Ariel School Encounter, Ruwa

Ruwa lies 20 to 22 kilometres southeast of Harare. Ariel School stands on Tarisa Road, its playing field giving way to rough bush and trees. Two nights before the encounter, on 14 September, a fireball crossed the skies of southern Africa. Calls about UFOs poured into ZBC.

Friday, 16 September 1994. Morning break, shortly after 10 a.m. On the field, children saw "three silver balls in the sky." They vanished with a flash of light and reappeared elsewhere. Three times. Then they moved down towards the school, following the line of electricity pylons. One landed, or hovered, over rough ground among the trees. Fifi Kirkman, 10, saw a "small whitish object" about 100 metres away. It glowed. Then it came closer, with "a sort of golden colour."

And then, the figure. Guy G. described "a small man about one metre tall." Others saw a head larger than normal, long black hair, a black, shiny suit and "big, black, slanting eyes." He walked a little way across the rough ground, became aware of the children and disappeared. He, or someone very like him, reappeared at the back of the object. "They turned round and stared at me and went back into a kind of ship," said Emily B. Then the craft took off very rapidly. And it was gone.

Some of the younger pupils cried. Some feared the visitors were tokoloshe, figures from local folklore. "I was excited at first but then I saw one of the smaller boys crying," said Guy G. "Then I also became afraid." Headmaster Colin Mackie had them draw what they had seen. About 62 of roughly 250 pupils said they had witnessed something. "I feel sure the children saw something," Mackie said.

BBC correspondent Tim Leach filmed interviews on 19 and 20 September. "I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this," he later said. Cynthia Hind of MUFON began her inquiry on the 20th. "There is no doubt in my mind that what the children are saying is what they saw," she wrote. Gunter Hofer photographed two oval impressions in the drought-hardened ground, the largest about 30 feet, and wedge-shaped marks. Soil tests found "some anomalies," but "none were of particular significance."

In early December, Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack arrived with anthropologist Dominique Callimanopulos. They interviewed 12 children. A new element surfaced: a message. "I think they want people to know that we're actually making harm on this world and we mustn't get too technologed," said Emma, 11. Mack found no sign of lying or psychiatric disturbance.

Sceptics argue that the 14 September fireball, since linked to the re-entry of the Cosmos 2290 rocket, primed the children. Critics note that Hind interviewed pupils in small groups while others watched, and that the message appears only in Mack's interviews. Gideon Reid has proposed touring puppeteers, though he admits no record places them in Ruwa that day.

In 2023, Netflix's Encounters brought a twist. Former pupil Dallyn said: "No, I didn't see the UFO. I made up the whole thing." Yet in 2008 he had called himself a "witness to an event that I cannot fully explain." Tapfu, another former pupil, was blunt. "It definitely was not a rock, I know what a rock looks like."

The story returned in James Fox's The Phenomenon in 2020 and in Randall Nickerson's Ariel Phenomenon in 2022. Salma Siddick, now a human rights lawyer, recalls feeling the being was "gazing into her soul." Another former pupil put it simply. "This stuff can brand you for life."