Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Child Witnesses and Unidentified Flying Objects
The following section will focus on cases in which young children were witnesses in alleged alien spacecraft cases. This witness group is important because young children are statistically the worst of all age groups at lying (Debey et al, 2015).
Children lack the ability to place themselves in an observer’s position, and their deception is poorly concealed due to their early stages of cognitive development and muscular control (Feldman & White, 1980; Charlesworth & Kreutzer, 1973). The following five incidents do not include stories of adults that claim to have encountered alien ships when they were kids.
The Voronezh Incident
The Voronezh Incident was an alleged UFO sighting reported in Voronezh, Soviet Union. First reported by Tass, the largest Russian news agency, this paranormal event and its witnesses were examined by various major outlets around the world, such as ABC (Madrid’s oldest daily newspaper), AP, EFE (the world’s fourth-largest news agency), The New York Times, and TVE 1 (the first Spanish Television channel) (EFE, 1989; Frías, 1989; Sotillo 1989; Fein, 1989).
On September 27, 1989, a group of 5th- and 6th-grade children, including Vasya Surin, Zhenya Blinov, and Yuliya Sholokhova, allegedly observed a red ball in the sky that turned into a disc. They claim they then witnessed a silver-suited humanoid with a robot escort emerge from the hatch (Fein, 1989). The head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, Genrikh M. Silanov, requested that the three children draw what they had witnessed.
Despite being separated from one another, their drawings were quite similar. TVE 1 interviewed Volodya Startshev, another 12-year-old witness who had seen the same and felt very scared at the time. Sergei A. Matveyev, of the Voronezh district police station, stated that although he had not seen the aliens themselves, he did see the strange object on the same day (Fein, 1989). He stated, “’It was certainly a body flying in the sky, moving noiselessly at a very high speed and very low altitude” (Fein, 1989).
While an above-average presence of the radioactive isotope cesium was found, investigators remained unconvinced (Afp, 1989). The UFO was also reported by several local inhabitants during this time (La Vanguardia, 1989)
The Broad Haven Primary School Incident
A class of students playing football at the Broad Haven Primary School in Wales reported a peculiar sighting to their teachers and headmasters on February 4, 1977. A group of 10- and 11-year-olds allegedly witnessed a cigar-shaped aircraft, and some claimed to have seen a figure in a silver suit emerge. The incident was published in the BBC and The Independent (Barnett, 2017; Herd, 2012; BBC, 2017). In an interview with the BBC, 10-year-old David Davies said, “I was a natural born skeptic so after the bell rang, I decided to go to the area that the children said they had seen it.” Teachers, in disbelief, separated the children and asked them to draw what they had seen; their drawings were all very similar (BBC, 2017). The two headmasters at the school agreed that the children were not lying and that they must have witnessed something.
According to the UK National Archives, one family claimed to have witnessed UFOs and silver-suited creatures within a week of the incident at the Broad Haven Primary School (Bourton, 2007). The owner of the Haven Fort Hotel, Mrs. Granville, also reported being woken late at night and seeing a saucer and silver humanoids through her window (Herd, 2012; ITV Report. 2016). Investigators, however, suspected pranksters behind these alien sightings
The Kofu Incident
In 1975, two 7-year-olds’ alleged encounter with “aliens” in Kofu, Japan was reported by the Yamanashi Daily News (山梨日日新聞); several witnesses involved in the incident were later interviewed by Nippon Television Network (1982). This famous incident was revisited by Fuji TV, one of the five largest commercial broadcasting stations in Japan (Yamanashi Daily, 1975; Fuji TV, 2018). On the evening of February 23, 1975, two grade-school boys, Masato Kono (河野雅人) and Katsuhiro Yamahata (山畠克博), were roller-skating near the Hinode Housing Estate in Kofu, Yamanashi. They noticed a pair of bright orange objects in the sky: the larger of the two objects flew toward Mt. Atago, and the smaller object descended to the ground. From its hatch, a silver humanoid allegedly emerged.
Yamahata fell down, as he was frightened by the creature that approached him, and Kono ran toward home carrying Yamahata. The terrified children relayed the wild story to their parents and took them to the location of the alleged incident. The children’s mothers and Kono’s father then witnessed an orange light in the sky.
Similarly, 8-year-old Ichiro Minegishi reported a shiny object flying toward Hinode Housing Estate a half-hour before these two boys claimed to have encountered the object (Yamanashi Daily, 1975). Overall, there was not enough evidence to verify the UFO landing; however, higher than natural levels of radiation and traces of artificial radioisotope were detected near the site
The Cussac Incident
On March 22, 2007, the French Space Agency CNES voluntarily disclosed its UFO files to the public (Tagliabue, 2007). One particular UFO case involving two children in Cussac, France was revisited by The Washington Post and Le Figaro, the oldest newspaper in France (Suply, 2007; Moore, 2007).1 On August 29, 1967, a 13-year-old boy and his 9-year-old sister, François and Anne- Marie, spotted “four small black beings” while watching over their family’s cows.
