Remembering the Incident Where More Than 60 Children saw ‘Aliens’ Near Their School

Ruwa (Zimbabwe) This event sounds like right out of a sci-fi movie, however with so many witnesses it deserves to be looked at with an open mind.

In 1994 at the Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe around 60 students reported that they saw a UFO and strange beings. Some of the children who described the event also say those beings communicated with them. Apparently the beings warned them to take care of the environment and told them that if humanity didn’t, there would be an environmental catastrophe for the earth. The aliens were harmless and kind to the children and merely wanted to impart a message to them, according to all questioned kids.

Allegedly, 62 children and faculty all told the exact same story, that two beings about three feet tall with large black eyes emerged from the craft. Harvard professor of psychiatry John E. Mack visited the school and filmed interviews with the children. He was assisted by South African producer Nicky Carter who had already made a short documentary on the subject for the SABC. The psychologist talked to each child independently and had them draw a picture of what they saw. Their pictures and story’s were all similar.

All of the kids said they saw a spaceship and “aliens with big eyes” near their school playground. Back then, the story was reported across the world. A BBC crew was amongst the first who spoke to the pupils and teachers after the incident. At the same time in other parts of the country there were also reports of strange lights and a ‘craft’ in the sky.

Carter had no doubt that the children were telling the truth. “When they were interviewed by Mack with all his professional skills it was clear they were telling the truth (…) their voice tone, their body language. They were so consistent, they told their stories with such conviction. And they spoke about it in their own language. One child recalled being told by the alien that we should not be so ‘techknowledged’, why make up something like that?”

Mack, a Pulitzer prize winner, was a highly respected psychiatrist. However, when he started to research reported alien abductions, his fellow academics looked askance. Sadly in 2004 Mack was killed by a drunk driver while he was visiting London to lecture at a conference.

In a BBC interview he said: “I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. (But) I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can’t account for in any other way. Yet I can’t know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry.”

Nickerson sees himself as taking that inquiry further to make a documentary about the event, incorporating the interview footage that was shot in 1994 with follow-up material recorded in the present.

“I want to present the story objectively and show the original raw material. That’s what initially interested me about this case. These children all describing seeing the same thing. You can tell they are not lying. But having seen this footage I thought: I need to go to this place, to talk to people, I need to investigate it for myself. Did this really happen? The subject has to be approached as scientifically as possible (…) There are questions that we need to ask. It’s a case of presenting the evidence just like court.” says Nickerson.

While it was many years ago, some of the children were interviewed again many years later and their stories haven’t changed at all. They still say exactly the same as when they were kids. Nickerson cites two students who are now studying in the united states: “Their father said that after their experience the children were totally changed, that’s what convinced him that something really happened.”

Ultimately the children, school teachers and UFO Researchers that were involved in the Ruwa UFO Incident are all convinced that what the saw was a real alien encounter, but we might never know for sure.

A documentary from the BBC can be seen here: