ADULT TESTIMONIES |
DRAWINGS |
If you have any information on who drew the unnamed drawings, or if you find more or higher quality genuine drawings from Ariel, please let me know.
On this page are drawings from 60+ different children from Ariel School. Cynthia Hind said "42 or so" had been completed when she visited the school on Tuesday. The others must have been drawn later. We know the 42 drawings were done on Monday (3 days after the sighting) because she writes:
[On the weekend] "I made several phone calls. One of them was to Colin Mackie, headmaster of Ariel school, and I suggested to him that he arrange to have the children draw pictures of what they had seen before they had time to discuss it among themselves." (Hind, UFOs Over Africa, 1996, p. 223-4) (emphasis mine)
The children had had the rest of the school day on Friday to discuss what they had seen, as well as the entire weekend. When Hind met with one child on the weekend, her friends were there - all witnesses, all discussing it among themselves. The idea these drawings were made without cross-contamination is unfounded, yet she boldly concludes: "there had been no collaboration among them." (p. 224)
The first few drawings below are from witnesses for whom we have testimony, followed by the other named drawings, and finally the unnamed drawings. Some of these are obviously photocopies or tracings - I've included the original as well, where possible. I have identified some drawings based on Hind's description in her book, as indicated.
Quotes for each child are in the order the child gave them - in the days after the event and up to 3 years later.
Notes:
Of the seven* children who drew multiple ships:
On this page are drawings from 60+ different children from Ariel School. Cynthia Hind said "42 or so" had been completed when she visited the school on Tuesday. The others must have been drawn later. We know the 42 drawings were done on Monday (3 days after the sighting) because she writes:
[On the weekend] "I made several phone calls. One of them was to Colin Mackie, headmaster of Ariel school, and I suggested to him that he arrange to have the children draw pictures of what they had seen before they had time to discuss it among themselves." (Hind, UFOs Over Africa, 1996, p. 223-4) (emphasis mine)
The children had had the rest of the school day on Friday to discuss what they had seen, as well as the entire weekend. When Hind met with one child on the weekend, her friends were there - all witnesses, all discussing it among themselves. The idea these drawings were made without cross-contamination is unfounded, yet she boldly concludes: "there had been no collaboration among them." (p. 224)
The first few drawings below are from witnesses for whom we have testimony, followed by the other named drawings, and finally the unnamed drawings. Some of these are obviously photocopies or tracings - I've included the original as well, where possible. I have identified some drawings based on Hind's description in her book, as indicated.
Quotes for each child are in the order the child gave them - in the days after the event and up to 3 years later.
Notes:
Of the seven* children who drew multiple ships:
- Two children drew them in the air (Barry D & Stefan), one with power lines and the other without but his testimony was that they were along the power lines. Both made all the ships the same size. Gunter Hofer recently assigned these to the Thursday sighting.
- Three children drew them on the ground among trees (Emily B, Emma K. Camilla) and they all drew one large object with several smaller ones.
- One (unnamed) child drew one large and three small ships apparently in the air, but also drew an alien in the foreground, so it's likely the ships at the top of the page are meant to represent landed ships in the background.
- A seventh child (Shaun) child drew one large and 2 small ships without context, but this was in 1996.
- None of the "aliens" appear to have a band around the head, as first reported by Luke.
- One wears a sash, which wasn't in any child's testimony.
- About half the 20-odd beings show a normal head, and half a possibly large head.
- 11 beings have no features on the face. About half the beings with facial features have normal eyes, and about half have slightly larger or much larger eyes.
- About 16 drawings show an object with windows, portholes, and/or doors.
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CLAIRE R
Grade 6 "I saw this maroon color in the sky. Me and my friends were following it. Then we saw this light in the msasa trees." "This figure... running in slow motion, and one poked his head up and looked at me out of the grass." "I couldn't see the eyes or the nose or the mouth. It was just blank, like a piece of paper." "We... saw a reddish light glittering in the sky and as it appeared and disappeared... We saw a big white silver glowing object... We saw aliens in tight black suits, faces exposed, who seemed to be walking around like in slow motion. You couldn't really see the ship because it was like a huge light." |
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DANIEL M
Grade 7 "I saw this silver thing in amongst this clump of trees with this one thing sitting on the side and another thing sort of like running up and down the top... It almost looked like a real person except it was fairly plump... At first I thought it was just some boy from the compound playing around, but... it looked more like our hair, it wasn’t curly. That thing almost looked like a hippie." |
Fungai's drawing for Mack
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FUNGAI M
Fungai is named Francis by Hind. Mack addresses him by name (Fungai) and the drawings of the alien match, so we know it's the same child. Age 11 [The eye area] was all black in here... The pupils were white like that. Hind describes his drawing: "Francis [Fungai] also showed this 'mist-like vapour' on top of the drawing." [p. 233] 
Count Otto Black, commenting on the BadUfos blog, points out the likeness of this drawing to the spaceship from the Invaders TV show (1967-8).