They observed them enter the spherical space ship and depart into the air. The sphere emitted a bright light and gave off the smell of sulfur. After the sphere disappeared with a whistling sound, the scared children raced home. The father of these children, Mr. Depleuch, was also the mayor of Cussac; he immediately alerted the gendarmerie (La Montagne, 1967). On the spot, the gendarmes noted the smell of sulfur and the drying of the grass where the sphere had landed (Suply, 2007). Investigators further confirmed that the account given by the frightened children was consistent with other details such as a strange whistling noise heard by the rural guard. Overall, this particular incident was labeled by the investigators and the French government as “most credible,” and “one of the most astonishing observed in France” (Moore, 2007).
The Ariel School Incident
On September 14, 1994, a group of private school students were involved in an “alien” encounter in Ruwa, Zimbabwe (Grant, 2016; Coan, 2008). This incident was examined by Tim Leach, BBC bureau chief for Southern Africa, and the head of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association in Zimbabwe (Ariel Phenomenon, 2019). The 62 children, who ranged between the ages of 8 and 12, were left unsupervised in the schoolyard while the teachers participated in a staff meeting during school morning recess. The children allegedly witnessed a silver aircraft and aliens, and they ran screaming back to the teachers. The teachers at the school initially ignored the student’s fearful cries, assuming that they were nothing more than a schoolyard prank. However, children went home and told their strange stories to their parents, and their parents came to the school wanting to know what had happened. Later, children were asked separately to draw pictures of what they had seen. Their drawings were identical.
The children were interviewed by John E. Mack, the head of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Their interviews, along with other interviews of the headmaster, teachers, and BBC reporter Tim Leach, are available for review (Ariel Phenomenon, 2016; Bobby Gooner, 2016). Notably, some of the children involved in the sighting also claimed that an “alien” communicated to them without words, but the children were too young to grasp the concept of telepathy. The alleged telepathic communication can be only implied from their words in their interview. The following are quotes from one of the interview clips
Child: “What I thought was maybe the world is going to end maybe they telling us the world’s gonna end.”
Mack: “Well why do you think they might want us to be scared.”
Child: “because maybe because we don’t look after the planet and the area”
Mack: “Is this an idea that you have had before that we don’t look after the planet properly or the air or did this idea come to you when you had this experience?”
Child: “When I had this experience.”
After investigating this incident, Leach claimed, “I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this” (Ariel Phenomenon, 2019). There were also several reports of alien sightings around the same time: a young boy and his mother reported a daylight sighting, and a trucker had seen strange beings on the road at night (Mail & Guardian, 2014).
Miscellaneous Sightings by Children
There are other notable sightings reported by children where only Unidentified Flying Objects are involved: the 1966 Westall Primary UFO incident in Australia, the 1967 Crestview Elementary School incident in Florida, and the 1973 Nakdong Elementary School Case in Korea. These cases will be briefly discussed here, as there is not enough information to conclude a connection between these UFO sightings and alien intelligence.
On April 6, 1966, the Westall Primary UFO incident had hundreds of witnesses, including many young children. In this instance, onlookers noticed a flying saucer playing a “game of cat and mouse” with jets (National Geographic, 2017; Studio 10, 2016; Foster, 2018). A similar incident occurred on April 7, 1967 at Crestview Elementary School in Florida, where a flying saucer witnessed by teachers and children was explored on Quest TV (2020). On April 13, 1973, the case of two silver Unidentified Flying Objects accelerating and disappearing near Nakdong Elementary School in Korea was widely publicized; witnesses in this case included 22 elementary school children and a school teacher (Dong-A Ilbo, 1982; Monthly Chosun Magazine, 2007)
The existence of many cases of young children around the world witnessing UFOs and aliens does not automatically guarantee that these findings are valid; however, these stories are unexplainable. Young children are capable of lying, as studies have shown that kids and children learn to lie progressively as they age; in this case, however, they would need to be quite specific and act realistically amazed or frightened while making up such vivid stories about UFOs (Talwar, 2018).
Adults and teenagers may fabricate stories about aliens for their own benefit, but there seem to be no real motives for a group of young children to act this way. In addition, scientific studies that investigate lying in children involve simple lies related to toys and puppets that are not nearly as extravagant or strange as these stories of UAP and alien visitors (Talwar & Lee, 2008).
It is also difficult to explain the matching drawings of children that were put in separate rooms, third-party witnesses other than these children, and the children’s detailed answers to interviewers’ questions. An alternative scientific clarification to their improbable stories requires an explanation of why the young children and third-party witnesses would tell uniform, vivid recollections of UFOs and “aliens.”