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

[Giddierone]

Tim Leach's videotape was lost

His tape wasn't lost, they asked him to reshoot some of it because of a bright light (maybe a shiny rock... ) that spoiled some of his footage.
[see #7]

Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't do some extra mental gymnastics and run with the sensational fact that Leach's next door neighbours in Hampstead were brutally knifed to death just nine days before John Mack was "run over by a drunk driver" in London...

[the article also gets the Ariel School event date wrong].

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Speaking with Tineke DeNooj in '96 he said: [English remarks start around 0:30]

I've changed my mind slightly I, I believe the children did see something

Not aliens, but not a made up event.

I'm not sure that Mackie really changed his mind, because he told Hind (4 days after the event):

I do believe that the children here today believe themselves that they did see something.

I guess there's a subtle difference between him believing the children believed they saw something and him believing the children did see something. He didn't think they made it up, anyway.

Of the day of the sighting itself, he said:

at lunch time a few of the children told their parents when they came to collect them. A few of the parents took a wander down there to see if they could see anything. That is when I really became concerned because if there was something there I didn't really want everybody walking down there.

So he took them seriously (that they'd seen something).

Mackie has not responded to interview requests since he spoke with Michael Heseman in '97.

He retired to Queensland here in Australia and didn't respond to my Facebook message a few years ago.

There's a total of one short paragraph in Kokota's paper about Ariel School. The problem is it's almost entirely incorrect. See sentences in bold. His citation for this information is Cynthia Hind, who we know was an unreliable narrator.

Zimbabwe

In 1994, 62 school children all reported seeing an alien craft land and extraterrestrial creatures emerge14​. Virtually every single one of the 62 children iterated the exact same story with same details and none of them had gone against his/her story. Many dismissed the 1994 incident as mass hysteria affecting the children. But when the children were found to not have much prior knowledge to UFOS or popular UFO perceptions, many other people believed that what the children witnessed could have been real. The children were asked to draw what they have encountered the day prior.

That YouTuber did at least acknowledge that the kids had access to pop culture on aliens.

But also, since publication of the above journal article I have been told by a pupil/witness that the track around the perimeter of the school cross country course - in the direction of where the children were looking - was suitable for a vehicle. So a reflecting vehicle at a distance is the hypothesis.

Thanks for all your continuing work on the puppet hypothesis. I really do think it's the best explanation we have right now. (Bearing in mind that anything seen in the sky was from the day before, so we don't need a hypothesis that explains "flying saucers" at all.)[/ex]

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Cynthia Hind also mentions a girl being interviewed by "SATV", South African TV? (UFO Afrinews 11, Feb 1994). Maybe that was for the Agenda program mentioned by Giddierone. If a neighbouring country is covering the story on TV- not many channels back then- it might indicate coverage was quite widespread (more than e.g. local radio).

Coverage in another country doesn't mean coverage was widespread. A puppet troupe in Zimbabwe doesn't watch South African TV (to address your question about why they didn't come forward to set the record straight.)

Other than the BBC interview and two reporters in the couple of weeks that followed (for South African then Zimbabwe TV), I've never seen any other on-camera interviews, and if newspaper reports exist I've never seen them. It looks like this was a brief "human interest" story (because who can resist cute kids) that didn't make the papers.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

The first time I heard about Ariel was likely this short clip on the BBC in 1994 that uses some of Nicky Carter's footage. I think this threadbare coverage (they also get the month wrong) was probably typical, rather than it gaining "significant publicity" (there's not much evidence of that).

How hilarious that the only drawing they highlight in close-up is this one, which seems rather obviously influenced by a TV spaceship:

From the Invaders TV show (1967-68):

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I get the impression that the school recreation ground would have been reasonably visible from approx. 100 metres away

It was 200 meters away. In fact I'm so confident of that, from the evidence presented, that I don't think it's helpful or accurate to use the 100m distance.

