00;00;00;00 - 00;00;09;29 Unknown That's. 00;00;09;29 - 00;00;31;19 Unknown And home and. 00;00;31;21 - 00;01;01;05 Unknown If you dig the twisted, admired the outlandish, and are enamored by the unusual. You're in the right place. True crime, the supernatural, the unexplained. Now you're speaking our language. If you agree. Join us as we dive into the darker side. You know, because it's more fun over here. Welcome to Total Conundrum. Or someone's first move born for one quarter. 00;01;01;05 - 00;01;30;19 Unknown The scope of this discussion is advanced. Ha ha ha ha. Okay. Conundrum. Cool. Picture this. It's 1994. You're in rural Zimbabwe. You're just a kid at school. It's recess and there are no adults watching you. Your classmates are just enjoying a sunny morning when something lands in the field just past the playground. It's shiny, it's silent, it's hovering. 00;01;30;22 - 00;01;55;12 Unknown And it's definitely not from around here. Then you see them small beings, huge black eyes, no sound, just thoughts beamed straight into your head. Now imagine you're one of more than 60 kids, ages 6 to 12, who all see the same thing. And not only that, but years later, you're still remembering it as clearly as the day it happened. 00;01;55;14 - 00;02;21;15 Unknown That's not an urban legend. That's the aerial school UFO encounter. And today we're diving headfirst into one of the most bizarre, compelling, and still unexplained mass UFO sightings in modern history. This isn't a story about one guy alone in the woods, or a blurry photo of lights in the sky. This is about dozens of children and broad daylight eyewitnesses who didn't just see a UFO. 00;02;21;18 - 00;02;49;07 Unknown They experienced something that shook them to their core. And unlike most sightings, this one didn't involve adults. That's right. No teachers, no parents, no principals, just the kids. Which made it easy for some people to dismiss. But if you ever tried to get 60 kids to agree on anything, you know just how impossible that actually is. If 60 adults saw a UFO, we'd have full on CNN coverage. 00;02;49;09 - 00;03;16;03 Unknown But when it's 60, kids suddenly it's all imaginary friends and sugar crashes, right? Like kids can't all describe the same alien being unless there was something to see. And here's what makes the case stand out. These weren't toddlers. They were primary school students who came from a diverse background. Some spoke different native languages, some were children of expats, other locals. 00;03;16;05 - 00;03;45;15 Unknown But they all told the same story. We'll walk you through what happened that day in Zimbabwe, what the kids saw, the strange messages they say were delivered directly into their minds. And decades later, many of them are still haunted by it. We'll also dig into the investigations that followed the Harvard psychiatrist who risked his career and believed them, and the skeptics who still try to explain it all the way with a shrug and a spreadsheet. 00;03;45;20 - 00;04;11;13 Unknown Whether you believe in extraterrestrials or think it's all mass hysteria, this is one that is going to stick with you. Because when that many kids see that much weirdness, well, let's just say recess was never the same. All right, buckle up. We're heading back to Zimbabwe, 1994, to a playground where time seemed to stop and the sky had something to say. 00;04;11;15 - 00;04;46;05 Unknown Let's rewind. It's the morning of September 16th, 1994, and we're heading to a quiet, rural part of Zimbabwe, specifically a little farming community called Rua, about 20km or 12 miles southeast of hurrah, the capital. Now, rural wasn't some remote village cut off from the world, but it also wasn't a bustling city. We're talking wide open land, scattered homesteads, tall grasses, dusty red roads, electricity and running water were available, but not everywhere. 00;04;46;10 - 00;05;17;15 Unknown Think calm, quiet and a bit isolated. In the middle of all that countryside sat Aerial School, a private primary school with students from all kinds of backgrounds. We're talking kids of farmers, doctors, international aid workers, business people. It was a real mix. African, European and Asian students all learning side by side. The school followed a pretty structured British style curriculum uniforms, formal assemblies, tight schedules, lots of structure. 00;05;17;17 - 00;05;41;24 Unknown Definitely not the type of place where chaos ran wild or kids were left to their own devices very often. And on this particular morning, the weather was gorgeous. Classic early spring in the southern hemisphere. Blue skies. Dry air. Temps in the low 70s. The kind of day where being outside felt like a gift. It was a Friday too, so the energy was lighter. 