UFOs, Demons Or Something Else?: Mystery Grows Around Sacred African Mountain
NYANGA, Zimbabwe — Nyangani Mountain, the highest peak in Zimbabwe (standing at 2,592 meters above sea level), has been the source of local intrigue for decades: People have gone missing, strange natural phenomena have created inexplicable mystical experiences; and now, some are even claiming the mountain is home to UFOs.
Located in the Eastern Highlands, the mountain is a tourist destination and harbors cultural significance to local people. Visiting the mountain traditionally requires one to follow strict cultural protocols and African Traditional Religion rites.
Failure to comply may result in being lost while hiking the mountain and, in worst-case scenarios, disappearing. Most of its visitors are hikers and researchers from around the world.
READ: 800 Years After St. Francis’s Death, His Story Gets A Vivid New Restoration
Since 1980, accounts of dozens of hikers being lost in sudden fog have been recorded, and unexplained disappearances and strange experiences have been reported by some visitors. The elders in the area say this has been the norm for many decades. The disappearances have become part of Zimbabwean folklore, including the widely publicized 1981 disappearance of two young girls, the daughters of a government minister and other cases that remain unresolved.
Every time, search teams and local communities have conducted extensive operations, but some missing persons were never found. While these incidents have contributed to the mountain's mystique, rescue experts point to practical explanations. Rapidly changing weather conditions, which include dense mist, steep terrain, deep ravines and low visibility, can make navigation extremely difficult, even for experienced hikers.
In recent years, Christians have challenged traditional and mystic experiences surrounding Mount Nyangani. They attribute the phenomena to spiritual warfare found in the Bible and fallen angels rather than ancestral guardians (the gods).
A local pastor said mountains are God-given and must be enjoyed like any other nature, without need for traditional appeasement rites.
“God created the mountains, forests and rivers,” said Godfrey Mutara, a pastor based in Nyanga. “We must respect the Creator and praise him for such scenic nature, not to dread in fear. The occult phenomena on high mountains, including Mount Nyangani and other dense forests, are habitats of demonic principalities cast down from heaven.”
Mutara is not alone. Many Pentecostal and evangelical Christians view the legends of Mount Nyangani, such as ancestral spirits, strange creatures or unexplained disappearances, through a cosmic lens of spiritual conflict.
Rather than employing local customs and traditional mitigation measures to appease the mountain, Christian teaching is spreading in the area, instructing believers to rely on prayer, faith and spiritual authority in Jesus Christ to confront regional spiritual strongholds. This is a shift from what has been traditionally believed in the Nyanga community and in other parts of Zimbabwe.
Cultural expert and researcher Tinashe Muchuri said that Inyangani Mountain is associated with the Simboti people, who claim they have the power to speak in the underworld associated with this mountain.
“It is a sacred shrine on which the people of the area communicate with nature and nature communicates with the people,” Muchuri said. “Unlike other sacred mountains, which the Christians in the area always climb while fasting to gain powers or the energy endowed in the sacredness of the mountains, Inyangani Mountain is not tolerant of such behavior. So, here Christians climb it as tourists and not as a place of pilgrimage.”
Amid the spiritual claims, recent claims by Lyn Buchanan, a former CIA agent, about unexplained phenomena at Zimbabwe’s Mount Inyangani have revived international interest. Those involved in remote viewing — or psychic spying — is a controversial practice where someone claims the “ability to describe distant people, places or events without using ordinary senses,” according to Ryan LaBee, a writer for Military.com.
Buchanan made the claims during his appearance on the American Alchemy podcast.
With unexplained disappearances of people in the mountains and scary folklore, UFO enthusiasts are adding extraterrestrial theories to the mix. But Christians reject both interpretations.
Buchanan, a retired Army intelligence veteran who participated in the U.S. government’s Cold War-era psychic intelligence project, Project Stargate, stated that Mount Nyangani was among several locations allegedly identified through remote-viewing sessions as sites of unusual activity
Buchanan said the Mount Nyangani site functions as a UFO repair, maintenance and intelligence center. He claims that Nyangani is one of four such extraterrestrial bases globally, alongside sites in Alaska, Australia and the Pyrenees. Buchanan also said remote viewers observed beings and craft using these hidden mountain facilities.
“Unlike the other three sites, the Nyangani facility functions as a repair center for extraterrestrial craft for ETs and for UFOs. The site is heavily guarded. You see too much. You disappear,” he said.
There is no publicly available evidence from Zimbabwe’s scientific studies or archaeological findings confirming the existence of extraterrestrial activity or underground alien bases at Mount Nyangani.
After these revelations, local leaders expressed concern that international fascination with alien theories risks trivializing the mountain's cultural importance.
Taurai Mudzudza, an archaeologist, heritage specialist and local villager, said Nyangani is a sacred mountain where rainmaking ceremonies are done by all the communities around it. Oral histories passed down through generations describe the mountain as a place deserving respect and caution.
“We also call it the mountain that swallows people,” Mudzudza added. “People who climb it, especially Mt. Muozi, without asking for permission from the local chief Saunyama will usually disappear. The Masaya twins who disappeared in 1984 and the Indian tourist who disappeared in 2013 are some of the examples.”
Mudzudza has noticed many visible changes lately. Some community members are no longer respecting the traditional values of the mountain since they now believe that everything that happens in and around Mount Nyangani is demonic, which requires prayers to cleanse it.
“Some African Independent Churches are doing their prayer sessions in that mountain as a way of cleansing those ‘evil’ spirits,” he said. “However, they face a lot of mysteries while doing their prayers, and a case in point is the 2020 example where three [people] died while doing their prayers. It is said that there was heavy mist that suddenly appeared, and it became exceedingly cold, and the congregants could not identify each other.”
Mudzudza said local leaders are “now understanding that the world is evolving very fast; as such, people’s beliefs are also changing, so they are now granting them permission to do their prayers. However, they encourage them to follow the taboos of the mountain. They started believing that it’s important to embrace the traditional ethos in their own Christian model.”
Calvin Manika is an award-winning international journalist based in Zimbabwe.