ADULT TESTIMONIES |
ANALYSIS |
I strongly recommend reading Gilles Fernandez's two blog posts about Ariel, especially the first (6/26/16 and 5/14/19; right-click and "translate to"). He has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and offers insight into how children are supposed to be interviewed, as well as how Cynthia Hind and John Mack failed to follow these guidelines, and how these mistakes influenced the children's stories.
My Twitter thread: Did the kids know about aliens and UFOs beforehand? (Spoiler: yes)
Cynthia Hind's three reports on the case are transcribed here and analyzed below in the section: Distorting the Myth.
My Twitter thread: Did the kids know about aliens and UFOs beforehand? (Spoiler: yes)
Cynthia Hind's three reports on the case are transcribed here and analyzed below in the section: Distorting the Myth.
Read almost any modern article on the Ariel School sighting and what you’re actually reading is a synthesis of other people's reports on several months’ worth of interviews. When these testimonies are put strictly in order, which I've done on this website (follow the links above), it becomes clear that the tale grew taller in the telling.
This analysis constitutes my thoughts based on my impressions of those testimonies, when viewed in order. Because cute kids are involved, and because some of them report life-long trauma, I promise I will almost never be facetious or snarky.
In total I’ve found 30 named witness testimonies (mostly on-camera) along with another 13 unidentified (may be some overlap). Given how this story changed over time, I don't see any value for this analysis in the testimonies of the now grown witnesses. (Of course they are interesting in their own right to learn how the event affected their lives.) What I'm doing here is examining what happened on that day in 1994, and what the possible explanations could be.
So, what did the children actually see? How did the details become increasingly weird or “alien” as the days, weeks, and months passed? And why did the story evolve in this way?
Cynthia Hind revealed in her write-up of the case in 1995 (BUFORA 1995) that the Grade Four children had had a discussion about UFOs earlier that week which may have influenced some children. She never mentions this again (as far as I know) and will later state on TV that the children had no cultural exposure to UFOs or TV (which is quite obviously untrue)
This analysis constitutes my thoughts based on my impressions of those testimonies, when viewed in order. Because cute kids are involved, and because some of them report life-long trauma, I promise I will almost never be facetious or snarky.
In total I’ve found 30 named witness testimonies (mostly on-camera) along with another 13 unidentified (may be some overlap). Given how this story changed over time, I don't see any value for this analysis in the testimonies of the now grown witnesses. (Of course they are interesting in their own right to learn how the event affected their lives.) What I'm doing here is examining what happened on that day in 1994, and what the possible explanations could be.
So, what did the children actually see? How did the details become increasingly weird or “alien” as the days, weeks, and months passed? And why did the story evolve in this way?
Cynthia Hind revealed in her write-up of the case in 1995 (BUFORA 1995) that the Grade Four children had had a discussion about UFOs earlier that week which may have influenced some children. She never mentions this again (as far as I know) and will later state on TV that the children had no cultural exposure to UFOs or TV (which is quite obviously untrue)
On Friday after the event, according to the headmaster Colin Mackie, parents collecting their children learned something had happened. They walked down to the “landing” site. Mackie doesn’t report that they found anything unusual although Guy will later claim there were three burn marks (which were gone by Tuesday). (BUFORA 1995, p.37)
Hind spoke to three children on the weekend. We don’t have accurate accounts of those phone calls, only her recollection three years later when Michael Hesemann spoke to her along with a couple of brief mentions (as indirect quotes) in her own reports.
In her book UFOs over Africa (1996), Hind says she heard from over 100 witnesses to sightings relating to a Russian satellite launch and nose cone re-entry. "I have no doubt that these [reports] were all of the nose cone on its way to landing on Earth." (p. 219) The handful of accounts that, to her, don't exactly match this mundane description she concludes were alien visitors "curious about events initiated by human beings." This sets the scene, in her mind, for what happened at Ariel.
Hind spoke to three children on the weekend. We don’t have accurate accounts of those phone calls, only her recollection three years later when Michael Hesemann spoke to her along with a couple of brief mentions (as indirect quotes) in her own reports.
In her book UFOs over Africa (1996), Hind says she heard from over 100 witnesses to sightings relating to a Russian satellite launch and nose cone re-entry. "I have no doubt that these [reports] were all of the nose cone on its way to landing on Earth." (p. 219) The handful of accounts that, to her, don't exactly match this mundane description she concludes were alien visitors "curious about events initiated by human beings." This sets the scene, in her mind, for what happened at Ariel.
Mundane Monday
The first available first-hand accounts are from the three children Tim Leach interviewed on camera for the BBC on Monday. Guy reports seeing a glinting disc in the trees 100 meters away (actually 200 meters away according to Hind's map and her 1996 book UFOs Over Africa), which he did not see land and which made no noise. He saw one thin man (5’6” tall) with light skin and large low eyes, who walked out and walked back again. (Kayleigh's account of two additional people – a red one and a white one - was quickly discarded.)
The object “just went all of a sudden”, “quite high”. Guy doesn't explain how high. In fact there are no witnesses I can find who report seeing the object descend from a high altitude to land, or depart at a high altitude and fly away. It was just there, and then it just disappeared. These three children deny it was a helicopter or guys playing a joke “because somebody wouldn’t just be playing around and just be on the ground all of a sudden.”
The object “just went all of a sudden”, “quite high”. Guy doesn't explain how high. In fact there are no witnesses I can find who report seeing the object descend from a high altitude to land, or depart at a high altitude and fly away. It was just there, and then it just disappeared. These three children deny it was a helicopter or guys playing a joke “because somebody wouldn’t just be playing around and just be on the ground all of a sudden.”
Unimpressive Tuesday
The next day, Hind interviews six grade 7 children, then a couple of younger girls while other children listen in. She discusses the drawings* with Mackie in front of the children and asks him if he believes in aliens visiting Earth. None of the children's reports offer much detail about what the object looked like, yet many of the drawings show windows and portholes, doors, landing struts, antennae, flashing lights, etc. None describe any features of the "alien" other than big eyes and a black suit, yet some drawings depict other facial features, a belt, buttons, a polka-dot suit, fingers and toes, and normal-sized heads and eyes, or no eyes at all. Nobody drew the headband that was part of the very first report to the woman in the tuckshop.
Some of the beings drawn on Monday, showing normal-sized heads and eyes, featureless faces, fingers, toes, belt and buttons, none of which were reported in testimonies.
Hind does acknowledge some of the drawings are “a bit imaginative” and later writes that some look like typical flying saucers drawn from popular culture. (Incidentally, years later on Sightings she will claim the children didn't know about UFOs despite multiple children testifying that others were calling the sighting a UFO. See also Gideon Reid's article examining the TV guide and newspaper articles on the weekend before the children drew their pictures and were first interviewed.) She doesn't tell us what criteria she uses to decide which depictions are imaginative and which are accurate representations of what was seen.
*Sixty-odd drawings are uploaded here, with notes.
Hind tells the children she's talking to London and America, and that this “could be the biggest story of the 20th century”. She later appears miffed, when Leach interviews her after the disappointing evidence-free jaunt to the site, that the British didn’t take an interest in a playground sighting in Wales 1979, even though she went over there three times.
“I think it’s time the world woke up,” she tells the children, so people don’t think she’s "kooky." This puts a tremendous burden on the children to help her out by producing what she wants. In a strict school setting they’re under additional pressure to perform correctly for the adults, especially when sat on a chair in front of the headmaster and with a BBC camera in their face.
The children’s accounts match the Monday reports but with more detail from these new witnesses: Nathaniel reports (and drew) a platform around the object. Hind refers to “a little man” but is corrected - he was the same size as a grade 7 boy.
His face wasn’t visible, only the large black eyes like rugby balls. His black suit was shiny and tight-fitting. He had long straight black hair like a “hippie”. He ran up and down on top of the object, while another sat on it or stood beside it. Some children admit they only saw a glimpse and the man was “like a shadow”. Daniel reports the man was plump.
After doing nothing interesting, the man went back to the “ship”. Emily B reports there was one big ship and a few little ones and that “everybody was saying that they were UFOs” but this didn't influence her interpretation. Emma reports the ship lifted one meter then disappeared. (It would have to lift a lot more than one meter to clear the trees, so it seems more likely it simply faded or disappeared, as others reported.)
One child drew UFOs flying along the power lines. Outside, Stefan - presumably the artist - points out a second landing spot to the left of the first, but says the ship didn’t move so maybe there were two. Hind doesn't follow up on this and it eventually gets dropped from the story. No physical evidence is found, although weeks later Guy will report that a teacher and students saw burn marks and dead ants on Friday that had disappeared by Monday.
So, by the end of this second day, it’s established that the children on the day identified the sighting as UFOs and aliens despite nothing particularly weird being seen. They’re testifying to the BBC. America and England are interested. They have a UFO expert encouraging them to think of the sighting as UFOs and aliens so she doesn’t look crazy, and their somewhat bemused headmaster prevaricates on whether or not aliens just visited the school.
Not one of the children reports being captivated by the alien’s eyes, or staring into those eyes, or any hint of telepathic communication. Nobody mentions an abnormally large head or the alien running in slow motion or winking in and out of existence. Hind tells Leach: “some of the things they’ve told me, they couldn’t have known about. Impossible.” – yet doesn’t specify what those things are. She mentions a “missing time element” apparently because some children drew distant figures while others drew them close and faceless.
*Sixty-odd drawings are uploaded here, with notes.
Hind tells the children she's talking to London and America, and that this “could be the biggest story of the 20th century”. She later appears miffed, when Leach interviews her after the disappointing evidence-free jaunt to the site, that the British didn’t take an interest in a playground sighting in Wales 1979, even though she went over there three times.
“I think it’s time the world woke up,” she tells the children, so people don’t think she’s "kooky." This puts a tremendous burden on the children to help her out by producing what she wants. In a strict school setting they’re under additional pressure to perform correctly for the adults, especially when sat on a chair in front of the headmaster and with a BBC camera in their face.
The children’s accounts match the Monday reports but with more detail from these new witnesses: Nathaniel reports (and drew) a platform around the object. Hind refers to “a little man” but is corrected - he was the same size as a grade 7 boy.
His face wasn’t visible, only the large black eyes like rugby balls. His black suit was shiny and tight-fitting. He had long straight black hair like a “hippie”. He ran up and down on top of the object, while another sat on it or stood beside it. Some children admit they only saw a glimpse and the man was “like a shadow”. Daniel reports the man was plump.
After doing nothing interesting, the man went back to the “ship”. Emily B reports there was one big ship and a few little ones and that “everybody was saying that they were UFOs” but this didn't influence her interpretation. Emma reports the ship lifted one meter then disappeared. (It would have to lift a lot more than one meter to clear the trees, so it seems more likely it simply faded or disappeared, as others reported.)
One child drew UFOs flying along the power lines. Outside, Stefan - presumably the artist - points out a second landing spot to the left of the first, but says the ship didn’t move so maybe there were two. Hind doesn't follow up on this and it eventually gets dropped from the story. No physical evidence is found, although weeks later Guy will report that a teacher and students saw burn marks and dead ants on Friday that had disappeared by Monday.
So, by the end of this second day, it’s established that the children on the day identified the sighting as UFOs and aliens despite nothing particularly weird being seen. They’re testifying to the BBC. America and England are interested. They have a UFO expert encouraging them to think of the sighting as UFOs and aliens so she doesn’t look crazy, and their somewhat bemused headmaster prevaricates on whether or not aliens just visited the school.
Not one of the children reports being captivated by the alien’s eyes, or staring into those eyes, or any hint of telepathic communication. Nobody mentions an abnormally large head or the alien running in slow motion or winking in and out of existence. Hind tells Leach: “some of the things they’ve told me, they couldn’t have known about. Impossible.” – yet doesn’t specify what those things are. She mentions a “missing time element” apparently because some children drew distant figures while others drew them close and faceless.
Distorting the myth
In three subsequent reports that Cynthia Hind wrote (for MUFON in Dec 1994, and two in her own newsletter in 1995), her reporting distorts the early testimonies of the children (the first two days, recorded by the BBC) - we know this because we have their actual words on camera. I'm not suggesting deliberate deception, only that in writing up the case (and in the absence of any pushback) she created a narrative that matched her bias.
Often her changes to their statements seem subtle, just a word here or there, but the implications are large. Two examples that add to the UFO/alien narrative are - contrary to the children's testimony - that all or many witnesses saw the object descend to the ground and land, and that the "man" was consistently described as very short. In reality, no child reported seeing the UFO(s) in the act of landing, and the man was described as the height of a 12-year-old (or taller).
I have no knowledge of how accurate Hind was with other cases (she was trained in journalism), but on Ariel her work was sloppy. As evidence that she distorted the story, however unintentionally, below is a comparison between what she reported and what was actually said.
Note: Bold text indicates excerpts from Hind's reports (reproduced here) in the first column, and verbatim quotes from on-camera interviews in the second column. Rows are arranged in approximate order of events.
Sources:
Often her changes to their statements seem subtle, just a word here or there, but the implications are large. Two examples that add to the UFO/alien narrative are - contrary to the children's testimony - that all or many witnesses saw the object descend to the ground and land, and that the "man" was consistently described as very short. In reality, no child reported seeing the UFO(s) in the act of landing, and the man was described as the height of a 12-year-old (or taller).
I have no knowledge of how accurate Hind was with other cases (she was trained in journalism), but on Ariel her work was sloppy. As evidence that she distorted the story, however unintentionally, below is a comparison between what she reported and what was actually said.
Note: Bold text indicates excerpts from Hind's reports (reproduced here) in the first column, and verbatim quotes from on-camera interviews in the second column. Rows are arranged in approximate order of events.
