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May 29, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:05:41
Edition 638 - Ariel School UFO Update

This is a podcast-only brand new conversation - Documentary film-maker Randall Nickerson has spent 15 years of his life researching Zimbabwe's 1994 Ariel School UFO case - sometimes involving personal risk... His documentary "Ariel Phenomenon" tells the full story with first-hand witnesses accounts from then - and now...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Beautiful sunny day for once.
Here in London Town, we've had a lot of cloud, very little rain, but a lot of cloud.
And I'm looking at a crystal blue sky right now.
And what am I doing?
I'm doing my duty.
I'm at home recording right now.
Hope everything is okay with you.
Thank you for all of the emails.
If you've sent me an email that requires a reply and perchance you didn't get one, then please let me know and I will make sure that you get one.
But apart from that, please know that I see all of the emails as they come in.
Few shout outs.
John the Cop in Leicester.
John, good to hear from you.
As you hear this, you may be about to go on duty for all I know.
David in Wokingham, Berkshire, where I used to work in Berkshire.
David, nice to hear from you.
Irene in South Yorkshire.
Sherry in Portland, Oregon.
Good that you are there and thank you for making contact.
Stephan in North Derbyshire and Grant in Vancouver.
And Carlo in Alaska.
I'm going to have to tell this quick because we've got another conversation with Randall Nickerson talking about the Ariel School, supposed UFO encounter or whatever it was, alien encounter in 1994.
He's made a fantastic documentary about it that you really should see.
It is beautifully done.
It's called Aerial Phenomenon.
I don't have a financial stake in it.
I just think it's damn good.
And we talked with him on the radio on Sunday.
We had technical issues.
So I basically said we get a better connection and we try and do something longer and ask some of the questions we didn't get a chance to ask last Sunday.
That's why we're doing this.
Randall Nickerson, the guest on this edition of The Unexplained.
Thank you very much to my webmaster, by the way, Adam, for his hard work and getting the shows out to you and all the rest of it.
Carlo in Alaska has this story.
Carlo says, I'm not 100% sure if I had a shared death experience or whether this was just a normal dream, mainly because I don't have confirmation the person I saw has actually died.
Carlo says, in Alaska, I work as a baker and in the kitchen.
I work at, we have a dishwasher who's called Maurice or Maurice, who I think is in his late 50s.
One afternoon I took a nap before going to work.
On this nap, I had a dream that I was at work doing what I normally do.
Then a person I don't recognize walked past me.
I looked at him and thought to myself, this person looks familiar, but I can't quite figure out who it is.
The person walks close to me and says, I appreciate you.
I kept staring at him with confusion and then realized that it was Maurice, but a younger version of him.
He was heading out of the kitchen into a hallway.
I chased him to ask why he looks so young.
I kept yelling his name repeatedly.
He didn't stop.
He kept on walking.
When I got to the hallway myself, I noticed it was bright.
There was a bright white light at the end of it.
As I got closer to Maurice, my head started to hurt.
It slowed me down, but I kept walking behind Maurice to stop him so I can talk to him, but my headache got worse.
As I woke up, I can still feel a bit of a headache.
Days have passed, and I realized I haven't seen Maurice in a while.
He hasn't showed up at work and was already replaced by a different dishwasher.
I asked around what happened to him, and the only explanation I got was that he just stopped showing up, so he was replaced.
So if you know from those scant details in Alaska, what happened to Maurice, you know, did Maurice pass on to the other side and was he coming back to see Carlo?
What was going on there?
What a fascinating story with so many loose ends in it.
But I wanted to tell it here.
Just before we get to Randall Nickerson to talk about the aerial school events, we made the news at the beginning of this week thanks to the comments of Jeremy Corbell on my show in the light of the hearings in Washington about UFOs.
And Jeremy Corbell, the Sun newspaper in the UK, wrote it up like this, says, the U.S. military have footage of attempts to shoot down UFOs, according to a filmmaker, behind a string of leaked videos.
Jeremy Corbell has been behind a string of high-profile clips featuring encounters between UFOs and the military, including one which was played at a landmark hearing held by Congress.
He was name-checked in that hearing very fulsomely, about which we were all very pleased, you know, not least Jeremy himself.
This is what Jeremy said in case you missed it from my show, just a little clip of him.
I will tell you this, Howard, and this is Scott.
I have seen the logs.
I have seen the videos.
We have attempted shoot-downs of UAPs on a regular basis.
We're talking as recently as last Friday.
Attempted shooting.
Shootdowns, as recently, this is important, as last Friday.
Correct.
And it happens on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
So you have to understand, we are protecting ground troops.
So in certain areas of the world.
So certain things that come in proximity to those ground troops, it is just limited.
Do we, because time is limited, do they fire back?
Have they ever fired back?
We'll talk about, I'm going to pass on that question at this moment.
But no, no, there's no aggressive action.
That means yes, doesn't it?
No, no.
I will say that there is no overt, aggressive action that seems to be taken towards us.
It seems more of an observational and also another type of program.
It screams all over it that this is not some power on earth.
This is some power that wants to demonstrate it has a technology.
Well, my thoughts, I'm sorry that the sound quality wasn't as great as it could be.
That was from my TV show last Sunday, Jeremy Corbel, saying that the U.S. military has basically engaged UFOs.
We will hear more about that.
There's some other stuff around too, so check out my TV show and we'll bring you the gist, if not the whole story, of all of that.
All right, let's get to the guest on this edition of The Unexplained.
Thank you for being part of this, by the way.
If you want to go to my website, theunexplained.tv, please send me an email.
