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A mass sighting in Ruwa, Zimbabwe

Hey friends,

Today’s email is a doozy. UFOs, aliens, Harvard psychologists. Talk about ingredients for a conspiracy. Let’s jump in.  

An alien encounter witnessed by 60 school children  

Here’s the gist: On September 16th,  1994, silver orb-like UFOs landed behind the Ariel School in Zimbabwe during the children’s morning break. According to the children, a strange being then emerged from the ship and even tried to communicate. All I can think about is that scene from Signs…

Coincidentally, on the night of September 14th, just a day and a half before the Ariel School sighting, there were reports of a swarm of multi-colored lights and pyrotechnics across the night sky in Zimbabwe along with neighboring countries Zambia and Botswana. It was deemed a meteor shower. Was this their test run of what happens when entering Earth’s atmosphere?

Kids draw the darndest things…

Cynthia Hind, a South African ufologist, received word of the incident and went to investigate. She asked that the students draw what they saw, and 35 of them did. Some are shown below – real eerie.

The children described the being as human-like and around 3 feet tall with a scrawny neck, thin limbs, long straight black hair, and huge eyes. Apparently the thing wore shiny, tight-fitting black clothing, too. I guess even aliens know the importance of a first impression.  

A Harvard psychologist interviewed the kids – he believes them

Dr John E. Mack was a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School as well as Pulitzer prize-winning author. After spending most of the 1980s focusing on root causes of the Cold War, he shifted and began researching the alien abduction phenomenon in the early 1990s. He published two books on the subject: Abduction and Passport to the Cosmos. (His focus on abduction didn’t sit too well with the Harvard establishment, but that’s a story for a different day.)

After the Ariel School sighting, Mack travelled to Ruwa to chat with the children. Some of these interviews can be found here on YouTube. During the conversations, kids mention that the being rose out of the top of the craft and telepathically communicated - through its eyes.

The children said that the messages were horrific, urgent, and environmentally focused, warning about the misuse of technology and harming the earth. Those that received the telepathy also mentioned feeling horrible the rest of the day.

The stories were consistent enough for Mack, and he concluded the children were of “sound mind.” He stated that the way they spoke about the sighting was the way someone would speak about a real event that occurred.

What makes this even stranger (if that’s possible)

Yes, an alien sighting at a school is already extraordinary. But this sighting has some peculiarities that make it unique, even when compared to other reported extraterrestrial encounters.

First, a typical (alleged) encounter tends to involve few people, often just one. But sixty people witnessed the Ruwa event. Yes, they were children, but it’s still incredible that sixty different stories matched up when scrutinized by a Harvard academic.

Second, the Ruwa sighting was just that – a sighting. No reports of abduction. No shouts of artificial insemination. No drunken bar stories about alien probes. Just a sighting. The simplicity of it makes Ruwa more difficult to dismiss, no?

Third, and possibly most odd, there was an alleged landing in Metapec, Mexico on the exact same date as the Ruwa encounter – September 16th, 1994. According to the Los Angeles Times article, the alleged landing happened in a cornfield and the witness reported seeing a humanoid leave the vehicle. Was this simultaneous visitation coordinated? Did one of the ships take a wrong turn and land in Mexico by mistake?    

Get your tinfoil hat on and take a deeper dive

Despite being less well-known compared to other alleged encounters, there is quite a bit of content out there on this one. Go jump in:

1. YouTube video of a few of the Dr. Mack/children interviews

2. Books by Dr. John E. Mack

3. Book by Cynthia Hind (remember it was Hind who got to the scene first)

4. Reddit AMA with Randall Nickerson, director of an upcoming documentary on the Ariel School encounter