Sources:
- Hind's articles in her own UFO AFRINEWS #11 (Feb 1995) and #12 (Jul 1995) are cited below as simply #11 and #12 with page numbers.
- Her MUFON UFO Journal #320 article (Dec 1994) is cited as MUFON.
- Other quotes are from camera interviews as transcribed on this site.
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From Hind's reports
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From on-camera interviews
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sixty-two children… were in their playing field for the midmorning break. Suddenly, they saw three silver balls in the sky over the school. These disappeared with a flash of light and then reappeared elsewhere. [MUFON, p. 6]
several of the children saw disc-like objects coming in along the power lines… [#11, p. 20] according to one boy, the object followed along this [power] line prior to landing. [MUFON, p. 7] |
Hind is mixing up various testimonies here to create the impression that 62 children saw the objects arrive in the sky, disappearing and reappearing as they flew.
She reports “one boy” saw one object following the power lines, but in another report it's “several” children”. Actual testimony: Stefan’s drawing shows objects along the power lines. Barry D told Hind (according to her paraphrasing) he saw the craft come into the school grounds along the electricity lines… he had seen three objects flying over... [#11, p. 22] Barry saw flashing red lights and disappearing/reappearing craft. No one else reported this. Certainly not 62 children. Hind’s phrasing suggests Barry saw the craft land: …come into the school grounds… came and landed near some gum trees. [#11, p. 22] It seems she’s making the assumption that objects in the sky descended into the bush and landed. No children describe a single detail about this momentous event. (See below where she deliberately misquotes Nathaniel about whether he saw the object land.) Furthermore, recently Gunter Hofer said that this UFO activity along the power lines was the day before. In summary, only one child reported (paraphrased) and one child drew the objects flying along the power lines, and this seems to be Thursday’s sighting. |
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Tertia N. said the light was a golden, shiny object with a little light switching on and off. When she first saw it, it was like a pencil in the sky with a shiny light at the back. [#11, p. 20]
Tertia N. said she and some friends had watched the object land and then it just vanished. [#11, p. 20] |
Though Hind includes this as part of the Friday sighting, Tertia’s drawing as well as her testimony (weeks and then 18 months later) makes it clear this was the Thursday sighting. “The day before the spaceship came, my friends and I were sitting in the playground and one of my friends - her name's Emily - she looked up into the sky and she said, “Oh there's a UFO’.” ... “It flew along for about a minute or so, and then it disappeared”.
It did not land. It vanished while in the air. (Her drawing and description appear to describe a plane, most likely misidentified due to "UFO mania" sweeping the country.) |
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[Guy G] said that the objects were disc-shaped and glinting among the trees before landing. He pointed out the landing place as at the third pole from the school grounds and the objects had come in along the electricity wires towards this area. [#12, p. 10].
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Hind misreports Guy in order to bring his testimony into line. Guy specifically said he never saw the object land. “Did you see it land?” Leach asks him. "No, it [singular] was in the trees over there, like, glinting."
Guy never reports multiple objects. Nor did he see anything flying along the power lines, but Hind ascribes that testimony to him. |
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The consensus of opinion was that an object came down in the area they indicated [MUFON p. 7]
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Hind implies multiple children saw the UFOs descend for landing. In fact, the majority of testimonies don’t include seeing the object in the sky or landing. It was simply there, a glint in the trees, a glimpse, a flash at the corner of their eye.
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Nathaniel said he saw ‘a ship’ land on the ground. [#12, p. 11].
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Again, Hind has Nathaniel seeing the ship in the act of landing. What he says on camera: “I saw a sort of like ship, landed on the ground.” At the time she appears to understand him to mean he saw a landed ship, not a ship landing, because she doesn’t follow up with a question asking him to describe the ship’s descent.
Yet she reports it as if he saw the descent, a far more dramatic event that removes the possibility the object in the trees drove in on wheels, or was a distant building with glinting glass windows. |
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the children pointed out two landing areas, the first where the craft touched down - at the third electricity pole from their viewpoint - and the second landing point, were the little men emerged. [#12, p. 10]
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Hind reports two landing sites but describes them unlike how any of the children described them. No witness reported the UFO moving from one spot to another. Stefan explicitly refutes this idea when he (and he alone) points out another landing site to the left of the one that all the other children agree on: the third pole is where they saw the UFO (on the ground or hovering) and where they saw the men.
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Most of the older (12-year-old) boys saw legs like tines dug into the ground [#11, p. 20]
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Hind found no physical evidence of the UFO landing, and speculates elsewhere that it was hovering. The fact the older boys drew a well-engineered UFO with legs while others drew it hovering is an indication that some children filled in the details of their drawings with imagination. Hind concedes this seems to have happened with some drawings, but provides no yardstick for how she decides which drawings are imaginative and which are accurate.
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There was one large object and two or three smaller ones. [#11, p. 20]
Emma's drawing of multiple ships
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Two witnesses report multiple “ships” at the landing site. Everyone else quite explicitly describes only one, but Hind reports multiple objects as factual. (Given many witnesses describe an ill-defined glinting disc, it's likely a single object reflecting the sun from different areas or windows might look like multiple glints.)
Emily B: “There was like sort of one big one and quite a few little ones scattered around.” Hind to Emma K: “In your drawing you’ve got not only the main object there but you’ve got several others.” (Emma drew multiple ships but Hind doesn’t give her the chance to elaborate here.) |
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They could also hear a whirring noise [#11, p. 20]
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It’s unclear where Hind got the whirring noise from (possibly Barry, whom she called that weekend). None of the children is seen reporting a noise. Guy tells Leech there was no noise.
The first mention of noise on camera is from Candice in the Jill Darke interview - she heard a flute sound. |
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Mrs Kirkman told me… the children came running into the Tuckshop, talking excitedly about ‘a small man running around with a band around his head and a one-piece suit’… [#11, p.19]
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Mrs Kirkman (in the tuckshop) said it was Luke N who reported the sighting to her. [Hesemann, 1997]
The “band” around the man’s head was dropped from the story. None of the drawings show a band. (Luke's drawing is not identified yet.) |
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The children were all a little bit afraid, although they were also curious. [#11, p.20]
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In contrast to the fear that Mack elicits from the children, Hind reports they were only “a little bit afraid”, and this is corroborated by their appearances on-camera in interviews days and weeks afterwards.
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Then a small man (approx. 1 metre in height) appeared on top of the object. [MUFON p. 7]
Where the drawings were most consistent were in the descriptions of the small entity the children had seen emerge from the craft. He was approximately one metre tall [#11, p. 20] [Guy] saw a small man (about one metre tall) get out and walk across the terrain parallel to the playground [Nathaniel said] He was about one-metre-plus tall. [#12, p. 11] |
In one of the most blatant exaggerations, Hind has inserted into the narrative short beings, because everyone knows alien Greys are short.