Give me your thoughts or guest suggestions there.
Okay, let's get to Randall Nickerson and a new conversation about his excellent documentary, Aerial Phenomenon.
Randall, thank you for coming back on my show.
Howard, a pleasure.
And listen, just to explain to my listener here and maybe viewer too, we had a few technical snafus issues on Sunday night.
And so I just wanted to do this in a more relaxed way on my podcast now.
You know, we've got more time here.
There's only you and me.
I thought it might be better.
So that's what we're doing here.
I hope you're okay with that.
Very much.
That's fine.
Okay.
Now, where do we start with this?
I suppose now that the documentary has been out for a week now, you can, before we do anything, you can tell me what kind of response you've had.
You must have been doing a lot of interviews.
A lot of people have been wanting a piece of you for this.
Yeah, I've been doing quite a few interviews.
The film is really taking off, which is great.
And, you know, the whole goal was to get, you know, have the world see this.
And I hope that happens.
And it's growing and growing and opportunities are coming in left and right.
So that's good.
But yeah, it's been a pretty crazy week.
I can believe it.
Because it's such an interesting topic.
And also, I think one of the most important aspects of this story is that it is for most people within living memory.
You're not talking to people or about people to whom something happened in 1962.
You're talking about something that was in 1994.
You know, that's effectively the year that apartheid ended.
It's a year that people can relate to.
That's correct.
Yeah, it was a big year that year.
And yeah, it's in our relative history.
And to be able to interview those same people today as adults, you know, in their 30s really brings it home, you know, brings it into the present day.
I know that you spent a lot of time researching this.
We spoke, I've just done my research, I think it was four or five years ago now about this, right at the genesis of the project.
So this has taken you a lot of time and a lot of effort.
Yeah, 14 and a half years.
It'll be 15 years in September.
Does it feel worth it?
Does it feel worth it?
Yeah, of course.
I mean, it's always, I always have done long-term projects.
This was by far the longest I've ever done.
I'm exhausted, but I, you know, absolutely.
I would do it again, and I'm glad I did it correct, you know, in the best way I possibly could.
Well, you did.
I mean, look, I'm completely on your side about this.
I think you've produced something that is telling a story, not just trying to create a sensation.
And I think those two things, you know, they can exist together, but often they're mutually exclusive.
So I'm, you know, I'm really pleased that you did it in the way that you did it because it's a beautiful narrative driven by the material.
And the material is what, and you can tell me better, but the material is what's taken you the time to get.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Howard.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, it took a long time to gather all the material.
It took years and years and years to gather everything because it was scattered across the globe.
People were scattered across the globe.
Media was, there's one tape that no one else in the world has, you know, of these children being interviewed.
Actually, part of it is in the movie, but there was only one copy and that person couldn't transfer that.
So I asked her, can I take the tape and give it my best to transfer it and gave her a copy, you know, a digital copy of it.
But that was the only tape that existed.
So I've run into a lot.
And that was the absolute...
But the icing on that cake is that original footage.
You're talking about the footage from the South African Broadcasting Corporation reporter, I think, aren't you?
Is that the one you're talking about?
No, actually, it was from Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe TV.
Exactly.
Wow.
Well, God knows how you got that.
I'll tell you what.
Let's do this.
I want to just play a little bit of the trail because the trailer for this is excellent and it's on your website.
We'll tell people where that is and how to look at it.
But the trailer begins with that footage of a newscaster on the Zimbabwe TV channel.
I think there was only one in those days on air in Zimbabwe.
Telling people in quite a matter-of-fact way what had happened.
Here it is.
Hundreds of people today phoned the ZBC saying they sighted an unidentifying flying object.
Well, a bright radiant light.
I've never seen anything like it in my life.
You've got to see absolute noise in this mic.
People from all over Zimbabwe were phoning the BBC to say we've seen something weird.
There were three of us that saw it.
Myself, the co-pilot, and the pilot in the other aircraft.
No winds, no nothing.
Shiny or nothing.
Ariel School 19th, September 94.
Could you tell me what you saw on Friday?
The silver thing in amongst this clump of trees.
We saw this black figure running.
His face was like this, and his eyes were dark hair.
I just thought it was some kind of alien from the alien.
Looks at those children.
They were absolutely credible.
The panic spread.
Am I safe or am I not safe?
These are horrid type hiatus.
Me, Dr. John Mac.
We came away convinced that an extraordinary event occurred here.
I think they want people to know that we're actually making harm on this power.
I put that little bit of echo there on the end of that because I was only using part of it.
But look, the trailer is superbly put together.
I don't know whether you did the trailer for it, but the trailer's worth seeing in itself.
And if anything is going to make you want to watch this piece, that trailer is going to do it.
So, you know, congratulations.
You need to be basking in what you have achieved because you have achieved 15 years it's taken you.
I'll tell you, it's worth it.
And that's why I wanted to have this conversation again.
Let's unpick the story then.
Just in case there are people who don't know this story or maybe didn't see my TV show on Sunday night last.
There's no reason why they should.
This is a story of a school in Zimbabwe in a rural area called Ariel School.
The kids there are mixed 6 to 13.
It's a very nice, Very education-oriented place where the kids, it seemed to me, got a very rounded education, had the chance to play sports, be outdoors, the kind of education we would all want.
But in 1994, something really weird happened when something appeared at the perimeter fence of this school.
Can you talk me through what it is that people, the kids, reported seeing and experiencing?
Well, the first thing they saw something in the sky, which I didn't know in the beginning.
And then this thing came down outside of the playground.
The playground border were very large trees, you know, that were cut down and put sideways.
They call them the logs.
So the kids ran up to the edge of the logs.
They're not supposed to go past that point because of poisonous snakes.
And I mean, Africa is a very different place.
And they observed this silver oval-shaped craft and watched it for quite a period of time.
And then they saw these black creatures of some kind get out.
Two of them, weren't they?
At least two.
And one of them, at least one of them approached the playground.
Yeah, I mean, there's one of them apparently stayed with the silver craft and the other one approached.
And then they had some kind of experience, you know, with this creature.
But not all of them, did they?
And what was reported was remarkably similar, but slightly different.
And that's a good thing for a reason that I will throw in in just a second.
But they didn't all experience in the same way, did they?
No.
I mean, and part of the understanding of it is the playground is really large.
It's like a college campus type of playground.
There's an upper field that's about 15 feet above the lower field where everybody made the observations.
And that field on the upper field is surrounded by trees.
You can't see out of that field.
So there was an enormous amount of, sorry, that's not the right word.
Yeah, there were a lot of children out there, but they all had a different perspective.
It's a very large playground.
It's hard to really express that.
I mean, you can kind of see it in the film, but boy, it goes on.
There's just a lot of real estate.
So it's a big area.
There are a lot of kids.
They're out in the sunshine because the sun shines, you know, it's southern Africa.
The sun shines an awful lot there.
So they're out there.
But the word spreads and kids run towards the fence.
And some of them are apparently, they say from their accounts, communicating, and we've heard this so many times through history, haven't we?
Communicating telepathically with one of these beings.
Talk to me about that.
It was interesting, even in the descriptions from the kids of what that was like.
One of the girls says, you know, that creature communicated in my conscience.
She didn't even know what telepathy or, you know, psychic activity even was, you know.
And it seems that that's what happened.
It wasn't the kids at all that were initiating that.
It came from that creature.
And you're right about the description.
You raise a really good point.
The fact that it wasn't the typical description, there were very specific differences, and they're rare in the history of unidentified objects and contact like this.
I mean, like you say, they're rare for adults.
They're incredibly rare for kids.
And here are a group of children, some of whom are experiencing something that is going to transform them for the rest of their lives.
You know, they're still all of them living with this.
Now, the message, the telepathic message, what was that?
Because I've read varying accounts of what the communication might have been.
Yeah, different the adult kids that I've interviewed, they all have a slightly different, but it's very similar.
It's almost like they got images of what was going to be going on with us as a planet, the dangers that we were going to be facing with climate and other things.
And it wasn't to give us any answers.
It was just showing us.
And I've, during the research, I found that was common with other people that had had encounters with these things.
You know?
And the kids, the kids were obviously very young then, as he says, between 6 and 13.
Yes.
Could they make sense?
The older ones, perhaps, but could they make sense of what they were receiving, those who felt they were being communicated with?
Could they make sense of the message, or was it only something that now, 28 years distant, we can understand?
I think they could make only the sense of sharing it at the time when they were children.
As adults, I think they think about it and wonder what that meant.
I've talked to several about it, and there was no, it was just showing us things, not trying to tell us how to solve it or that there was an answer to it.
But yeah, I'm sure every single person that saw that thinks about it every day.
You know, thinking with my adult brain, I'm sure that if something like that happened to me, which I'd rather like it to, but I don't think it will, I would probably be first.
Well, we'd all like this, and then, you know, we'd have front page news everywhere.
But my first question would be, why are you here?
Why have you come here?
Why are you talking to me?
Would be the way that I would look at it.
I'm curious to know, and you talked to many of these kids as adults.
That's part of the point of the documentary.
But I'm keen to know what sorts of contact they had going in their direction towards whatever this was.
Did any of them say anything?
Did they try to communicate in the other direction or were they just receiving?
I think it was receiving.
I think they were shocked and stunned, so to speak.
You know, in those moments, there's not much to say, I would think.
So it was pretty much one way.
And from what I've, unless there's, and there are people who haven't spoke on camera who I hope someday will share.
You don't have to name those people.
You've got quite a lot of the witnesses, both in archive footage and today.
But the ones who won't speak, why do you think they won't talk?
I think it's because they have families.
They have good jobs.
And at least in the past, they were afraid to be ridiculed or lose friends or have people think they're crazy, basically.
But those days are changing a bit, I think.
Well, I mean, that's good.
And I'm hoping that you're making a difference with this.
Was this a difficult thing for you to do in Zimbabwe?
Yes.
Yeah, very difficult.
Yeah, we got to meet the Zimbabwean Special Forces.
It was extremely challenging.
The CIO, which is basically their intelligence agency, kept an eye on me.
And on what premise had you gone to the country?
Did you tell them that you were making a wildlife film or did you tell them why you were there?
No.
Not at all.
Geez, you did an awful lot then without having to divulge that.
But the security services, the police took an interest in you.
How did you get around that?
Just being a good person, you know, and just...
Not with the intelligence services, but with the special forces.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not the only one that was there that day.
That was a very intimidating experience.
But anyway, it was just, I had to do what I had to do.
And they let you get on with it?
They did.
They did.
Just out of interest, had any of them heard the story?
Were they aware of this?
Yes.
Right, so they knew what you were doing, and that's why you were there.
You weren't just making a travelogue.
All right.
So I tried to keep it as quiet as possible and just slept in a shack for a long time out in the middle of nowhere.
No electricity, no water.
I think when you do interviews about this.
I won't talk about this too much.
I want to go back to the next one.
No, no, that's fine.
But I think, you know, for other interviews that you do, you should at least mention this because it all goes to show how much of an effort that you've had to put in to get this story.
