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You’re tuned to the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Corporation Radio 1.
And here is a special announcement.
If anyone has video footage of the meteorite showers–or
whatever they were–please get in touch with
Tim Leach of BBC Television very urgently.
BBC Television News.
I was not so frightened in the war zones
of Angola or Rwanda as I was when this story hit.
Hundreds of people today phoned the ZBC
and BBC correspondent in Harare saying they sighted
an unidentified flying object last night.
These things were flying in a pattern
and there was no sound.
No wings, no nothing. Shiny oval thing.
Hello?
Hello, my name’s Tim Leach from BBC Television News.
I understand that you, you had some strange experience.
Yes, that’s right.
It was a bright, radiant light.
I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
It was the absence of noise I didn’t like.
There has been much excitement after hundreds of people
have reported seeing a mysterious bright object.
We suddenly looked up and we saw this thing
coming over the top of the hill.
As it sort of came abreast of us,
it suddenly changed from this glow to,
to let’s say two big red-orange balls.
No sound.
Look.
It’s going. Is that what a meteorite does?
No way. No way. It’s incredible.
Eyewitnesses say it had a bright light at the front
and flew at great speed.
The object was also seen by two international airline pilots
who reported it to air traffic control at Johannesburg Airport.
There were three of us that saw it,
myself, the copilot, and the pilot
in another aircraft.
South Africa’s top meteorologist says
there’s no rational explanation for the bright light
and it could be one of the most widely reported
unidentified flying objects in recent time.
None of it made sense. So I phoned the BBC in London
and I said,"What is this meteorite shower?"
And they said, "No, no, no, no, no,
it’s got not nothing to do with, with Africa or Zimbabwe.
The meteorites come down in an arc;
they don’t fly parallel to the earth."
"What about the,
the, the, this Russian debris that’s coming down?"
"No. That doesn’t work either. Um, sorry." Well, what is this?
Viewers with more information can either contact
the ZBC or BBC in Harare.
For at least three or four days,
people from all over Zimbabwe were phoning us at the BBC
to say, "We’ve seen something weird."
It was a helicopter or a what? No, no.
It was just a big, round ball. The bottom was flat,
but it was round like the top of my wall by my house.
And then I got this call from Ariel School, Ruwa,
that the children had seen this UFO landing
and these funny men in, in body-clinging suits,
black suits. Uh, weird.
I went roaring out there in the car with my sound man.
Ariel School,
19th September ’94, 12:12 local time.
Could you tell me what you saw on, on Friday?
Well, it’s, it was just glinting in the trees
and this, like, there was a man and he walked towards us
and he walked back again.
And what did he look like?
His, his face was like this and his eyes were down here.
Like, what, further down his face?
Yeah. Much further down than us,
because our eyes are here and his are down.
You don’t think it was somebody in fancy dress
doing a prank or something? - No.
And how tall about?
About say there. Sitting on the spaceship.
How did you know it was a spaceship?
It wasn’t a helicopter or something like that?
No.
Well, it looked like it was like,
like a disc, like a round...
And whereabouts was it? It was in the trees.
In the trees over there, between the big pole.
And did you girls see that as well?
Yes. Yes.
We asked them to draw pictures of what they saw on Friday
and after looking at those,
I definitely feel that they did see something.
What do you think that was?
I agree that it could be something that we, um,
are not common with.
But to actually say that it was a UFO,
I would be, uh, reluctant to make a decision like that.
All the other journalists in Harare
were not taking this seriously.
But I took it seriously because this story
got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and...
I need to know what was, what was going on.
Who do I talk to?
And then I spoke to some contacts
and they put me in touch with Cynthia Hind,
the person for UFOs in Zimbabwe.
That Cynthia Hind’s coming out
and I believe she bringing a Geiger counter.
She did mention it on the telephone.
I think we’ll wait until she comes and see what happens then.
Just come and sit on these chairs along here.
All right, these are the grade sevens,
the oldest children here at the school
who say they saw something.
Did you all see something? Yes.
What’s your name?
I, I, I’m Daniel Mandy and, and I saw this,
this silver thing in, in amongst this clump of,
of trees with this one thing sitting on, on, on the side and,
and another thing sort of like running up
and down the, the top.
It had a, a long top
and it then it was flat like that along the sides.
What was around the sides?
Just a, um, sort of like a platform coming down the side.
Platform. Did you see anything else?
Yes. We saw a black man running around. Just...
A little man or what?
From where we looked, he was about this small,
but we were quite a way away. So he was about our-size.
What did you see?
I saw something silver on the ground amongst the trees
and a person in black. And that’s all I saw.
You saw a person alongside the silver thing?
Yes.
Have you heard about UFOs before this?
No.
You didn’t know anything about it?
So it was something quite new to you?
- Yes. - Were you afraid?
Yes.
Nobody should panic. We don’t know what it is...
No, not at all.
...and it could be just some...
There was Russian satellite went up on the 27th of August
and it’s possibility something came down.
But it would not account for the figure you saw.
But I think for moment, you should keep everybody away
until we’ve had some analysis, you know, of what’s going on.
It was in between the gap of this one building,
behind this pile of dirt.
Yes, I can see that.
Where did they think it was?
They, they told it was in between these two poles here.
In between these two poles? Yeah.
Gunther, can you try the Geiger first?
Yeah, OK. Do you want me to hold it?
What equipment have you brought with you?
Well, Gunther is a highly technical chap
and because it’s difficult and very expensive in this country,
he’s made he’s made his own Geiger counter.
We’re going to check it out
and see if there’s any radioactivity there.
If there’s really some changes the Geiger would
be going faster. But, um...
So is this just normal background radiation?
Yeah, this is about normal.
Yeah, I was helping Cynthia out more on technical terms.
So Cynthia found me quite useful
in maybe explaining away certain phenomena.
Maybe it was a certain time of the year
where certain meteorologic events occurred,
like the Leonid meteor shower or the Perseid meteor shower.
So we used to try to eliminate all the natural events
that might be happening in the sky
before we thought maybe there might be something more to it.
But how skeptical are you?
Well, I would like to see some evidence.
You don’t think it would be appropriate at the moment to...
No. I haven’t.
But from what I see from some of the children,
I do believe that something happened.
I’m not all that gullible.
But this to me is a very typical case
and I’ve handled several hundreds in southern Africa.
I certainly believe the children.
There’s some extremely interesting pictures
and there’s certainly some of the things that tell me
they couldn’t have known about. Impossible.
I can remember it like it was yesterday.
It was easy to put down, because that’s exactly what I had seen.
So, you know, it’s something that I’ll never, ever forget.
In ’94 I was in grade 2 at the time at Ariel.
My teacher was Mrs. Chipo.
What I can remember was we were playing around in the,
in the playground area.
It was one of those rare occasions when the teachers
were having a staff meeting, so it was quite a long break.
We were happy to have those because there was more playtime.
And there was, like, a flash of light.
And it was bright, bright silver and everything. It shot past.
At the time, I mean, I remember it well.
We were on the field playing our football and a friend of mine,
Vimbai, said, "Hey, Luke, do you see that in the sky?
What is that? What is that?"
So I was looking up and I saw it.
And it was for want of a better word, you know, a UFO.
I wasn’t sure what it was.
But it was a silver object that was in the sky.
And we were both, like, looking at it.