The grade 6 & 7 witnesses who reported on the man’s height all said he was their height or taller. It was simply untrue for Hind to write there was consistency in the report of a small man, based on the interviews she conducted. Guy indicates with his hand, on camera, that the man was a head taller than himself - yet Hind ascribes to Guy the testimony that the man was 1m (3’4”) tall. She asks Nathaniel about “a little man” but he corrects her: “From where we looked he was about this small [indicates 1m] but we were quite a way away so he was about our size.” Hind may think she’s covering herself by reporting this as “one-metre-plus [3’ 4”+] tall”, but Nathaniel and Guy are quite clearly not describing a “little man” here. The average 12-year-old is 5 feet (1.5m) tall. |
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[Guy] could see the little man was dressed in a black, shiny suit (like a skin diving suit) [#11, p.21]
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What Guy actually says: “He wasn’t very dark, he was quite light-ish [skin color] and very thin”. As above, Guy did not call him a little man but indicates he was a head taller than himself. He makes no mention of the man’s clothing – not the color or the style. The first mention of clothing is from the grade 7 children the next day, who say the man was “all black” and “in black”.
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[Guy] could see… that he had long black hair and big eyes, which seemed lower on the cheek than our eyes, were large and elongated. The mouth was just a slit and the ears were hardly discernible. [#11, p.21]
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Guy doesn’t say anything about the man’s hair, mouth, or ears. All the Grade 7 children say the face was not visible except the big eyes.
In later interviews some children add details such as the small nose and mouth. |
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[Luke] “He looked like a shadow of something.” [#12, p. 11]
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Luke didn’t mention the word shadow. He tells Hind the man was “all black”. Hind asks why he couldn’t see anything more. “Was he among the trees?”
Trevor, sitting beside Luke, answers: “It was just like a shadow. We just saw a shadow going.” Hind misquotes this as “a shadow of something”. Her carelessness with quotes and attributions here is obvious because we can compare to the on-camera interview. Those interviews are incomplete, which makes me not trust her quotes that weren't recorded. |
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[Daniel] “his hair was not like the usual African hair - very curly and close to the head - it was almost like a hippy's hair, long and black.” [#12, p. 11]
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Hind takes liberties with Daniel’s testimony as he explains why he thought the man was not “some boy from the compound playing around”.
What he actually says is: “the hair was - it looked more like our hair, it wasn’t curly. That thing almost looked like a hippie.” He doesn’t mention hair color. |
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[Emily B] “I saw the little men with longish black hair and big black eyes. They turned round and stared at me and went back into a kind of ship. There was only one ship and some little ones scattered around it. I could see their big eyes and long hair. I definitely saw them! [#12, p. 11]
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Hind adds two words here: "at me". Emily actually says: "They kind of turned around and stared and then went back into a kind of like ship." Emily (and others) will later tell Mack the beings stared at them, which made them afraid and in some cases transmitted telepathic messages. There's no indication in these first interviews that anyone was mesmerized by the eyes.
What Hind fails to report is also telling. She gets Emily’s quote approximately right, but doesn’t include this: “Well everybody was saying that they were UFOs and everything, so [shrugs]…” or Emily’s admission that she was “sort of” influenced by what the other children said. |
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When asked by Tim Leach of the BBC if she had heard of UFOs, Charity replied: “I’ve not heard of UFOs before.” [#12, p. 11]
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This odd error only emphasizes Hind's shoddiness when it came to transcribing and reporting. It's not Leach who asks this, it's Hind. And Charity simply answers: “No.”
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[Emma] “The little men were wearing clothes which were very, very shiny black. Like a diving suit and tight-fitting.” [#12, p. 13]
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Here’s an example of Hind putting words into a witness’s mouth. Emma never says diving suit. She describes the man as “very very shiny black.” Hind prompts with "Shiny black suit?" and Emma isn’t sure what to call it. Hind asks: “Have you ever seen the divers going in the sea?” Emma agrees it was “like that.” Hind asks if it was “a tight-fitting suit” and Emma agrees.
Hind writes it up as if Emma volunteered that term. In subsequent interviews, other children will start calling it a diving suit. |
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[Lisel] “A man dressed in black came out. He had big eyes.” [#12, p. 13]
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Lisel didn’t say a man came out. She said this: “And I saw a black man, he was just in black, and he had big eyes.”
Hind has filled in the missing detail – that Lisel saw an alien exiting the craft. In a later TV interview, Hind will add even more detail: “then a door opened and this little man got out” [Unexplained Mysteries ep. 25, from Sightings interview 1996] I haven't come across any child mentioning the UFO had a door, let alone that it opened, although 3 or 4 drawings show a door. |
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One girl interviewed by the SATV, said he had arms and legs like a human being, but his head was larger than a normal head. [#11, p. 20]
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Despite an abnormally large head being a feature worth commenting on, no witness initially reported it. Hind has to turn to a TV interview with Salma, 2 weeks later, for this detail that quickly gets incorporated into the group narrative. (These later interviews were for TV newscasts - the children would have watched themselves and their classmates recount the event.)
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The object took off very rapidly and disappeared. [MUFON p. 7]
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The witnesses are vague about how the object left, but none describes it like Hind does here. Nor does she say who told her this, but it's not in any of those early recordings. The best we have is Emma, although it's not exactly a description of the things flying off: "I saw them disappear. They went 1 meter up from the ground and then they just disappeared."
Guy similarly doesn't seem to have seen it fly off in the air: "It just went all of a sudden.... More down into the valley." Randall Nickerson now says none of the children saw the UFO leave because they all ran inside – it was simply gone when they returned with teachers. |
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Headmaster Mackie had the presence of mind to get all the children back into their classroom, asking them to draw what they had seen. [#11, p. 20]
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Mackie's BBC interview makes it clear the children made the drawings on Monday, three days after the event. Here Hind makes it sound like it was Mackie’s idea and that he had them draw immediately.
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I had suggested to Mr Mackie prior to visiting the school and before the children had been interviewed, that he let the children draw what they had seen. [MUFON, p. 7]
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Here Hind contradicts herself - she asked Mackie to have the children draw. Whether they drew immediately after the event (Friday) or on Monday after they'd had a weekend to compare notes is a significant difference. That Hind would contradict herself within weeks on this important point continues the pattern of her misquoting and exaggerating in order to add credibility to the story.
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he now has about 30-40 drawings… I have 22 photocopies of the clearer drawings as Mr. Mackie kindly allowed me to page through the pictures and choose those I wanted. [MUFON, p. 7]
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Hind was perhaps misinformed about how many drawings were made, as 62 is the commonly reported number. Or perhaps there were only 30-40 done on Monday, and the rest were done days or weeks later. As well as selecting the 22 drawings she preferred, video corroborates this: she's sorting the pictures into two piles based on what she believes more accurately represents an event she didn't witness.
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the white children were mostly - although not all - aware of UFOs. So where they drew pictures, it was often identified as ‘a UFO’ and the little men in black were labelled 'aliens'. [#12, p. 9]
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We see the children freely talking about UFOs and aliens in the Monday and Tuesday interviews, and that children yelled about aliens during the sighting (creating excitement among the others). So, Hind correctly reports here that some were aware of such things.