00;05;41;26 - 00;06;06;21 Unknown Kids were ready for the weekend. No exams, just normal classes. A mid-morning break around 10 a.m. while the teachers went inside for a staff meeting. That meant dozens of kids, ages 6 to 12 out on the playground without direct adult supervision. And that's when it happened. But before we jump into the event, let's talk about Zimbabwe's cultural climate at the time. 00;06;06;24 - 00;06;34;10 Unknown In 1994, the country was facing a lot of economic uncertainty. Inflation was creeping up. Jobs were scarce. Political tensions were rising. But UFOs? Not exactly front page news. Unlike the US or UK, where Roswell, X-Files and alien pop culture had taken hold, Zimbabwe wasn't really caught up in the flying saucer fever. Most of these kids wouldn't have grown up on alien media. 00;06;34;13 - 00;07;00;21 Unknown No internet limited television if they had one. For many, this was the first time they've ever even heard about extraterrestrials. And that's important because skeptics later tried to say the kids were influenced by media or by what they'd seen on TV. But that doesn't track. Not in rural Zimbabwe. Not in 1994. Exactly. They weren't teenagers trying to get on the evening news. 00;07;00;24 - 00;07;27;16 Unknown These were little kids just going to school, thinking about lunch, soccer and the next spelling tests. Maybe a little gossip about who had a crush on who or what was for dinner. Not hey. What if we fabricate a coordinated alien mass encounter? I imagine these kids were more worried about spelling tests and lunchboxes than close encounters. And now it's one of the most famous alien sightings. 00;07;27;22 - 00;07;50;28 Unknown That's got to be more stressful than math class. So what exactly happened out there on that playground during break? Why did dozens of children come running back inside? Shaken, pale, summoned tears. Babbling about lights in the sky and beans in the grass. In white. Almost 30 years later. Do many of them still remember it like it was yesterday? 00;07;51;01 - 00;08;15;11 Unknown Well, let's get into it. Because what happened next is where things get really weird. All right, convention crew, let's walk through what actually happened that day. September 16th, 1994, around 1015 in the morning. It started like any other Friday at Ariel's school. The teachers had gone inside for a staff meeting, leaving the kids outside for a mid-morning break. 00;08;15;14 - 00;08;42;08 Unknown This wasn't unusual. It was a routine part of the day. There were about 62 students out in the schoolyard. The playground sat on the edge of the school property with a wire fence separating it from the surrounding brush. Tall grass, scrubby trees and open land. Then, without warning, some of the kids noticed something strange in the sky. Shimmering silver object hovering silent above the trees. 00;08;42;10 - 00;09;06;00 Unknown Some described it as disc shaped. Others said they were cigar like. But most agreed there was at least two of them, possibly more. One of the objects hovered, while another descended lower, almost like it was preparing to land just beyond the fence line. No sound, no smoke, just a smooth, silent descent. And that's when things got really weird. 00;09;06;03 - 00;09;43;23 Unknown The craft that had descended seemed to land, or at least come very close to the ground. Kids said it either touched down or hovered just inches above the earth. And then they saw them. Figures moving near or beneath the craft. Small human like, but not quite. Dressed in tight black clothing. Maybe a jumpsuit or body suit. Their bodies were thin, like unusually thin, long arms, long fingers, slender legs and their heads large, with huge black eyes that stood out from their pale grayish faces. 00;09;43;25 - 00;10;14;00 Unknown No visible mouth. Some kids thought they had long, dark hair. Others said they were bald and these beings didn't move like us. They didn't walk. They glided almost like floating across the ground without lifting their feet. The kids were frozen. Some watched in total silence, unable to look away. Others backed up slowly, sensing something was off. Many said they felt like time slowed down or like they weren't in full control of their bodies. 00;10;14;03 - 00;10;38;15 Unknown One girl later described the moment like a dream that wasn't a dream. She knew she was awake. But something about the air, the light. The energy felt surreal. Then came the wildest part. The messages. That's right. A number of children, especially the older ones, like the ten and 12 year olds, said the beings communicated directly with them, but not by speaking. 00;10;38;22 - 00;11;08;28 Unknown There was no sound, no alien language, no subtitles. Just a sudden intrusive knowing. The kids said that the beings put thoughts into their minds. They described it as images, feelings, mental downloads. The messages weren't words. They were emotions and visions, like telepathic data packets beamed straight into their brains. One student described seeing trees dying, pollution spreading and people becoming addicted to technology. 