And I only saw it for possibly a few seconds.
And it seemed to,
to move off a bit and then suddenly vanished.
And we were, were both sort of standing there looking up,
saying, you know, "Geez, what was that?"
But didn’t put too much thought to it
and obviously went straight back to playing our football match.
A few minutes later, there’s a whole sort of commotion going on
and there were a whole bunch of kids
down at the bottom of the, the playground.
We were sitting on one of the logs that we always sat on,
eating our lunch,
and I noticed that people were pointing at this one thing,
or something, in the bush.
And I got up to see what was going on
because one person actually started crying.
And, you know, like I said,
because we were the older group on the playground,
we all, people in my year, um, just were kind of concerned
about what was going on with everyone else.
There was a big group of kids all sort of gathered at,
right at the bottom of the playing field pointing
and making a noise and shouting and screaming.
And I went up to sort of see what was going on,
try to, you know, um, calm everybody down.
You know, and my initial thought
was somebody had hurt themselves or something.
OK. So if I was there.
So, say, a couple of hundred meters up it was right there.
So it seemed to be right on the cross-country course.
I remember seeing two flashing lights.
And I saw, like, a big silver,
like a saucer kind of thing that was hovering.
And then it landed or hovered on a, on a stone.
And I saw two figures come out. Really black, but their face,
you could actually see not much of their face,
but it was really, really white in color.
The skin pigmentation was very–I don’t,
I don’t know how your can...
Pale doesn’t even, it, it looked plastic.
You know? It looked like, uh,
someone who had too much, too much Botox.
Now when I think about it,
I’m like, that’s, that’s exactly what...
At the time I didn’t have a color or word for it.
Um, but that’s exactly what it looked like.
It was very smooth and soft-looking.
It looked like it, you’d slide right off
if you tried to touch him. He had, just, yeah.
I suddenly realized that it,
that’s not, he’s not quite normal.
I didn’t actually know about UFOs and aliens at the time.
So I just thought he was a strange person.
But it was the eyes that, that made him.
So, that kind of shape. I think the eyes were obviously
a lot more fluid, round, shiny, protruded.
Almost like rugby balls or America,
you know, American footballs.
Huge eyes on the, on the side of his face.
And so I looked over and sort of thought
I could see something unusual going on in the bushes as well.
And I was like, yeah, there is. There’s got to be something.
It looks like there’s something there.
And the realization that there was something moving–and
it appeared to be coming towards us as well–that,
I felt scared at that point.
The panic spread.
I was looking for my for my brother and sister
to make sure that they were OK. And when I did have them,
then we continued to look onward.
They just seemed confused. Like, what is going on?
One moment we’re playing, next moment everybody’s looking,
pointing and everybody’s in a panic.
That was a little bit scary.
I just turned twenty eight.
I ended a relationship. I was engaged for six years.
You know, this whole topic definitely weighed
on our relationship.
So I moved in with my folks.
I’m thankful that I’m here right now
and with my family who supports me.
As for future goals, plans, work, I have no idea.
But I feel alone.
"Dear Emily, I hope this finds you well.
As you may have seen on our Facebook page, next month
we will be celebrating our 25th year as a school.
I know it’s short notice coming from Canada,
but we’d love to have you join us.
If you can’t make it,
know that you are always welcome to visit your old home.
Love, Judy."
It brings up a lot for me.
It’s a reminder of pain,
of holding something inside.
I don’t want to hold onto those feelings anymore.
We haven’t got all day. This lady and gentlemen
are from South African Broadcasting Corporation.
They’ve come to talk to some of you.
Hi everybody. My name’s Nicki.
OK, and that’s Ivan with the camera.
And we’re going to actually speak to a few of you
who did see something that day
and ask you what happened, what you felt when you saw it
and that sort of thing, you know.
So very, very casual.
You must say exactly what you want to say, OK?
What were you doing on the day?
Well, I was walking and I saw this maroon color in the sky.
And me and my friends were following it.
And then we saw this light in the in the Msasa trees.
Then I saw something shining and somebody sitting on it.
And they were wearing pure black.
We saw this black figure running in a slow motion.
The strange thing was it seemed to be
in very slow motion,
which to us seemed very interesting
because Cynthia had come across this kind of event
in some of our other cases around the world
where she had reports of, you know, alien encounters.
Cynthia, how long
have you been investigating UFO phenomena?
Well, about 17 years.
I’m, I’m the continental coordinator in Africa for MUFON.
MUFON has over 5,000 members, most of whom are scientists.
You interviewed the children. What was your conclusion?
I believe them.
I believe they saw what they said they saw.
I think that perhaps some have been influenced by others
and they’ve added a little bit here and a little bit there,
but basically they put, drew in their drawings many things
that I don’t think that they could know about.
How big was the figure?
It was about as big as a grade six.
How tall would have said?
Maybe about three and a half feet.
There’s another one, he, he, he was a bit short.
As an investigator I’ve learned that
if they tell exactly the same story,
then there’s corroboration, they’ve got together
and they’re doing it.
But if they tell a similar story but from different viewpoints,
to me, that’s the truth.
We saw two of them, one was standing in front of the ship
and then the other one had, um, long hair.
But the one was standing in front
didn’t have any hair at all.
Show me with your hands how big the eyes were.
They were shaped like something like that.
Big head and big black eyes
and was dressed in a black body suit.
What did you think it was? I don’t know.
I just thought it was some type of alien
from a different planet.
What are they talking about? I had no experience of UFOs
or anything like that apart from seeing Steven Spielberg’s film,
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" or whatever.
I just thought they're all bonkers!
I was just a hard-assed journalist, skeptical as,
as everybody would be! What is this? I want to know.
I mean, the BBC want to know. What is going on here?
There’s a truth behind, you know,
your environment shaping who you are.
For me, growing up in Africa was normal. It was just home.
You’re growing up in an area
where you need to be aware of your environment.
This is not living in America.
You’re in Africa.
You’re in Zimbabwe.
We didn’t grow up around TV. People like to joke about.
"Oh, did you have running water?" Yes.
That was, that was luxury, actually.
That’s something you were lucky to have.
Or electricity, because the places that we went to a lot,
I mean, they’d have nothing.
You live in a mud hut. Thatched roof.
You live every single day to live and hope you can.
Yeah, so it was completely different.
OK, mom, dad. Do you remember this place?
We used to stop here all the time.
This is really... I feel at home.
If you go back to Ariel,
it means I get to go back to the spot where it happened.
I don’t know how I’m going to feel.
I don’t know what it’s going to bring up.
But I feel really blessed to be able to do that in my life.
My family’s religious
and we came to Africa for mission work.
My brother and sister also attended Ariel.
They were very traumatized about the event.
Talking about it in a religious environment
wasn’t something that was allowed to be done.
I was very quickly removed out of the situation,
so it was pack up everything and we flew into Canada.
I didn’t get to have the opportunity of growing up
with the friends in that environment
who had had that occur to them.
I’m looking for to, uh, reconnect again.
I haven’t been back to Ariel for just over 20 years.
Oh, my gosh!
Holy... And the classrooms.
Hi! How are you doing?
Good. How are you?
Good. Emily.
Ms. Bates is right in there.
How are you? How are you?
I’m good.
Yeah. And you?
Good. I’m really glad to be back.
