rocks.
(also note the witnesses said from their pov that the UFO was between the 3rd and 4th utility pole)
So that's the orange-circled rocks in this Google map. The UFO was (I believe) another 100m further away, which is the top mid-to-left of your image. (I believe the running track did not exist in 1994, though it's there in 2005?)
I don't know how that ties in with the power lines though. Or why Hind thought it was 100m away at first, then revised that to 200m. When she went into the bush during her visit, was she 100 or 200m from the logs? Was she 200m but thought she was 100m away? Or was she 100m away, then later realized she didn't go out far enough?
This path (orange below, and parallel to the white arrow in my pic above) is presumably the access road for those houses. One rebuttal to the idea the UFO was a vehicle that drove away is that nothing could drive in or out of the area, but unless those houses weren't built in 1994, it would seem a a vehicle could. The kids may not have realized that, if they never crossed the boundary logs and if the area was a lot wilder than the map shows.
MyMatesBrainwashed
Senior Member
It's fortunate they chose kids without the concept of aliens cos otherwise their environmental message would probably have been perceived as a threat.
Giddierone
Active Member
It appears to just be unimproved ground / scrub in the BBC footage.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-57749238
They appear to be standing in line withe the utility line, about 20m from the track running parallel (if it existed in 1994).
I mention the powerlines becuase Hind says she heard the object flew in over the powerlines, and others make awful visualisations using the wrong kind of pylon (metal transmission towers - nope!) to suggest powerlines at great height above the playground.
e.g.
However, this description doesnt really indicate something flying in the air - since the utility lines are in the valley strung between (likely at most 18m tall) utilitiy poles, they are looking over. It could have been an object/vehicle moving on the ground.
What do you mean "without the concept of aliens"? That's an obvious falsehood so why say that?
John J.
Senior Member.
Tim Leach links the September 14 events with those at Ariel School, September 16; maybe this coloured his perception of the latter.
Cynthia Hind also links the September 14 "fireball" sightings with UFOs, arguably for longer than seems justifiable.
In UFO Afrinews, February 1995 (PDF available above) Hind writes in "UFO lap in Zimbabwe" (pgs. 4-18) about the Zenit-2 re-entry, the highly probable cause of the sightings of Wednesday September 14, two days (well, approx. 37 hours) before the Ariel School events.
I don't know at what point the fireball(s) over Zimbabwe were linked with the Soviet rocket, from accounts of the local press coverage (e.g. ZBC radio asking people to 'phone in with their experiences) I'm guessing not for at least several days (that is, not until after the Ariel School events). If American, Russian or other authorities knew the likely cause of the lights, this explanation doesn't appear to have been known to most Zimbabweans in the days immediately following the sightings.
However, by the time February's UFO Afrinews was compiled, it's clear that Hind was aware of the re-entry and she refers to debris being found north-west of Harare (Zimbabwe's capital; Ariel School is just outside the eastern suburbs) and Chokwe in Mozambique, some 480 miles / 772 km SSE of Harare.
Nevertheless, she says
She goes on to add that she thinks UFOs have an insatiable curiosity, andMy third conjecture, and I know it's one which will all too readily be dismissed by the majority, is that it was an unknown craft and not of this Earth.
John Mack gets a mention,The message from the aliens appears to be that we are destroying Earth and its environment...
This is all in the context of the September 14 sightings, not Hind's subsequent article about Ariel School , September 16.Dr. John Mack... feels that we are part of an overall cosmic involvement and that the aliens, or whoever they are, cannot accept our destroying Earth...
I think it's reasonably clear that Hind advanced a less-than-likely explanation for the September 14 events even after relevant facts supported a more plausible cause, and that she had a pre-existing belief that aliens were visiting Earth with an environmental message. She can't really be regarded as an impartial, unbiased investigator.
Giddierone
Active Member
I wrote quite a bit about this. Here: https://gideonreid.co.uk/russian-rocket-over-africa/
To summerize: The rocket was Identified the day after it was seen and there were media reports saying this on 15th and 16th, in the British press. Hind knew about this (and Leach should have since they were workign together), becasue she mentions it when she visited the school on 20 Sept. She wouldn't accept that the collection of eye witness accounts she compiled were different but described the same thing. So she chose to ignore it, but then took the stange position of saying there was a rocket AND a UFO.
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Mendel
Senior Member.
It's what you need to do when some kids saw a gardener but you still need to keep this a UFO story.
Ufologists don't exist in the sense other -logists do because of a total and utter lack of subject matter. None of them has ever seen or touched a UFO. There is not a single hard [fact] that the field has established. Ufologists come to prominence because they turn science fiction into reality TV, by spinning "UFO sightings" into tales of actual UFOs.
So when you call these experts, you get a UFO tale, because that's what they do.
It's pretty clear that what the Ariel School sighting needed was not experts on UFOs, but experts on reports. Experts who know how to take witness statements without prejudicing the witnesses. Experts who know how to seek out and document facts.
A big reason why AARO works so well is that they employ the latter kind of experts. They clearly have processes for taking witness statements. And AARO has groups of experts adept at interpreting reports and data on things that actually exist.
But that's why the UFO believers don't like AARO: they want these UFO reports "explained" such that they turn into a believable UFO story. But that's what the UFOlogists do that AARO does not employ.
On the Red Line thread, we talked about evidence. We have two distinct types of reasoning::
1. We have unexplained evidence, therefore UFOs exist.
2. We have evidence of UFOs, therefore UFOs exist.
The second reasoning is logical.
The first reasoning really stands for, "We have unexplained evidence, therefore we can spin an uncontradictable UFO tale". And that's what the "UFO experts" are really experts at.
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