Summary of “Phoenix Lights”
Event
At approximately 6:55 p.m. (Pacific) on Thursday, March 13, 1997, a young man in Henderson, Nevada, reportedly witnessed a V-shaped object, with six
large lights on its leading edge, approach his position from the northwest and
pass overhead. In his subsequent written
report to the National UFO Reporting Center, he described it as appearing to be
quite large, approximately the “size of a (Boeing) 747”, and said that it
generated a sound which he equated to that of “rushing wind.” It continued on a straight line toward the
southeast and disappeared from his view over the horizon.
This sighting is perhaps the
earliest of a complex series of events that would take place during the next
2-3 hours over the states of Nevada, Arizona,
and possibly New
Mexico, and
which would quickly become known as the “Phoenix Lights” sightings. It involved sightings by tens, or perhaps
even hundreds, of thousands of witnesses on the ground, and it gave rise to a
storm of controversy over what had caused the event.
The next reported sighting
was from a former police officer in Paulden, AZ. He had just
left his home at approximately 8:15 p.m. (Mountain), and was driving north, when he looked out the driver’s
window of his car to the west and witnessed a cluster of five reddish or orange
lights. The formation consisted of four
lights together, with a fifth light seemingly “trailing” the other four. Each of the individual lights in the
formation appeared to the witness to consist of two separate point sources of
orange light.
The witness immediately
returned to his home, obtained a pair of binoculars, and watched as the lights
disappeared over the horizon to the south.
He watched the lights for an estimated 2 minutes, and reported that they
made no sound that he could discern from his vantage point on the ground.
Within a matter of minutes of
these first sightings, a “blitz” of telephoned reports began pouring into the National UFO Reporting Center, to other UFO organizations, to law enforcement
offices, to news media offices, and to Luke Air Force Base. They were submitted from Chino Valley, Prescott,
Prescott Valley, Dewey, Cordes
Junction, Wickenburg, Cavecreek, and many other
communities to the north and west of Phoenix.
Witnesses were reporting such
markedly different objects and events that night that it was difficult for
investigators to understand what was taking place. Some witnesses reported five lights, others
seven, or even more. Some reported that
the lights were distinctly orange or red, whereas others reported distinctly
white or yellow lights. Many reported
the lights were moving across the sky at seemingly high speed, whereas others
reported they moved at a slow (angular) velocity, or they even hovered motionless
for several minutes.
These apparent discrepancies,
together with the large number of communities from which sightings were being
reported in rapid sequence, raised early suspicions that multiple objects were
involved in the event, and that they perhaps were traveling at high speed. These suspicions would be borne out over
subsequent months, following extensive investigation by many individuals. The investigations pointed to the fact that
several objects, all markedly different in appearance, and most of them almost
unbelievably large, passed over Arizona that night.
One group of three witnesses,
located just north of Phoenix, reported seeing a huge, wedge-shaped craft with
five lights on its ventral surface pass overhead with an eerie “gliding” type
of flight. It coursed to the south and
passed between two mountain peaks to the south.
The witnesses emphasized how huge the object was, blocking out up to
70-90 degrees of the sky.
A second group of witnesses,
a mother and four daughters near the intersection of Indian School Road and 7th
Avenue, were shocked to witness an object, shaped somewhat like a sergeant’s
stripes, approach from over Camelback Mountain to the north. They report that
it stopped directly above them, where it hovered for an estimated 5
minutes. They described how it filled at
least 30-40 degrees of sky, and how it exhibited a faint glow along its
trailing edge. The witnesses felt they
could see individual features on the ventral surface of the object, and they
were certain that they were looking at a very large, solid object.
The object began moving
slowly to the south, at which time it appeared to “fire” a white beam of light
at the ground. At about the same time,
the seven lights on the object’s leading edge suddenly dimmed and disappeared
from the witnesses’ sight. The object
moved off in the general direction of Sky Harbor International Airport, a few miles to the south, where it was witnessed by
two air traffic controllers in the airport tower, and reportedly by several
pilots, both on the ground and on final approach from the east.
After this point in the
sighting, the facts are somewhat less clear to investigators. It is known that at least one object
continued generally to the south and southeast, passing over the communities of
Scottsdale, Glendale,
and Gilbert. One of the witnesses in Scottsdale, a former airline pilot with 13,700 hours of flight
time, reported seeing the object execute a distinct turn as it approached his
position on the ground. He noted that he
witnessed many lights on the object as it approached him, but that the number
of lights appeared to diminish as it got closer to overhead. Many other witnesses in those communities
reported seeing the object pass overhead as it made its way toward the
mountains to the south of Phoenix.
Other sightings occurred
shortly afterward along Interstate 10 in the vicinity of Casa Grande. One family of five, who were driving from Tucson to Phoenix, reported that the object that passed over their
station wagon was so large that they could see one “wing tip” of the object out
one side of their car, and the other “wing tip” out the other side. They estimated they were driving toward Phoenix at approximately 80 miles per hour, and they remained
underneath the object for between one and two minutes as it moved in the
opposite direction. They emphasized how
incredibly huge the object appeared to be as it blocked out the sky above their
car.
Many witnessed, located
throughout the Phoenix basin, allegedly continued to witness objects and
peculiar clusters of lights for several hours following the initial
sightings. One group of witnesses
reported witnessing a large disc streak to the west over Phoenix at very high speed.
Others reported peculiar orange “fireballs,” which appeared to hover in
the sky even hours after the initial sightings.
One of the more intriguing
reports was submitted by a young man who claimed to be an Airman in the Air
Force, stationed at Luke Air Force Base, located to the west of Phoenix in Litchfield Park. He telephoned
the National UFO Reporting Center at 3:20 a.m. on Friday, some eight hours after the sightings on the previous night,
and reported that two USAF F-15c fighters had been “scrambled” from Luke AFB,
and had intercepted one of the objects.
Although the presence of F-15’s could never be confirmed, the airman
provided detailed information which proved to be highly accurate, based on what
investigators would reconstruct from witnesses over subsequent weeks and
months. Two days after his first
telephone call, the airman called to report that he had just been informed by
his commander that he was being transferred to an assignment in Greenland. He has never been heard from
again since that telephone call.
Most of the controversy that
arose from the incident centers around a cluster of lights that was seen, and
videotaped, to the south of Phoenix
at between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. on the same night as the sightings.
In May 1997, the Public Affairs Office at Luke AFB announced that their
personnel had investigated these lights, and had established that they were
flares launched from A-10 “Warthog” aircraft over the Gila Bend “Barry M.
Goldwater” Firing Range at approximately 10:00 p.m.. Even the most
implacable UFO skeptics admit, however, that irrespective of whether such
flares had in fact been launched or not, they cannot serve as an explanation
for the objects that had been witnessed by many individuals some 1-2 hours
earlier.
Another interesting aspect of
the case is the virtual absence of coverage in the print media, save for a
handful of articles in local newspapers.
The Prescott Daily Courier carried an article on March 14, but the Pheonix newspapers, and the national wire services,
provided no early coverage of the event, even though they had been apprised of
it. It was not until mid-June, almost
ten weeks later, that the national press took any interest in the incident with
the appearance of a front-page article in USA Today on June 18, 1997
Investigators may never be
able to re-assemble all of the facts surrounding the events that took place
over Arizona on the night of March 13, 1997. However,
there is no doubt in the minds of most that what occurred was extraordinarily
bizarre in nature, and that many thousands of witnesses can attest to the
events.
* * *
Submitted by: Peter B. Davenport, Director, National UFO
Reporting Center, Seattle, WA