close encounter
On September 16, 1994, approximately 60 children between five and 12 years old were playing outside their school on the outskirts of the capital of Zimbabwe when they saw a large spaceship and several smaller craft gliding over the scrubland.
The spacecraft landed beside their playground. The children claim that they were approached by beings from the ships and that the whole encounter lasted about 15 minutes.
With all the adults in a meeting inside the school, it wasn’t until the kids returned to class that the adults realized that something had happened. The day continued normally, but it wasn’t long before the parents of children who wouldn’t stop talking about aliens started making phone calls.
After the encounter
In the days after the encounter, the kids were interviewed by Mack and Tim Leach, the BBC bureau chief for Zimbabwe. All the children told similar stories and drew similar pictures of what they’d seen. When filmmakers tracked some of them down in 2014, they stuck to their stories. It was also clear that their lives had been affected by the experience.
At the time, one little girl known only as “Elsa” said, “I got the feeling he was interested in all of us. [ . . . ] He looked sad and without love. [ . . . ] In space, there is no love, and down here, there is.”
She also said that the feeling of hopelessness persisted: “Like all the trees will go down and there will be no air. People will be dying. Those thoughts came from the man—the man’s eyes.”
Ten-year-old Isabelle said much the same in her interview: “We were trying not to look at him ’cause he was scary. My eyes and feelings went with him. [ . . . ] We are doing harm to the Earth.”
All the children described the man as small with long, black hair and huge eyes. They said that he didn’t see the kids at first. When he did notice them, he headed back to his spacecraft and left.
This event occurred at the end of a series of UFO sightings in the area. Just what the children saw is still debated, but a planned documentary will put all the evidence together and let viewers decide for themselves.
The documentary
