Ariel Phenomenon

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.