Phoenix Lights

In numerous Arizona and Nevada towns, remarkable events unfolded in the sky on March 13, 1997, captivating thousands of witnesses, which remains unexplained almost thirty years later. The Phoenix Lights is one of the most controversial phenomena of modern times. It included two distinct sightings — a massive V-shaped formation of lights moving across the state and a series of defixed lights locked over Phoenix. Despite the official claims that the lights were due to fire military flares, the witnesses’ credibility and the official narrative inconsistency have raised questions about aliens’ existence.

The set of V-formations was spotted gliding across the Arizona sky on a southeast trajectory for about 300 miles. The journey started at dusk in Henderson, Nevada, at 7:55 PM, where people witnessed the object moving toward the Arizona border. It was first spotted at 8:15 PM over Paulden Town, which is located north of Phoenix. At 8:30 PM, the object could be seen casting an eerie shadow within the darkening skies. The formation was right above Phoenix, enough for people in Glendale and other towns to see. 

Eyewitnesses stared at the formation, and it was after 8:45 PM that the object reached Tucson; what appeared to be a seamless flight marked the saucer’s smooth journey over the state. The trajectory showed an astonishing speed of almost 360 miles per hour to cover the 50-minute flight from Henderson to Tucson. Another unexplained sight was seen around 10:00 PM when stationary lights became visible, twinkling at nighttime close to the Sierra Estrella mountain range.

The Phoenix Lights shares striking similarities with other mass UFO sightings. One such incident is the Belgian UFO wave, which occurred from November 1989 to April 1990 and included around 2,600 reported sightings of large, triangular light-emitting objects, mainly in the French-speaking areas of Belgium known as Wallonia. The wave began with a substantial sighting in Eupen on November 29, 1989. Multiple witnesses reported silent, low-flying lights bearing objects, with lights at each corner and, at times, a central light. The phenomenon peaked on the night of March 30, 1990, when two F16 jetfighters were sent on an intercept mission from Beauvechain Air Base against a radar-detected object. 

During 09:00 and 12:00 GMT, the pilots attempted nine times to intercept the object, and during three of them, they received radar confirmation locks but could not visually confirm seeing the object. Subsequent analysis showed the evidence tended toward the theory that such radar locks were the product of atmospheric effects like Bragg scattering. Initially thought of as convincing evidence, a widely published photograph claimed to be taken from Petit-Rechain was debunked in 2011 to have been created using a polystyrene triangle with bulbs. While some scientists like physicist Auguste Meessen maintain that the wave is still unexplained, skeptics like Marc Hallet and Pierre Magain argue that it was a psychosocial event caused by mass hysteria and the mistaken identification of ordinary aircraft like helicopters.

Another similar event is the Rendlesham Forest incident, which is named “Britain’s Roswell.” This event occurred near the US Air Force base, RAF Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England, over two nights in December 1980. Each year, on December 26, security force members claimed to have seen what looked like an aircraft light descending into the forest. While investigating, they came across a glowing silver object with colored lights around 10 feet wide, hovering through the trees. The day after, they discovered branch breakage, what looked to be burn marks, and three small impressions arranged triangularly. Local police were called on two occasions. They claimed these marks were animal prints and only sighted the Orford Ness lighthouse. On December 28, Cooperative Lt. Charles Halt grabbed his team and, together with him, went to the site where he recorded outline exposure of 0.07 milliroentgen every hour. This was higher than the rest of the site, which recorded 0.03-0.04. 

However, Halt was skeptical and commented that this was only a background exposure level. Halt’s team reported seeing a red light glowing and three star-like lights in the sky, and one of them stayed at the exact location for hours. When talking about the witnesses, many, including Ed Cabansag and John Burroughs, claimed these lights were, in fact, the lighthouse, but Halt, in a 2010 statement, claimed they were non-terrestrial. The UK Ministry of Defence decided that the incident did not threaten national security and, therefore, did not investigate further. Pundits explain the various factors, such as a fireball, five-second flashes of Orford Ness lighthouse, Sirius the star, and rabbit diggings. Yet, it remains one of the canons of UFO mythology.

Actor Kurt Russel reported seeing the lights to air traffic control, considered the first official sighting log. Later, he stated that he had not understood the significance of the lights until he watched a television program on the incident a few years later. Dr. Lynne Kitei, a physician at the Arizona Heart Institute, Kitei recorded The Lights and claimed to have witnessed similar phenomena two years earlier. After holding onto the information for seven years, she published a book and documentary titled “The Phoenix Lights,” which some experts consider to contain photos of tremendous value. These events have helped maintain public interest in her work. Tim Ley and his family, Tim stated how the V-shaped formation flew right over their house. He noted the silence alongside the low altitude, highlighting the object’s strange, enormous size and abnormal behavior and the rest of his family’s claims.