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LISEL P (LISIL)
Grade 6
Grade 6
Lisel drawing for John Mack (~Nov 1994)
Lisel drawing for Michael Hesemann (1997)
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"Jupiter 2" spaceship from Lost In Space TV series (1965-68)
"I saw a silver sort of thing, it was shaped [circles her finger], it was like lying down like this on the side. And I saw a black man, he was just in black, and he had big eyes... I thought it was an alien, and then I thought maybe it was the gardener or someone."
"I couldn’t see his nose, his nose was quite small. And his mouth was quite small. His eyes were shaped like kinda pointy." From later interviews (clearly influenced by the school's standard story): "We saw something shiny and we saw two people... One of them was running in slow motion up across the ship and the other one was standing beside the ship." "[the UFOs] were making different color lights, like green, red... blue and then purple." "...we saw a strange silver thing... It was round, like half a bullet of silver or a plate..." We saw two people. One had long black hair, the other one was bald, and they both had large eyes. [1997, translated from German] |
Lisel making the drawing for Michael Hesemann (1997) - screenshot of video clip from Ariel Phenomenon (2002)
Lisel's drawing for Ariel Phenomenon (Nickerson 2022, but probably filmed well before The Phenomenon 2020). She draws two figures (but only ever mentioned one) including one with hair (which other children reported but she did not). Despite this, she says: "It was easy to put down because that's exactly what I'd seen. Something that I'll never ever forget."
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Lisel's drawing for The Phenomenon (Fox 2020). In both this and her other adult drawing, the craft has lost its surface features making it look less like the Lost in Space TV spaceship.
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Emily B's drawing for Mack
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EMILY B
Grade 7 "I saw the little black men. They had longish hair and it was all black. And they had big black eyes, that’s all I saw. I saw a glimpse. They kind of turned around and stared and then went back into a kind of like ship. There was like sort of one big one and quite a few little ones." "...they were kind of just like looking at us. They were like kind of astonished at what we were... I saw one over here and I saw one of these men by the spaceship, looks like it was guarding by the big spaceship. And there was another one running in the grass. He ran normally like us, but bouncy as if a human would run on the moon... they seemed to have stiff necks." |
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ORIANA F
"under the silver glittery thing I saw this black - looks like a stick but was very thin... All I saw was a long thing on a silver thing." "It had orangey-red like glittering thing except when moving at the side. And I saw like a black thing sitting on top of it. I don’t know if it was a branch or the thing - the part of the alien where it was sitting on." Notes: (1) See the similar drawing to Oriana's, towards the bottom of this page. Their "aliens" are very different from anyone else's, suggesting one of them simply copied the imaginative drawing of the other. (2) This color image comes from Encounters (2023) and doesn't include the name, which was perhaps photoshopped out. The line drawing has the name. |
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SALMA S
Grade 6 "He looked like, definitely not a human... He had a big head and big black eyes and was dressed in a black bodysuit, tight fitting... [Arms and legs] like a human’s but he definitely didn’t look like one, his head was much too big." |
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STEFAN (?)
Mackie appears to introduce Stefan to Hind as the boy who did the power lines drawing. He saw a craft in a different location. Hind reported [UFO AFRINEWS #11, p.22] that Barry D saw the objects come in along the power lines, possibly from her phone call to him the weekend after the sighting. Note: Gunter Hofer in a recent interview said that the objects seen coming in along the power lines (which Hind reports as part of the Friday sighting, or at least does not distinguish the two events) were actually part of the Thursday sighting. Meanwhile, all the other witnesses were vague about the UFO landing. It was simply there. |
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BOY 4 interviewed by de Nooij
[this appears to be the drawing he was holding while speaking] "It looked like a round shape. Sort of like a plate, so like two plates... on top of each other. Then there was looked like the hatch foot and also looked like in between two trees, you couldn't see that clearly and it was just silver all over. I didn't see any men..." |
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BARRY D
Marle[sp?] says he and Barry saw a "circle" craft in the air. Hind reports that Barry saw three craft come in along the power lines with flashing red lights. They disappeared, reappeared almost immediately somewhere else, disappeared again. This happened 3 times, then they landed near gum trees. The largest object was the size of his thumbnail held at arm's length. |
Emma K's recreation of her drawing. Note the multiple ships in the drawing on the right, which match her drawing as a child. The alien does not match.