00;11;09;00 - 00;11;34;27 Unknown Another described oceans drying up and the skies turning dark and over and over. The core message seemed to be the same. Your planet is in trouble. You need to change course or something bad is coming. So these kids got a cosmic Ted talk while the adults were sipping tea. Aliens. The original environmental activists. It's like, hey, we traveled light years across space to tell you to chill with the oil spills. 00;11;34;29 - 00;12;04;03 Unknown Maybe stop microwaving your atmosphere. And for the love of the galaxy Recycle. Honestly, if this beings were trying to warn us, they picked the only people who might actually listen. Kids? Yeah, because adults would say, well, that's not in the budget this quarter. But here's where it gets even more unsettling. Several students reported feeling deeply emotional, like the messages they received weren't just intellectual, but spiritual. 00;12;04;05 - 00;12;28;15 Unknown Some said they felt sadness. Others said they felt a sense of urgency, like time was running out. One boy described it as feeling like he had to do something important with his life. He was ten years old. That's heavy stuff. And remember, these kids didn't talk to each other before sharing these experiences. The stories were recorded separately, and still they matched. 00;12;28;17 - 00;12;54;14 Unknown They described the same creatures, the same craft, the same feeling over and over again. Some of the younger children didn't get the message. They just saw the craft and ran. But the ones who were closer or braver said they locked eyes with these beings and it was like looking into something ancient. One girl said it felt like the being looked right into her soul. 00;12;54;17 - 00;13;22;21 Unknown And that gives me full body chills every time. After a few minutes, maybe five, maybe ten, the beings returned to the craft. The object lifted back into the air without a sound. It hovered briefly, then shot into the sky and vanished. Just like that. Gone. No evidence. No scorch marks, no blinking lights. Just stunned kids standing in silence. 00;13;22;27 - 00;13;49;02 Unknown And then all hell broke loose. Some kids started crying. Others ran back towards the school building, shouting for their teachers. A few just stood there like they couldn't process what just happened. The adults totally unaware they were just finishing their meetings when 62 kids came charging in with wild stories, tears streaked faces and matching drawings of beings with big black eyes. 00;13;49;04 - 00;14;14;00 Unknown And that's where things started to shift from kids playing games, too. Wait a second. Something real happened here. And what happened next? The interviews, the investigations, the years of scrutiny were about to get into all of that. But here's the takeaway from this part of the story. These kids didn't just see a weird light in the sky. They saw beings. 00;14;14;03 - 00;14;38;26 Unknown They had experiences. And some of them, according to their own words, were changed forever by what they saw. It wasn't just a close encounter. It was a message. And nearly 30 years later, the world still hasn't figured out exactly what happened that day at Ariel School. So imagine you're a teacher at Ariel School. You're wrapping up a routine staff meeting. 00;14;38;27 - 00;15;04;13 Unknown The bells about to ring. Everything feels normal. And then suddenly you hear it. Dozens of kids yelling, running back towards the building. Some crying, some shaking. If you two stand to speak, the students burst through the doors and it's pure chaos. They're talking over each other, describing silver things in the sky. Little men in the field. Eyes that stared through you. 00;15;04;16 - 00;15;32;29 Unknown It's just not 1 or 2 kids making noise. It's the entire playground. Naturally, the teachers assume the kids were just playing around overactive imaginations. Maybe someone told them a scary story and it got out of hand. It was recess after all. To these messages. Hey, conundrum crew. Have you ever listen to an episode and thought, wow, I wish I could wear this level of chaos? 00;15;33;02 - 00;16;01;11 Unknown Well, now you can. That's right. Total conundrum officially has merch, hoodies, t shirts, mugs, stickers, everything you need to wrap your favorite mystery loving, banter filled podcast in style. And the best part? Our signature cute pink brain is front and center, scratching its head just like the rest of us trying to figure out life's weirdest mysteries. Honestly, it's the perfect representation of our show. 00;16;01;15 - 00;16;38;15 Unknown Smart, a little confused, and totally adorable. Just like me. Yeah, sure. Jeremy. Let's go with that. Anyways, if you want to grab your official token under merch, head to the bonfire.com/store/total-conundrum and get yourself some spooky, stylish, and absolutely conundrum worthy because nothing solves a mystery quite like retail therapy. Available now. While supplies last. And back to the show. 00;16;38;17 - 00;17;10;16 Unknown But what threw them off was the emotional intensity. Some of the younger children were crying uncontrollably. Others were visibly shaken, pale, unable to form full sentences, not playing pretend. Shaken. Something happened. And here's where things started to turn. When the teachers calm the students down and began to ask questions, they realized something was seriously off. The kids were telling the same story over and over again, independently. 