However, within two years on Sightings (TV show) she denies the kids picked up these ideas from popular culture: “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?" This fabrication, along with her paraphrasing the children at times, changing their meaning to better fit her idea of little grey men, severely damages her credibility and puts into question any reported "facts of the case" that can't be independently verified (such as through on-camera interviews). |
Behind the myth
Based on these early reports, what was it the children saw?
We can’t go back – we’ll probably never know – but I found this section in Hind's 1996 book UFOs Over Africa curious. It refers to when a group of adults and children explored the supposed landing site on Tuesday:
Both boys also mentioned a very bright light coming from the top of the rise among the thick bush, almost like the sun reflecting off glass. Fungai said that at first he thought it could be the sun reflecting off the glass windows of a house, but then realized there were no houses up there.
The group searched the top of the hill for habitation, but the bush was thick and totally unoccupied.
When Tim Leach sent his video to London, it was pointed out to him that a very bright light obscured some of the film which had been taken when we were all together and investigating the uninhabited property. It was suggested that he return to the same spot and refilm that particular section. This he did two days later and on just such a clear day. This time there was no evidence of the bright light in the background. (Hind, p.231)
It seems likely there was something up on the hill, either a building the group didn't find with something unusual going on over the course of a few days (the 2005 map does show buildings behind the trees) or a mobile object - either way, whatever caused the bright light was gone two days later. It therefore seems likely that either this bright light was the UFO, with the children's imaginations filling in the details, or that at least some of the children didn't see the UFO at all but only saw this bright light. (Several report seeing merely a glint or flash.) Whatever it was, it was apparently less bright by Tuesday, but still bright enough to interfere with the footage.
If this bright light was not the UFO, and the children were fairly accurately seeing lights, windows, and a distinct shape to the object, then a vehicle reflecting sunlight is a possibility. As the vehicle drove off the "light" may have appeared to rise up (going over a bump) then disappear (as it moved into shade and stopped glinting).
As for the "aliens", given they were described as regular people with large eyes moving normally in the early reports, a couple of guys running around in sunglasses or masks fits most of the evidence before the stories became more elaborate and alien-like.
Some of the drawings certainly look like a camper trailer (as suggested by Gilles Fernandez) or van, with a row of windows and some with a defined "front" and "back". The children say they couldn’t see clearly because of the trees and long grass, which would hide the wheels. Bright sunlight would wash out other features.
And far be it from me to speculate on alien behavior, but why the heck were they on top of their spaceship? Isn't climbing up and sitting on your vehicle's roof something idiot teenagers would do for a laugh?
Maybe those dudes were playing a prank. Maybe they stopped for a spliff and realized the kids were curious, so they had some fun with it. But the fact remains, even if we'll never know exactly what was out there and why, from the earliest accounts there's no good evidence this was anything otherworldly.
We can’t go back – we’ll probably never know – but I found this section in Hind's 1996 book UFOs Over Africa curious. It refers to when a group of adults and children explored the supposed landing site on Tuesday:
Both boys also mentioned a very bright light coming from the top of the rise among the thick bush, almost like the sun reflecting off glass. Fungai said that at first he thought it could be the sun reflecting off the glass windows of a house, but then realized there were no houses up there.
The group searched the top of the hill for habitation, but the bush was thick and totally unoccupied.
When Tim Leach sent his video to London, it was pointed out to him that a very bright light obscured some of the film which had been taken when we were all together and investigating the uninhabited property. It was suggested that he return to the same spot and refilm that particular section. This he did two days later and on just such a clear day. This time there was no evidence of the bright light in the background. (Hind, p.231)
It seems likely there was something up on the hill, either a building the group didn't find with something unusual going on over the course of a few days (the 2005 map does show buildings behind the trees) or a mobile object - either way, whatever caused the bright light was gone two days later. It therefore seems likely that either this bright light was the UFO, with the children's imaginations filling in the details, or that at least some of the children didn't see the UFO at all but only saw this bright light. (Several report seeing merely a glint or flash.) Whatever it was, it was apparently less bright by Tuesday, but still bright enough to interfere with the footage.
If this bright light was not the UFO, and the children were fairly accurately seeing lights, windows, and a distinct shape to the object, then a vehicle reflecting sunlight is a possibility. As the vehicle drove off the "light" may have appeared to rise up (going over a bump) then disappear (as it moved into shade and stopped glinting).
As for the "aliens", given they were described as regular people with large eyes moving normally in the early reports, a couple of guys running around in sunglasses or masks fits most of the evidence before the stories became more elaborate and alien-like.
Some of the drawings certainly look like a camper trailer (as suggested by Gilles Fernandez) or van, with a row of windows and some with a defined "front" and "back". The children say they couldn’t see clearly because of the trees and long grass, which would hide the wheels. Bright sunlight would wash out other features.
And far be it from me to speculate on alien behavior, but why the heck were they on top of their spaceship? Isn't climbing up and sitting on your vehicle's roof something idiot teenagers would do for a laugh?
Maybe those dudes were playing a prank. Maybe they stopped for a spliff and realized the kids were curious, so they had some fun with it. But the fact remains, even if we'll never know exactly what was out there and why, from the earliest accounts there's no good evidence this was anything otherworldly.
A possible explanation for the Ariel School "UFO" - a van or similar vehicle, half-hidden in long grass, glinting in sun.
The area was part of the school's cross-country running track, a "beaten path" [Hesemann, 1997] through the bush, so it seems there was a way for a vehicle to get in and out. What about the failure to find vehicle tracks? It's possible the children misjudged the distance to the object and the "landing site" wasn't quite where they thought. (Remember that Hind reported the site was 100 m away based on what the children said, but later decided it was 200 m away - were the adults who investigated even looking in the right place?) Gunter Hofer said the earth was rock-hard following a severe drought, so this may also explain the lack of tracks.
What about the objects coming in along the power lines? This may have been an unrelated sighting, perhaps helicopters (a strong wind and a whirring sound were noted in Hind’s report) or even birds. Again, we’ll never know - but it’s odd that only two witnesses saw this: Stefan, who drew it, assuming I've correctly identified his drawing, and Barry, whose testimony we only have indirectly from Hind. In any case, Gunter Hofer recently stated the sighting along the power lines was the day before.
What about the objects coming in along the power lines? This may have been an unrelated sighting, perhaps helicopters (a strong wind and a whirring sound were noted in Hind’s report) or even birds. Again, we’ll never know - but it’s odd that only two witnesses saw this: Stefan, who drew it, assuming I've correctly identified his drawing, and Barry, whose testimony we only have indirectly from Hind. In any case, Gunter Hofer recently stated the sighting along the power lines was the day before.
Hypothesis: Puppets
Researcher Gideon Reid has hypothesized another solution to the Ariel sighting: a puppet performance (or rehearsal) by a touring theater group. This hypothesis treats the children's testimonies and drawings as essentially accurate, right down to the grey faces and stiff necks, and accounts for some of the more unusual drawings. It may even explain the flute noise. Read his detailed hypothesis Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.
