(A) Phoenix Lights: 1997 Mass UFO Sighting | Archive Ep31

[00:00:00] Arizona is known for its beautiful vistas, amazing geological formations, and otherworldly sunsets. The Grand Canyon State contains almost 114,000 square miles of land and ranges in elevation from just 70 feet above sea level at the Colorado River to 12,633 feet at Humphreys Peak near Flagstaff.

[00:00:22] Vast alpine forests to the north and beautiful saguaro-filled deserts to the south give the state a diverse and unique beauty. But in the spring of 1997, Arizona would add yet another attraction to its already impressive list of natural wonders.

[00:00:38] A phenomenon that has come to be known as the Phoenix Lights. The first time it happened, I was sleeping and woke up because I felt a hand on my leg and I realized that I couldn't move.

[00:00:55] And he come across this object on the ground which was the shape of a flying saucer. So he jumped out of his pickup and went down there and there was four beings laying on the ground.

[00:01:05] When I raised my head back up, I was turning my head and out of my peripheral vision I seen something hop to a tree. And it was tall, about 7-8 foot tall, it was black, real hairy, like a gorilla.

[00:01:18] Welcome to the show, I'm your host Nick Ryan and this is episode 31. Just over 22 years ago on the evening of March 13th, 1997, something extraordinary occurred in the skies over Nevada and Arizona. A phenomenon that has intrigued and puzzled its residents to this very day.

[00:01:52] A series of events that was witnessed over hundreds of miles and by such a large number of people that it quickly became known as one of the largest mass UFO sightings in modern history.

[00:02:04] Arizona has become a hotspot for UFO sightings. Most of the sightings come from Sedona and Flagstaff and now even Phoenix. The Arizona National Guard who would know about military exercises and stuff, says it has no explanation at all for those lights.

[00:02:17] The craft was moving very slowly. The people that saw that believe what they saw was an alien spacecraft. Now Governor Symington himself has launched an official investigation. What are these lights spotted over Phoenix? What is described as a giant brightly lit boomerang soars through the air.

[00:02:34] It's just so bright I saw five bright luminous objects and a straight line heading south. What's interesting particularly about March 13th is 98% of the people that I've talked to describe the same thing. Multiple descriptions but the people up in northern Arizona saw lights that were distinctly red.

[00:02:51] Large triangular shaped aircraft, some described as a mile wide, gliding silently over Phoenix. There's no doubt in my mind that they saw something really phenomenal. In order to understand the scope of this phenomenon however, tonight's story begins approximately 22 miles west of the Arizona border in Henderson, Nevada.

[00:03:13] About 20 minutes southeast of Las Vegas and just west of Lake Mead lies the town of Henderson. Just before 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 13th, 1997, a resident of Henderson reported witnessing a flying V-shaped craft with six large lights that approached his location from the northwest.

[00:03:35] The witness stated that the craft flew directly over him at which time he noticed that the strange object was making a sound that he compared to rushing wind. He also said that the craft was very large and approximately the size of a 747.

[00:03:50] The witness said that after it passed over him, the object continued to move in a southeast direction eventually disappearing out of sight. Approximately 45 minutes later and just over 200 miles southeast of Henderson, a former police officer in Pauldin, Arizona reported seeing strange lights in the sky.

[00:04:11] The officer stated that he had left his home at around 8.15 p.m. and was heading north. He looked westward out of his driver's side window and saw what he described as five reddish orange lights.

[00:04:23] The officer said the lights appeared to be in a formation with four of the lights being closer together in a cluster and the fifth light trailing behind. He also described each of the lights as having two points of origin that seemed to emit an orange glow.

[00:04:38] The officer quickly turned his car around and headed back to his house where he retrieved a pair of binoculars and for the next couple of minutes he watched the lights silently travel into the distance until they once again disappeared out of sight.

[00:04:52] These two sightings are extremely compelling by themselves, but they pale in comparison to the string of events that were soon to follow. Within minutes of the officer's sighting and 120 miles south of Pauldin, the phones at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale began to ring.

