#2: The Kids Are NOT Alright
The Ariel School UFO Incident
I honestly debated so long on what I’d do for my very first edition of this new newsletter. Really, it should not have been this hard, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be something super closely tied to Love and Other Conspiracies or just something fun and interesting.
I am currently working on a deadline for Book 2 revisions, and have been really deep in UFO conspiracies because of it. I haven’t talked much about Book 2 yet because we haven’t really announced it, but the title and first chapter is in the back of LAOC arcs and will be in the back of the final books so… it’s technically out there!
What’s also out there is the FMC’s name: Ariel. “El” for short.
When I set out to write this book, I knew I wanted to name the protagonist Ariel from one of my favorite UFO incidents. There’s something about it that always sticks with me and continues to perplex me. So let’s get into it!
It’s September 16th, 1994 outside of Ruwa, Zimbabwe. The Ariel School was an expensive private school attended by mostly wealthy children in the area. At around 10am, during the children’s recess, a silver disc landed just on the border of the school grounds. The faculty was inside for a meeting, so the kids rushed over to get a closer look.
Fifteen minutes later, the students returned to the school faculty to report what they’d seen and were met with natural skepticism. It was when the children went home and told their parents that the incident began to take off.
The BBC’s correspondent in Zimbabwe, Tim Leach, UFO researcher Cynthia Hind, and Harvard professor of psychiatry John Mack visited the school within the following days and months to interview the students and teachers on what they’d experienced. Tim Leach reported, “I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this”.
Through the reports combined by Leach, Hind and Mack, all the children — sixty-two students between ages six to twelve — told them the same story.
The students saw at least one UFO flying above the school before setting down at the landing site between the trees. Between one and four creatures with big black eyes, dressed in all black, appeared before the students. They telepathically communicated with the students and warned them of the impending threat of environmental and technological destruction, which distressed the children greatly. (I mean, obviously)
Below are some of the collected drawings made by the students in isolation:
While there were obviously some deviations, the central tentpoles of the incident were consistent. Many were quick to (and still do) write the incident off as a prank or a case of mass hysteria, plenty of students stand by their account of the day even decades later and remain shaken by what they saw.
I’m certainly not one to poo-poo on mass hysteria. I see one TikTok about some completely obscure disease and magically manifest the symptoms the next day. I think we’re all susceptible to influence and subliminal messaging in some ways. There are many criticisms of Hind, Leach, and Mack’s interview styles and process, including lumping the kids in groups of four or five, a delay in interviewing, which would have allowed the kids time to pull a story together, and the possibility that the interviewers were prompting the kids to answer a certain way. All fair judgements and critiques, however, shocking no one, I am a firm believer that something odd happened here.
The biggest reason for me is that these were kids.
It’s not to say that kids don’t have wild imaginations and aren’t prone to pulling pranks or whatnot. This, however, feels different from a group of cousins breaking your aunt’s prize vase and making up a lie to cover your butts. This is sixty-two kids. Across grades. Across differing backgrounds. One of the theories Hind had was that some of these kids honestly didn’t know what UFOs or aliens were because of the lack of media presented to them with the content. Many thought they were creatures and objects from local folklore.
I find it hard to imagine one kid could say “let’s all do this” and give specific details, and have sixty plus kids all be relatively consistent? I don’t know. If I were in fifth grade and a third grader said “let’s pull a scheme”, I probably would have been like… no?
Cover ups take a lot of work. A lot of work from very smart and secretive people, as Hayden explains regarding the faked moon landing in LAOC:
I personally think if that many kids could agree on something, tell their teachers, tell their parents and remain afraid of what they saw to this day? I struggle to see how kids would be keeping that up for thirty years.
I first learned about this case during the Expedition Unknown: Hunt for the Extraterrestrials special that came out a couple of years ago. This story pops up in episode three, I believe. Something about the way the story was presented, the emotion in the witnesses voices and expressions felt very real and stuck with me. If you are interested in learning more about it, there are also several other documentaries on the topic.
So, when I went to write a book that starts off with a UFO sighting, I thought… yeah, maybe I should name the character something pertaining to my favorite UFO sighting.
I’m really eager to share more about this book in the coming months and I really can’t wait to get working on the cover because the potential is just… *chef’s kiss*.
In the mean time, a few other updates:
Love and Other Conspiracies is available for preorder wherever books are sold. I am hoping to have a preorder campaign through a local indie where I’ll do signed copies, but nothing is set in stone just yet. Stay tuned for more on that and more on a launch event!
I will be at Romance Con September 6-7th, 2024 and hope to see some of you there! Tickets are now available.
If you don’t want to wait until August, Love and Other Conspiracies is available on NetGalley to request. I know Berkley can be tougher with approvals, but it does seem like quite a few people are getting approved for ARCs, so it’s worth the shot!
Watching…
I am notoriously bad at watching TV. I tend to watch a ton of YouTube videos, especially during the work day. One of my favorites the past few months is Hannah the Horrible. She covers all kinds of topics from true crime, to internet mysteries, to paranormal and I think she covers these really often dark topics with a lot of care and respect.
Reading…
Currently, I am reading UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There by Garrett M. Graff. I kept seeing it at B&N and as I’m revising Book 2, it’s actually been a huge help in fleshing out the world and history of these characters. It’s also just a really fascinating breakdown of how the US government has handled and researched extraterrestrials since the 40s.
Listening…
This is kind of cheating because it’s kind of watching, but last week, did I watch both the Thursday and Friday Eras Tour shows in Paris? Yes, yes I did. I absolutely did not shirk my work duties to gasp as Taylor changed the whole set list to add a Tortured Poets set!! I was honestly wary because as much as I love TTPD, I was worried she end with it and Karma is such a great ending to the show, I really didn’t want to lose that. (Also rip to Long Live, The Archer, and Tolerate It). But this new set is some of the coolest stage work I’ve ever seen and absolutely brilliant choreography. I will sell a kidney to anyone who wants to give me their tickets so I can see the set in person. Also like… she did this for me.
Until next time!
I got chills looking at those kids' drawings! And I loved learning the story behind Ariel's name -- what a cool way to pick a character name tbh