1. Google Maps shows the school boundary and the bush where the "glint in the trees" was - although I don't know who placed that pin. This map is from 2005, so 11 years later and some land features may have changed. The season is 4 months earlier (May = end-Autumn) than the sighting (September = early Spring). 100 meters away would place the UFO across the playing field and not in the bush and tall grass that we see in videos (below).

2. Guy points at the location and says it's "between the third [telephone] pole" which implies he's counting from the nearest pole (number 1) and then the sighting was either 2.5 or 3.5 poles away. I can't find Zimbabwe-specific info about pole span but 100m is "standard" in rural Uganda. (Spans are longer in flat rural terrain, shorter in built-up complex areas.)

Source: PREPARATORY SURVEY REPORT ON THE PROJECT FOR RURAL ELECTRIFICATION PHASE III IN THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA, JICA, 2012 (p. 2-7).

Guy pointing to the location. Source: BBC interview, 1994, timestamped.

3. The site was on the cross-country trail (according to the adult kids, I think?). This isn't evidence for the distance of 200m but just for context: I don't know where that trail was, but by definition it's not purpose-built (like a regular athletics track) or it wouldn't be cross-country, so it was presumably further afield than the playing field area. According to RunningShorts.com primary kids run 1 to 2 km for cross-country. The yellow line here is 1000 meters exactly and would take the children past the site, whereas running around the track would not.
(BTW the Westall sighting in 1966 was also associated with the school's cross-country trail, which was just some roads and tracks through a rural area beyond school grounds.)

4. Hind corrected the "100 meters" to "200 meters" her book UFOs Over Africa, 1996:

p. 222

p. 229

Obviously the kids could not see the features clearly at that distance, regardless of Hind's determination to present their perception as accurate. It's human nature to add details to a poorly perceived sighing (and especially to our memory of the sighting upon recall) if we already think we know what we're looking at.

It seems improbable that a human-sized puppet could be seen in considerable detail, but that the puppeteers couldn't be seen and recognised as such, nor could their vehicle.

This video is on Hind's assistant Gunter Hofer's site and shows Gunter, Mackie and Hind trekking toward the site (timestamped) - some of the plants are as tall as them, and since they haven't yet reached the site, this vegetation is what would be obscuring the view:

19:09: Here's Gunter talking to a couple of the kids at what I presume is near the site, since they've stopped to discuss something and Guy is gesturing toward the right:

19:32 Here they're returning from the site back to the boundary log - it gives a good idea of the view the kids had in terms of vegetation:

 

[Giddierone]

Obviously the kids could not see the features clearly at that distance,

I think the distance where most people can determine facial details is actually surprisingly short. like less than 50m.
Some discussion of that here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/re...-a-distance-using-a-camera.13199/#post-303617

It seems improbable that a human-sized puppet could be seen in considerable detail, but that the puppeteers couldn't be seen and recognised as such, nor could their vehicle.

Actually I think the opposite and agree with Charlie above. The long grass and trees offer the perfect, almost theatrical, screen. And, the puppets were of various sizes, >2m tall, slightly larger than human-sized, down to hand puppets.

The terms the kids used to describe the figures just seem like they are watching a performance of awkward humanoid puppets.

"short legs and a long top"
"running up and down like he was confused"
"They seemed confused"
"They seemed astonished to see us"
"He ran normally like us but bouncy, as if a human would run on the moon"
"They were just looking at all of us, they seemed to have stiff necks, they didn't seem to move their necks like we can" [puppets of the type i'm suggesting didn't have flexible necks]
"Almost looked like a real person" [Almost]
"Had no facial expression"

I'm hesitant to consider a hoax over a simpler misunderstanding, but if it were, then the model for that hoax is the film Nukie (1987) which involves a short, big-headed, telepathic alien who has crash landed in the African bush, it approaches children, disappears, then reappears in a different location - identical to some of the Ariel children's testimony, and virtually identical to the vegetation beyond Ariel School.

