Ariel School UFO - glinting reflections through vegetation how to visualise?

[Charlie Wiser]

He doesn't have to remember, he can watch the video of his interview 18 months after the incident.

There's no reason to think he had access to this.

 

[deirdre]

Also he told me there's no way he'd have had a watch like this.

that's an odd add on.

which Dallyn explained means green house - there were two, red and green, and Dallyn was red (hence the red hat in his footage

i thought the footages were 18 months apart?

i had a little one with a nose likethat so i got to see it from different angles. we cant really see the eyebrows due to his hair and he is in a squint due to sun the whole time i think. it could well be him 18 months earlier physically, not sure if thats a birthmark on him (in red hat) or just a play mark..cant really see it in older videos but hes got a beard. dont see it on beige hat boy.

ultimately i dont really think the accent matches to where he is talking calm here. assuming that wouldnt change much in 18months.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

that's an odd add on.

Well, he was joking (but also stating a fact) - he had no idea he'd been associated with this other boy.

i thought the footages were 18 months apart?

Yes. Same house colors though.

i had a little one with a nose likethat so i got to see it from different angles. we cant really see the eyebrows due to his hair and he is in a squint due to sun the whole time i think. it could well be him 18 months earlier physically, not sure if thats a birthmark on him (in red hat) or just a play mark..cant really see it in older videos but hes got a beard. dont see it on beige hat boy.

It's not Dallyn. Ariel Phenomenon has admitted they got it wrong.

 

[deirdre]

With the camera, like he did consistently on Instagram video you posted.

oh. i disagree with that. i feel oninstagram he knows the audience is IN the camera. where when you skype the people you are talking to are on your computer screen.

not that ive ever skyped... so you could be right.

 

[deirdre]

Ariel Phenomenon has admitted they got it wrong.

im not sure who i believe to be honest more...Dallyn or Ariel Phenomenon

 

[Duke]

From what I can gather, he believes alien sightings are demons and angels.

The point is, in the transcript of the interview with the Dutchman you posted, he acknowledged aliens as having been there and offers a suggestion as to why. What he believes aliens to be now doesn't figure into the 1994 and 2008 interviews, unless he expressed those beliefs at those times.

He didn't really change his story, he just added a new facet to it. His childhood and 2008 testimony is consistent. In 2023 he reiterated that those flashes he saw were in the sky and that he has always maintained he never saw a UFO or aliens.

He took credit for starting the UFO rumor by going along with the little kids who thought a shiny rock was a UFO. I think he's exaggerating that part of the story, or misremembering. It seems clear he didn't witness most (or all) of the event because he never mentions seeing the "men" that many other kids saw (i.e. aliens). I think he probably got there too late, so while he saw something shiny (which he thought was a rock, or is saying now it was a rock) the men had gone by then.

Agreed, to my knowledge he has not said specifically he saw aliens. It's not the story changing as much as it is the tone of the story. Watch the Instagram video, he took/told the story seriously, called it "mind-blowing." Compare that to his recent interview where he was more flippant, calling it a joke. Same basic story, but the way he tells it is, the tone, is what's different.

Not all 18-year-olds are grown up. Most of them aren't, in my experience.

I don't disagree, but I didn't say he was grown up when the Instagram video was shot. I was only referencing his reason given for coming clean.

Maybe he was having a bad day or has been through some life experiences since then. He's been on podcasts since the doco last year. I can only guess his motivations: maybe he enjoyed his 15 mins of fame, maybe he believes exaggeration is acceptable for the cause of spreading skepticism, maybe he doesn't realize he's exaggerating.

Lot of "maybes." One or more of those could be true, but we don't know. The only reason we have as to why the tone of the story changed is because he grew up. I find that difficult to believe, but if others find it believable, more power to them.

 

[DavidB66]

All this discussion of whether Dallyn is this boy or that reminds me that there are a couple of photos somewhere (probably another thread) which look very like photos of the same boy (not Dallyn) at different ages giving different accounts of the UFO event. It's worth bearing in mind that a school like Ariel might well have pairs of twins, siblings, cousins etc who look very similar, especially when wearing similar clothing.

 

[Giddierone]

flashes he saw were in the sky

There's some speculation about what that might have been in this separate thread: 1994 NASA STS-64 Mission & Lights Seen in the Sky Over Africa.

I have no idea who Nickerson is,

An experiencer and former patient of John E. Mack, and a subject of Budd Hopkins, who was given access to Mack's archive material to tell the story about Mack's involvement with alien abduction investigations, and his fight with Harvard.

 

[deirdre]

The only reason we have as to why the tone of the story changed is because he grew up. I find that difficult to believe, but if others find it believable, more power to them.

well his story does kinda match what other people who 'escaped the rabbit hole' have said.

Article:

9:02
I don't know what you saw in that documentary, I have always maintained that I never saw any aliens walking around
and if you watch the Randall Nixon documentaries, I was always talking about something that I had seen in the sky that I wasn't sure what it was,
and I've never changed until, obviously older and I started to really examining from a logical perspective what I had seen
and what I had learned in my later life aliens, and about spirituality and about obviously the physics,

So you've got to come to a point where you are able to look beyond your own thoughts and step out of yourself and look at it very critically
about what you what you actually observed, not what you think you observed

and i try to make the most logical assumptions about what happened during that day
and what I observed and then obviously during that time did my own research to find out more
about what was transpiring not only in Zimbabwe during that day but what was happening in other countries during that time
and the movies also, and everywhere, X files and all the mythology about aliens at that time so,

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsxjeBU02gI&t=617s

and obviously he had seen the Ariel Phenomenon documentary. The way the other people in that documentary are portrayed is 'unsettling'. Maybe their 'extreme' depiction of events in that documentary shocked him. (Just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, i also doubt most of the other schoolkids still think they saw aliens. But that's me)

 

[JMartJr]

An experiencer

@Giddierone -- not familiar with this term. Is it a it of UFOlogy slang? Or what?

 

[Giddierone]

@Giddierone -- not familiar with this term. Is it a it of UFOlogy slang? Or what?

Experiencer is a term used to describe someone who believes they have had direct contact with aliens. In Nickerson's case he believes he was repeatedly abducted and experiemented on by aliens from an early age. It doesn't necessarily mean experimentation, but rather contact (which need not even be physical). The earlier "contactees" (of the 1950s) typically reported much more pleasent "experiences" with aliens who showed them wonderful things or reassured them in some way.
Suggested reading: Chapter 5 of John Mack's Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. "Scott" is a pseudonym for Randall Nickerson.
https://archive.org/details/abductionhumanen00mack

trying to give him the benefit of the doubt

The thing about Vico is that he is one of the vast majority (1 of more than 180) of children who didn't see aliens. Have we heard from any others? No, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. After the initial media storm in the 1990s the story has remained relativly low-profile until James Fox / Randall Nickerson's films in the 2020s brought it to wider attention. The story has been driven by a small group of supposed witnesses, many very poor interivews, and the superstar profile, and tragic story of John Mack.

 

[JMartJr]

Post about other schools with similar sightings was intended for the main thread on Ariel School, posted here in error -- now moved there: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/th...ng-has-it-ever-been-debunked.5389/post-315411

Apologies to those who have already replied here...

 

[DavidB66]

It is hard to conjure up a direct causative link to these events in the 1970s and the Ariel School incident on another continent in 1994

I would be wondering what had been on TV or in cinemas recently. The British incidents are a bit too early for Close Encounters (released in 1978 in the UK) but not for Star Wars (1977).

 

[Ann K]

After allowing for variations and embellishments [the head-teacher] is loathe to believe that the children are capable of a sustained sophisticated hoax; that they did see something they hadn't seen before he is prepared to accept.

One might suspect the head teacher of underestimating ten year old boys who have watched, say, Star Trek. Especially if Sci Fi is not the teacher's choice of entertainment...

 

[John J.]

I would be wondering what had been on TV or in cinemas recently. The British incidents are a bit too early for Close Encounters (released in 1978 in the UK) but not for Star Wars (1977).

Lots of other SF films and TV shows, many American, featuring alien visitors were seen in the UK from 1950s on, including Earth Versus The Flying Saucers, This Island Earth, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The War of The Worlds, from 1963 on some Doctor Who storylines, the Quatermass films, The TV series UFO. I'd guess many others.
Many SF books including some aimed at children. 2000 AD weekly comic from 1977 on, Marvel comics (and similar US imports) widely available and sometimes had stories with alien baddies.


IIRC @Giddierone has demonstrated that SF / fantasy films and TV shows were shown by Zimbabwe TV, including shows aimed at children, either on this forum or elsewhere (danged if I can find the relevant material though).