[00:05:10] As operators at the base fielded the calls, phone lines at the National UFO Reporting Center, news reporting offices, and multiple law enforcement branches also began to light up. Initial reports came in from Chino Valley, Prescott, Prescott Valley, Dewey, Cordes Junction, Wickenburg, and Cave Creek,

[00:05:31] as well as other towns northwest of downtown Phoenix. As the reports flooded the call centers, investigators found it difficult to make sense of what was taking place,

[00:05:41] not only due to the bizarre nature of the reports, but because a vast majority of the eyewitnesses were reporting different descriptions of the objects in the sky.

[00:05:50] Some of the callers stated that they were seeing five lights in the sky, while others reported seeing seven or sometimes even more. Certain eyewitnesses said they were seeing red lights, while others were sure that they were seeing orange.

[00:06:04] Many people claimed to witness yellow lights, and others reportedly saw white. To add to the confusion, some of the eyewitnesses said that the lights were moving across the sky at a high rate of speed,

[00:06:15] but others insisted that the lights they saw were moving slowly, and in some cases hovering motionless for long periods of time.

[00:06:23] So many different descriptions across hundreds of communities led investigators to believe that there had to be multiple types of crafts moving at extremely fast speeds across the state. Just north of downtown Phoenix, three witnesses reported seeing a massive wedge-shaped craft.

[00:06:41] On the underside of the object, the witnesses said that they could clearly see five lights as the craft eerily glided above them. The witnesses said that the craft was so large that it blocked out at least 70 to 90 degrees of the sky.

[00:06:55] They continued to watch as the unidentified object headed south and passed between two mountain peaks. At the intersection of Indian School Road and 7th Avenue, a mother and her four daughters saw what they described as an object shaped like a sergeant's stripes off in the distance.

[00:07:13] As they looked to the north, they could see the strange object emerge from above Camelback Mountain as it continued heading south in their direction. Once it reached their location, all five of the witnesses stated that the craft stopped and hovered directly over them for approximately five minutes.

[00:07:31] They also said that the craft filled at least 30 to 40 degrees of the sky, and that it seemed to emit a faint glow from the rear.

[00:07:40] They also reported that they could see features on the underside of the craft, and they were all certain that what they were seeing was indeed a very large, solid object. After what felt like an eternity, the object began to slowly move as it continued on its southern route.

[00:07:58] At this moment, onlookers stated that it fired a beam of light toward the ground. As it did this, seven lights that were on the front edge of the craft dimmed and then disappeared.

[00:08:10] The large object then began to move in the direction of Sky Harbor International Airport, where two air traffic controllers witnessed the craft. At this time, multiple pilots both on the ground and on final approach saw the eerie lights.

[00:08:25] One of those approaching aircraft was piloted by actor Kurt Russell. This is an excerpt from a show where he describes his and his son's experience that night. I was flying him to go see his girlfriend, and we were on approach.

[00:08:42] And I saw six lights over the airport in absolute uniform in a V shape. And Oliver said to me, I was just looking at him, and I was coming in, we're maybe a half a mile out, and Oliver said, Pa, what are those lights?

[00:08:56] And then it kind of like came out of my reverie, and I said, I don't know what they are. He said, are we okay here? And I said, yeah, I'm going to call him. And I reported it. And they said, we're not painting anything. We don't show anything.

[00:09:08] I said, well, okay, I'm going to declare it's unidentified, it's flying, and it's six objects. We landed. I taxied, dropped him off, took off, went back to L.A. Never said a word. He never said a word. I never thought of it.

[00:09:27] Two years later, Goldie is watching a television show when I came home. And the show is on UFOs. But as I came home, hey, honey, how's it going? And I'm kind of hearing the TV going, and I stopped, and I started watching, and it was on that event.

[00:09:42] Now, that was the most viewed UFO event. Over 20,000 people saw that. And I'm watching this, and I'm feeling like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's like, why do I know this? And it's not clear to me.

[00:10:02] And finally, I said, and they said, a pilot reported it, a general aviation pilot reported it on landing. I'd never thought of it since then, and I said, that was me. That was me. And I said, wait a minute. I'll go to my logbooks.

