Gunter Hofer Interview Transcript_Daily Mail Online_New photos show imprints left behind by UFO spotted in Zimbabwe in 1994

9:10AM Jun 2, 2022

Speakers:

Josh Boswell - Daily Mail

Gunter Hofer

Keywords:

kids

zimbabwe

cynthia

object

reports

drew

headmaster

drawing

oval

looked

left

investigate

creatures

september

grass

witness

shaped

atmosphere

interview

electrical disturbance

Um, how you came to be at that school and, you know, after the event and what you saw and what happened.

Just to go back a little bit, I got involved with Cynthia Hines, who was actually the local UFO investigator for MUFON, in Zimbabwe. But she represented almost Africa because she was really good at her work and detailed, and was always willing to go out and investigate in the field directly. And her past experience– she was a journalist herself, so she was involved in writing, etc. So she had the right type of skills to report on a case, get details from witnesses, etc. And I just came across her book when I was quite young– actually my teens. My father just left the book on the table, and I thought "oh". And I read it, and that's how I got hooked onto UFOlogy, basically, because of that. And because of Cynthia, which was a person who actually lived in Zimbabwe. So that was even more intriguing; that there was someone in Zimbabwe at the time who was investigating UFO's.

So after a couple of years[–] After high school, I wrote to her, and she was interested because I made a device for her, that I said maybe she could use, and it was [an] electrostatic detector, basically, that I created. And she was intrigued by that. She invited me to her home, and we looked at it, and we thought it would be a possible useful device to use, to pick up static fields. Because there's always been reports of people saying, oh, there was some kind of electrical disturbance; like maybe the car would stop, or things in the house would malfunction because of that. And that's how I started this, and then over the years[–] I was also an amateur astronomer. So for her that was useful, because I could then probably help identify satellites, or planets, or other astronomical events that might be occurring, like meteor showers, etc. I could advise her, most likely this was it. Because most of the reports we get of UFO's were of lights in the sky, which are really hard to identify what they could be. Because they're usually quite fleeting, and there's little trace after, apart from the witness experience. And plus people at that time, in the 90's and 80's, in Zimbabwe, they didn't have many cameras, like you have now. Everyone's got a camera in their pocket, basically now.

So anyway, going forward to 1994. I think it was around September. Actually, that whole week was a bit of a strange week, because on September the 14th – I think that's a Wednesday – there was what looked like a bullet or meteor breaking through the atmosphere. Quite a large object, which seemed to have broken up, and there was a large chunk of it in front, which left like a vapor trail, as you'd expect, burning through the atmosphere. [ ] So there was a lot of activity over that evening. And then, of course, two days later, we had on the Friday the 16th of September, a call from Tom Leech, a BBC reporter. He was getting reports from a school in Ruwa: Ariel school. Reports of basically like a spaceship landing on the school grounds during the break time at school, which was around 10 o'clock in Zimbabwe at the school. And the only witnesses you knew of were the kids, because the teachers were in a meeting at the time, and the only adult in the ground was a volunteer adult who was looking after a Tuck shop, which is just a little shop where the kids could buy sweets and biscuits and stuff like that. But she had refused to leave the Tuck shop, not believing the kids, what they had said.

So anyways, we got the reports. Cynthia was absolutely fascinated. We wanted to go, but because the school was breaking up for the weekend, there was no possibility of interviewing them over the week, Saturday or Sunday. So we arranged with the headmaster to come to the school. If I believe right, this probably was a Tuesday, which was the 20th of September. [ ] Cynthia asked the headmaster if the kids could draw what they'd seen while it was fresh in their mind so when we got there, we could have a look at the drawings. And of course, many of those drawings are quite popular on the internet now. You see a lot of them around, and they've been shown I think on many blogs and reports of us.

So we went to the school, and we proceeded to– We met the headmaster, and some of the teachers. They brought in some of the drawings on the desk. And then they brought in some of the kids for Cynthia to interview, and Tom Leach to also have a talk to and interview some of the kids then. Obviously, there's a lot of excitement about it, because there are people here coming to listen to their story, you know? But we could see there was a very palpable atmosphere of excitement, of course. And there was confusion as well: what it could be? Because some kids didn't know what it was. Was it something strange? Others thought it was some kind of spacecraft coming down with little creatures, because they saw these little creatures.