Bit of a shock to come... ...back.
Yeah. Come home, whatever.
Home. Yes, home.
It is! ’Tis.
Home. Always.
Yes.
It’s good to see you.
Thank you. Oh, my goodness.
That’s Rachel. This is Paul, my brother,
who also attended the school. So we’re a family of three here.
So will someone be able to show me around the school?
Victor is going to show you around.
Oh, hi, Victor! Emily.
Nice, nice to meet you. It’s nice to meet you, too.
I’m walking where I used to step.
Yeah. It, it feels incredible.
Today we’ve got a special visitor in our midst.
It’s Emily Trim
and she was here at the Ariel School 21 years ago.
Was Mr. Mackie here when you guys were here?
Yes. Do you remember Mrs. Hwacha?
Yes. Yes.
She was I think my grade three teacher.
Was she? Yes.
Then she came and,
sort of like stalking in the supermarket, in SPAR,
when you were phoning me. And the trolley was full of...
Are you having a good day?
Yes.
Yes? Is it lunchtime right now for you?
Yes. Yes. Wonderful.
There were the boundary logs here.
And that field wasn’t there. Uh, so it was all brush and...
And you were guys went down to the logs?
Well, I was right on the log when it actually happened.
You were there? Yes. I was here.
And you saw them? You are the ones who drew those...
Yes. ...funny pictures.
Yes. Oh, OK.
Yeah.
Nice to meet you. Where are you staying?
With Ms. Bates. OK. OK. OK.
We have the shower down there.
And this is your room here. Everyone’s got a fan.
I don’t have mozzie nets, I’m afraid.
You don’t have what? Mosquito nets.
It’s OK.
And what did your other friends say?
They were scared.
We wanted to tell the teachers but some of us were too shy to.
We, we ran down to the teachers
and we went into the office
and we started telling the teachers.
And then they said maybe there’s nothing.
And how did that make you feel
when they said maybe there’s nothing?
Well, we felt very sad because we did see something.
Cheryl, what was your reaction when Candice and Teagan
told you about the UFOs
and the aliens that they saw on Friday?
Um, I don’t know, really. I found it very hard to believe.
I’ve always taught my children seeing is believing
and unfortunately I didn’t see,
so I don’t know if I believe. We always joke
that the children saw these little green men come out.
And they say, "No, mummy, but we did see."
So I don’t know. I do believe Candace to a certain extent."
What did the man look like?
Why would they make up such a story?
And kids of that age, 6 to 9, 10,
they wouldn’t be able to sustain such a story
for such a long time.
And one of them’s going to crack.
And then it will be,
then it will be unrolling a ball of string, you know,
all the rest of them would, would, um, crack as well.
So would you want to talk about it to friends
or other people you meet in the future when you get older?
Or do you just want to forget about it?
No, I don’t want to forget about it.
I want to keep it in because I know that it was true.
And I want to talk to other people about it.
They were fascinated.
They accepted it in their full stripe.
They knew what they’d seen. They’re not stupid.
Children are so much more open than adults.
I’ve always kept an open mind about the life, the universe,
and everything, God, Buddha, whatever you want to call it.
But this story was something I hadn’t encountered before.
In October of 1983 I went to Zimbabwe
which was going through massacres
and I went all over Africa being a camera man,
doing what’s called "bang bang", which is serious war zone.
I had done a lot.
I’d done Angola, Rwanda, Liberia, Nigeria.
I’d done lots of war zones.
A lot of friends and my crew were killed.
And I survived. That was my job.
But this was a bolt out of the blue.
I mean, I wasn’t expecting this because I was, I was a realist.
It was totally out of my remit.
I could handle war zones but I could not handle this UFO thing.
It just didn’t make sense.
And that’s when I had to call in extra help.
Cynthia Hind put me in touch with Dr. John Mack.
And, uh, I got his number at Harvard University.
Tim Leach
from BBC Television News in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Message for Dr. John Mack.
This concerns a UFO sighting over a school
where it hovered, landed, a black man got out.
But of course we’re having difficulty
being taken seriously despite it being the BBC.
Please call me as soon as you can. Thank you.
I said, "Listen, I don’t know what’s going on,
but this is way outside my normal ballgame.
What do I do?" And John Mack said,
"As soon as I can break away I’m coming over."
And he did.
With his credentials
as head of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard,
I sat up and took notice. That took it to another depth.
And their stories are consistent...There’s
some details that are not consistent,
like the boys saying the two different days and...
Do you think it’s possible that one, uh, imaginative child,
uh, had a story and kind of stirred the, the rest of them?
No, I don’t believe. I don’t believe.
I honestly believe they saw something,
but for me to actually draw a conclusion as to what it is,
I don’t think I could do that at this point in time.
OK. How many of them reported seeing the craft?
In other words...
Probably in the region of about 60.
More of them could have seen it
and they’re just too embarrassed to talk about it.
Or we haven’t, actually haven’t had the grade ones
and twos involved.
You haven’t spoke...
So the six and seven-year-olds.
Right. How long would you, uh,
estimate that the scene actually lasted?
It took over about 10 to 15 minutes.
Really, that long?
Did they describe any other, sensory experiences like smell
or sound or anything of that kind?
Nothing at all actually. Honestly nothing.
I don’t think anybody’s actually asked on at question.
You’ve you’ve talked with the BBC people
and with Nicki Carter here before, right?
Yes. Yes.
OK. But the experience
is still fresh in your mind, is that right?
Yes. OK.
What were you doing at the time?
Well, I was playing at, in the playground
and then we just, we saw something silver
and then we quickly ran to the log, to the logs.
And then we saw a silver, silver thing.
And we saw a man standing next to it.
And what did he look like?
Well, he had big eyes that, like, pointed.
Pointed, big eyes? Yes.
Can, can you... Maybe you could just draw the head.
What, what... Do you like to draw?
Yes.
OK. Pull your chair up and we’ll go.
And what, these are what? What are you drawing here?
The eyes. The eyes. OK.
And I couldn’t see his nose and his mouth,
but his nose was pretty small.
So his eyes were large.
Is that right? Yes.
Did you look into the eyes?
I mean, could you make, did you have a sense that you were...
No. All we saw was his eyes. They were black.
Black. But, like, were looking at you
or were you at, at, at, uh, at him?
Seemed that he was looking at all of us.
Have you, have you ever seen a UFO.
Have I? I never have, no.
And I didn’t see anything over there.
No nose. You didn’t see a nose?
No.
I just, my heart kind of went faster
and then slower
and then faster and the slower all at the same time.
Now was that... That was excitement and...?
Yeah. Excitement and scariness.
And scary. And how, well you said happy too.
Yeah. Yeah. Happy because?
Because...
I saw something strange and something peculiar
and something nobody had ever seen.
Haley, you, something scared you.
Is that right? Yes.
What, what scared you? The noise.
What noise?
The noise that we heard in the air.
You heard a noise in the air? Yes.
What was it like? Like a roar or a buzz or a hum
or what kind of a noise?
It was like someone was blowing a flute.
And that scared you?
Yes. Mm hmm.
And what did you do when, when you were afraid?
Um, I ran away from it.
Mm hmm.
We told the teacher but she said just forget about it.
People who have these experiences
are very serious about them.
And I think that generally speaking when something
powerful, important, exciting, scary has happened,
that it’s useful to talk about it,
to have open discussion.