[00:10:19] So I went to my logbooks, and there was the flight at that time, and I didn't mention anything about the UFO. And the fascinating part of that to me is that it just went literally out of my head. And Oliver never mentioned it.

[00:10:33] And had I not seen that show, I'd have never thought of it again. That to me was the weird part. As the evening progressed, all call centers and investigators began to lose track of exactly how many objects were being seen due to the sheer number of sightings.

[00:10:50] After the sightings at Sky Harbor International Airport, we do know that there was at least one other object that was reported moving in a south by southeast direction and eventually passed over the towns of Scottsdale, Glendale, and eventually Gilbert.

[00:11:05] One of the Scottsdale eyewitnesses was a retired airline pilot with over 13,000 hours of flight time. He stated that the object executed a distinct turn as it approached him. He said that he could see lights on the craft that seemed to fade away as it came closer to him.

[00:11:21] As it left the Scottsdale area, it once again continued to head toward the mountains south of Phoenix. Moments later, on Interstate 10 near Casa Grande, a family of five reported that a massive craft had passed over their station wagon as they were driving from Tucson to Phoenix.

[00:11:39] The family said that as they looked out the passenger and driver's side windows, they could see what appeared to be the wing tips of the giant craft. The family also stated that the object was flying south as they were heading north.

[00:11:52] However, the craft was so large that it took them approximately one to two minutes before they were able to drive out from underneath it. All five of the family members stated that the craft was so large that it completely blocked out the sky above the car.

[00:12:08] Another documented report came from Phoenix resident and well-known singer-songwriter Vincent Furnier, better known as Alice Cooper. Cooper briefly shared his experience in an interview years later. The Phoenix Lights was maybe the biggest UFO sighting of all time. It was over Phoenix, Arizona.

[00:12:32] It was seven lights in a V like this and it was a mile wide. And it flew over Arizona, over Phoenix and everybody saw it. I saw it and nobody could explain it. The Air Force couldn't explain it. They just went, we have no idea what this is.

[00:12:52] They tried to say it was flares for an hour moving in one direction. Flares fall. This thing had purpose and everybody saw it. It was like a Spielberg movie. Everybody was like this. It was as plain as that, those lights. I mean, look at these lights here.

[00:13:14] It was just that plain. And it wasn't one or two people. It was thousands of people saw it and took pictures of it. So, you know, whatever it was, it wasn't hiding. I guess we're on the map. I guess we must be some feature on their tourist map.

[00:13:34] Over the next few hours throughout Arizona, phone calls continued to trickle in to multiple 911 operators. Reports ranging from orange fireballs hovering in the sky to disc-shaped craft streaking over Phoenix. But perhaps the most compelling report was submitted by a man

[00:13:52] who claimed to be an airman stationed at Luke Air Force Base. The airman called the National UFO Reporting Center on Friday at 3.20am, roughly eight hours after the initial sightings. The airman said the two United States Air Force F-15C fighters

[00:14:09] had been scrambled from Luke Air Force Base and that they had actually intercepted one of the unidentified craft. Luke Air Force Base never confirmed that any fighters were scrambled that night. But much of the other details that the airman gave to the National UFO Reporting Center

[00:14:23] proved to be highly accurate. Two days after his initial call, the alleged airman from Luke Air Force Base called the reporting center a second time. This time, he told the investigator that answered the phone that he had just been informed by his commander

[00:14:39] that he was getting reassigned to be stationed in Greenland. Since then, no other correspondence with the airman has been received. In May of 1997, two months after the sightings took place, the Public Affairs Office at Luke Air Force Base finally claimed that their personnel had investigated the sightings

[00:14:57] and what people were actually seeing were flares launched by an A-10 Warthog aircraft over the Gila Bend firing range at around 10pm. This explanation immediately brought confusion to the airmen. This explanation immediately brought confusion and frustration to the community as a whole.

[00:15:15] Skeptics and believers alike knew that what they had witnessed were not military flares. In a media briefing, the former governor of Arizona, Fife Symington, claimed that he was looking into the matter. Many of our citizens have been very disturbed by this.