"I saw this black figure running in slow motion. And then I didn't want to see it so I looked away and I looked again and it wasn't there anymore."

pole span

This view offers a better look at the utility poles (marked). The area with the running track was just rough ground at the time in '94.

 

[JMartJr]

I'm hesitant to consider a hoax over a simpler misunderstanding, but if it were, then the model for that hoax is the film Nukie (1987) which involves a short, big-headed, telepathic alien who has crash landed in the African bush, it approaches children, disappears, then reappears in a different location - identical to some of the Ariel children's testimony, and virtually identical to the vegetation beyond Ariel School.

Possibly -- but "Nukie" was not a hit, and not widely seen, because it is a truly terrible movie. This does not rule out that it might have been on a video cassette available to and popular with some of the kids, especially with its African connection. But it did not have the sort of cultural reach and impact that something like "E.T." or "Close Encounters."

After discussing the film with executive producer Gregory Cascante, the two (Cascante and Michael Pakleppa, whose company owned distribution rights -- JM) attempted to create a new edit intended to remove material they considered racist; however, the effort resulted in only about 40 minutes of usable footage. Pakleppa subsequently made several trips to South Africa with a small crew and collaborated with the film's writer and director, Sias Odendaal, in an attempt to salvage the project (through reshoots, etc. -- JM)
...
Following an extended post-production process, Pakleppa's company declined to release the film theatrically, and it was instead distributed via television, with the foreign rights sold to various distributors

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukie

An interesting side note, from the same source:

The Milwaukee-based production company Red Letter Media spent nearly a decade collecting Nukie VHS tapes after fans began mailing them copies of the film. Despite this, they never watched the film until December 2022, when they released a special episode about the practice of grading VHS tapes following a VHS copy of Back to the Future auctioning for $75,000. The group had one copy of the movie professionally graded, while the others were destroyed using a woodchipper to inflate the graded tape's value. The graded tape was then auctioned off on eBay with proceeds going to charity, selling for $80,600. The results of the auction made Nukie the most expensive VHS tape in history.

Emphasis added. It just goes to show that wildly unlikely things DO happen, I guess...

 

[John J.]

3. The site was on the cross-country trail (according to the adult kids, I think?).

With respect, that isn't established. Are there any contemporary reports that suggest this?
@Giddierone wrote

But also, since publication of the above journal article I have been told by a pupil/witness that the track around the perimeter of the school cross country course - in the direction of where the children were looking - was suitable for a vehicle.

This might be relevant, and could explain the presence of a vehicle. But it is a single account, made many years later.
It says the direction of the sighting was in the direction of the cross country track, not on it. There is no indication of distance.
I don't think a single specific location, if there was one, has been identified. All proposed distances are estimates, and dependent on the identification of a specific or likely location. None of the previous areas/ locations proposed appear to be on a track.

It could be read as saying the cross country track was, at least in part, around the perimeter of the school, which considering the age of the children (6-12) and the local environment (areas of scrub near the school that the kids were told not to enter) seems plausible.
Perhaps "the track around the perimeter of the school" is the cross country course, or part of it; I think the account is a bit garbled- it's hard to visualise what is meant otherwise (unless we think that the cross country route itself had a track around its perimeter- presumably parallel to it- which doesn't make much sense; why not just use that track? It's hardly likely to have experienced regular traffic).

If this interpretation is roughly correct, and the cross country course follows (at least part of) the perimeter of the school grounds, then it might not be a definitive indicator of direction- the children could look in different directions but still be looking toward the track.
In one video, Mr. Mackie/ Cynthia Hind talk to a couple of children while in the recreation area, they ask them where they saw whatever they saw, and they indicate different directions (YouTube, Gunter Hofer, "Ariel School UFO landing 1994" uploaded c. 2013):


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBqKJHSrYZg&t=17m

It's not likely that a puppet troupe drove along a cross country track following the perimeter of a school's grounds,, got out some puppets, returned to the vehicle and moved a short way along the track, got the puppets out again etc. etc., all the while unaware that there were 200 or so kids in a playground nearby.

Overall (not just this video) there doesn't appear to be unanimity amongst the claimants about direction, distance or (most importantly, I feel) descriptions of what they saw. In fact there is huge variation, perhaps more than might be expected due to variance in eyewitness testimony.

Most children present, over a period of 10 minutes or more, saw nothing unusual: They also didn't describe anything mundane that might have inspired the sightings: No nearby vehicle, no people or puppets, no bright reflections.

I think it is likely that some accounts/ drawings etc. are objectively inaccurate, and probably fanciful. Maybe all are. It is possible there was an exterior object/ happening that some children saw that served as a focus of attention or the basis of their accounts, but it seems unlikely that this was the cause of all accounts, and it seems strange that other children present (the majority) saw nothing at all.
Not one of them (as far as we know) said "...it was a van", "they were looking at a shiny rock", "there were some people on the cross country track" or anything similar.

As far as I know, we don't have any evidence that the majority were aware of any unusual behaviour by the claimants- no throng of 60 children desperate to get a view from a narrow vantage point, no-one trying to get their attention to point out what they were looking at. They carried on with their activities as per usual. No-one went to get an adult. I would be surprised if all the (subsequent) 62 claimed witnesses had all been in one place without the other kids noticing or becoming interested.

 

[Giddierone]

@John J. We know the general direction of the observation (small yellow arrow) and approximate distance by looking at the archival footage and hearing what witnesses said. Initial estimates were ~100m from the playground but later extended to ~200m. Most children were apparently somewhere near the word "view" in the image below which is where the logs are — although there are other reports of children who got much closer to whatever it was, but these all appear to be claims made by now adult witnesses - so make of that what you will.

Edit: I'm referring to the view of the figures, not so much the shiny thing, because there isn't much testimony about that other than it being about the size of a thumbnail at arms length.

 

[John J.]

@John J. We know the general direction of the observation and approximate distance by looking at the archival footage and hearing what witnesses said.

I agree that some of the claimed witnesses indicated a direction like that in your photo/ diagram. Emma in Gunter Hofer's video indicates a different direction. We don't know if other children (had they been asked independently, which they weren't) would have indicated the same directions.
In terms of what had been seen, the children's accounts/ pictures vary enormously. Maybe an element of imagination was involved.

Any distances have to be estimates, as there isn't an agreed location. There was no ground evidence (if we discount Cynthia Hind's dead ants at the end of summer). And a location, and its distance, presuppose that there was a single discrete object/ event responsible.

To be honest, I feel that imaginative play or some similar behavior, influenced by the recent coincidence of the class discussion of UFOs and the fireball two days earlier, might have played a greater role than some exterior real-world occurrence.
(This isn't to say some visual feature wasn't initially fixated on by some -probably not all- of the claimed witnesses).
This might have been exacerbated by the staff's reactions; when a couple of younger children became upset fearing tokoloshes (which presumably they couldn't see), some older kids might have been tempted to maintain there had in fact been something strange visible. Big kids making little kids cry isn't a good look. The staff accept that explanation.
Mackie asks for accounts and drawings of what was seen, but strangely doesn't comment on the (I feel irreconcilable) differences, or notice the striking similarities in some pictures/ descriptions from subsets of children. These issues remain for any theorised exterior stimulus (aliens, pranksters, a puppet show, an incidental vehicle).
The early involvement of Hind and others, and the access that Mackie allowed them to the schoolchildren, further muddied the picture.

 

[Giddierone]

Mackie asks for accounts and drawings of what was seen, but strangely doesn't comment on the (I feel irreconcilable) differences, or notice the striking similarities in some pictures/ descriptions from subsets of children.

I get the sense watching him in Gunter's footage that he feels he's being pranked. I think he just felt greater responsibility to the school than to giving an opinion on whatever all the fuss was about. I get no sense that he even really looked that carefully at the kids drawings, he defers to "the expert" Hind.