And it doesn’t mean you have to impose a point of view.
It’s not about what we believe; it’s what their experience is
and how they find the adults
around being receptive to that experience.
And you said that, uh, you saw two, um,
what would you call them? Um...
Aliens. Aliens, you call them.
And, and where the aliens in relation to the to the craft?
I saw one over here.
And I saw one, one of these men by, by the spaceship.
It looks like it was guarding by the big spaceship.
And there was another one running, running in the grass.
And how did he run compared to the, say, a way a kid would run?
He ran normally like us but bouncy
as if a human would run on the moon.
As there were less gravity and it seemed light. Is that...?
Yes. But not, not as much as a human on the moon.
Not that extreme. When he ran his distance,
he stopped and he looked at us at for a while
and then he ran back again.
The one thing that I’ve told everybody
is we are dealing with children here.
Right.
Sometimes the imagination can get carried away with them.
Yeah. OK.
How many of you still think they were just making it up?
And what got me was that there were no adults outside.
Nobody, none of us saw it.
We just happened to be in a staff meeting.
I totally believe the children.
They came running up here in such a panic
and, I mean, even if we had staged it
they could not have run all together like that.
Just heard them screaming, screaming, "Ah!"
and they were here. You know? And a child can’t make that up.
And I mean, children know when other children are conning them.
And they were, like, about 100 of them that just came here.
They didn’t see anything. I think they said making,
make-believe story that actually created.
That’s my feeling.
What do you think started the story?
Since during that time,
there were the talk about meteorites and all that.
I suppose they, somebody created this story
and they sort of thought maybe they had seen something.
You think that the children’s imaginations
are getting carried with them.
But I became convinced when I saw the drawings,
because so many of the drawings were similar.
And also when they wrote their stories in their storybooks.
They, they definitely seem genuine because, I mean,
they all wrote completely different stories
but they had seen the same thing.
And I think that’s what convinced me
because I think I was as skeptical as everybody else.
It wasn’t just Ariel School.
There were a lot of different occurrences
that happened over the, the, probably that whole week.
I live here at the school,
so I try not to think about it at all.
Because if I do I have sleepless nights.
Then you have sleepless nights?
I do!
I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights since it happened.
So I tried to put it out of my mind.
What do you think about the reality aspect of it?
Seeing is believing. I don’t know.
But then I’m also scared of the unknown,
so it’s something that I block off
because I’d rather get on with school.
Do you think the kids are telling the truth
or do you think they are, they kind of...
I think they are
...embellished it, imagined it?
Yeah. I think that I’d rather not think about it...
You’d rather not? ...again, because
now if I think about it tonight
I’ll have another sleepless night.
Because I’m waiting for an alien to come through the walls.
So...
Some of the kids in my class are so frightened.
I actually can see that.
It must have affected them so much
that they sort of imagine something will happen to them.
They’re still young and you don’t know sort of,
how to act and how to speak to them.
You’re a bit careful.
If we’re going to keep discussing this,
the parents have been knocking on my door every single day.
Yeah.
Um, I don’t think you can generalize
when it comes to something like this.
You got to be extremely careful
which way the parent is going to jump.
If he’s going to jump the wrong way, you’ve caused a problem.
Right. You’ve caused a problem.
I think you’re all... You’re not solving it.
You’re probably all aware of this caution
that Colin is talking about.
We had one child who was very upset by the whole thing.
Unfortunately he’s not at the school anymore.
He’s actually gone back to Canada.
He was having sleepless nights and this was a 12,
13-year-old child. Basically the cause of that
was his parents refused to discuss the situation with him.
His parents were very religious and according to them
this sort of thing doesn’t happen.
Just down that road, yes.
Oh, my gosh.
I can’t believe I’m going to see Mrs. Hwacha.
And she, her name suits her, too.
Yes, it does. Yes, it does. You know? Mrs. Hwacha.
Mrs. Hwacha. Watch!
Exactly!
I remember she was very strict.
Was it, like, very, very strict.
Like, everything was done by her book.
Yeah.
There we go. Judge Hwacha.
That’s her car there, yeah?
Yes. OK. Ms. Hwacha’s coming.
She’s coming out now. Yeah. Emily Trim.
Yes! You remember?
Yes! Mrs. Hwacha!
Mrs. Hwacha! I’m now old.
I'm now old. I know.
You don’t see me to be old?
No! I missed you.
Pardon?
I missed you. You missed me?
Mm hmm.
I was a little bit difficult. Wasn’t I?
No. You?
Mm.
Oh. You were, you were strict.
You were strict!
That is exactly what I wanted to hear!
Yes! You were strict.
But you were fair, you know? You were fair.
I was very fair.
Yes. But...
Strict. And it was beautiful.
Oh Beautiful
There is this business of,
um, us being, asked about the aliens.
Yeah. Up to this end.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, because you saw that, those things.
You saw those people? Mm hmm.
We asked the children, the school children
then to draw.
Yes. You remember?
Mm hmm. You also drew?
Mm hmm.
So Mr. Mackie asked us,
we put all the papers according to the classes,
finished this class, to the other, to the other,
to the other. They were all the same.
Same.
We ended up concluding that certainly we saw people.
They’re going? Where to?
Yeah. How did they come there?
Mm hmm.
Who are they? Are they people?
We couldn’t tell. That’s what this story is.
Yes. That’s what you saw also.
Yes. I had kept those papers myself.
You Did?
I don’t know what happened to them.
Ah! I’m looking for mine.
I... You can’t find it? I can’t find mine.
Same with me.
Because I had thought it was something I must also hold onto.
I didn’t know what that meant.
Uh, these eyes, did you look at them?
Yes.
What feeling did that give you when you looked in the eyes?
It made me shake a little.
Made you shake.
It was a terrifying feeling.
A what?
A terrifying.
A terrifying feeling. Yes.
And what made it terrifying?
The way he was looking at me.
How did he look at you?
Strangely, like and old woman who hadn’t seen a kid before.
Like a what?
An old woman who hasn’t seen a kid before.
An old woman who hasn’t seen a kid before?
Yes. She stares like this.
OK, let me, I’m going to ask you to do something.
Try to just be in that feeling for a moment.
Try to remember that terrifying feeling. OK?
Can you do that?
I know it’s unpleasant, but nothing bad will happen. OK?
And just try to tell me what that terror,
what’s in the terror.
See what, what you find in the terror.
What, what, what it might be about.
It was making me all scared and my heart
was now starting to pump faster
and it was making me all woozy now.
Like woozy, losing... Yes.
Like, like you were going to faint, you mean?
Yeah. Did you faint?
No. Yeah. Yeah.
And then I was looking at him, right?
Yeah.
And then he was looking at me back.
How could I just keep on looking at him?
So I just stopped and I looked sideways,
so he wouldn’t keep on making me feeling faint.
But you kept looking? Yes.
Why did you keep looking?
I don’t know. Something just attracted me to look at him.
Something attracted you, huh? Yes.
The other man, he, his eyes looked at me as if, um,
"I want to..." Things like that.
I want to what? I want you.
I want you? Yeah.
I want you in what?
Like, I want you to come with me?
Yeah. I want you to come with me.
I want you to come.
Did you go with him, do you think?
No. Only my eyes went with him.