Hypothesis: Dust devil
Oliver D. Smith wrote an article for SUNlite (May-June 2023, Vol. 15 no. 3 pp. 7-8) suggesting the sighting was a dust devil stirring up dirt and vegetation.
Establishing the myth
Over the next few weeks, at least two more interviews were done with the children in groups. The sighting is firmly established as a UFO and aliens. The official story is consolidated while details that don’t fit are discarded. Never mentioned again are the strong wind, the silence, the craft coming in along the power lines, the men in red and white.
The normal-sized man, who was too far for facial features other than large eyes to be seen, becomes two or more little men with big heads and tiny noses and mouths. One becomes bald. Now they run in slow motion. The ship is patterned in yellow, purple, green, silver. It’s orangey-red. It’s silverish.
Three years after the event, Hind will write that one child reported the beings "seemed to move 'in slow motion'" (Fate magazine, April 1997, p.48), along with other direct and indirect quotes that prove the slow motion quote comes from a later TV interview, not from anything a child personally told her four days after the event. Thus the "slow motion" description was not part of any initial testimony.
Only one child - Candice - is recorded speculating the aliens are “trying to tell us something.” Another (Marle[sp]) also gives one alien a motivation: he is “guarding” the ship while the other runs up and down “like he was confused” (notably not in slow motion).
The sighting on the day before, Thursday, is established: what we would call a tic-tac with flashing lights, most likely a distant plane.
Candice reports that she and her friends got closer to the object, thinking it was a house with sunlight reflecting off the windows. They didn’t get close enough to identify it as anything other than “this silver thing just shining”. Her friends Claire and Camilla’s drawings of the object are likewise featureless. Salma reports getting one meter from the alien but no other children saw this remarkable sight. Candice hears a flute – which her other friend present, Hailey, will later report to Dr Mack.
The normal-sized man, who was too far for facial features other than large eyes to be seen, becomes two or more little men with big heads and tiny noses and mouths. One becomes bald. Now they run in slow motion. The ship is patterned in yellow, purple, green, silver. It’s orangey-red. It’s silverish.
Three years after the event, Hind will write that one child reported the beings "seemed to move 'in slow motion'" (Fate magazine, April 1997, p.48), along with other direct and indirect quotes that prove the slow motion quote comes from a later TV interview, not from anything a child personally told her four days after the event. Thus the "slow motion" description was not part of any initial testimony.
Only one child - Candice - is recorded speculating the aliens are “trying to tell us something.” Another (Marle[sp]) also gives one alien a motivation: he is “guarding” the ship while the other runs up and down “like he was confused” (notably not in slow motion).
The sighting on the day before, Thursday, is established: what we would call a tic-tac with flashing lights, most likely a distant plane.
Candice reports that she and her friends got closer to the object, thinking it was a house with sunlight reflecting off the windows. They didn’t get close enough to identify it as anything other than “this silver thing just shining”. Her friends Claire and Camilla’s drawings of the object are likewise featureless. Salma reports getting one meter from the alien but no other children saw this remarkable sight. Candice hears a flute – which her other friend present, Hailey, will later report to Dr Mack.
Camilla's and Claire's drawings of non-descript glowing objects, proving they did not get very close. (Camilla later explains the objects were silver but she didn't have silver paint.)
These children aren’t lying – at no point do they appear to be intentionally deceptive. They’re checking their own memories against the group’s evolving story and adjusting to match. Those who didn’t see much truthfully report they didn’t see much – “All I saw was a silver flash,” says Anna. Others report what the group saw rather than what they personally saw. And because they are always in groups, they’re unlikely to deviate from the official story and force their classmates to deal with a contradiction.
Validating the myth
I wrote to the John E Mack Institute (June 2022) in the hope of getting full transcripts of the children's interviews. The response from their archivist indicated there were no accurate transcripts, unless Randall Nickerson generated transcripts while researching his film (Ariel Phenomenon, 2022). So, aliens landed their flying saucer at a school and communicated with children... yet the full account of the extraordinary event, as relayed to a renowned psychiatrist, was not transcribed and the full videos are hidden from view. Astonishing.
UPDATE: Aug 2022: The archivist tells me the Institute hopes to make the full interviews available - to visitors if not online for everyone - but not until mid-2023 as "There are exclusivity agreements that expire on the anniversary of the release of Ariel Phenomenon."
Dr John Mack’s bias is unfortunately on display from the moment he talks to the headmaster Mr Mackie, 2.5 months after the event at Ariel School. He never seems to consider that the children were mistaken, saw something mundane, fed off each other’s panic, and created a narrative about aliens that important outside adults quickly validated in defiance of the parents who didn’t believe them.
Mack does ask Mackie if it’s possible that “one imaginative child had a story and kind of stirred the rest of them?” This explanation is dismissed. Everyone agrees the children saw something, and nobody wants to suggest that with no adults around to explain what they were seeing, they misinterpreted it.
Two teachers in the staff meeting do express views along this line, but it’s not a theory that seems to have stuck, and in any case Mack tells them: “It’s what their experience is and how they find the adults around them being receptive to that experience.” The teachers are being told it's healthy to acknowledge the children’s fantasies as reality. Mackie doesn't want to deal with parents who may not like the school encouraging the alien invasion perspective. However, he is cooperative with allowing TV cameras into the school at least for a few years, though he generally looks bemused, uncomfortable, or roped-in during interviews.
There are seven recorded interviews with Dr John Mack available, although his assistant Dominique Callimanopulos said they talked to twelve children. Note that only three of these children end up “recalling” telepathic messages. I’ve reconstructed the interviews here. This is a summary of what each child reports, and how in some cases Mack led them to believe they'd received telepathic messages.
Nathaniel C redraws his spaceship with the platform (which he says is red) and confirms the men were “about my size”. These were not the little Greys that everyone seems to want them to be.
Emily B reports the now established alien-like behavior of running in slow motion (“bouncy as if a human would run on the moon” – but not that bouncy). Low-gravity walking is of course how a child might imagine an alien from another planet would move. She says the being ran a short distance, stared at the children “kind of astonished at what we were”, then ran back again. She also repeats Marle’s[sp?] testimony that one was “guarding” the ship (which is not to say he came up with it first).
Hailey’s interview is painful to watch – that child looks terrified. The available footage starts with her saying the flute noise scared her. Mack asks “What were you scared would happen?” – putting the idea in her head that something frightening was about to happen, which she had not mentioned at all (in the available clips). But now she’s required to come up with a frightening scenario, and she does: “I thought the aliens would attack me.” Even though she also says the aliens weren’t unfriendly and didn’t try to attack.
Kayleigh V describes the alien’s eyes and is asked to come up with a feeling when she looked at them. She says the eyes were evil, then has trouble coming up with a reason, settling for: “It looked evil because it was just staring at me.” Not good enough. Mack requires her to explain the alien’s motivation for its evil stare: “Staring at you… as if to do what?” and she finds one: “As if it wanted to come and take us.”