00;17;10;19 - 00;17;40;28 Unknown The details weren't just close, they were uncannily consistent. And these were students of different ages, backgrounds, and languages. It wasn't. One kid made it up and everyone ran with it. They described the same floating silver desks, the same black suited beings, the same giant eyes. And in some cases, the same weird emotional reactions, the fear, the stillness, the sense of being watched or spoken to inside their heads. 00;17;41;01 - 00;18;10;19 Unknown Let's be honest. Try getting 60 kids to describe the same birthday party, let alone aliens. Exactly. These kids weren't collaborating. They were reporting. Some of the teachers began to take notes. Others asked the kids to draw what they saw. And what they got was killing dozens of drawings, all eerily similar disc shaped crafts, black clad beings, large almond shaped eyes. 00;18;10;22 - 00;18;35;08 Unknown Some kids drew the craft hovering near the trees. Others included what looked like portals or beams of light. And remember, these kids were separated when they made these drawings. They weren't copying each other. They weren't coaxed. They just knew what they saw. One teacher later said that even the more skeptical staff members started to feel uneasy. You could see it in the children's eyes. 00;18;35;13 - 00;19;02;22 Unknown They weren't lying. They were scared and scared in a very specific way. Not like they'd seen a movie that was too spooky. More like something had reached into their lives and shaken up their entire understanding of reality. By that afternoon, the headmaster and staff had gathered several firsthand statements. Some were written. Others were verbal. But all of them lined up. 00;19;02;25 - 00;19;33;25 Unknown And here's the cool detail. The school didn't immediately go public. They wanted to be cautious, so they started reaching out quietly to psychologists. Researchers. And yes, eventually to UFO investigators. Because whatever happened that morning, it wasn't going away. The kids weren't forgetting. In fact, as the day went on, more students began sharing more detail things that they hadn't said at first because they were too scared or confused. 00;19;33;28 - 00;19;58;13 Unknown A few of them said they didn't want to speak up right away, because they were afraid of being punished or not believed. Which honestly makes their honesty even more compelling. These weren't attention seeking stories. These were reluctant confessions. And one teacher, a woman named Elsa. I think she deserves some credit here. She was one of the first to realize something bigger. 00;19;58;13 - 00;20;26;11 Unknown What's going on? She reportedly said, I believe they saw something. There are two consistent, and they're too upset. So within hours of the encounter, Ariel's school went from just another quiet school in Zimbabwe to the epicenter of one of the most important UFO cases in history. And the ball was just getting rolling. Soon, UFO researchers and even a Harvard psychiatrist would get involved. 00;20;26;13 - 00;20;48;08 Unknown But it all started here, in this moment, with a bunch of frightened kids, a bunch of skeptical adults, and a story that refused to go away. Coming up next, we'll meet the woman who began documenting the case and the man who staked his entire career on proving that the kids were telling the truth. Yeah, we're talking tape recorders. 00;20;48;08 - 00;21;16;00 Unknown Video interviews and academic reputations on the line. You won't want to miss it. So within a few days of the Ariel school encounter, word started to spread, not just through the community, but across Zimbabwe. The press picked up pieces of it. UFO researchers began circling in and one of the first on the scene was Cynthia Hind. Cynthia was Africa's most well-known UFO investigator at the time. 00;21;16;02 - 00;21;46;19 Unknown Kind of a legend in the field. She arrived at the aerial school within a couple of days and began collecting firsthand testimonies, drawings, and recordings. She took the kids seriously. She believed them. But what really pushed the story into the international spotlight was what happened next. Enter Doctor John Mack. Okay. Doctor Mack was a Harvard psychiatrist. Not just a guy with a blog and a crystal necklace. 00;21;46;21 - 00;22;18;21 Unknown He was a Pulitzer Prize winning professor. Head of the psychiatric department at Harvard Medical School and a widely respected academic. In other words, the guy had zero interest in chasing aliens. In fact, he initially built his reputation treating trauma and researching dreams, past life memories and near-death experiences. But when he began hearing reports of alien encounters, especially ones involving children, he got curious. 00;22;18;23 - 00;22;44;23 Unknown He flew to Zimbabwe a couple of months after the incident and spent several days at the school conducting one on one interviews with students. And he wasn't there to validate UFO claims. He was there to study the psychological impact of what they saw. Mack used every tool in the psychiatric playbook, observing eye movements, body language, emotional responses, memory, recall. 00;22;44;27 - 00;23;13;16 Unknown He wanted to see, were these kids making it up? Did they show signs of fantasy, suggestion or trauma? What he found shocked him. These weren't kids caught up in a trend or copying each other's stories. They were speaking with clarity, conviction, and in many cases, tears. One girl began crying during the interview not because she was scared to tell the story, but because remembering it brought the fear right back. 00;23;13;18 - 00;23;39;26 Unknown Another student described locking eyes with one of the beings and feeling like he knew everything about me. That's not something you get from playground gossip. Mack noted that there was no signs of group hysteria, no kids contradicting themselves. No exaggeration over time. If anything, some of them seemed embarrassed to talk about it. And get this, he wasn't interviewing them together. 00;23;40;01 - 00;24;09;28 Unknown He spoke to them individually and still got matching details descriptions of the craft, the suits the beings wore, the way they moved, and in several cases, the telepathic messages about Earth, about the environment, about technology harming the planet. Now, these were kids who had access to climate documentaries or global warming lectures in 1994. So where were these messages coming from? 00;24;10;00 - 00;24;36;28 Unknown Right. It's one thing to say I saw something weird, but it's another to say I felt something talk into me and it told me the earth was dying. And what's interesting is that Doctor Mack didn't jump to aliens are real. He didn't claim a flying saucer. Definitely landed. But what he did say was this. These children experienced something extraordinary, something real to them. 00;24;37;00 - 00;25;04;23 Unknown And dismissing that is not scientific. It's lazy. He concluded that the kids weren't lying, weren't confused, and weren't under some mass hallucination. They saw what they saw and they were still processing the trauma of it. And here's where it gets even more fascinating. Doctor Mack was so moved by what he found at Ariel School. He started reevaluating his entire approach to alien encounters. 00;25;04;25 - 00;25;32;07 Unknown Before Ariel, he was a cautious academic with a passing interest in fringe experiences. After Ariel, he became one of the few high profile psychiatrists openly calling for serious research into extraterrestrial phenomena. Of course, not everyone at Harvard loved that. In fact, the university launched a full inquiry into his work, basically trying to push him out. But guess what? 00;25;32;09 - 00;25;57;01 Unknown He stood his ground and in the end, Harvard backed off. They couldn't dispute his credentials, and they couldn't argue with his data. He wasn't trying to convince the world aliens existed. He was saying, these experiences are happening, and we owe it to ourselves to understand why. And to this day, the Ariel School encounter remains one of the strangest cases supporting his argument. 00;25;57;04 - 00;26;28;22 Unknown Because of the kids, yes, but also because of him. Because someone with that much credibility chose to believe them. He didn't want to believe them, but the evidence made him reconsider. And honestly, that's the part that gives me chills. When science meets sincerity and can't explain it away. So we've got 60 plus kids matching drawings, emotional responses, and now a Harvard psychiatrist who says, yeah, this is real. 00;26;28;24 - 00;26;58;00 Unknown Coming up, how the media reacted, what skeptics said and what happened when those kids grew up and still remembered everything. So once the initial shock settled at Ariel School, the staff realized this wasn't just some elaborate playground game. They called in backup. Enter Cynthia Howard, Zimbabwe's leading UFO researcher at the time. She was well known across Africa for investigating strange sightings and encounters. 00;26;58;03 - 00;27;26;25 Unknown And she was already following chatter about the Ariel incident. She arrived quickly, just a couple of days after the event, and got to work interviewing the children, recording their stories, and collecting their drawings. Her documentation was meticulous. She wasn't just talking to the kids and scribbling notes she used. Tape recorders separated the students ask structured questions. She wanted to preserve the integrity of the individual experiences. 00;27;26;27 - 00;27;55;19 Unknown And again, what she found was that the consistency was overwhelming. Kids who didn't sit near each other, kids from different age groups, even some who didn't speak the same first language. Still same story, same drawings, same haunted expressions. Cynthia believed the children. She wasn't shy about saying so. She wrote reports. She spoke at conferences as she pushed the case to international researchers. 