On an October night in 1940, when he was 5 years old, Brad Steiger, a writer of the paranormal, witnessed something extraordinary. He was sitting on his bed looking out the window at a harvest moon when he heard something. It was the sound of someone walking on the fall leaves outside his house. He was surprised that his dog, Bill, wasn’t barking, for his family lived on an Iowa farm, and the dog always barked at strangers.
He then heard the sound of a wash tub being dragged from the well pump. This prompted him to look out the window. He wasn’t scared, more amazed to see a small man in tight overalls standing outside the kitchen window. The man had an oversized head, pointed ears and slender fingers, and two slits for a nose. They were seven feet from each other, separated only by the glass of the window. The man looked at him with large, reptilian, slanted eyes that made his heart race. He felt a tinge of fear until he continued to look into its eyes. The next thing he remembered it was morning. (Steiger 1-2)
The UFO phenomenon is both fascinating and frightening at the same time. Although alien encounters have happened since antiquity, there’s a sense of denial in our current culture that causes us to dismiss that these events are actually happening to people. It’s been said that we like to live in our comfortable boxes, but the truth is something is going on. It might be a message to us that we’re just not hearing. But what is the message?
Aliens in Ancient Times
Objects in the sky or unidentified flying object sightings have been recorded since ancient times as far back as the 15th Century BC in Egypt when the pharaoh Thutmose III witnessed circles of fire and discs in the sky. (Williams 20-21)
These ancient records have included men in shiny white clothing appearing in altars in the clouds. “Encounters range from distant views to possibly actual contact; the preferred place and time of observation seem to be rural areas in the daytime. Physical evidence is generally lacking.” (Stothers 90)
Alien Abductions
Although sightings are an anomaly for most, alien abductions are even more intriguing. In modern times, for those who have been abducted by aliens or have witnessed a UFO, there is never enough proof to convince non-believers that the events actually happened. However, when there is more than one witness to a UFO sighting, the stories become more believable. Especially when the event involves children, and their accounts coincide with one another.
Ariel School Alien Sighting
One compelling example coined as “one of the most important events in UFO history” is that of 62 children who witnessed something incredible at the Ariel Primary School outside Harare, Zimbabwe in 1994. While in the school playground, they heard a high-pitched sound and saw two or more objects or crafts land, and two alien men appeared outside the crafts. In separate interviews, they described the beings as small in stature with large, black slanted eyes and described them as acting curious. They seemed to “hop” around. After the encounter, many of the children drew what they saw.
Dr. John Mack, a Harvard psychologist and Pulitzer prize winning author, traveled to Zimbabwe to interview the children. This is his account of what happened there, “The older children were monitoring the younger children. They noticed the younger children were wandering outside the school perimeter going further out of the schoolyard than they should have. So the older children followed to bring them back, and the younger children pointed to a field and said ‘look, ’ and the older children saw this large UFO hovering above the ground and a smaller craft there and two or more alien beings there and the children became very excited, all of them. Sixty or more children saw this, the ones that were out there. As what happens so often…there’s always this irony of data.
“The adults were in a meeting. The children came rushing in, excitedly, frightened, about this serious thing they had seen. They told the adults. No adult went out to see this. By the time the break was over, and it was time to go out, there was nothing out there to be seen. This trickster like play of information runs constantly through this field, that illusiveness of data. (Mack)
“At first the parents didn’t believe the kids. But as the consistency of the stories came up over and over again, this very hard-nosed head master came to a conclusion that those children saw something that was “not of this world.” That was his phrase. And the teachers were even more skeptical. We met with all the teachers, and we went around the room to hear what they thought. They said ‘I know those kids. This happened. They saw it.’ The teachers were shocked and appalled. It was kind of like a single event [that] shattered their worldview. Because they were geared not to believe this and yet there was no other explanation.” (Mack)
The Alien’s Message
During the interviews with Mack, one little girl named, Lisel expressed her concern and an innate understanding that the aliens had a message for them. “We don’t look after the planet or air properly,” she said and told Mack that she felt horrible after she had returned home the night after the encounter. He asked her why and she replied, “It was like the world, and all the trees would come down, [there’s] no air and people will be dying.” She said that if it happened again that she would have asked the beings why they were here and what they wanted from us. (Fauci)
Mack states in his book Passport to the Cosmos that he was “astonished to discover…in case after case, powerful messages about the human threat to the Earth’s ecology were being conveyed to the experiencers in vivid, unmistakable words and images.” He believed it was, “quite possible that the protection of the Earth’s life is at the heart of the abduction phenomenon.” (Christie)
Emily Trim, another girl who witnessed the event, described her experience as a child the best she could at the Alien Cosmic Expo in June 2015 as a guest speaker. At the time of the incident, she received telepathic, technological messages in the form of images in her mind from the beings who were no more than five feet from her, what she believed to be a warning that we need to use our technology for better purposes. She was asked by an attendee of the conference if the beings still contacted her and she answered yes. She currently uses painting and drawing as therapy for her experiences and visions. (Trim)
At the close of Emily’s emotional speech regarding those strange events that happened in Zimbabwe over twenty years ago, Luigi Vendittelli, a UFO and abduction researcher and monitor of the event commented on his previous conversations with her. “I remember Emily saying once to me, who cares what the ship looked like, who cares what it sounded like, who cares what they looked like. She says it’s what they are trying to say to us.” (Trim)
Lisel, the student mentioned previously, appears as an adult in the upcoming film’s trailer for Ariel Phenomenon, and said, “There is a God, but there’s also other things around that can’t be explained. It’s another creature.” (Earth Mystery News)
-Ariel Phenomenon. “Ariel Phenomenon” Official Trailer. Youtube, Published on 30 Aug, 2016. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_remi7qgQ.
-Christie, Sean. (2014, September 4) Remembering Zimbabwes Great Alien Invasion. Retrieved from www.mg.co.za/article/2014-09-04-remembering-zimbabwes-great-alien-invasion.
-Earth Mystery News. Zimbabwe UFO Child Conactee Speaks Publicly For The 1st Time. Youtube, Published by Earth Mystery News – EMN, 21 Jun, 2016. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaLvp-BkqAo.
-Fauci, Vince. John E. Mack: 62 School Children: Close encounter with 2 beings: UFO lands in schoolyard. Youtube, Published on 17 Jan, 201. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W75HZD8VaE.
-Mack, John E. 1995.04.28 John E. Mack, M.D. presentation at IONS on alien encounters. Youtube, Published on 24 March, 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Y07Ij06qM.
-Stothers, Richard. Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity. The Classical Journal 103.179–92, 2007.
-Williams, Richard. UFO: The Continuing Enigma. New York: DK Direct Limited, 1991.