Yep, you risked your life.
And so did other people.
Yes.
How do you think you risked your life?
Well, when I first got into the country, you know, it was 2008 when Mugabe was intimidating everybody so they wouldn't vote for the opposition party.
All the journalists, the New York Times reporter, he stayed in Harare.
I was out in a shack an hour out of the city.
And he got arrested.
He got put in jail.
Remember that story?
I do.
I was there.
I do.
I mean, look, that was never out of the news back then.
And this just speaks to the fact that you really have been doing this for years.
I have.
That was the first trip.
And that was, yeah, every trip had its own difficulties.
Let's put it that way.
I don't want to, I'm not trying to make, You know, not only did I risk my life, other people did too.
There's a million stories, you know.
Well, look, I'm not going to give you problems by asking you what those stories are.
And I can understand your reticence to tell them, but it is part of, you know, if you ever write the book, Randall, you've got to put all of this stuff in because it's part of the tapestry here.
So look, you were there.
You risked yourself and not just you, other people involved in this, your safety to do this thing.
Let's go back to the story and the kids.
The kids are having this experience.
There is some kind of silver craft and some kind of beings.
Where are the adults?
The adults, there was one adult in the tuck shop, which is like a curio shop or a little candy snack shop when the kids go on recess.
But from her vantage point, and she was far away from this, where the kids' children had gathered, but she had no visual viewpoint of that area of the school.
There was a grade one teacher that was, unfortunately, she's not alive anymore, that was also in the grade one classroom.
She had a perfect view.
And then the other teachers were in a staff meeting over wages for the year.
And all those children came, you know, 100 kids came screaming into that room about what they had seen.
Now, you know, in any era, when I went to school, If a bunch of me and my friends ran into the school telling the staff, we've just seen an alien and an alien craft or something that you know sort of looks sci-fi outside, we would be dismissed.
Were they dismissed?
Yes, they were.
So, what happened?
Um, the children went home and told their parents, and their parents called the school and say, what the heck, what happened to our kids?
What happened, you know?
And then the school.
Were the kids all different?
I mean, were they changed by it when they went home?
Yeah.
I mean, it was the kids themselves that made the school pay attention because they went home, told their parents.
The parents called the school.
One of the parents called the BBC.
So it was, you know, not just a few parents called, a lot.
And then the school had to deal with it.
They were forced to deal with it.
So that's how it happened.
And then the school really picked up their responsibility and did a fair job, I felt.
What did they do?
Well, they had the kids draw pictures of what they saw and then allowed an investigator, the BBC, to talk to a few of the kids initially.
And then Cynthia Hind to come in.
And she was a MUFON investigator for her to come in and ask some questions of these children.
So, you know, the school allowed these children to be interviewed, which we wouldn't be talking about this story if that didn't happen.
And a wonderful BBC reporter called Tim Leach, who, you know, I didn't realize until close to the end of the documentary is no longer alive.
But, you know, that guy is, and I worked for the BBC for a very small part of my career, but he is one of the archetypal reporters out in the field.
He's steeped in the country.
You know, he's not the kind of guy who I think could have functioned as well here because he was so into it there that that was his place.
You know, that was his place.
That was his time.
But he'd seen an amazing man.
He also studied Zimbabwe, and that was his major in college.
Right.
So, you know, he loved the country, and that was absolutely clear.
Those who fall in love with southern Africa, you know, once you see it, once you experience it, if it's your thing, it's in your life and your heart forever.
And the video that you got of him, absolutely, that's the story.
So here's a guy who's covered African wars.
He's seen bloodshed.
He's seen bullets flying.
He's lucky to have survived a lot of situations.
This thing he can't work out.
Yeah.
This one, I guess, yeah, he says it best.
It's just blew my socks off.
That's how he would say it.
Yeah, and the man had been shot.
I mean, he showed me the bullet hole in his leg.
And yeah, he had been through a lot.
So he calls for help, doesn't he?
He calls a few people for help.
I think he was the guy, did he, who got this MUFON investigator involved, and she talked to the kids.
But he didn't only do that.
It got to the stage where he realized that it was something big, but it was too big for him to assimilate.
So he gets in touch with, and I don't know how he does this, you can tell me, the very famous Harvard psychologist and investigator of all of these things, John Mack, the late John Mack.
He gets hold of him.
That's correct.
Yeah.
And I think that when Cynthia got there, Cynthia Hine from UFON, she connected Tim with, got him the number because Tim was looking at everything, you know, every explanation, every potential explanation.
And he was making phone calls all over the world.
And he called John Mack, Dr. John Mack, who was a Pulitzer Prize winning professor of psychiatry.
And he, you know, Dr. John Mack, he was looking into this subject matter because it didn't fit into any diagnosis that he was aware of.
And he had worked in, you know, with addictions, suicides.
I mean, the man had written so many books.
He did the biography on Lawrence of Arabia.
I mean, that's where he won his Pulitzer Prize.
He was a brilliant man.
And he was looking for, he was one of the first Ivy League people to really to really look into this and actually give his honest opinion.
And Tim made that happen.
He did.
And the video, I don't know whether that was Tim who shot that video of John Mack interviewing the kids.
And the kids, the thing that will stick with me forever is that this was a more innocent era.
There were not smartphones in every pocket.
The internet wasn't everywhere.
Everybody didn't know everything back then.
Somebody texted me, said, well, if it was real, why didn't they get it on their cell phones?
And I'm like, that's 1994.
Yeah, no, we were probably at least a decade away from everybody having the beginnings of a cell phone.