00;27;55;21 - 00;28;20;26 Unknown And she wasn't alone. Other UFO investigators and independent journalists began to take an interest. This wasn't your typical fuzzy lights in the sky sighting. This was something different. Eventually, the story caught the attention of the BBC, who sent a team to the Ariel school. That's when we got some of the most important video interviews. The ones that still circulate today. 00;28;20;28 - 00;28;46;20 Unknown If you've ever seen a clip of a little girl in a school uniform calmly describing a scene with big eyes who told her something through his eyes. That was from the BBC's footage. And it's chillingly calm. But while international media was starting to pay attention, the local press not so much. A lot of newspapers in Zimbabwe gave the story the side eye. 00;28;46;22 - 00;29;26;11 Unknown Some mocked it. Others barely reported it at all. Editors figured it was just kids being kids. It's like the media only gets interested in aliens once Americans hear about it. Yeah, but I guess it visits African school kids, doesn't sell as fast as Elon Musk tweets again. Fair point. Sadly, the location probably played a role in how long it took for the world to really take notice that, and the fact that the witnesses were children, it made it easy to dismiss them, easy to say, oh, they imagined it, or they were just influenced by stories. 00;29;26;13 - 00;29;50;02 Unknown Which is wild, because if 60 grown men in suits or saucer land during their smoke break, we'd be drying up peace treaties with Mars by Tuesday. But these kids didn't back down. They stuck to their stories even as the media tried to twist things or laugh it off. And some of them, years later, would still stand by every word. 00;29;50;04 - 00;30;14;10 Unknown And that BBC footage that some of the most powerful video evidence we've got not of aliens but of believability. Those kids weren't lying. They were confused. They were trying to make sense of something they didn't have words for, which is honestly even more compelling than if they had tried these fancy descriptions. It wasn't sci fi. It was real. 00;30;14;13 - 00;30;38;25 Unknown And once the media got Ahold of it, this case started traveling US, UK, South Africa, Australia. The Ariel School became a legend in the UFO research world. But while believers started digging in, skeptics started rolling up their sleeves too. They wanted to explain it all away. And we'll get into that next. Yep. Time to break up the mass hysteria. 00;30;38;25 - 00;31;08;10 Unknown PowerPoint slides and the swamp gas excuses. Let's see how the skeptics tried to rationalize one of the most consistent mass sightings ever recorded. So here's where things get even more compelling. Fast forward decades later. These kids, they've grown up, they've moved on with their lives. But the story never left them. We're talking 20, 25, even 30 years later, many of them still remembering exactly what they saw that day. 00;31;08;12 - 00;31;37;25 Unknown And now they're in a fuzzy. I think something weird happened kind of way. They remember it with clarity, with emotion. Some of them have spoken out in documentaries, radio interviews and podcasts. One of the most comprehensive looks into their adult lives came from the 2020 documentary Aerial Phenomenon by Randall Nickerson. That film tracked down several of the original students, now in their 30s and 40s, and asked them, what do you remember? 00;31;37;28 - 00;32;01;08 Unknown What do you believe now? And nearly all of them still stand by their stories. Some said they tried to forget, tried to rationalize it, but the memory wouldn't leave. It wasn't a moment. It was a turning point. Take some acidic. One of the most vocal witnesses as an adult. She talks about how she was changed forever by the encounter. 00;32;01;10 - 00;32;26;20 Unknown She remembers the bean's eyes, the intense emotional connection. The message she received and how it stuck with her. Others have said they didn't talk about it for years, not until adulthood. Why? Because they're afraid of being mocked. Of being labeled the alien kid. Can you imagine holding on to that memory your whole life and still not being believed? 00;32;26;22 - 00;32;48;15 Unknown That's like trying to prove a ghost story with no ghosts in a room full of skeptics. One witness said he didn't even tell his wife for years. He thought she'd think he was nuts. Another said he only opened up after he saw the old interviews resurfacing online and realized he wasn't alone. And that's kind of the heartbreaking part. 00;32;48;17 - 00;33;10;20 Unknown A lot of them carried this quietly, silently. The rest of the world either ignored the story or treated it like a punchline. Some of them admitted they still had nightmares. Others said they felt like they were chosen to receive a warning. And it's haunted them that they couldn't do anything about it. One even said they felt like the being was trying to explain something. 