The Phoenix Lights: A baffling mass UFO sighting
On 13th March 1997, thousands witnessed the Phoenix Lights in Arizona. Bradley Walsh now investigates this UFO sighting in Sky HISTORY’s Out of This World.
Image: stock.adobe.com
On the evening of 13th March 1997, a man in Nevada was minding his own business when he suddenly noticed something peculiar in the sky. He would later describe it as a flying V-shaped formation. He wouldn’t be the only one to see it.
Over the next few hours, reports came flooding in from thousands more onlookers as the airborne ‘V’ made its way southeast across Nevada and Arizona. There was a consistent theme to the sightings. This UFO’s enclosure was said to be lined with five to seven lights reminiscent of orbs.
This spectacle came to be known as the ‘Phoenix Lights’ in Arizona, where video footage of the amazing sight was captured. But was it really an extraterrestrial spacecraft, or something much more down-to-earth (literally)? Sky HISTORY regular Bradley Walsh investigates in his new series, Out of This World starting Tuesday, 3rd November, but what do we actually know about the lights that stopped a city?
What did witnesses report seeing?
Back in the ‘90s, we didn’t have smartphones with built-in cameras. However, when people did see the Phoenix Lights in Arizona, they were still mindful to film them on their ‘90s camcorders. Footage from the VHS tapes has even been uploaded to YouTube, where you can check it out today.
When you do watch the YouTube clips, you’ll notice that many of them show a steady string of lights apparently suspended in the night sky. The lights appear to move forward together in unison, with some occasionally flickering out of sight. Stranger still are witnesses’ accompanying descriptions of what their humble cameras of the time weren’t quite able to capture.
‘We could see the outline of a mass behind the lights, but you couldn’t actually see the mass,’ Dana Valentine claimed. ‘It was more like a gray distortion of the night sky, wavy.’ Another witness, Tim Ley, concurred: ‘All you could see was the outline, as though something was blotting out the stars.’
The shadowy shape was commonly estimated to be about a mile wide.
What were the Phoenix Lights in Arizona?
The US Air Force had an answer. According to military officials, a group of A-10 Thunderbolt jets from the Maryland Air National Guard happened to be flying above Arizona that night. The pilots were on a training mission, with their jets collectively forming a V-shaped pattern. The good people of Phoenix, Arizona could see the aircraft lights, but the jets’ bodies were mainly shrouded in darkness.
This all happened between 7:55pm to 8:40pm, corresponding with the initial sightings of the Phoenix Lights. So, why had seemingly the same lights re-emerged later that evening, after 9pm? They weren’t the same, if officials are to be believed. These later lights were explained away as parachute-equipped flares released by A-10 pilots training near the Barry M Goldwater Air Force Range.
Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley did recall seeing planes when peering through his telescope into the Arizona night sky that evening. Had this particular UFO sighting been something of a damp squib? The then-Governor of Arizona, Fife Symington III, certainly seemed to treat it as one. At a press conference in June 1997, he jokingly brought out 'the guilty party' responsible for the lights: an aide in an alien costume.
The Maryland Air National Guard would not acknowledge its flare drops until the following month. Even then, some remained convinced that Symington had simply found the wrong alien…
Could it have been aliens after all?
Witnesses to the Phoenix Lights have dismissed the idea that they were simply planes. Several claimed that the lights moved too slowly to be manmade aircraft, and were completely inaudible. There are even reports of the UFO abruptly vanishing, as if escaping into space or another dimension.
So, what about the flares theory? Does that stand up? Not according to a pilot who spoke on the programme Unsolved Mysteries in 1999. The anonymous interviewee insisted that they knew from experience what flares genuinely looked like from the ground and air. They also pointed out that flares are ‘dangerous, so they would never, ever be dropped over a population centre.’ The population of Phoenix numbered in the millions.
Even Symington eventually retracted his previous public sentiments about the Phoenix Lights in Arizona. He confessed to seeing the UFO himself, 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.’
Love speculating about curious sights in the sky? Sign up to the Sky HISTORY newsletter for more UFO mysteries. Every week, you'll receive the latest articles, episodes and more delivered straight to your inbox.