Your eyes went with him? And my feeling.
And your feeling went with him.
So was there a part of you that wanted to go with him?
Yeah.
That felt, like, drawn to go with him?
Yeah. OK.
Can you say what that felt like?
Again, scary and a little excited.
Yeah.
And, and a little I shouldn’t go.
Yeah. And yet I want to go?
Yeah. Yeah.
John Mack seemed to have brought out that information,
because we just took it out in a very analytical way.
We just said, "What did you see?"
and "What did the aliens look like?"
"What did they do?" But we never thought
there might be some kind of emotional, deeper effect.
You know, it really gave you goosebumps,
if I might put it that way.
You know, there’s something more going on here
than what met the eye.
What made you scream?
I was just getting very scared.
What were you scared would happen?
Now don’t be afraid to make, say,
even if you think it’s not sensible,
just tell me what you were afraid might happen.
Um, I thought the aliens would attack me.
Would attack you? And do what? Hurt you?
Yes.
How would they do that? I don’t know.
Mm hmm.
It looked evil because it was just staring at me.
With what? Starting at you as if what? As if to do what?
As if it wanted to come and take us.
I know this is hard. I know it’s hard. Try to...
It’s hard to put into words what you felt, I’m sure.
John did this public meeting in Harare.
He did an incredible service to the community
who were worried and just wanted answers.
Dr. John Mack is a true academic.
He’s a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University.
I think we’re very, very lucky in this country
to have somebody of his caliber.
So can we have a big hand for Dr. Mack?
Thrilled to be here tonight to have a chance
to talk with you about this phenomenon.
I’m trained in adult and child psychiatry
and adult and child psychoanalysis.
And I’m a relative newcomer to the UFO field.
And the reason for this trip
is the incident that took place in Ruwa at the Ariel School.
A number of you
I’m sure know something about what took place there.
The children we talked with clearly
were talking about a phenomenon
that occurred in physical reality.
In other words, their stories were consistent
and the way they talked about it
left virtually no question in our minds
that what happened was just about what they said happened.
I know it’s strange, very weird.
Yeah. I just got so scared.
So, yeah.
If I had to describe that day,
the first thing that I remember is the light
and sound is the main thing that just strikes me.
And then the two shadows.
But especially the sound and the light.
The light because it was so bright,
the sound because it scared me. So...
Yeah, we heard a sound in that, that direction.
It was sort of like a buzzing noise.
It was a very, you know, it was like a buzzing.
The buzzing of what you would hear at an electric station
or, um, anywhere close to that.
Like, something’s being zapped almost.
I noticed that there was a large shape amongst the trees,
which we couldn’t really figure out what it was.
It looked like a, a big rock.
It looked like water was trickling over it
and the sun was reflecting in that water.
That’s the best way I can describe it.
It didn’t look like a, a smooth metallic object as you would,
you would think when you were looking at a UFO on TV
as we depict them. It looked natural.
It didn’t look like anything man-made.
You saw it again appearing in kind of like in spots.
You saw it and then you didn’t see it.
You know, and then you saw it again.
In the same general area, but it was, that kind of was,
you know, like I said, what made you think twice,
like, OK, did I, did I see it? Didn’t I see it?
But when every, you know, then everyone else
started saying, "Yes, I see it." And it was the same thing
when we saw whatever beings where there.
You know?
It wasn’t like they were just standing and looking at you.
You would see them in various places at various times.
So you didn’t know if it was one,
if it was more than one.
He moved kind of strangely. I’d say almost like,
say, a very graceful sort of movement.
You know, not like he was stumbling around or anything.
He, like, sort of like glided from, while he was walking.
There wasn’t any gravitational pull.
It was, uh, very fluid.
So when he was moving it was very fluid and flowy
and it wasn’t kind of jerky or...
Yeah.
The strange thing was it was running in slow motion,
as if you would watch a replay in a football match.
It was running in slow-motion diagonally down the field.
And then suddenly it would reappear in the corner
where it started and do the same thing.
And then it would reappear and do the same thing.
And that was frightening, more frightening than seeing
what these things actually were,
was not being able to see them long enough, I guess.
It really ripped my socks off. It was unbelievable.
I’ve got to justify myself to the BBC and...
How am I going to explain to a serious BBC editor in London
that this is not an April Fool’s joke in September?
The BBC always have this policy
that you don’t run with one source.
You got to get two or three, preferably three.
And I had 20, 30, 40.
Now I put a, a lot of stake on the physical evidence.
But I don’t primarily emphasize that not
because I don’t think it’s critically important.
I think that physical evidence is very valuable.
But for me my strongest suit
is my clinical investigative approach to create trust,
to bring forth whatever it is,
and the memories and experiences come flooding back.
Now the fact is that people aren’t threatened
when they come forward about this.
Children, very reluctant to tell their parents,
and a mother or father may say to a child,
"Oh, you must have been making it up.
You, your imagination is too, uh, too lively."
And then the child sort of grumbles
and they go inside and they do what I call "going underground".
They know what happened to them, but they don’t tell anybody.
I mean you just felt nobody really cared.
Who do you talk to? How do you understand it?
The people in my life that were supposed to be the closest
and, um, the support system,
it didn’t feel like it was there.
There was nobody there to say, "Now it’s OK to talk about it."
So we never did. And as children you have a huge imagination,
so you see those sort of things and not know what they are.
And you, you’re left with this, well, "where am I?"
limbo state of "Am I safe or am I not safe?"
So it was, I think as a protective mechanism,
block it out, turn it off, don’t, don’t go back to it.
I haven’t really talked to anyone about it.
I usually kept it quiet, you know,
because most people probably think I’m a,
you know, a bit nuts.
You’re not exactly going to bring up
this kind of conversation at a, at a bar or a restaurant or...
You know? People think you’re crazy.
It’s very hard. It’s kind of strange, I guess,
because they don’t believe you.
Some of my close friends know about it.
But it’s more like not a joke; but they’re like,
’Huh, you’re crazy" type of thing,
like laughter type of,
like it’s something funny to, something to laugh about.
If this had been ten years ago,
I wasn’t in a place where I really wanted to talk about it.
I just didn’t want to be associated with that.
I was very self-conscious.
So, yeah, it’s kind of hard to talk about it. It is.
Because it’s not something that I bring up to anybody ever.
My husband doesn’t even know about it.
Oh, true expression of how it felt at times.
It’s really, really difficult to face yourself.
That’s a scary time. Very, very scary time.
A lot of this was done in black at first,
because I think that’s how I was really feeling.
This is me with my hands over my eyes trying to hide away
from everything that’s been going on.
It got really, really dark. I love this piece.
It’s when I started using color.
It’s still a stern face, but I think it’s more confident.
Yeah, this one.
So here, this is the mouth, like, being zipped up.
This was, like, when all you want to do is just talk
and you feel like you have no one to talk to.
I didn’t realize that it affected the children that much.
Mm hmm.
But it obviously has. Yes.
It was quite difficult, wasn’t it?
Because your mum and dad would not have believed.
They, they believed that something had occurred,
but it was very difficult to integrate...
Very difficult to put your religion and your,
see the Christian side of it with that happening.
So, Mr. Sitoni, yes. Come in.
Oh, hi, Ms. Bates. Hi!
How are you doing?
Oh, I’m OK, Mrs. Bates. How are you?
