Phoenix Lights

1997 mass UFO sighting over Arizona, US

File:PhoenixLights1997model.jpgA drawing of the boomerang-shaped craft that appeared in USA Today, June 18, 1997

On the evening of March 13, 1997, thousands of residents of Nevada and Arizona reported a pair of mass UFO sightings — known collectively as the Phoenix Lights or the "Lights Over Phoenix" — beginning around 7:30 pm MST and continuing past 10:30 pm. Lights of varying descriptions were reported across a corridor of roughly 300 miles (480 km), from the Nevada line through Phoenix to the edge of Tucson, with some witnesses describing a huge carpenter's square-shaped craft containing five spherical lights. Witnesses reported two distinct events: a massive silent V-shaped formation traveling south across the state, followed later by a cluster of stationary orb-like lights over Phoenix. Arizona Governor Fife Symington initially mocked witnesses at a press conference the following day, but later admitted he had personally witnessed the first event and described it as "otherworldly."

Timeline of events

The V-formation (approximately 7:30–9:30 pm)

At approximately 7:55 pm MST, a witness in Henderson, Nevada, reported seeing a large V-shaped object traveling southeast — the earliest recorded observation of the formation.

The first report reached the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) hotline from a former police officer in Paulden, Arizona, approximately 30 miles north of Prescott, who described witnessing a cluster of red-orange lights in a "V" formation at approximately 8:16 pm. The formation consisted of four or five red lights "in the lead" followed by a single trailing light, and the entire cluster made no sound.

Reports then arrived sequentially from locations progressively southward: Prescott and Prescott Valley at approximately 8:17 pm, then Dewey, Chino Valley, Tempe, Glendale, Phoenix, Kingman, and finally Tucson. A witness in Dewey who pulled over to observe the object estimated it to be no more than 1,000 feet above the ground, moving at a pace slower than a light aircraft, and so large that a clenched fist held at arm's length could not cover it. In Tucson, a witness tracked the lights for an estimated 15 minutes — from approximately 8:45 to after 9:00 pm — as they maneuvered overhead and then moved south in "nose to tail" formation over the mountains.

Among the most detailed close-range accounts was that of the Tim Ley family — Tim, his wife Bobbi, son Hal, and grandson Damien Turnidge — who first saw the lights from a distance of roughly 65 miles (105 km). The lights initially appeared as five separate points in an arc, but over about ten minutes resolved into an upside-down V formation; at closest approach the family reported that they could make out a structure resembling a 60-degree carpenter's square, with one light at the front and two on each side, passing 100 to 150 feet (30 to 46 m) above them at a speed so slow it gave the impression of silent hovering. The craft reportedly passed through a V-shaped opening in the mountain range toward Piestewa Peak and on toward Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Actor Kurt Russell, an amateur pilot approaching Sky Harbor that evening, is reported to have called the lights in to air traffic control.

Between 8:30 and 8:45 pm, witnesses in Glendale — a suburb northwest of Phoenix — reported the formation passing overhead at an altitude sufficient to be partly obscured by thin clouds. Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley in Scottsdale, Arizona observed the high-altitude lights through a telescope and reported that they were, in his view, clearly individual aircraft flying in formation.

The stationary orbs (approximately 10:00 pm)

A second, distinct event occurred around 10:00 pm when a series of stationary orb-like lights appeared over the Phoenix metropolitan area and remained visible for an extended period. Large numbers of Phoenix-area residents described "a row of brilliant lights hovering in the sky, or slowly falling," and the event prompted author Robert Sheaffer to describe it as "perhaps the most widely witnessed UFO event in history." This second event was visually and behaviorally distinct from the earlier moving V-formation and is the aspect most commonly captured in video footage from the night. Analysts have suggested that some of the apparent serial "winking out" of lights visible in that footage may have been caused by mountains not readily visible at night partially obstructing the view from certain angles.

Witnesses

The sighting drew reports from thousands of individuals across Nevada and Arizona, including law enforcement officers, commercial and private pilots, and ordinary civilians. NUFORC director Peter Davenport described it as "perhaps the most dramatic UFO sighting" reported to the center in two to three years and began cataloguing accounts within hours.

Dr. Lynne Kitei, a physician and health educator in Phoenix, photographed the lights and became one of the most prominent researchers of the incident. She later authored the book The Phoenix Lights and produced a documentary of the same name, arguing the phenomena could not be explained by conventional means.

Fife Symington, then Governor of Arizona, was among the witnesses to the V-formation event, though he did not disclose this at the time.

Official explanation

The United States Air Force attributed the 10:00 pm stationary lights to LUU-2B/B rescue flares deployed by A-10C Thunderbolt II aircraft of the Maryland Air National Guard conducting a night training mission over the Barry Goldwater Range southwest of Phoenix, in what authorities identified as part of Operation Snowbird — a winter pilot-training program operated by the Air National Guard out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha independently investigated both events and attributed them to A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft flying in formation at high altitude, with the first formation — five A-10 jets following an assigned air-traffic corridor under visual flight rules — displaying steady formation lights rather than the blinking collision lights used on civilian aircraft, before landing at Davis-Monthan at about 8:45 pm. The 10:00 pm flares were said to appear to hover because rising heat from the burning flares created a balloon effect on their parachutes, slowing descent; the lights then appeared to "wink out" one by one as they fell behind the Sierra Estrella mountain range southwest of Phoenix.

In March 2007, Maryland Air National Guard pilot Lt. Col. Ed Jones publicly confirmed having flown one of the A-10 aircraft in the formation that dropped flares on the night in question; a 2000 history of the Maryland ANG attributed the flare drop to the 104th Fighter Squadron, which was on a training deployment to Davis-Monthan at the time. The earliest reports identifying the Maryland ANG as responsible appeared in The Arizona Republic in July 1997. The explanation was widely disputed by witnesses, who noted that the stationary lights appeared over a populated urban area and that the earlier V-formation — which was silent, enormous, and tracked southward across two states — was not addressed by the flare explanation.