[00:15:30] In response, I suggested that it was time to end months of speculation on the question and investigate the matter once and for all to clear it up. There may well be life out there, nobody knows. You can't say there isn't.

[00:15:43] But as the briefing continued, Symington claimed that they had arrested an individual that was to blame for the phenomena. He then brought out his chief of staff, who was dressed in a shiny outfit, wearing an alien mask and gloves. Symington then said this.

[00:15:58] This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious. On September 5th, 1997, Fife Symington's term as Arizona governor ended, and ten years later, he had this to say to CNN. In 1997, during my second term as governor in Arizona,

[00:16:17] I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality. I witnessed a massive delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix lights.

[00:16:35] To my astonishment, this apparition appeared. This dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I'd ever seen,

[00:16:53] and it was certainly not high altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation. The incident was witnessed by hundreds, if not thousands of people in Arizona, and my office was besieged with phone calls from very concerned Arizonians. The growing hysteria intensified when the story broke nationally.

[00:17:12] I decided to lighten the mood of the state by calling a press conference where my chief of staff arrived in an alien costume. We managed to lessen the sense of panic, but at the same time, we upset many of my constituents.

[00:17:26] I would now like to set the record straight. I never meant to ridicule anyone. My office did make some inquiries as to the origin of the craft, but to this day, they remain unanswered. Eventually, the Air Force did claim responsibility, stating that they dropped flares.

[00:17:42] This is indicative of the attitude from official channels. We get explanations that fly in the face of our facts. Explanations like weather balloons, swamp gas, and military flares. I was never happy with the Air Force's silly explanation.

[00:17:57] There might very well have been military flares in the sky that evening, but what I and hundreds of others saw had nothing to do with that. I now know that I am not alone. There are many high-ranking military, aviation, and government officials who share my concerns.

[00:18:14] While on active duty, they have either witnessed a UFO incident or have conducted an official investigation into UFO cases relevant to aviation safety and national security. By speaking out with me, these people are putting their reputations on the line.

[00:18:30] They have fought in wars, guarded top-secret weapon arsenals, and protected our nation's skies. We want the government to stop putting out stories that perpetuate the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth conventional terms. Investigations need to be reopened, documents need to be unsealed,

[00:18:50] and the idea of an open dialogue can no longer be shunned. Incidents like these are not going away. About a year ago, Chicago O'Hare's International Airport experienced a UFO event that made national and international headlines. What I saw in the Arizona sky goes beyond conventional explanations.

[00:19:10] When it comes to events of this nature that are still completely unsolved, we deserve more openness in government, especially our own. In the years that followed, Simington spoke openly about his true feelings regarding the Phoenix Lights and has apologized for the way that things were handled in 1997.

[00:19:29] To this day, he stands by his belief that what he witnessed in the skies over Phoenix was extraterrestrial. In an interview with Fox 10 News, he had this to say. March 13th, 1997. This event called Lights Over Phoenix. What did you see?

[00:19:50] Well, I saw a huge craft just kind of come right over a squall peak. It was just breathtaking. I'm not sure about the date. You've got a better memory for the dates than I do. Unquestionably, it was a UFO, which means unidentified flying object.

[00:20:12] That doesn't mean we're being visited. Well, it's nothing like anything I've ever seen. And you're an Air Force guy. Yeah, yeah, and a pilot. Got a lot of hours flying. So it was pretty breathtaking. And I'll never forget, I snuck out to see it without DPS,

[00:20:30] which I'm not supposed to be driving my own car and that kind of thing. But I told Ann what I was doing. I was going to go up to squall peak and see what everybody was clamoring about.

[00:20:42] And when I walked in the front door, she looked at me and I was apparently just... Normally I'm fair-complected and pale anyway, right? And she said, oh my gosh, she said, she looked like a ghost. What did you see?

[00:20:53] And I said, I don't know what I saw, but it was really something. I'm not going to talk about it. Wow. Did it frighten you? No, I think I was kind of in awe, really. How big? Bigger thing I've ever seen in the sky.