Revisiting a bit of post #22

I've read (a post by @Giddierone? Apologies if I'm wrong) that science fiction films and TV programs (including for children) were broadcast by the local TV channels at that time.
And an interesting coincidence (remembering that the incident happened on Friday 16th September 1994):

(1) Cynthia Hind wrote in The Proceedings of the 8th BUFORA International UFO Congress (ibid., PDF below),

Some of the Standard Four's (10-year olds) had a discussion earlier that week in one of their general
discussion classes about UFOs.
Content from External Source

-She didn't say "...the day before" (Thursday 15th September) so we're talking Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

(2) At about 21:00 on the night of Wednesday 14th September, a stage of a Soviet Zenit-2 rocket, the launcher for Cosmos 2290, re-entered the atmosphere creating a bright fireball, disintegrating into a number of fireballs, seen over much of Zimbabwe. Many people at first thought it was a comet or meteor, and it generated many UFO reports.
This was nationwide news in Zimbabwe, and the state-owned radio broadcaster ZBC asked listeners to 'phone in with their accounts.

So, on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, some of the pupils have an in-class discussion about UFOs.
On Wednesday evening, a bright fireball is seen across Zimbabwe and becomes national news.
On Thursday, the children are in school, perhaps discussing the fireball on the news, and some talking about their classroom discussion about UFOs. We know the UFO discussion and the fireball are coincidences. They might not have.
On Friday, the children are not supervised during their mid-morning break (they are normally supervised).
Some claim to see a UFO (or UFOs), a smaller number claim to see an alien (or aliens). Most see nothing.
The period of UFO/ UFOnaut activity falls entirely within the short unsupervised break.
No child reports receiving a message of any sort- not to their teachers, not to their parents. Not until questioned by John Mack over 2 months later.

 

[Giddierone]

@Giddierone has demonstrated that SF / fantasy films and TV shows were shown by Zimbabwe TV, including shows aimed at children,

Yes, I reviewed local TV listings for several months on either side of the sighting and wrote up my findings here: https://gideonreid.co.uk/demystifyi...e-children-of-ariel-school-in-september-1994/
I also corresponded with Dr Euan Nisbet, an eyewitness to the rocket reentry on 14 Sept '94, who helped untangle some of the confusion about how the local Zimbabwe media were slow to publish the identification of the lights, here: https://gideonreid.co.uk/russian-rocket-over-africa/

 

[ratliner]

I was in Zim in 1994, and prior. They got US TV shows, though a season or more in arrears. ST:TNG was on. When the film Terminator 2 played in Zim, it had the second highest box office in the country's history*. One of the Ariel witnesses mentioned being familiar with E.T. and The Jetsons. I could dig through my material but it's a waste of time. Many of the kids were familiar with the idea and images of UFOs and aliens, while others were not.

* Africa Film & TV 93, published by Z Promotions, Harare. The highest local grosser was NERIA directed by a late friend.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I was in Zim in 1994, and prior. They got US TV shows, though a season or more in arrears. ST:TNG was on. When the film Terminator 2 played in Zim, it had the second highest box office in the country's history*. One of the Ariel witnesses mentioned being familiar with E.T. and The Jetsons. I could dig through my material but it's a waste of time. Many of the kids were familiar with the idea and images of UFOs and aliens, while others were not.

Cynthia Hind had witnesses say UFO to her face, but later said these kids had no concept of UFOs and aliens.

Suddenly, one of the children,Luke, ran into the shop shouting that a UFO had landed just beyond the school grounds.

Hind (1996), UFOs Over Africa, p. 222 [Direct quote from the only adult present, Alyson Kirkman, in the tuckshop]

HIND: What did you think it was?

EMILY: Well everybody was saying that they were UFOs and everything, so [shrugs] I -

A lot of people said they were UFOs?

Yeah, people were coming around telling - we were in a classroom and I ran out and I saw it. I did think they were UFOs. I did see them.

Were you perhaps influenced by what the other children had said?

Sort of, but I did definitely see -

What you saw.

- what I saw, yes.

Witness Emily to Hind, interviewed 4 days later for BBC camera

What did you think it was?

I don't know, I just thought it was some kind of alien from a different planet.

So you knew about UFOs?

Yes.

You've watched on television?

Yes.

You think that influenced you?

Mmm…

Or you weren't thinking about it when you -

I wasn't thinking about it.

Okay.

Witness Emma to Hind, interviewed 4 days later for BBC camera

The people in Africa don't have television. They might have a radio, but I can tell you the media don't deal with UFOs there… So where would they pick it up?

