Netflix Produces New UFO Series With Zimbabwe’s 1994 Alien Encounter At Ariel School

With all the buzz about UFOs—more recently dubbed “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” or UAPs—coming from sources not involving shadowy Men in Black these days, it’s inevitable that a Netflix series was going to come along to capture the moment. Enter Encounters, which is produced in part by Amblin Television—a bona fide that one might interpret as meaning it’s E.T.-approved.

Amblin Television, along with Boardwalk Pictures and VICE Studios, released a first trailer for Encounters today.

Here’s more about the series, courtesy of Netflix:

“Explosive new revelations from military whistleblowers of alien encounters, UFOs, and clandestine Pentagon programs, as well as coverage from major news sources, have breathed a fresh urgency into a topic that, for decades, we’ve relegated to the realm of conspiracy. Encounters, directed by Yon Motskin (Generation Hustle) and executive produced by Amblin Television, Emmy-winning Boardwalk Pictures and Vice Studios, is a landmark four-part series that travels the globe to explore four extraordinary true stories of encounters with otherworldly phenomena. Each cinematic and deeply-researched episode tells a single story: strange lights in the sky over small-town Texas; submersible space crafts haunting a coastal Welsh village; an alien encounter with schoolchildren in Zimbabwe [for context In 1994, a BBC reporter named Tim Leach was assigned to cover a peculiar story unfolding at a school in Zimbabwe.

In his report, he expressed, “I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this.” Likewise, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who visited the school was also taken aback by what he witnessed.

This is the account of the Ariel school UFO sighting. On September 16, 1994, 62 students from Ariel Primary School, a private school in Zimbabwe, allegedly witnessed unidentified objects descending from the sky.

According to their claims, when the crafts landed, individuals dressed in black approached them and conveyed messages.

The students were so startled that some of them burst into tears. The incident had a profound impact on the school community.

Remarkably, students between the ages of 6 and 12 shared nearly identical stories and drew similar depictions of the objects.

Despite this however, some doubt whether the children did see an alien spacecraft and say that the claims are simply a case of mass hysteria spreading.

Nevertheless, even today, the Ariel school UFO sighting is widely recognized as “one of the most significant events in UFO history.”]

; non-human intelligence reportedly interfering with a nuclear power plant in Japan.

As told from the perspective of firsthand experiencers—in the places where the sightings occurred—and guided by cutting-edge scientists and military personnel, the series goes beyond the science to highlight the profoundly human impact of these encounters on lives, families, and communities. A timely and timeless cosmic detective story, what will be revealed from this puzzle of seemingly unrelated encounters across different places, times, and cultures is a set of uncanny similarities, and one astonishing truth: extraterrestrial encounters are global, awe-inspiring, and unlike anything we’ve ever imagined.”

While there have been a lot of documentaries purporting to reveal the “truth” about UFOs—including beloved series like In Search Of… and Unsolved Mysteries—Encounters sounds like it’ll be thoughtfully crafted and hopefully will be something both skeptics and believers (and everyone in between) can enjoy. The four-episode series drops September 27 on Netflix.

-Agencies-