[00:21:11] Like an aircraft carrier in the sky? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that. And it was hard to define because of the light in terms of the size, but it was absolutely silent and had sort of eerie embedded lights. So that's what I saw.

[00:21:25] And I wasn't expecting to see anything because I was looking out over at Luke to the west. And then all of a sudden these people in the park area just on the west side of 51, there were a bunch of people there. Everybody said, oh, look at that.

[00:21:42] And we turned around and this thing was coming from the northwest traveling to the southeast. We now know, and it really hit me when we were watching the Diamondbacks in Game 7 and the B-1 flew over, over. Yeah, it wasn't a B-1 bomber.

[00:22:01] But that thing all of a sudden out of nowhere appears. And I said to somebody that night, I said, well, you know, when they do test these, they test them in populated areas. They're new stuff. They test it to see if people detect it.

[00:22:15] Do you believe it was ours? Do you believe it was something from the U.S. government that they were kind of flying around? No, it wasn't even close to a B-1. It was much bigger than a B-1. A B-1 actually isn't that big.

[00:22:25] I mean, if it's at low altitude, it'll appear big. But no, this was totally different. Something, though, that you think our own government may have been kind of running by a populated area to see what would happen?

[00:22:38] Well, they certainly achieved their goal of stirring the pot if that's what they were doing. But I don't think so. I think this was technologically far advanced. I use the analogy. Can you imagine if you took Christopher Columbus and put him in the cockpit of a Boeing 777,

[00:23:00] what his reaction would be? He wouldn't understand it. He would be convinced that this is something from another world. And I really believe that. I believe that. But I've always been open to that. We're not alone in the universe. Oh, I agree with that.

[00:23:16] We're going to find that out one way or the other. Even Bill Clinton was talking about that the other day on the National News. I saw that. I do believe that, that we're not alone. I just don't know that we've been visited.

[00:23:26] But you think maybe that night we were. I think so, yeah. There have been so many different sort of sightings and inexplicable phenomena that, you know... But the disparity in terms of technological progress would be so vast

[00:23:41] that we would be, I think, of sort of no consequence to whoever is visiting us because the technology to get here would be just beyond anything we could imagine. Did it hover? No, it was just going in a straight line. Slow pace. Yeah, slow pace, yeah.

[00:23:55] And then, you know, there were all the sightings. There were the sightings of the America West plane coming into Sky Harbor. Said he could have landed on it. It was enormous. Like an aircraft carrier in the sky? Is that about as close as you could...

[00:24:06] Yeah, I think that's a fair description. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Maybe it's our next generation we're working on. Who knows? Well, we'll find out at some day. One of the many odd occurrences surrounding the Phoenix Lights

[00:24:21] was the almost complete lack of media coverage during and shortly after the sightings. An article was published by the Prescott Daily Courier on March 14th. However, almost none of the Phoenix or national press reported on it

[00:24:35] until almost 10 weeks later in mid-June when USA Today finally released a front page article. Now 22 years later, more and more witnesses have come forward and hundreds of books and documentaries have been released. But the events that took place on March 13th, 1997 still remain a mystery.

[00:24:55] So what do you think? Were they military flares? Possibly military planes on maneuvers? Before researching this episode, I didn't fully understand how much depth this story actually had. I'd heard about the Phoenix Lights when it occurred in 1997.

[00:25:13] And over the years, I've seen documentaries and heard multiple retellings of that night's events. But no matter how much you think you know, there's always more to the story. Perhaps one of you were in Phoenix that night and have a story to tell of your own.

[00:25:27] That's the end of our show for tonight, but we'll see you back here very shortly. If you have questions or stories for us, you can email us at paranormalmysteriespodcast at gmail.com. You can also get involved by joining our forum and by following us on social media.

[00:25:41] And you can also support the show by subscribing and sharing it with your friends. New episodes are available on all of your favorite podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, and Spotify. From all of us at Paranormal Mysteries, thank you very much for listening.

[00:25:59] And remember, don't wait for the unknown to come to you. Get out there and find it.