And of course, as you know now, Southern Africa depends on mobile phone technology, but that wasn't the case then.
There were landlines, and when I used to go to Southern Africa, you had to buy a call card with like however many RANs it would have been in South African money's worth of credit on it, and then find a payphone and use that thing.
That's how you communicated with back home.
That's what I had to do.
I had to have a couple phones when I was there, even in 2008.
Yeah, yeah.
We just don't know, but that's how it is.
It's another conversation about how the cell phone is changing Africa.
My gosh.
You know?
I think that's happened.
I think it's good in many ways and bad in many others, which is another subject of conversation for another time.
But John Meck comes over and his interviews with the kids are remarkable.
You have got them in the documentary, and you don't mess about with them, you don't intercut them, we don't have lots of swishy sound effects going from thing to thing.
Thank God you don't do that because what absolutely makes the point is the look of honesty and wonderment and questing and quizzing on the faces of the kids.
They look like they've really seen something big, but they can't make sense of what it might have been.
Yeah, that's true.
And that's what struck me was realizing everything was said on these people's faces and in their eyes.
I didn't need to do any special effects or try to create anything.
When somebody's telling the truth, you know it.
You can see it.
I mean, body language experts see it.
You know, I had people look at this and it's just, if that's there, you don't need anything else.
You know what I mean?
It's just truth speaks.
And the woman from MUFON was absolutely convinced because she said, and I think John Mack might have made this point too, but she made this point in the documentary and archive footage, that people who are, you know, inclined to not really get the right end of the stick of what they've seen, you know, all their stories, their stories will be, you know, you'll be able to tell.
But the most important thing when it involves these kids is that a bunch of kids who were making something up or extemporizing on it or building on it and flamming it up into something that it isn't, they would have all told exactly the same story.
And there were minor differences between everybody's stories.
And for, I don't know whether it was Mrs. or Miss Hines, that was the key point.
And I agree with her.
And I saw the same thing.
It was, you know, I started to map out where each child was.
Because, you know, it's, again, an enormous playground.
And, you know, they were all in, there were, there were many gathered in one location, but there were also others that were much further away, but saw it from a totally different angle.
And, you know, I got to say, I've been out, my email address and phone number has been out in Africa and Zimbabwe and to the aerial school and to all these kids for 14 and a half years.
And that speaks loudly to me at this point because I never got any emails saying it didn't happen or somebody made it up or there was a hoax.
That never happened.
And I, you know, for that amount of time, I would expect somebody to come forward.
I just don't, it's just, I think what happened happened, you know.
Were there people at the time?
I know that John Mack went back to America with the story and some of his colleagues looked askance upon him and he had a bit of a hard time with people questioning his professional credibility because he was doing this kind of thing and apparently buying into it.
But was anybody in Zimbabwe debunking it at the time?
The documentary doesn't give me that impression.
At the time, I think it gradually set in, to be honest with you.
I think there was a lot of disbelief and there still is in pockets there for sure.
But I think over time, I mean, even one of the teachers that didn't believe the children in the meeting with Dr. Mack, I found him and I asked him, what do you, you rose your, you thought these kids were making it up.
Do you still feel that way?
Because I would love to hear how you know that.
And he said, no, I don't believe that anymore.
He said, I believe the kids saw something because of the consistency of the story over time from the kids.
And so he had changed his mind because I was looking for, believe me, I wanted the skeptic, right?
I did.
I wanted that other perspective.
And I didn't find that.
And you talked.
Sorry.
I expected to find that, but I didn't.
And, you know, the documentary faithfully records that.
Okay.
You talk to a lot of the kids as they are now as adults.
Robert Medcalf remembered a flash of bright silver light.
We haven't really talked about what happened to the craft.
Can I tell you a little story?
Do it.
The interview I'm interviewing in his car.
He was working for the, he was a tank driver for the British military.
We're sitting outside the base.
I mean, I love Robert's a really great man, just a good stand-up guy.
And, you know, I could have put, you know, British military under there, but didn't need to.
But I just wanted to give you the...
So he talked about his life and in later life.
You know, he's now a trained observer, so he knows what he saw.
Correct.
Okay.
Luke Nell, somebody else, was playing football, saw a silver object that vanished, then, quotes, there was a commotion.
I love that word, but that's what he said.
Salma Siddique saw kids pointing at an object in the bush and a large group of children gathered.
And Salma Siddique, I think, says in the documentary that the faces of the aliens, they had, you know, the standard sort of oval-shaped eyes that we expect of such things.
But the faces, she says, looked plastic.
That was a really graphic and very revealing way of describing.
Yeah, very, you know, others said it was so smooth, you know, and slippery looking.
You know, that was very consistent.
And, you know, the unusual part about it was the dressed in black type of outfit, like the skin-tight suit.
I mean, I would have expected because of what was in, not that they had a ton of media over there, they didn't, but I would have expected it to be gray, you know, with if they copied a story, I would have not expected what they said in small detail.
So that was interesting to me because there's very, those incidents where these things are dressed in black are rare.
Now, you have done, and we've said this, but it needs to be remarked all the way through this because you're not going to do it for yourself, so I'm going to do it for you.
You've done such a lot of work on this, such a lot of research over all of those years.
One of the characters in this documentary who made a big impact on me was the South African Broadcasting Corporation SABC's reporter.
You managed to get her to come back from there, and you also managed to get all of the footage from there.
For them, even though they were across the border, you know, South Africa had and still has more comprehensive media than Zimbabwe.
This was a big story for them, wasn't it?
It was a big story for them.
She was very helpful, very, very helpful with helping me find the school.