Yes. Hello.
Hi, how are you? It’s good to see you.
It’s good to see you, too. Back to your roots, are you?
Absolutely.
All right. I know. That’s beautiful.
Yeah, connecting and seeing, seeing the school again
and, you know, the event that occurred here in 1994.
Oh, yes, the aliens and all that. All right.
Yes. Beautiful.
So that’s, that’s what I’m here for.
Oh, that’s wonderful. Yeah.
Maybe, if you’re in tomorrow, if you don’t mind...
Yeah.
...we can do the tradition thing. Do you mind?
I would love to do that. Ah, you’d love to. OK.
Yeah, because culture is a huge part of this.
Introduce you to a few people?
I’ll walk you out and you can visit all the sacred places
and you can talk to them.
And you can then, so when you come back here,
like, wow.
Yes! Yeah, OK. No, beautiful.
Thank you. Good to see you, isn’t it?
Good to see you, too.
Later. Ms. Bates.
Thanks, Mr. Sitoni.
I saw these beings and they have black eyes.
We’ve, we’ve got those ones. We experience quite a lot.
A lot? Yeah.
Is it the same description as how I describe it, with...
Yes. ...that?
Yeah, they come, they come in different versions, yeah.
They come in different versions.
I don’t know what you’ve heard.
I’m supposed to talk about with, not,
it’s not, you know, not for...
Yes.
The sacred shrines. Yes.
So it’s really important that...
Mm hmm
Did you hear about it? Sure.
With Ariel when it happened?
Can you point to us where the Ariel school is from here?
Oh my gosh!
Had you had those thoughts before this experience?
No.
No. And did, how did those thoughts come to you?
Did they come to you from the craft or from...
From the man. The man.
And the man, did the man say those things to you?
How did he get that across to you?
Well, he never said anything.
It’s just that the face, his, the eyes.
Fungai, what do you imagine
is his reason for visiting earth?
I think it’s about something that’s going to happen.
Something that’s going to happen?
Yes. Like what?
Um, it’s pollution or something.
Pollution? Yes.
And how did he get that idea of pollution across to you?
Um, the way he was staring. The way he was staring?
Yes.
Somehow there was a message about pollution
from the way he was staring?
Yes.
I think they want, um, people to know
that we’re actually making harm on this world
and we mustn’t get too technologed.
How did that get communicated to you?
I don’t know.
But somehow it did?
Yeah. It came through my head.
Through your head?
Did it talk, like, through words or...?
My conscience, I think. Your what?
My conscience told me.
It came to you through your, your conscience told you.
Yeah.
You mean while you were in contact with the being,
you mean or what?
While I was... While the being was looking at me.
While it was looking at you.
It was like this lake of calmness in his eyes.
I was compelled to look at him.
It wasn’t like I, I wanted to look away from him.
Time became very still and very bizarre.
In my mind, technology...
and, and not, not good feelings about technology either.
It was like technology was a bad, dirty word.
I think that he was saying to me, beware of the technology.
Don’t go into it too heavy
because it’s, it’s not going to be good for you.
It was only when I was looking at him and his face
and his eyes that I got that.
As soon as I looked away from him,
that’s when all of reality and,
and everything that was happening came back to.
And that’s when I realized that something really strange
is happening here.
It's fascinating.
This was imagery coming through from them communication,
but it’s done through, right in your brain.
You, you were saying that you thought that they maybe
were trying to tell us something like, uh, about the future.
Can you say more of what your thought is? What was it like?
It was like on the world, all the trees will just go down
and,
and there were will be no air and people will be dying.
I think that in space there’s no love and down here there is.
There is love? Yes.
Mm hmm.
Is there anything we can do with that love,
as far as taking care of the earth?
You talked about the, that they, their message,
that we don’t take care of the earth.
No. Why not?
Several of them talked about, uh,
a message being transmitted through the eyes,
that the beings were trying to tell us something.
What gave that a certain edge of sincerity
was they weren’t offering solutions,
like we’ve got to become environmentally conscious
and, you know, do something about the earth.
So I’d say, "Well, what are we supposed to do?"
And they would say, "Well, no.
That’s not what they were doing, what they were conveying.
They, they were simply telling us that this is what’s going on
and they felt very upset about it."
But it wasn’t like a, you know, ecological,
uh, political program or something.
So that, that gave it this kind of authenticity.
At first no news coverage took it seriously.
And I leave you to check for little green men
and flying saucers and...
And then when Reuters got hold of it, it got very serious.
There was a bit of a buzz
and it was in the news and everything.
You had people that knew about the school from all over,
not just in Zimbabwe, but it was all over the world.
On the other side of the world,
an unusual visitor called into a Zimbabwean playground.
Unexplained Mysteries;
Something major has happened in Africa
a unique mass encounter between aliens
and school children.
Hello, welcome back. Someone who started off as a skeptic,
and you’re a Pulitzer prize winner and all the rest of it,
have actually been convinced
that the people you interviewed at great length
and talked to about their encounters with aliens,
they were actually telling the truth.
There is something out there trying to contact us.
Yeah, there’s some kind of authentic mystery here,
which my training in psychiatry just hasn’t prepared me for.
With all the skill that you have,
you’re a top American psychiatrist at Harvard–you
would be able to tell when people were telling fibs.
That’s what I’m supposed to be trained to do,
is to distinguish between fantasy,
dreams, psychosis, or authentic experience.
And this is, has all the marks of authentic experience.
So we just stared at it.
And we heard this flute, sort of like a flute noise.
Then 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.
When you looked at those children,
they were absolutely credible. And you can look at their faces,
even on television you can look at their faces
and know if they’re bullshitting or not.
And they weren’t.
We came away convinced
that an extraordinary event occurred here.
Uh, one of, uh, quite unique, I think, in UFO history.
If there’s anything that could convince a skeptical,
closed-minded public that some kind of intelligence
that is not, as the headmaster said,
"of this world", than this event should persuade people.
I believe overall this is a phenomenon of enormous
complexity, meaning, and value for understanding of ourselves,
who we are in the universe.
And we’re just beginning to grasp what this is about.
Welcome back to Larry King Live.
He’s a Harvard psychiatrist and though he was once skeptical
that beings visited from other planets,
he now believes differently.
John Mack has been a psychiatrist
at Harvard University for more than 30 years now.
he won a Pulitzer Prize two decades ago
for writing a psychological biography of Lawrence of Arabia.
But these days his writings have placed him
on the academic fringe.
Meet Dr. John Mack,
a believer in aliens from outer space.
What would the academics up at Harvard University
think about all this?
We started to hear that John was getting to be in trouble.
His practice was beginning to be largely
about the investigation of these strange phenomena.
He had started support groups so that the various people
who had reported these strange phenomena
could hear the stories from each other
and begin to feel a little bit normal.
No matter how I looked at it,
they were talking the way people
talk about something that's happened to them.
I was stuck with this dilemma.
what do you do at that point? Do you say, Well, I’m sorry.
There’s got to be some kind of mental illness
I’ve ever heard of before?
Or do you say maybe what I thought was possible
wasn’t complete.
It seems to me it’s clinically and humanly more honest
to say there’s something I don’t know here
and to follow your clinical instincts.
What did you say? What did you tell your mom?
This is Kayleigh talking now. Go ahead.