Hind on Sightings (TV show), 1996

 

[Giddierone]

Cynthia Hind had witnesses say UFO to her face, but later said these kids had no concept of UFOs and aliens.

I had a long chat with one of the witnesses recently, who also pooh-poohed this idea saying that they absolutely had an idea of aliens and UFOs because they were "middle class kids living in an ostensibly Western lifestyle". Also, the figures they saw were immediately characterized as "aliens".

 

[Giddierone]

In the 2023 Netflix show Encounters one dissenting voice is provided by former student, Dallyn Vico. He introduces a new explanation for the glinting light described by other witnesses - a reflection off a rock.
This isn't an unprecedented explanation for a UFO. There's the Cracoe UFO photographed by two off-duty police officers in the UK in 1983.
The full report can be read here:
The terrain is somewhat similar, in that the Ariel children were looking across a valley toward a hillside that had large boulders.

Excerpt from: https://archive.org/details/JTAP_Vol_4_No_4_Mar_1987…
and
https://archive.org/details/UFO_Brigantia_issue_23
It's also featured in David Clarke and Andy Roberts' book Phantoms of the Sky (starting around p.73) which can be read in full here: https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Books/Other/Clarke, David and Roberts, Andy - Phantoms of the Sky.pdf

View attachment 63441
Screen grab from Ariel Phenomenon (2023) showing one of the witnesses standing amongst large rocks looking from the opposite side of the valley toward the school.
View attachment 63443

I just realised there's a much better photo of the Cracoe shiny UFO rock illusion in 'The UFOs that Never Were" by Jenny Randles, Andy Roberts & David Clarke.

Looks totally plausible to me. Even the heat haze effect later described by some of the Ariel witnesses.

Source: https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Book... Clarke, David - The UFOs that never were.pdf

 

[Giddierone]

Guy Gibbons talking with Jill Darke, sometime after the BBC visit and Hind's visit, makes mention of something glittering "quite strongly" on the rocks.
[1:29]
Source: https://youtu.be/ZXM3-gVzwcA?si=tmdFMWcuQjv5rd2A&t=89

Also, he says they went back to the school the following day, which would have been the Saturday. I wonder if this is him misspeaking (maybe he's referring to the BBC visit on the Monday and Tuesday) or maybe some of the children / parents went back to the school out of school hours to see if they could still see anything.

 

[JMartJr]

Also, he says they went back to the school the following day, which would have been the Saturday. I wonder if this is him misspeaking (maybe he's referring to the BBC visit on the Monday and Tuesday) or maybe some of the children / parents went back to the school out of school hours to see if they could still see anything.

Perhaps he is intending "the next school day?"

 

[Giddierone]

Perhaps he is intending "the next school day?"

But that would mean he'd be expecting the glittering to have remained there the whole weekend. Now that I think about it I think I read somewhere that parents went to the school on the Saturday, will have to look for the reference.

 

[JMartJr]

But that would mean he'd be expecting the glittering to have remained there the whole weekend.

Would it? Or would it just mean he noted it was gone next time he was in a position to look? And come to think of it, is it really much different for a kid to expect maybe glittery whatever would be there the next day after a UFO sighting, or a few days later?

 

[Giddierone]

There's also this from Cynthia Hind's book UFOs Over Africa. Which suggests they're looking at the same thing near the rocks.

The girls also saw the silver 'thing' and, at first, they
thought it was a reflection off a glass window, but then they
realized there were no houses on the rocks up there.

This is what the rocks looked like at the time.

Another better view of rocks on the nearby hills, seen from the school.

BBC archives of three children pointing towards where they saw the light. (they didn't witness it from where they are standing in this photo, they were on a playground a several feet higher up nearer the school)

Michael Heseman a few years later asked the children (not the same group as many had left the school) to recreate where they were.

 

[Ann K]

If you are going to see gleaming rocks, you'd ideally want to be looking at them when the sun is in about the same position. The sighting at the school was reported to be at ten a.m. on September 16, but I don't know if any of the subsequent investigations made any effort to record the times of their observations.

 

[Giddierone]

If you are going to see gleaming rocks, you'd ideally want to be looking at them when the sun is in about the same position. The sighting at the school was reported to be at ten a.m. on September 16, but I don't know if any of the subsequent investigations made any effort to record the times of their observations.

There's some illustrations of the sun's position relative to the ground features earlier in this thread.

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