She took the same risk I did in 2008 to go into that country.
She's a very brave woman, I can tell you that.
But yeah, she had all the interviews that she had done.
She actually had a nephew at the school at the time also.
And she had an aunt who would run the tuck shop occasionally at the school.
But yes, the SABC did that story.
BBC actually ran a small piece at the time as well.
Which, you know, something I was on the radio in London.
I don't remember the story from then.
In fact, I made my first trip to South Africa and I was doing training for the SABC.
That's how I know it.
In 1994, right?
I was a young guy that they'd hired to do radio training.
And I don't remember the story.
And it happened in that year.
So it's remarkable for me to discover it now.
Her name is Nicole.
What, you know, talking to her both in the documentary, and you must have spoken with her a lot when you weren't recording, how did she feel about it?
What were her recollections?
Just the genuineness of the children and, you know, that they, her perspective, and she could speak to this, but that they couldn't have been making it up.
I mean, she was a, even at that time, she was a very good reporter.
Do you know what I mean?
So she knew, you know, as a reporter, you can suss out.
That's your job to suss out whether someone's telling you the truth or not.
And then you got to get another opinion.
Then you got to get another witness, you know, to really be able to go with a story, you know, like Tim Leach did.
So, yeah, she was fantastic.
And that's so funny you were at SABC.
That's, yeah.
Well, that's how it chimes with me and, you know, what I saw.
I mean, I have to say that some of the stuff that I saw when I watched the documentary moved me so much that I was sitting here in tears.
But there was only me here and only you and I know that.
So it was a beautiful thing.
I want people to see this documentary.
Okay.
Let's wind it up to date now.
And you talked to what were the kids and are now adults, as many of those as you could.
Talk to me about the impacts, because there was definitely trauma, I think even physical signs.
You brought one witness back who now lives in the United States, Emily Trim.
Her parents were missionaries in that area at that time.
She's now gone back to the U.S. You brought her across the Atlantic, and she met all of her colleagues again, went back to the school after all these years.
That was quite momentous.
And she talks pretty movingly about the impact of this on her, doesn't she?
Yes.
Yes.
Every person that I've met has dealt with it a little differently.
It's very unique, in my opinion, how the human psyche deals with it.
Some people struggle more than others.
Some people just block it out.
Don't want to remember.
Don't want to think about it.
I've seen that as well.
So it really, regardless of the event, not regardless, but after the event, it's all how the human being processes what they've seen, what they've experienced.
And that varies widely.
One of the kids as were, and you talk to her now, basically said, well, you know, whatever it is we saw, it kind of indicates that we are not alone.
And that's the biggest, if that is so, that's the biggest truth in the world ever, as they used to say on movie trailers.
That's true.
That's very true.
And I think just talking to many other people during this process, it is something real that people just are having a hard time wrapping their heads around.
And I think it's extremely important that we find out what's happening to us as a species.
I mean, that's just being a smart animal.
You want to pay attention to what's going on on the bigger scale.
And obviously there is something.
And we need to find out what these things are, what their intentions are, how we fit into a bigger picture, which we're just getting off the planet to explore.
It's only been relatively short period of time that we've crossed the border into space.
So it would make sense that we'd start seeing whatever else is out there start paying more attention to us because we're going to be entering their neighborhood.
Where is the physical evidence, though?
There were some photographs taken that showed what appeared to be the imprint of something having impacted the soil.
But beyond that, there was nothing Else, was there?
There were multiple photographs taken of marks on the ground and also swirls in the grass, the tall grass, and also something not quite right with the wildlife in the area.
And I cannot speak to that because I wasn't the cameraman, but I'll tell you, there's a cameraman out there that shot a lot of this that he shoots for National Geo.
He shoots for, he's a wild, that's all he does is shoot wildlife.
And he was on that scene that day.
And he could tell you his personal opinion about, he's never seen anything like that before.
And he's out there every day out in the bush, you know, rhinos and elephants and baboons.
That's what he does for his living.
So I trust him.
I talked to him on the phone many times and he, you know, he always says I never saw anything like that ever in my entire career.
And did the animals appear spooked?
What, you know, there was something odd about them?
Did they look frightened or were they subdued?
Well, it was a lot of the insect life that there was the termite mounds, you know, those things are all over the place.
And they were all dead.
Right.
So whatever had happened.
That wasn't the only thing, but he would be better to speak to about it because he witnessed it.
You know, I'd rather have the first person witnesses talk about it because I may get it wrong.
But you telling me that, and we've talked about this once before when you started this project, something caused them to die off, and we still don't know why.
One of the things that I think was a masterstroke about your documentary, and this is one of the things I found revealing and moving about it, was that you took Emily, who'd come across from the U.S., to meet some tribal leaders and others.
And they had a completely different perspective on this.
And because I know Southern Africa, it's no surprise to me that these guys said, yeah, this stuff has been going on forever, for as long as we've been going on.
This is no big surprise.
So here we are, we're saying, wow, there was this contact experience and a Silvercraft and all the rest of it.
And the people who really know Africa were there telling you and telling her, this stuff has been going on for as long as we've been here.
Yeah, that's very true.
I was stunned by that.
You know, one of my first experiences, I was standing next to a chief and he, I'm looking out at the stars at night and I said, do you think there's anything out there?
And he said, of course.
Of course.
Why would you ever even think that there wasn't?
That was in the beginning.
And then I started to interview chiefs, you know, they call them Sangomas or, you know, there's all types of Nyangas.
Well, the Sangoma is like a kind of wise person.
Correct.
Yeah.
And then you had, you know, Credo.
