Reid, Gideon

Reid, Gideon

“Gideon Reid is a dad, a researcher, and a writer. British and American, he has a BA in Philosophy from University College London, and an MSc in Media Politics and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He lives in London.” – GideonReid.co.uk

 

 

Gideon Reid’s “Puppetry Hypothesis”…

An unusual English class exercise

I come to this topic like everyone else who enjoys a mystery, especially one involving multipule witnesses, and as the parent of two children roughly the age the Ariel School children were when they had their strange encounter.

Just last year my children’s primary school staged a mysterious UFO landing in the school grounds. The charred wreckage of a craft was created and a staged crash site was set up with a police cordon. A masked scientist in a green hazmat suit was seen collecting green goo in a test tube, an inspector with a magnifying glass performed checks and a policeman stood by protecting the scene against tampering. Apparently there had been a call from the Ministry Of Defence and even the Prime Minister, and there was a rumour that an alien had been spotted leaving the scene…

What made all this more mysterious is that it happened during the COVID restrictions on movements in the UK, so no parents (except those who were in on the hoax or played one of the characters mentioned) were able to see the UFO on the school grounds. All of the reports about it came from the children. Most other parents were not told about it ahead of time.

I hadn’t known it at the time but this is a common English class writing exercise in UK primary schools that has been on the curriculum for more than a decade, and is designed to encourage children to be observant when they are asked to write up a report on the incident.

 

. . .

Abstract. There is no shortage of popular sensationalist retellings of the Ariel School encounter story, yet very few sceptical assessments enjoy equivalent media attention. Fernandez (2016) and Dunning (2020, 2023) rightly point to the flawed investigation that took place and the bias of journalists and academics who encouraged the conclusion that it was a genuine case of alien visitation. Wiser (2022) has transcribed the available witness testimony and interviews and provides a timeline of events, exposing how the children’s remarks have been misrepresented and distorted, allowing the story to grow taller over the years. Sceptics have tended to focus on what was wrong with the investigation but to overlook the spontaneous and freely recalled details in the children’s remarks during their interviews. It is argued here that the whole series of events should not be considered simply an open-and-shut case that was a mixture of group conformity, mass hysteria, a textbook exercise in poor interviewing methodology, or something made up by the children, although good arguments could be made for all of these. This article is sceptical that the Ariel School mystery is good evidence of alien visitation but argues that it is good evidence that a stimulus did exist. A stimulus that caused the children’s, clearly genuine, reaction that was neglected by the investigation and deserves further analysis, not only for the now-adult witnesses who maintain they saw something otherworldly, but also so that we may learn something about how the varied testimony of mass sightings can be unequally weighted by investigators. This article argues that there are overlooked clues to what the stimulus could have been that exist in the children’s testimony – something prosaic, if unusual — puppets.

Keywords. UFO, Alien Abduction, Theatre for Development, Puppetry, Uncanny Valley, Reliability of Child Witnesses

Citation: Reid, G. (2024). Les évènements mystérieux de l’école Ariel : l’hypothèse des marionnettes. Scepticisme scientifique, 2, 25-39.

 

 

 

Reaction

  • @MickWest () – “Did the children at the Ariel school see puppets instead of aliens? It’s a theory that sounds silly. But are travelling puppeteers actually more or less plausible than telepathic aliens? Give it a read, then consider where it ranks on the hypothesis list https://t.co/5kPFi2OoPc“
… which caused quite the reaction and attribution of this theory to Mick when he clearly linked to Gideon’s article(s).
  • @GarryPNolan · : “Mick, u reached out to me & asked for help getting Jacque’s photo of the “star-shaped” craft taken by the children in France. In good faith, I said I would get it for you. I retract the offer because this kind of ridiculous blather insults the intelligence of…anyone./1″
  • Chrissy Newton @chrissynewton · : “Puppets?! Really Mick? Lol If you really want to go there, let’s use Muppets instead. At least Jim Henson created an alien one. Right @MJLpuppetDesign?!”
  • Rachelle @Raindance_33 · : “Just read the puppet theory in its entirety. Gary, did you actually read it? I challenge anyone to read it and take offence. Do I find it likely they saw puppets? Having read it I’d say no, didn’t quite ring true to me, but hey, certainly it’s possible. Am I insulted? Get a grip”

 

 

See also…