A few dozen people started to make their way inside Memphis’s Midtown Malco Theater last Tuesday night.
As they made their way into screen No. 4, Indianola native Percy Townes grabbed a microphone and welcomed those in attendance to the “historic” screening of Ariel Phenomenon, a documentary about a UFO sighting at a rural school in Zimbabwe in 1994.
Townes, who now calls Memphis home, works for the Hilton corporate office there as an accounting analyst, but he has been working in his off time with Ariel Phenomenon director Randall Nickerson to get the movie screened in the South.
“I had been sending messages in the Ariel Phenomenon DM on Instagram for a while inquiring when the film was to be released,” Townes told The Enterprise-Tocsin. “Long story short, I saw where the film was to be released digitally late 2022, in which I was excited about seeing it. Once released, I was able to watch and was blown away by the (number) of kids who experienced an amazing encounter where a spacecraft landed and beings descended from the craft.”
It sounds like something out of a science fiction story, but the encounter the kids had at Ariel School in Zimbabwe was all too real to those who experienced it.
The documentary is split between news and academic archival footage and modern-day interviews with those who lived the encounter.
Townes grew up in Indianola, at least until he turned 11. His father is Willie Townes and his mother is Martha Townes.
“Growing up in the Delta taught me the value of hard work,” Percy Townes said. “Once I moved to Charleston, at age 11, my brother and I (Willie Jr.), would revisit Indianola (and) my father during the summer school breaks. He instilled in us to work for what we wanted, allowing us to work in the fields, making a daily wage.”
Townes said he grew up
attending the B.B. King Homecoming Festival each year.
“Knowing a superstar such as B.B. King is from Indianola, I took interest in entertainment at an early age and now I’m also a musical artist as well. (There’s some) symbolism in which B.B. King had a show on WDIA Radio station in Memphis, and I ended up in later life working for WDIA for 13 years.”
Townes said he still visits his father and stepmother, Dorothy Raymond, in Indianola.
For Townes, his interest in the film was really piqued by his own encounter in Memphis years ago.
“I was traveling home from work when I noticed something in the sky at Perkins/Knight Arnold in Memphis,” Townes said. “What really piqued my interest is there were people in the parking lot of a Family Dollar store, watching and taking pictures of the same object. It was just hovering in the sky, rotating. There were parents and kids, and I was just in awe. It hovered around 10 minutes and then zoomed off in lighting speed, and there was a flash of light right before it disappeared.”
Townes, who attended Lockard Elementary in Indianola as a child, said he began to read about similar encounters.
“From then, I started looking into it, and was quite amazed from all the literature and videos I stumbled across,” he said.
Townes said from the moment he saw Ariel Phenomenon he knew he wanted to help get the film in front of as many people as possible.
Director Nickerson told The E-T last Tuesday night that it was Townes who reached out to the film crew to get involved.
Nickerson drove from Massachusetts last Tuesday to be part of the screening and a Q&A after the film.
The director said he had been working on the film since 2007.
The original interviews with the children at Ariel School are convincing, to say the least.
They were so convincing that Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist Dr. John E. Mack (Harvard University) traveled to the school to personally interview the children shortly after the close encounter.
He left a believer, and his subsequent professional troubles that followed are covered in the documentary, along with a BBC veteran reporter who experienced backlash in his field as well.
Nickerson praised Townes multiple times for arranging the screening, which came after Townes told the film crew he had connections with several theater companies.
“I received a response from one of the associate producers. She gave me Randall’s number and the rest is history,” he said.
Townes is all in on the proliferation of Ariel Phenomenon. He is helping to send news releases out to TV stations all over the country, informing them about the film.
He wants his home state and region in the Delta to get excited about the story as well.
“Once we set up a national theatrical run, I’ll be sure there are Mississippi theaters included in that run,” Townes said.
Townes said the goal is to have a traditional film release worldwide.
“Right now, we’re taking it step-by-step,” he said. “We know that once people find out about it, their interest will be piqued, and once they see the film, it’s somewhat of a consciousness shift for many.”