00;33;10;23 - 00;33;38;03 Unknown They were too young to fully understand. That sense of you were given something important, and now you have to make sense of it. And that's the part that really hits me. The message that they received about Earth, about nature, about technology, it all resonates. Maybe now more than ever. Because let's be honest, we've got melting ice caps, poisoned air, microplastics in our coffee mugs. 00;33;38;05 - 00;34;04;11 Unknown Maybe someone or something tried to warn us and we just didn't listen. The witnesses say they didn't get a message about aliens. They got a message about us, about how we are treating our planet, about consequences. And again, these aren't people with book deals or gofund me's. They're teachers, artists, parents, adults with normal lives who will say, yeah, this happened to me. 00;34;04;13 - 00;34;32;01 Unknown They've said it's frustrating, infuriating, even, that all the stories were dismissed for so long that even with all the recordings, all the interviews and all the drawings, people still don't want to believe them. It's like the scarlet letter of Close Encounters. You can tell the truth. You can have proof, but you'll still be laughed out of the room until someone else finally says, hey, I saw it too. 00;34;32;03 - 00;35;03;07 Unknown But for the kids of Ariel School now, the adults of the real world, the experience is still alive. Not because they want it to be, but because it never left. And the longer time goes on, the more their memories have turned from strange childhood trauma into a call they're still trying to answer. Coming up, we'll look at the skeptics, the theories, the official explanations or lack thereof, and what it really takes to believe something this unbelievable. 00;35;03;09 - 00;35;27;07 Unknown All right, so we've walked through the timeline, the witnesses, the emotional aftermath, the media and the experts. But now it's time to hit one of the biggest questions of all. What the heck? Actually happened out there? Let's start with the rational explanations. The one skeptics love to reach for when anything weird happens. First up, the go to for anything involving groups of people. 00;35;27;12 - 00;35;54;20 Unknown Mass hysteria. This theory says that all the kids just fed off of each other's fear and imagined it all together. But here's the thing. Psychologists, including Doctor Mack, rejected this. There were no signs of hysteria, no screaming chaos during the actual setting. No one fainted. No contagious panic. And the kids were separated and interviewed individually. Their stories didn't just match. 00;35;54;22 - 00;36;25;26 Unknown They overlapped. And weirdly specific ways. That's not hysteria. That's consistency. Plus, hysteria doesn't usually result in coherent drawings matching emotional cues and long term memory recall decades later. Next, maybe it was a plane, a helicopter or a weather balloon. Something totally explainable, right? Except no. These kids saw objects that moved in a way conventional aircraft can hovering, zipping around silent. 00;36;25;27 - 00;36;57;26 Unknown No propellers, no engines, no noise. Also, there was the landing. Beans got out. Last we checked. Commercial airliners don't come with optional gray aliens seating. And if it was a craft, military or experimental, there'd be radar reports, an investigation, maybe even some. Oops. Sorry for landing in your playground paperwork. Another theory. Some adults played a prank. Maybe someone put on a costume and staged the whole thing. 00;36;57;28 - 00;37;22;19 Unknown Cool theory. Except there is no evidence of that. No costume, no adults reported missing from the staff, meaning no one confessed. No one came forward. And let's be honest. If you pulled off the greatest prank in UFO history, someone would have posted about it by now. Hey guys, remember that time we dressed up like aliens and mentally traumatized 60 kids in 1994? 00;37;22;21 - 00;37;48;10 Unknown Good times Yeah. Not exactly the kind of thing that stays buried for 30 years. So now let's look at the other side. The theory that makes most people uncomfortable, but kind of like, makes the most sense in context that this wasn't a mass confusion or a weather balloon. That this was real non-human intelligence. Something not of this world that made contact. 00;37;48;13 - 00;38;20;07 Unknown The kids described telepathic communications. Warnings about Earth's destruction. Advanced technology. Crafts with flight capabilities that still don't exist in 2025. And that matches dozens of other UFO and contact reports from kids at Westall School in Australia in 1966 to adults in cases like Betty and Barney Hill, Travis Walton and more. There's a pattern here beings that don't speak but send messages. 