NUFORC's preliminary analysis ruled out conventional aircraft on the grounds that the object was reported to hover silently and to have traveled no less than 30 miles (from Paulden to Prescott) in approximately one to two minutes — a speed and behavior inconsistent with known aircraft of the time. Balloon and comet explanations were also dismissed, as the object moved rapidly across large portions of sky.

Reports also reached NUFORC alleging that F-15C fighters from Luke Air Force Base had scrambled to intercept the object over downtown Phoenix and photographed it with gun cameras, though NUFORC was unable to corroborate any element of these claims.

Symington press conference and admission

On March 14, 1997, Governor Fife Symington held a press conference at which his chief of staff Jay Heiler appeared in an alien costume, mocking witness reports and deflecting public concern. Symington later explained that the ridicule was a deliberate strategy to prevent public panic.

In 2007, on the tenth anniversary of the sighting, Symington reversed course publicly, disclosing that he himself had witnessed the first event — the V-formation — and that what he saw defied any conventional explanation. In his own words: "It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too." He described the event in subsequent media interviews as something that "just felt otherworldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly," adding: "I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery." Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon cited Symington's reversal as particularly significant: "Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona, who's a former Air Force officer himself, said after the fact, he saw this thing and it was not a plane and it was not flares as some of the Air Force contended."

The V-formation event witnessed by Symington occurred at approximately 8:15 pm on March 13, 1997, with multiple witnesses across the state estimating craft sizes up to a mile long. His former chief of staff Jay Heiler, while remaining personally sceptical of extraterrestrial explanations, stated that Symington was fully convinced the craft he saw was genuine and believed that earthlings would travel to distant solar systems at above the speed of light "in our lifetimes."

Investigation and documentation

Dr. Lynne Kitei documented the Phoenix Lights extensively over several years following the 1997 event, publishing the book The Phoenix Lights: A Skeptic's Discovery that We Are Not Alone and producing a feature documentary. The National UFO Reporting Center under director Peter Davenport compiled one of the earliest and most comprehensive witness databases for the incident, publishing a preliminary summary in August 1997.

Questions raised by researchers and former officials since 2007 have centered on whether the Air Force explanation addressed only the second event (the 10 pm orbs) while leaving the first event (the V-formation) entirely unaccounted for, and whether other classified programs — including the reported Aurora hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft — might account for some observations.

Later Phoenix sightings

Similar lights were reported over Phoenix on February 6, 2007, and captured by the local Fox News television station; military officials and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) attributed them to flares dropped by F-16 "Fighting Falcon" aircraft training at Luke Air Force Base. On April 21, 2008, lights were again reported over Phoenix, reportedly shifting from a square to a triangular formation; an official from Luke AFB stated that there was no U.S. Air Force activity in the area at the time. The following day, a Phoenix resident stated that he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his backyard; the account was reportedly corroborated by a police helicopter.

Additional witness accounts

Steven Greer was present in Phoenix on the night of the event, working at a digital lab being loaned to him for preparation of a briefing for the Vice President's office. He witnessed the phenomenon first-hand and described the craft as so large that "you could probably put dozens of [747s] inside the volume of this thing." Greer noted that national media did not report on the incident until June 1997, three months after the March event.

Legacy

The Phoenix Lights are one of the largest documented mass UFO sightings, distinguished by the number of witnesses, the geographic extent of the event, and the status of several named witnesses including a sitting state governor. David Fravor, Commander of Black Aces and the pilot at the centre of the 2004 Tic Tac UAP encounter, framed the mass witness problem directly: "when you go to Phoenix Lights and you go, hey, you know, when a thousand people see something, are you going to discredit all a thousand people or you're going to try and explain it away with something else?" UFO documentarian James Fox, who personally investigated the Phoenix Lights in the 1990s, described witnesses lying on their backs in their yards as the boomerang-shaped craft passed overhead: "they said this thing was so huge it took 4 min to pass over our house. It looked like it was going to land." Fox also described a verified case in which an air traffic-monitoring Vietnam veteran filmed the craft as it passed directly over his house, only for two men claiming to be from Councilwoman Frances Barwood's office to collect the footage — footage Barwood herself said she never received. Joe Rogan characterised this as the most credible firsthand account he had encountered of MIB-type operatives confiscating evidence. Fox recounted: "We were going to get to the bottom of it. And then... he had to quiet, calm down the hysteria. But did he get a phone call just saying, hey, kill this story? I lean in that direction." The incident prompted sustained public debate about government transparency and UAP disclosure and has been the subject of multiple documentaries, news investigations, and congressional references in the context of later UAP legislation. The annual anniversary is marked in Phoenix with public events and remembrances.

Related films

The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone Documentary (2005) — executive produced by Lynne D. Kitei, based on her book The Phoenix Lights…A Skeptic's Discovery That We Are Not Alone and featuring astronaut Edgar Mitchell and former Governor Fife Symington.
The Appearance of a Man, directed by Daniel Pace.
Night Skies (2007) — horror film starring Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, and Ashley Peldon.
The Phoenix Incident (2015) — science-fiction conspiracy horror film.
Phoenix Forgotten (2017) — found footage science-fiction horror film.

References

Source ratings:

(

[1 Wikipedia-grade]

[2 Questionable]

[3 Reporting/Analysis]

[4 Speculative/Hearsay]

[5 Ungrounded]

). (To change source ratings,

edit this page

Template:Distant UFO sightings with multiple civilian witnesses