I interviewed Credo Mutua.
He's the Zulu, yeah, the knowledge keeper for the Zulu people.
And, you know, he's, he told me, he's like, we've known about these things for thousands of years.
That's what he said to me.
And he said, when are you guys going to get on it?
The Western world.
Because, and you're, he also told me we're losing an awful lot of knowledge because we're not paying attention to the people.
And it's mostly the Native people who've known about this for, you know, forever.
And the other thing because we haven't been talking to them.
Yes.
And the other thing he told me, which kind of was profound, and this is all on tape, so I can back it all up because he passed away last year at 91.
And, you know, he said to me, he said, we used to think they were gods.
We used to think they were gods.
And he said, we started to notice that they were using technology.
So that was just profound things that are known by the native culture.
So the knowledge that there is another race, not like us, from somewhere else, deploying technology that's gone back, you know, as far as human beings strolled around this planet on two legs, it is astonishing.
And I'm glad that you did that because it really was, again, another piece of icing on the cake.
Let's talk briefly about the fact that this was not just a one-day experience.
This wasn't just something that happened to the kids on that day, and that was it.
And people went in and investigated.
They told their stories.
They wrote their reports and everybody went away.
First of all, there was the sighting of some kind of brilliant object that crossed the Atlantic, apparently.
I think that was tracked in some way.
Certainly an air crew noticed something.
And then something was noticed the day after.
I think some kids went back to the site the day after.
So let's try and unpick that.
What happened before and after the day itself?
Well, it went on for a good week.
According to Tim Leached, you know, he was getting phone calls for weeks.
He said multiple weeks.
I mean, there's more witnesses out there than I could have.
There were too many.
I couldn't chase every witness down because there were so many before and after Ariel.
I mean, there's adults that had the morning before, the day after.
I mean, there's stories that I hope come out now because there was a lot I couldn't, I just, I had my hands full and that I couldn't track down.
There's two other pilots that were in the air.
I know they're out there.
I have seen them comment about it on aviation websites.
And I hope they come forward at some point because a lot of people saw a lot of very strange things at that time, that whole week, and the week and the days following Ariel.
It's just, you know, people just don't want to come forward.
I mean, you know, at least at that time, it was just not acceptable.
And I hope times are changing so we can actually have the conversations, and especially by professionals, you know, people that, like pilots, like, you know, people that are really good observers.
They have to be.
And when they see something strange, they know it.
And just to sum it up, what did they see?
What was it?
Well, the pilot, one of the pilots I interviewed was a commercial pilot flying from Botswana to South Africa to Johannesburg.
And when you do that, you cross near the border of Zimbabwe.
And that's where this occurred.
And he, his co-pilot, and a pilot and another aircraft that was formating on him.
It's funny.
We can't do that over there, but in Africa, they do.
Two commercial airlines flying in formation.
Sorry.
But they, you know, they, you know, you could keep your eyes open to see where, because this was around dusk to see where that aircraft is coming to formate on you.
And he looked out the window to his right-hand side.
He thought that was the aircraft, but it wasn't.
And they all watched this thing, this ball of light, like an orange ball just go from their left wingtips across in front of them.
And they were at 25,000 feet.
And it just went straight across the horizon.
And when you're at that altitude, the horizon is huge.
I mean, it takes a long time for something to disappear.
This thing was gone in two seconds.
So that, you know, those people will never forget that.
They still remember it very well because they had never seen anything like that.
And pilots, when you're commercial, you see meteorites, you see bolites, you see all kinds of all kinds of things.
So you have a good, you know, your experience.
By that time, you've got thousands and thousands of hours up there.
You know what happens up there.
And if you're flying anywhere in Africa, then you're used to seeing an awful lot of nothing out the window.
That's correct.
And every so often something really weird.
Certainly in the 90s, the rules of doing all these things were completely different.
I remember flying down on one of my many trips down to Johannesburg.
And I was, I think, on a British Airways.
They let me up on the, this was just pre-9-11, so they let me up on the flight deck, and I sat with the crew for a good long time in the middle of the night.
And, you know, there were other planes coming underneath us.
And just like cars on a dirt road in America somewhere in the middle of the night would flash their lights to each other, these aircraft were flashing their lights to each other, and the navigation was all done by shortwave.
So, you know, we're talking about, I'm just trying to set the scene here for what is a completely different thing.
And the people who fly there, you know, they're people who have to be, all pilots have to be very alert and savvy, but, you know, you have to have a particular kind of something to fly there, I think.
What about just quickly the day after?
And there was the story about the kids who went back to the site the next day, wasn't there?
I mean, people did go back to the site to take pictures anyway and that kind of thing.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
But a lot of the kids were afraid to go to school.
So, yeah, I mean, there's a whole, a lot happened after that event.
I mean, what interested me about the day after was one of the workers also had something happen.
Anyway, that's a whole nother story.
But I just wanted to mention.
But what was it?
Can you tell me what it was?
I'm pretty sure I'm going to, that person's either going to come forward or I'll play the interview at some point.
But was it some kind of encounter?
Yes.
On a road near Ariel.
Yeah.
With something or someone?
Correct.
With these.
With something and someone.
Well, something.
Yeah.
I mean, it was the same thing that was reported at Ariel.
Can we go back for a second to Africa?
Because what people don't understand is there's not a lot of radar coverage in Africa.
I mean, you know what I'm saying?
Like, Johannesburg has great radar.
And if you look at the radar map of Africa, there's hardly any radar at all over there.
But I can tell you this, Johannesburg, that pilot that I interviewed, he went to the air traffic control tower when he landed and they had seen it on radar.
So that exists, existed.
It probably exists.
But I know that's a fact.
So there's two radar sightings.
And that stuff's important.
And I hope, because that's the tangible stuff.
You know, trace evidence, ground, all that stuff seems to be more elusive, but radar hits and the speeds these things are going at, that's evidential.
And so are the pilot width.
When pilots report that, you know, they are taken seriously on a certain level or they just don't say anything.
Somebody pays attention to that.
They do?
Anyway.
And you did, and I'm glad you did.
Just finally then, some questions, just three lots of questions, really, three questions from listeners.
Zev emailed me and asked me to ask you after the show on Sunday, and I said I would.
Zev says, I have heard reports from other students at the school in Zimbabwe that that day they saw and heard nothing.
How can you explain that?
That's a good question.
It's a really good question.
I can't explain that.
It depends on where they were.
If they were on the upper playing field, which was 15 feet above the lower one and it's surrounded by trees, they couldn't have seen anything.
So that I have run into that, and I don't know how to explain that, to be honest with you.
But don't you say that the physical proximity and their location might, we don't know, might explain that.
Was that familiar with that?
Yeah, you're saying?
It might explain that.
I don't know, but I have talked to people that didn't see anything.
So that's, but it, you know.
Do you think that that detracts in any way from the story?
No.
No, I don't.
I think if I was there, I would have closed my eyes too.
If that's what happened.
I mean, again, it goes back to what happens to people's psychology when they see something like this.
And maybe some, I don't really know.
It's a question that is going to be answered at some point, I think.
Well, it sounds like you're going to have to go back and do more about this.
Anthony in Nottingham and Jonathan in Worthing in the UK both asked the same question essentially.
Having talked to some of the aerial school children now as adults for the documentary, have any of them gone on to have further encounters with UFOs or possible extraterrestrials or anything like that?
And did the experience awaken any latent psychic ability that they might or might not have had?
Were they changed in that way?
I'm not entirely sure on the psychic ability thing.
I think what happens from my understanding of it is when you're exposed to them, it awakens a psychic part of your mind and then it slowly, gradually disappears.
And the other thing is there have been, I can't speak about it because the witnesses, a couple of them have told me to be just, you know, not to share that, the things that have happened since.
Okay, last question.
And thank you for doing this because I know that you're not a big, a huge fan of interviews.
I know that.
And I'm really, you know, I wanted to make this.
I like a zoo thing.
I don't like to talk about it.
Well, no, I was going to say that.
You know, look, I'm no psychic.
I was about to say that back to you.
You're a guy, and I worked that out just from watching the documentary.
You're a guy who likes to make things happen.
And so, you know, I'm going to say it again.
I've never done this with a guest.
But, you know, the man that I'm speaking to, his work does the talking.
So, you know, I personally think that you would do something good by taking a look at the documentary because it is one of the best that I've ever seen.
So there's me putting myself out on the line there, Randall.
Last question from Howard Thompson.
Howard Thompson asks, he basically wants to know where he can find the documentary and read about this.
I think just your website.
Yeah, it's right at the moment.
We're at arialphenomenon.com.
It's A-R-I-E-L Phenomenon.com.
And, you know, we're looking at streaming services now as far as just making it even a bigger launch.
We're getting all the bugs out.
That's all happening.
Now it's all doing really well.
But we're going to take it to another level because my intention from the beginning is I wanted everybody on this planet to see this story, to just, you know, just to be aware.
Well, I think it's beautifully put together.
I love the way that you resisted all of the gambits and techniques and techno-flash, if that's the right way.
And you just got the material that took years and a certain amount of risk.
And you told the story.
One question I asked you on the TV, and I think we probably ran out of time before we got a full answer, but just quickly at the end, there must have been records and documentation about this.
Where are they all?
On an official side?
Good question.
You know, the Zimbabwe military said their radar was down.
Tim Leach went there first.
So I don't know what the real story is.
The real capability was in Johannesburg as far as technology of radar and things like that.
And, you know, the South African Air Force is significant.
Zimbabwe, not so much.
But I think there are people that know.
I don't think they could have missed this on an official level, and they've been quiet.
South African Air Force, same thing.
Totally quiet about it.
So maybe some of the answers that you might have to return to one of these days.
Well, I'd rather not.
I'd rather have them come forward.
Right.
Okay, well, you know, but I'm just saying maybe some of this stuff is in files in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.
Correct.
Pretoria is, yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, I mean, I'd rather have these people come forward because to be honest with you, it's a moral, it's morally the right thing to do.
Right.
And there's, I know there's people that know.
And it's, you know, and again, I can't get them to talk.
I can't even say their names.
But you know that there are people who know and they will not as of now talk.
Correct.
Randall, I think that's a very good point at parking this.
I know that you'd rather be doing the job than doing interviews, but I'm glad you did this one.
I appreciate it, Howard.
You know, you got a career.
I love your voice.
Jeez, tell my boss.
If you need any narration, I'm very reasonable.
Yeah, I could see some major network in your future for sure.
And just from your voice and your questions.
Who knows?
I could be saying that.
You never know, right?
Yeah, you never know.
I could say those words in a world.
Randall, lovely to talk with you.
Pleasure, sir.
Thank you so much.
Your thoughts, welcome about this.
Randall Nickerson is a man who would rather be out there filming stuff and telling stories than doing interviews.
And I have a lot of time for that.
But I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Unexplained.
I think there is much more to be said about that story, the Ariel School story, and maybe we'll hear about it one of these days quite soon.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the home of The Unexplained, so until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online, and please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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