At about 10 a.m. on September 16, 1994, during morning break at Ariel School near Ruwa, about 22 km southeast of Harare, a large group of children said one or more silver, disc-shaped objects came down into the brush and trees just beyond the school grounds. Teachers were inside at a meeting; the only adult nearby ran the tuck shop. The episode lasted about 15 minutes.
Children said one or more small beings dressed in black, with big eyes, came out and moved toward them. Many ran, while some older pupils stayed to watch. Teachers at first dismissed the reports, but parents came in the next day. Some children thought they had seen tokoloshes, beings from local folklore, rather than aliens. The sighting came two days after a fireball was seen over southern Africa, which skeptic Brian Dunning attributes to the re-entry of a Russian rocket stage.
BBC correspondent Tim Leach filmed interviews at the school on September 19, and local researcher Cynthia Hind interviewed pupils the next day and had them draw what they saw. In November, Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviewed children, some of whom then described a telepathic warning about harming the environment. Skeptics note that Hind interviewed the children in groups, which risks stories blending together, and that the environmental message first appeared in Mack's later interviews. Other explanations offered include mass hysteria, a prank, a dust devil, or a travelling puppet show.
In a 2023 Netflix documentary series, one former pupil claimed he had started the story as a joke by calling a shiny rock a UFO, but his claim conflicts with his earlier interviews and with other witnesses. Several former pupils, now adults, still say they saw something real. The case features in the 2020 documentary The Phenomenon and the 2022 film Ariel Phenomenon.