We asked them, what do they look like? Most of the descriptions we got from the kids were very consistent of a very short looking being. They couldn't describe the clothing– exactly what it was. But one of them said, oh it reminded them of a diving suit. When they used to go to South Africa on holiday they used to wear a diving suit, and it reminded them of that kind of fit, because it's tight fitting. And we also had reports of kids saying the beings had hair– what looked like hair.

And from that description, I made a drawing. This is the original drawing I did of the creature at the time. But this is actually now a copy because I gave this to Professor John Mack. He took it and he's actually put his notes here. So he asked if he could take it, and he took it. So one of his representatives actually sent me a copy of the drawing because I wanted it as well. Because it was original. So you can actually see in [the drawing] the tight fitting clothes, the very large eyes, which a lot of them described. And even some of them said it looked odd– the eyes are like down here. I think it was one of the kids said the eyes were down here. [?] because it has such a bulbous head above.

So did you show that picture to the children, and did they give you feedback?

No this is based after the event. I drew from their descriptions. But this is kind of like a general [drawing] of all the descriptions. I think some of them didn't say there was hair. Some of them just drew the oval like head with the big eyes, and maybe just a slit for the mouth. One of the kids, or adults now recently, he recordeded– we didn't interview at that time– [an interview] describing these creatures walks, but very strange because he moved– disappeared, completely vanished– and then reappeared a couple meters ahead. Disappeared again, and was a distance away again, you know? And this was such a strange motion.

And also from the drawings that the kids drew– we were looking– you can kind of gather a little bit more information, because we noticed some of the kids drew two objects. One object, it looked like a cigar shape, and they'd labelled that Thursday, the 15th. So that was the day before, and then they drew what they saw on the Friday 16, which was more the disk-like object– oval object– that they saw. So we were curious. I said, 'Why did you draw this on "Thursday"? I thought it was on Friday.' And they said, 'No, some of us saw for a short time this cigar shaped object' flying above the– I think– powerlines. And it had a big bright glowing end, and it just flew– and had flashing lights and all that– and then it just– similar to how the alien being was moving– it was like, moving, disappeared, reappeared instantly somewhere else, and then vanished. That was it.

So the kids– it was actually, maybe three or four objects on the Friday they saw come down. There was the main object that everyone seemed to have been focusing on in the playground; more to the right side where they had these logs, which they used as barriers on the playground where they indicate to kids 'you can't go any further than this.' Because it's mostly just wild overgrown area, which is a bit dangerous, because there could be snakes and other animals could be moving in there. So they weren't allowed to pass this barrier that they'd put.

So about 60-odd kids witness the main object, and they saw two beings; one was on the craft, and the other one was moving in the grass. And of course, some of them told me, apart from that, they saw over a little bit to the left, some more objects land in the grass. So there were several. It seemed like there was more than one object that had come down and then rested on the ground in some way, in this very wild Savanna kind of grass. And it's very high grass, it's about– maybe it reached me by my shoulders, roughly height. Maybe one meter, or higher. Something like that. Yeah. And that's almost the height that the kids described the thing was: three and a half feet, we were estimating from what they described it as.

So after that, I made a little kind of rough map of this. This area here was the main location where the kids saw [across] from the school. And a couple of days later, when I had time to go through– because we were mostly just going to the main landing site to investigate. And I was trying to take some radiation, and metal detector to see if there's any metals, or any unusual radiation, which we didn't find anything like that. I didn't find any burn marks of such in that area. Or any markings that I could say there was anything there. Because where the main object was supposed to have landed the ground was actually quite hard. Zimbabwe was going through a drought for quite a few years. It's very dry and hard ground. So a couple of days later, I took the opportunity to go and see the other parts of the ground to see if I could find anything else. But it was a lot of grass that end. And I found, over this side, two oval shapes: one small oval and one larger oval. Now the larger one crossed over a path. So it kind of had a division through that path. And the small one was in there. And I remember seeing that there was a slight swirl to the oval– to both ovals. So that was quite interesting, to say that we found something quite interesting going on here now. And I also found what looked like a wedge shaped marking in the ground– something that pushed in.