Francis’s interview is almost comical. He draws the alien’s eyes, describing them in matter-of-factly. Mack requires him to produce a feeling. Francis, smiling and having fun, reports shaking, feeling terrified, woozy… “Why did you keep looking?” Mack asks, even though Francis just said he stopped looking.
Rather than contradict the Very Nice and Important American, Francis attempts but fails to find a reason. Mack asks, “What do you imagine is his reason for visiting Earth?” This is a request to speculate ("We never force the child to imagine in the question." - Gilles Fernandez). Francis thinks long and hard before coming up with a half-hearted: “Pollution or something.” Mack’s excited response tells him he got the answer “right”.
Now Mack rephrases the question to turn it into a telepathic message: “And how did he get that idea of pollution across to you?” Remember, Francis was not recounting a message at all. He was imagining – as requested. After all that talk about the alien’s eyes making him woozy, he’s well-primed to give the correct response (though he sounds unsure): “The way he was staring?” Mack again rephrases in a definitive tone, to reinforce: “Somehow there was a message about pollution from the way he was staring?” And with relief, Francis says: “Yes.”
Turns out the idea didn't originate with aliens or with Francis's imagination: "There had been some prior discussion in school about what causes pollution, Francis told me, but this was the first time he had thought about it or spoken of it." [Mack, Passport to the Cosmos (1999), p. 97]
Emma K talks about her emotional reaction to the beings – she’s excited, scared, and happy about seeing something new. The eyes told her: “I want you,” which Mack helpfully suggests means: “I want you to come with me.” Emma reports to Mack (although not previously, in available footage) that she got 3 to 4 yards from the being.
There’s too much missing from this interview to know how she ends up with: “I think they want people to know that we’re actually making harm on this world and we mustn’t get too technowledged” – but given the sentence starts with “I think”, I expect Mack asked her: “What do you think they wanted?” He’s again asking her to speculate, which gives her permission to make up an answer, which she even tells him comes from her "conscience" (she possibly means sub-conscious)… yet he directs her to realize it was telepathic communication from the alien.
Lisel P’s interview is one leading question after another, starting with: “But the experience is still fresh in your mind, is that right?” She draws the being’s huge eyes and Mack asks with hand motions if she had a “sense” of connection with it. She says “No.”
By the end of the interview she’ll be telling him she received a full-blown apocalyptic message via these eyes.
When the parents gave permission for these children to be interviewed by a renowned child psychiatrist from Harvard, did they imagine their kids would walk out with implanted memories of irresistibly evil eyes transmitting apocalyptic visions, or at the very least a fear of being kidnapped by aliens?
UPDATE: Aug 2022: The archivist tells me the Institute hopes to make the full interviews available - to visitors if not online for everyone - but not until mid-2023 as "There are exclusivity agreements that expire on the anniversary of the release of Ariel Phenomenon."
Dr John Mack’s bias is unfortunately on display from the moment he talks to the headmaster Mr Mackie, 2.5 months after the event at Ariel School. He never seems to consider that the children were mistaken, saw something mundane, fed off each other’s panic, and created a narrative about aliens that important outside adults quickly validated in defiance of the parents who didn’t believe them.
Mack does ask Mackie if it’s possible that “one imaginative child had a story and kind of stirred the rest of them?” This explanation is dismissed. Everyone agrees the children saw something, and nobody wants to suggest that with no adults around to explain what they were seeing, they misinterpreted it.
Two teachers in the staff meeting do express views along this line, but it’s not a theory that seems to have stuck, and in any case Mack tells them: “It’s what their experience is and how they find the adults around them being receptive to that experience.” The teachers are being told it's healthy to acknowledge the children’s fantasies as reality. Mackie doesn't want to deal with parents who may not like the school encouraging the alien invasion perspective. However, he is cooperative with allowing TV cameras into the school at least for a few years, though he generally looks bemused, uncomfortable, or roped-in during interviews.
There are seven recorded interviews with Dr John Mack available, although his assistant Dominique Callimanopulos said they talked to twelve children. Note that only three of these children end up “recalling” telepathic messages. I’ve reconstructed the interviews here. This is a summary of what each child reports, and how in some cases Mack led them to believe they'd received telepathic messages.
Nathaniel C redraws his spaceship with the platform (which he says is red) and confirms the men were “about my size”. These were not the little Greys that everyone seems to want them to be.
Emily B reports the now established alien-like behavior of running in slow motion (“bouncy as if a human would run on the moon” – but not that bouncy). Low-gravity walking is of course how a child might imagine an alien from another planet would move. She says the being ran a short distance, stared at the children “kind of astonished at what we were”, then ran back again. She also repeats Marle’s[sp?] testimony that one was “guarding” the ship (which is not to say he came up with it first).
Hailey’s interview is painful to watch – that child looks terrified. The available footage starts with her saying the flute noise scared her. Mack asks “What were you scared would happen?” – putting the idea in her head that something frightening was about to happen, which she had not mentioned at all (in the available clips). But now she’s required to come up with a frightening scenario, and she does: “I thought the aliens would attack me.” Even though she also says the aliens weren’t unfriendly and didn’t try to attack.
Kayleigh V describes the alien’s eyes and is asked to come up with a feeling when she looked at them. She says the eyes were evil, then has trouble coming up with a reason, settling for: “It looked evil because it was just staring at me.” Not good enough. Mack requires her to explain the alien’s motivation for its evil stare: “Staring at you… as if to do what?” and she finds one: “As if it wanted to come and take us.”
Francis’s interview is almost comical. He draws the alien’s eyes, describing them in matter-of-factly. Mack requires him to produce a feeling. Francis, smiling and having fun, reports shaking, feeling terrified, woozy… “Why did you keep looking?” Mack asks, even though Francis just said he stopped looking.
Rather than contradict the Very Nice and Important American, Francis attempts but fails to find a reason. Mack asks, “What do you imagine is his reason for visiting Earth?” This is a request to speculate ("We never force the child to imagine in the question." - Gilles Fernandez). Francis thinks long and hard before coming up with a half-hearted: “Pollution or something.” Mack’s excited response tells him he got the answer “right”.
Now Mack rephrases the question to turn it into a telepathic message: “And how did he get that idea of pollution across to you?” Remember, Francis was not recounting a message at all. He was imagining – as requested. After all that talk about the alien’s eyes making him woozy, he’s well-primed to give the correct response (though he sounds unsure): “The way he was staring?” Mack again rephrases in a definitive tone, to reinforce: “Somehow there was a message about pollution from the way he was staring?” And with relief, Francis says: “Yes.”
