Did you read the article or no? These links are even better, especially detailed with the timeline and specifics of initial events.
ARIEL SCHOOL
threedollarkit.weebly.com
ARIEL SCHOOL
threedollarkit.weebly.com
1. The reentry of the Zenit-2 rocket two nights before had created a light show over Africa, leading to hundreds of claimed UFO sightings across the country that everyone was talking about, including children. The 4th-grade class at Arial School specifically had a class discussion about UFOs the same week the sighting occurred. Several children reported a different UFO sighting the day before the main event, with a complete different-looking craft.
2. Some children during recess reported seeing an alien running around in the trees, with a UFO. The trees in question were at least 700 feet beyond the school boundary which was the furthest the children were allowed to go. Most children out at recess said they had seen nothing.
3. The intial interviewer, Cynthia Hind, was a UFO enthusiast who interviewed the children in groups (something you never do with eyewitnesses especially children, because it leads them to latch onto the other stories in their group) and almost certainly planted the ideas in their head.
4. Even with the group interviews, only a fraction of the children reported seeing something, while most children said nothing happened and no adults saw it. It's difficult to determine the exact number of actual eyewitnesses, but there are ~30 out of 250 children who have an interview statement attached to a name, and some of those 30 didn't see a UFO. 62 of the children made a drawing of the events, but many of the drawings are clearly copied from each other and no one spoke to these children to ask how many actually saw the thing and how many were just completing the assignmnet by copying.
5. Some children reported one man, some reported 2, some reported up to four. Some described him as a normal Black man but with long straight hair, while others reported one or more little gray aliens fitting the conventional description but wearing Black clothes. A few reported blank faces with no features. The descriptions fit into wildly different categories.
It seems almost definitive that the original sighting was of a long-haired mixed-race man, perhaps someone who looked slightly odd and thus surprised the white kids, and then the alien descriptors were added afterwards due to mass hysteria. They fit into basically three main categories, likely of kids who were copying each other's stories:
Remember that these sightings are occurring at 700+ feet away:
Notice that numerous children, in both the descriptions and the drawings, ONLY see a black man. They didn't see a UFO at all.
6. The second interviewer, UFO enthusiast John Mack, came 2.5 months later. Suddenly now the kids reported telepathic messages they had not reported before. Suddenly now the kids reported pro-environment messages they had not reported before. Does it surprise you that John Mack is a noted environmental activist?