I said, "Mummy, I saw an alien at school."
Then they, my mummy said, um, she, my mum never believed me.
Yeah? Does that upset you when your mom didn’t believe you?
Yeah. Sometimes.
Kayleigh! Hi!
How are you?
I’m good. How are you?
Good.
Oh, it’s so nice to see you. I know!
How does it feel?
It’s crazy.
Right? It is.
So do you want to take a little walk?
Oh, my gosh. And, I mean...
I know, we have to look. OK, let’s look.
OK. I was trying to find mine.
And I’ve been looking to find all my pieces
because I don’t have my drawings as well.
See, like these ones you can’t see.
I know! That’s why I’m like, oh.
Right? It’s not here.
Well, we could keep going.
Tell me what you remember.
See, I was playing rugby over here.
In this open part over here. With the little boys.
Yeah.
And then all the logs were down there.
Were all here.
I don’t know why I remember a huge tree like this down there.
Because that was, that field wasn’t there.
This is where I kind of remember it happening.
Like standing over there.
I then ran, I must have run there, closer to...
I remember being close to the tuck shop.
Well, that’s why, I remember right here.
And I remember Lisil and I right there.
So it must be there. And, yeah.
Emily!
Yes
Ms. Bates found some of the drawings.
Ms. Bates found some of the drawings?
They’re in an envelop on the desk.
Oh!
Up in the office there.
But I think there’s been such a runaround this morning.
They’re trying to do things.
They just let us know they’re there.
Oh, how exciting. Right?
I hope mine’s there.
I, I really hope mine’s there, too.
I think they’re both there.
I haven’t opened anything. I haven’t looked.
Oh, my gosh. You must be kidding me!
I’m scared.
I’m kind of scared, too.
You don’t have to be scared.
OK, you open it with me. Open it together.
We’ll do it together.
Let’s take a peek.
Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!
You see, I’m sure...
You can’t see it very nice, but I’m sure this was the tree.
I’ve drawn this again.
Like, like, exactly like this.
You see silver shining as well.
Uh huh.
I mean, I said I saw, like, a crazy light.
Oh, my gosh! With this coming down.
I think I blocked out a lot, man.
You remember, and like we keep saying, like,
I think we blocked out a lot.
I really do as well. Yeah. Holy shit!
Wow!
I know. Think it a lot of people, like, didn’t believe us.
It’s beautiful. It’s so peaceful.
Yes. I have the best memories here.
Me, too. Of us.
I’ve been so terrible.
Well, Ms. Bates is, she wants...
So terrible.
...she wants to see you.
She’s a, she’s a little hurt because she feels like...
I know.
...the students have avoided this place
for a such a long time.
Well, you see, that’s the thing, is, like...
I know.
...what happened.
I know.
I think that’s why I’ve never come back.
I don’t want to deal with...
Deal with it.
...coming here and remembering all the stuff.
I think that’s honest,
the honest God’s truth of why I didn’t come.
Yeah. So 20 years later...
We still have the same story.
But that’s the funny thing, is, like, I’m adamant
about this tree and the light. And there on my picture,
which I don’t even remember drawing, it’s there!
It’s there! And I drew that.
I can’t wait to show my mum.
You have to see it to believe it.
If, if somebody’s a staunch believer that it’s not,
how is me
telling them my experience going to change what they think?
It will change what they think about me.
It’s not going to change what they think about the universe.
And I don’t need that.
But with 60 of us all saying it together,
that will change what that one person thinks of the universe.
Many of you are going to think my guests today
have lost their minds
To be honest, their stories do sounds really crazy.
But we were intrigued by this man.
He is Dr. John Mack, who does believe their stories.
The president’s lawyer said, "What do you think it’s like
for the dean for the medical school
to see one of his professors on Oprah Winfrey
saying that men, women,
and children are being taken by little green men?"
It does reflect, I think, the anxiety that this caused.
Doctor, is the profession embarrassed
when one of your colleagues puts forward theories like this?
Oh, yes. We’re very embarrassed.
Embarrassed for the profession
and a little worried about John himself.
What? He’s gone of the rails a bit?
Well, John is a man of great gift and great intelligence,
but he’s also a man of,
who tends to take on enthusiasms.
And this times he’s gone, yeah, gone too far.
We’re worried about him.
We hope he’ll pull himself together, come back.
I sensed that I ought to try to get ahead of the curl on,
on the high exposure that I had.
But I was too late.
There was something afoot.
They were putting together a committee
to look into the work and see if I had maintained
the standards of the Harvard Medical School.
I am, uh, Arnold Relman.
I am a physician.
I was asked by the dean of the Harvard Medical School
to look into John’s activities in view of all the publicity
and the fact that John was using the Harvard Medical School’s
name quite liberally,
and implied the Harvard Medical School
was somehow sponsoring what he was doing,
the dean wanted to know, what is he doing?
His research is shattering preconceptions
about alien abductions.
He’s studied over 100 people and is convinced
they are telling the truth.
John, you have a very high profile.
And the fact that you’re a professor at Harvard tends
to make people believe you.
And do you think you could be seriously misleading people
about what’s going on here?
The concern is what is his relationship to the subjects?
Is their psychological welfare being protected?
And is this a violation of medical standards?
I miss this place so much.
You know, just after talking to Ms. Hwacha
and, you know, just kids and the school.
Because we were listening to music.
And the music in the...
You tear up. I’m like, what’s going on?
It’s a horrible feeling to feel alone.
But you've got us now. You’ve got the whole Ariel
family, like, everybody’s there, like, looking out for you.
Tracy said he’ll be on the other side.
And everybody’s there for you. Everybody’s looking out for you.
God, I needed that, you know, so badly.
They forget that there’s a human being behind all of this
and nobody asked for it to happen.
There’s Lisil.
Lisil, Fungai, Grant. I remember her, too.
I remember the face, but I don’t remember the name.
There are many people who probably are not going
to believe certain things
until they happen to them, period.
That probably is even more pronounced in the West
compared to many other cultures
because we have advanced so far technologically,
because our technology, which is, you know,
based in science is so dramatically powerful
that people start thinking that must be all there is.
A lot of the criticism about John and John’s work
pre-supposed that it was simply impossible
that people could be visited by aliens,
that aliens even exist,
To reduce knowledge of reality to purely the physical world,
what about the whole emotional world, the spiritual world.
When you go into subatomic reality,
there is not material world.
There’s only possibility and probability.
The new findings in physics, if you take them seriously,
are just as undermining of the dominant worldview
as anything I’m talking about.
Baloney!
Old-fashioned physics, new-fashioned physics,
quantum mechanics, string theory,
you got to have evidence.
You have to be able to measure something.
I am morally and virtually certain
that what we’re dealing with
is some kind of internal psychological phenomenon.
It is inconceivable to me
that these people are being abducted by aliens.
If they were,
then the whole world as we know it is upside down.
Harvard University was the kind of global champion
of the classical liberal worldview.
And that he was trying to propose an alternative worldview
with the reality of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
A worldview is a kind of psychic glue.
It sort of orients you.
It’s what allows people to think they know
who they are in the worlds that matter to us, family,
groups that we’re in, institutions, schools.
What’s possible is a matter of worldview.
A culture decides what’s real.
What’s real in this culture is completely different
than what’s true in other cultures.