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EMMA K
Drawing identified from the above description and Emma's drawing as an adult. Hind: "In your drawing you’ve got not only the main object there but you’ve got several others." "They [objects] went 1 meter up from the ground and then they just disappeared... [The creature] was very very shiny black... I only saw a glimpse of [his face]... I only remember that his eyes were quite big... I just thought it was some kind of alien from a different planet." "his eyes looked at me as if [stares] uh, I want you... He was just staring and we like tried not to look at him, cuz he was quite scary."
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CAMILLA
"I didn’t have a silver crayon. So I did it yellow." "A silver round thing and three in the sky and three black objects running around. They had big eyes like a cat's eyes and they were really thin and tall." [Hesemann 1997] |
Emily T now describes a very intense encounter with the beings, but did not draw them.
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EMILY T
Grade 3 [adult testimony]"We heard a high-pitched frequency sound, and we saw a flash and a craft... two beings were hopping along the side... they weren’t touching the ground. They were almost like mimicking us. All of a sudden they were in front of us. I’d describe them as being about an arm’s reach. Telegraphic images started going across my face. It’s communication through the eyes..." |
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ROBYN S
~Age 8 "It was as if it had landed in the trees. It wasn’t perfectly round, but rather oval, and the top was domed, it wasn’t flat. And lights went all around it. Doors or anything like that were not visible." (1997) [translated from German] (This may be her picture drawn in 1997, not 1994) |
Part of Tertia's original drawing, reproduced in Hesemann's 1997 article. The line drawing appears to be a tracing.
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TERTIA
~Age 8 [Thursday sighting] "it was going along slowly... and we thought, 'Yeah that is a UFO.' It flew along for about a minute or so, and then it disappeared but it looked like a cigar, a cigarette." "I thought to myself, That can't be an aeroplane because it was very shiny. It looked kind of like a cigarette, you know. It was a long thing, and then on the end it was all shiny." "I didn’t see aliens or anything like that, I was too far away, only a shiny object and there were many lights all around it." (1997) [translated from German; note Hesemann misnames her Trisha in his article] |
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 Brian R's drawing from his storybook
BRIAN R
From his storybook: "I saw a door of the UFO... I saw a thing glinting by the tree." |
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 John W's drawing from his storybook
JOHN W
From his storybook: "[My friend] showed me the UFO. It was silver in the trees and it had landed on the ground and it had lights around it which were flashing. They seemed to be silver." "It was like a mirror, it reflected the sun, and we looked at it more closely and saw that it was in the shape of two saucers placed one on top of the other, and it was silver." [Hesemann 1997] |
Ross S's drawing from his storybook: he drew a landed UFO for Friday, and "a week later" a UFO in the air: "My sister and friend showed me".
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ROSS S
"[I] saw this silverish type thing in the bushes" From his storybook: "...someone said there's a UFO... I first thought it was a rock but then lights appeared round it." |
Nathaniel C's drawing for Mack
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NATHANIEL C
"I saw a sort of like ship landed on the ground... it had a round top and it was flat like that around the sides. Just a sort of like a platform coming around the side. We saw a black man running around. From where we looked he was about this small [1 meter] but we were quite a way away so he was about our size." "It was silver and the ring around it was red. There were lights around here... One of them was running in the trees and the other was running across the ship. They were about my size." |
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SHAUN
Drawn in 1996 for de Nooij interview |
LLOYD
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PAUL T, grade 7
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AMY H
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SEAN R
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TARA: "Three men were sitting on a spaceship."
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TANATSA(?) (according to description in Hind, p.233)
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Note similarity to Oriana's drawing above. Both children were 9, presumably in the same class.
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MAUD (according to Hind's description, p. 234). Hind noted similarity to Tertia's drawing. Three girls saw a "cigarette"-shaped UFO in the sky on Thursday.
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SHENDL (according to description in Hind, p.233)
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(c) Charlie Wiser 2022