Turns out the idea didn't originate with aliens or with Francis's imagination: "There had been some prior discussion in school about what causes pollution, Francis told me, but this was the first time he had thought about it or spoken of it." [Mack, Passport to the Cosmos (1999), p. 97]
Emma K talks about her emotional reaction to the beings – she’s excited, scared, and happy about seeing something new. The eyes told her: “I want you,” which Mack helpfully suggests means: “I want you to come with me.” Emma reports to Mack (although not previously, in available footage) that she got 3 to 4 yards from the being.
There’s too much missing from this interview to know how she ends up with: “I think they want people to know that we’re actually making harm on this world and we mustn’t get too technowledged” – but given the sentence starts with “I think”, I expect Mack asked her: “What do you think they wanted?” He’s again asking her to speculate, which gives her permission to make up an answer, which she even tells him comes from her "conscience" (she possibly means sub-conscious)… yet he directs her to realize it was telepathic communication from the alien.
Lisel P’s interview is one leading question after another, starting with: “But the experience is still fresh in your mind, is that right?” She draws the being’s huge eyes and Mack asks with hand motions if she had a “sense” of connection with it. She says “No.”
By the end of the interview she’ll be telling him she received a full-blown apocalyptic message via these eyes.
When the parents gave permission for these children to be interviewed by a renowned child psychiatrist from Harvard, did they imagine their kids would walk out with implanted memories of irresistibly evil eyes transmitting apocalyptic visions, or at the very least a fear of being kidnapped by aliens?
Reciting the myth
By the time Cynthia Hind publishes her reports in the following months, she has Mack’s implicit approval that aliens landed at Ariel and communicated telepathic messages to the students. The kids have averaged out their testimonies when retelling it, and so has she.
Hind's first write-up of her research was in the Dec 1994 MUFON UFO Journal where her phrasing implies that 62 children reported seeing three silver balls in the sky, disappearing and reappearing, that came down to land 100 meters away (amended to 200 meters in her book). This is completely untrue - one boy reported seeing UFOs in the air, and Gunter Hofer recently attributed that sighting to the day before. All the other children reported only an already landed UFO.
In the report, Hind describes the man as "approx. 1 metre in height". In her 1995 BUFORA Symposium Proceedings she indirectly cites Guy Gibbons saying the man was "about the size of a Standard Six child (approx. 1 metre)." This is ludicrous. The average four-year-old boy is one meter tall. The average 12-year-old (Standard Six) is 1.5 meters tall (4'11"). And on camera Guy (a Standard Six boy) indicates the being was a head taller than him, or about 5'6".
Hind's first write-up of her research was in the Dec 1994 MUFON UFO Journal where her phrasing implies that 62 children reported seeing three silver balls in the sky, disappearing and reappearing, that came down to land 100 meters away (amended to 200 meters in her book). This is completely untrue - one boy reported seeing UFOs in the air, and Gunter Hofer recently attributed that sighting to the day before. All the other children reported only an already landed UFO.
In the report, Hind describes the man as "approx. 1 metre in height". In her 1995 BUFORA Symposium Proceedings she indirectly cites Guy Gibbons saying the man was "about the size of a Standard Six child (approx. 1 metre)." This is ludicrous. The average four-year-old boy is one meter tall. The average 12-year-old (Standard Six) is 1.5 meters tall (4'11"). And on camera Guy (a Standard Six boy) indicates the being was a head taller than him, or about 5'6".
Excerpt from CDC Growth Chart
Eighteen months after the event when the kids are interviewed for Dutch TV, Lisel P speaks for the group and includes details she never reported earlier (two beings instead of one, running in slow motion, one big ship with smaller ones around it, multi-colored lights). A few of the kids stick to their own accounts – “I didn’t see any men”, while a group of boys discusses the exact colors of these lights that they know UFOs are supposed to have, after all, but which are a later addition to the story.
Another girl says the investigators who came to the school found burn marks and “all the living things had died” in the area – yet the investigators actually found nothing. She’s mixed in a sensational detail that one child reported. Again, she’s not lying – she’s reciting the myth.
Another girl says the investigators who came to the school found burn marks and “all the living things had died” in the area – yet the investigators actually found nothing. She’s mixed in a sensational detail that one child reported. Again, she’s not lying – she’s reciting the myth.
Feeding the myth
The witnesses as adults have given interviews in recent years, in advance of the Ariel Phenomenon movie which Randall Nickerson began making in 2008. That they still tell the same story (more or less) is seen as good evidence the kids didn't make the whole thing up.
But once again that misses the point: kids - or anyone else - can be truthful but also mistaken.
The incident at Ariel had profound effects on some of them, who still believe and testify that they saw a flying saucer land and aliens on that day. Since then, they've no doubt gone over and over the details - and talked to each other as well - and those details are changing yet again. Two witnesses now report they got within arm's length of an alien - something neither they, nor any other child, reported at the time. It's not something the other children on the playground would miss, surely? - seeing their classmates come face-to-face with aliens?
The UFO now buzzed like a machine bee. The aliens are now floating. Or, they ran not only in slow motion but in a strange looping pattern - covering a distance, then disappearing, reappearing at the start, and running the same distance again, repeatedly. This sure sounds like someone is recalling and replaying the memory of a single event, not the event itself repeating. None of this supernatural behavior was reported at the time by the very witnesses now "remembering" it.
Which goes to show how malleable and how fallible memory is. In every other aspect of life we know this is true - we forget things, we remember things incorrectly, and of course we misperceive. When it comes to a UFO sighting from childhood, why would adult perception and memories be deemed accurate? Even when we have filmed evidence that the sighting as originally reported was not remarkable, and that memories have changed?
But once again that misses the point: kids - or anyone else - can be truthful but also mistaken.
The incident at Ariel had profound effects on some of them, who still believe and testify that they saw a flying saucer land and aliens on that day. Since then, they've no doubt gone over and over the details - and talked to each other as well - and those details are changing yet again. Two witnesses now report they got within arm's length of an alien - something neither they, nor any other child, reported at the time. It's not something the other children on the playground would miss, surely? - seeing their classmates come face-to-face with aliens?
The UFO now buzzed like a machine bee. The aliens are now floating. Or, they ran not only in slow motion but in a strange looping pattern - covering a distance, then disappearing, reappearing at the start, and running the same distance again, repeatedly. This sure sounds like someone is recalling and replaying the memory of a single event, not the event itself repeating. None of this supernatural behavior was reported at the time by the very witnesses now "remembering" it.
Which goes to show how malleable and how fallible memory is. In every other aspect of life we know this is true - we forget things, we remember things incorrectly, and of course we misperceive. When it comes to a UFO sighting from childhood, why would adult perception and memories be deemed accurate? Even when we have filmed evidence that the sighting as originally reported was not remarkable, and that memories have changed?
Sources
This page combines information from all the other Ariel pages on the site, each of which lists sources at the end. Also
- UFOs Over Africa, Cynthia Hind, 1996
- Cynthia Hind, 1995 BUFORA Symposium Proceedings, pp. 35-38
- CDC Stature-for age and Weight-for-age percentiles, 2 to 20 years: Boys (2000)
(c) Charlie Wiser 2022