I really think human egoism in the broadest sense
is what is at stake,
our sense of value, our sense of who we are.
Are we powerful, are we in charge of our own fate.
Freud said there’s three big blows to human egoism.
And the first was the discovery by Copernicus and Galileo
that the Earth was not at the center of the cosmos.
Second was Darwin’s finding that we’re not particularly different
from the other animal species. Freud claimed his was the third,
that we’re not really in charge of our own individual lives.
And this, I think, could be a fourth.
We’re far from being the most intelligent
or advanced creatures in the cosmos.
I think in the broad scheme of things,
it’s not a socially good thing to do.
It promotes the cult of mysticism
and magic and superstition.
You know, the X-File kind of mentality.
They’re, they’re out there and the government won’t,
won’t let us find out about it.
It’s childish.
And it’s not good for the American public.
Why should this be so remarkable
when we claim to believe in God
and all kinds of spirits,
and yet there’s something about this one which takes a form
that is particularly disturbing to us?
There’s a lot of harrumphing that goes on.
"Well, we don’t really want to be identified
with this kind of science.
It’s OK to be identified with other bizarre views
that might emanate. But we have our limits, too."
Remember, we’re a university that has a divinity school.
We know the boundaries.
Theology is OK, but extra-terrestrials, no.
Angels, yes. Extra-terrestrials, no.
Let’s just sit down and rationally,
objectively talk it through,
because there’s a lot we don’t understand.
there’s a lot we worship in our various religions
that’s meaningful and inexplicable.
You can’t just rule stuff out willy-nilly
because there is a magical side of life that is very precious.
I’m a Christian in my beliefs,
but that doesn’t mean to say that I think,
um, there’s no other types of,
or forms of life that exist in the universe.
There is a God, but there’s also other things around
that can’t be explained.
You know? It’s, it’s another creature.
They teach you there’s no such things as aliens
because, I mean, God created just human beings.
That’s what I was taught; that’s what I grew up thinking.
The universe is so big so I can’t completely say
it’s fact that there’s no such thing
as life outside of Earth’s solar system.
The universe is a beautiful, strange place
and we’re just human beings and we can’t know everything.
Maybe we don’t have the capacity to understand it.
We may be just exploring the limited reaches of space.
Beyond that we absolutely know nothing in terms of life
or how life exists elsewhere.
Maybe it’s too disturbing.
In the beginning of my going public with this,
I received absolutely no general acceptance.
There were no particular advantages to be gained
and every disadvantage.
And there were assaults from every direction
in terms of the main part of my profession.
If it was an opportunity,
it was an opportunity to commit professional suicide.
It’s a dirty subject.
If you want to sustain a career in the BBC
after having been in many war zones,
you don’t suddenly come up with a UFO story
which was absolutely waterproof.
Then they just said, "No. Tim’s suffering from the stress
and the strains of all the war zones he’s done.
He’s lost the plot. He’s gone bonkers."
I think that’s when my career with the BBC ended.
Gone. I think I, I, I lost my credibility,
because you don’t talk about these things.
When I was in residency,
John’s office was on the main floor
of the psychiatric wing.
When I came back in 2004
his office was offsite.
And I actually took that as a sort of metaphor
for him being pushed out and extruded in a certain sense.
Finally the dean of the medical school wrote a letter
to John basically apologizing and saying that they were,
that it was unfortunate that he had misconstrued
what it was that they were trying to do.
And as I say, and reiterated this totally foolish position
that they had that all the dean was trying to do
was to get some information so he could respond to calls
that he was getting.
And so that they ended up dropping the entire thing
and letting him go back
to doing his normal work at the university.
I accept, Dr. Mack’s statements at face value.
He is inquiring and probing and he has the right to be wrong.
The most fundamental right that any academic has
is the right to be wrong. Prove that he’s wrong.
That’s the job of other academics.
He became the iconic figure of someone
from inside a major institution
who was willing to take the risks
and pay the consequences for what he believed in.
My respect for Dr. John Mack for his courage,
for the difficulties that he’s undergone.
And I think any human being would have to admit
that if the UFO phenomenon
is occurring as the reports suggest,
it’s the most important event in human history.
We’re going to Canada with you.
We can fit in one suitcase!
I’m going to miss you when you go.
You’re going to miss me when I go?
Yes!
Oh, my gosh! I’m going to miss all of you!
I really thank you for everything.
I know, I felt so welcome here.
We do our best. Yes.
Healing process, eh? Come on, you’ll be fine.
I know. Absolutely fine.
Mommy!
It’s a very precious thing to me,
to be able to have this drawing again
and look at it and say after 21 years
I’m still depicting it exactly the same way
and I can put it with the rest of them.
I have probably over 300 pieces and it started here.
I don’t know what it means for me further down the road,
but I feel more confident.
It’s a stepping stone forward to go out, show my art,
share my story, and feel good about it.
With my family, they’ve been extremely supportive
throughout this whole thing. And they’ve understood
that this is something that I’ve had to go through.
My mother has started speaking a bit about it.
My father for the first time at the dinner table brought it up.
But I don’t know if this is something
that they’ll ever be able to accept completely,
but I know that they love me and they trust me.
They know because they were there that something happened.
I’d like to introduce to you, Emily Trim,
one of the witnesses at Ruwa, Zimbabwe, in 1994.
"That was the day my world shattered.
And my outlook on the world
became something completely brand new to me.
I’m thankful for going through such a process
and a journey in life which has led me to discover,
look deeper into the meanings of things,
and become more self-aware.
And I appreciate you taking the time to allow me to speak
and thank you for your understanding in something
so very personal."
I don’t know why it had to be Ruwa,
a small, rural, farming town. I truly don’t.
But for whatever reason, it did. It, it happened.
I’d like to know what we’d seen
and find out what it wanted.
Why us? Why us kids? You know?
It was a wonderful experience actually,
because I know definitely
I’m not going to see something like that ever again.
Maybe. Who knows?
And it’s something that I will pass on to my kids one day.
They might be just here as observers.
We’re just an interesting part of the local community,
like we go to safari in Africa
or see this other creature that is unique to that world.
For some people it is scary, very scary,
because it kind of makes them feel humanity
is not in complete control of our destinies
and we think we are the dominant species on the planet.
But maybe, maybe we are the dominant species on the planet,
but maybe not the dominant species
in this corner of the universe.
I think it’s certainly open-minded.
I think it’s a bit arrogant to say that we are the only life
in the galaxy or the universe.
Yeah, I think it’s good to speak about it, speak about it.
If there was one experience I’d like to relive,
it would be that particular experience.
I don’t really say "I swear, man! It was there!"
That sort of thing, you know?
Like, you don’t have to believe me.
I’m sure a lot of people
who’ve seen it barely believe themselves.
I don’t think that the answer’s out there.
I don’t think that I’m going to find an answer from Googling it
or from talking to others about it.
I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a long story, is the answer.
I think the answer will come maybe in this lifetime,
maybe in the next. I don’t know.
I’m glad I was there. It really stretched my mind
and gave me a new perspective on life, the universe,
and everything, really.
I would not have missed that for the world.
That’s all I can say.
Would you like to see him again?
Yes.
You would like to see him again.
And if you saw him again, what would you do?
I’ll ask him some questions.
What would you like to ask him?
I’ll ask him what is he doing on earth
and what does he want with us?