Those children are now young adults scattered around the globe. Nickerson is tracking them down and interviewing them about the experience. “Their stories have not changed at all,” he says. “Not what you would expect if they had made it all up.”
At the beginning of the project Nickerson set about contacting those people who had been among the 62 children who had witnessed the sighting. They are mainly students in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Britain.
Tracking them down hasn’t been that difficult. “They are contacting us because of what we put up on the John E. Mack Institute website. What is interesting is that their stories remain the same as in 1994.
“They were affected profoundly,” says Nickerson. “At the time one girl was told by her parents not to talk about it, that she had imagined it all. But then she found other people’s stories on the Internet. She got in touch with them and realised ‘Oh my God, that was real’.
“Others I’ve met never doubted it. They say the experience opened up new horizons for them.”
Nickerson cites two students who are now studying in the U.S. “Their father said they would never have done that, but after their experience the children were totally changed, that’s what convinced him that something really happened.”