The United States military has explained the Phoenix Lights phenomenon as strategic pieces of operational routines. It was said the V-shaped formation noticed was a collection of A-10 Thunderbolt II warplanes operated in a part of the A-10 Snowbird exercise, a training scheme conducted at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. The stationary lights were identified as illumination flares dropped by another A-10 flight around 10 PM over the Barry Goldwater Range, Southwest of Phoenix. Reports stated the flares were thought to have been dropped from an altitude of 15,000 feet behind the Sierra Estrella mountains and could have given the “hovering” appearance.

Skeptical figures like Tucson astronomer James McGaha defended the military’s explanations, claiming A-10s were active during that time. Also, Mitch Stanley’s airplane observations through starburst telescopes paired with wingtip lights further backed the aircraft theory. Still, many witnesses, including former Arizona Governor Fife Symington and documentary filmmaker Lynne Kitei, rejected those explanations and argued that the lights’ silence, size, and behavior, such as forming a coherent object, contradicted traits of aircraft or flares. Gear flares burn for mere minutes and move while suspended in the breeze, whereas the lights described as either fixed in place or moving for long periods could not drift freely.

Even with the public attention and many reported sightings of the Phoenix Lights, no government agency conducted any formal investigation. Some authorities and skeptics accepted those explanations, but numerous witnesses, including former Governor Fife Symington, ridiculed them, citing the unusual characteristics and behavior of the light. After receiving many calls from the public, Phoenix City Council member Frances Barwood attempted to investigate the event and was ridiculed and lost her seat due to the political backlash from her queries regarding the issue. Her inquiry led to public humiliation even though they initially asked her to investigate. 

Additionally, it was decided that the Phoenix Lights did not present an immediate danger to the resident’s safety or a potential risk to national security. The need for further detailed investigation was out of question in the periphery of government agencies. Even when disputed, the military’s explanations held enough credibility to settle the official standpoint. The official lack of national media coverage until June 1997, when USA TODAY reported, further weakened the public’s interest and evaporated the attention to the investigation needed, causing even less pressure for inquiry.

Even today, many controversies continue to rage about it. An eminent explanation suggests that the lights were part of a UFO. The object’s size and utterly motionless silence, combined with its eerie stillness, led countless excited observers and researchers to conclude that it is a vehicle of extraterrestrial origin on any human engineering scale—utterly impossible. Some theorists venture into the fictitious frontier for the sake of imagination, claiming the lights belonged to beings or vehicles of a different dimension dubbed ‘hyperspace.’ Propagators of this theory cite extraordinary motions reported by the craft, such as the ability to pause as if remotely controlled, among other traits such as a quick speed boost propelled burst of acceleration. 

All theorists agree that these striking features suggest the presence of unearthly technology. Another fascinating theory proposes that the lights were part of a reconnaissance mission by aliens observing human activities. They argue that the object’s slow, deliberate movements over populated areas such as Phoenix seem to imply that the ‘intelligence’ was human behavior, and its ‘surveillance’ was the UFO watching (pointing in the direction) of humans at ease and cozying up to their habits during nighttime. Moreover, some observers remember seeing multiple lights instead of a single craft, which invokes the notion of several alien vessels moving like clockwork in a premeditated fashion. 

This brings up the idea of tactical choreography as these crafts exchanged information or signals with one another and executed their aerial formation. A specific set of theorists further stated that the Phoenix Lights gave a chance to view regions concealed by aliens that were usually impossible for humans to detect. They support the lack of official explanation alongside countless claims of governmental conspiracies as suppression, which happens to be an active indicator of cover, suggesting some other civilization beyond us has monitored us for far longer than we initially believed. 

Phoenix Lights still capture an intriguing mystery, teetering between what is known and what is cosmic. This phenomenon makes us wonder what is possible—whether the explanation is sophisticated technology, aliens, or something we have yet to grasp fully. Nearly thirty years later, with no compelling reason, the lights, together with thousands of witnesses, epitomize the lights of hope that spark humankind’s perpetual curiosity and the numerous unknowns that beckon us to look up to the sky while reflecting on what reality could be waiting for us in the void.