00;38;20;09 - 00;38;48;03 Unknown Encounters that come with feelings of our dread, and often warnings about what we're doing to the planet. So maybe the aerial case wasn't random. Maybe these beings were doing kind of a cosmic intervention like, hey earthlings, maybe don't fry your planet. Aliens telling us to clean up our act. That's more accountability than most governments offer, right? Like a cosmic environmental Yelp review. 00;38;48;04 - 00;39;17;03 Unknown Earth. Great biodiversity, terrible maintenance. So where does that leave us? With a mass sighting that's never been debunked. With children who have never recanted and with an event that still haunts everyone involved. There's no smoking gun, no little green men in a zoo exhibit. But there's overwhelming testimony from children, from adults, from experts. And when science can't explain it, does this mean it didn't happen? 00;39;17;05 - 00;39;41;11 Unknown Or does it mean we're just not really ready to understand it yet? Next up, we bring it all home. What does aerial school encounter mean today? Why is it more relevant than ever? And what can we learn from a playground full of kids who may have seen the truth while the rest of us looked away? Final thoughts, listener theories, and maybe a little call from the stars. 00;39;41;11 - 00;40;04;17 Unknown Stick around. What would it mean if this encounter had happened in New York or London or Tokyo? Would the world have paid more attention? Or were those kids that aerial the only ones willing to listen? And maybe the bigger question isn't did it happen? Maybe it's what happens if we ignore it? What if we already are? So, Jeremy, real talk. 00;40;04;19 - 00;40;34;25 Unknown What would you have done if you saw something like that as a kid? Cry p myself. Then tell everybody and then get grounded for lying. Solid plan. I probably would have drawn it in my Lisa Frank notebook, cried into a Capri Sun, and probably never gone outside again. Honestly, I might still do all of that now. Same. Whatever really happened that day at Ariel's school, it gave us something powerful. 00;40;34;28 - 00;40;57;18 Unknown A story that refuses to fade. A shared experience across time and space that still has people asking what if it was true? And hey, if the truth is out there, maybe we already found it. Maybe we just haven't caught up yet. All right, conundrum crew, that's going to wrap up this week's mind melting journey into the skies over Zimbabwe. 00;40;57;20 - 00;41;22;07 Unknown If your brain isn't at least a little bit abducted by now, go back and re listen to those kids stories. Seriously, 60 plus kids. One clear message and decades of questions. Whether you believe in aliens or just think something unexplained happened. It's the kind of case that sticks with you. And if you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us wherever you listen. 00;41;22;11 - 00;41;45;23 Unknown Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts shout us out! Click on those stars or just whisper total conundrum to your local UFO and we'll take care of what we can get. And hey, if you've ever seen something strange in the sky or have a story of your own. Hit us up on social media or contact us at target. Underscore home. We want to hear your weird. 00;41;45;26 - 00;42;15;18 Unknown Now, next week we're switching gears and diving into a chilling unsolved true crime case. The murder of Missy Beavers. This one straight out of a Dateline fever dream. A fitness instructor murdered in a church at 4 a.m.. The only suspect caught on surveillance dressed in full Swat gear. The footage is bizarre. The motive still unknown. The killer still walking free. 00;42;15;25 - 00;42;38;00 Unknown It's eerie, it's tragic. And it's gonna twist your brain into knots. So bring your theories. Your crime boards and your cold brew. We're diving deep. Until then, keep your eyes on the skies. And your feet on the ground. And if someone tries to beam a message into your head. Maybe write it down this time. Stay curious, stay weird. 00;42;38;01 - 00;42;44;24 Unknown And as always, keep on keepin on. We love you, baby. 00;42;45;19 - 00;43;09;23 Unknown Please make sure to check out our website and blog at Turtle conundrum.com for news, upcoming events, merch, bloopers, and additional hysteria. You never know will pop up, so be sure to follow along if you want to show your support for Turtle Conundrum and gain access to all of our bonus content, please visit our Patreon page. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 00;43;09;26 - 00;43;41;13 Unknown The links are available in our show notes. If you have any questions, comments, recommendations or stories to share, please email us at contact at. Total conundrum.com. Episodes are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. If you like the show, please rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. We appreciate the love. Keep on creeping on Mother Truckers and family. 00;43;41;15 - 00;43;46;15 Unknown And. 00;43;46;17 - 00;44;13;03 Unknown Family. And you know. And it's time for you to have. An.