The Phoenix Lights

Jason: 00:00:00

The mass UFO event known as the Phoenix Lights was truly bizarre. If you lived in the Phoenix metro area in 1997, you might have seen it. I sure did, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

Music: 00:00:13

Is it UFO or UAP? The government's confusing me. The experts make it complicated. Lack of answers has me jaded. UFO? I don't know. UAP? Yeah, I guess so. Searching for answers. Where to begin? Round and round in circles again. Thunderstruck by mass confusion. Is in fact or fiction? Convolution! UFO? UAP? Which is right idiomatically? Just my luck. Now I'm stuck. Scratch my head and say yeah what the fuck? UFO or UAP? It's all so confusing to me. Beyond frustrated. Damn my luck. Pondering insane thoughts. What the fuck?

Jason: 00:00:58

Hello citizens and welcome to UFO UAP WTF? I'm your host, Jason McClellan, and together we'll be exploring the fascinating, enigmatic and frustrating subject of UFOs. I'm recording this episode in mid-March of 2024, and this month marked the 27th anniversary of the Phoenix Lights incident.

Jason: 00:01:16

This was a UFO event witnessed by thousands of people in the state of Arizona on March 13th, 1997. This case is pretty fascinating, and it's always fun to revisit it every year when the anniversary rolls around. We'll talk more about it soon, but let's quickly see what's been in the news. On Friday, March 8th. The Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, also known as AARO, published volume one of its report on the historical record of U.S. government involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomena. Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder issued a press release on March 8th to announce the publication of this new report from AARO. Ryder explains that this report, "reviews the record of the United States government pertaining to unidentified anomalous phenomena as required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023." The press release further describes the scope of this report. "The goal of AARO's efforts in producing this volume, and the second forthcoming one, is to use a rigorous analytic and scientific approach to investigate past US government sponsored UAP investigation efforts and the claims made by interviewees that the US government and various contractors have recovered and are hiding off world technology and biological material.

Jason: 00:02:36

AARO has approached this project with the widest possible aperture, thoroughly investigating these assertions and claims without any particular preconceived conclusions or hypothesis. AARO is committed to reaching conclusions based on verifiable evidence. As AARO has said before, they will follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads." The press release also reveals that "AARO will publish a second volume that will provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after November 1st, 2023, including information received via interviews with current and former US government personnel who contacted AARO via the secure reporting mechanism on AARO's website." The report is 63 pages, so there's plenty of content to review if you're interested in checking it out for yourself, I've included the link to the full report in the show notes, and you can also find it at RoguePlanet.tv. Let's jump into our Phoenix Lights discussion. If you've dipped your toes in UFO research and spent any time looking into notable UFO cases, you've likely heard of the Phoenix Lights. As I mentioned, this was a mass UFO sighting that occurred in Arizona on the night of March 13th, 1997.

Jason: 00:03:53

Thousands of people witnessed this event, and therefore there are also many differing descriptions and accounts of what took place that night. This, by the way, is largely true for most events witnessed by multiple people. Whether that's a car accident, a murder, or a UFO sighting. Our perceptions, recollections, our reactions, and so on are all different, so varying descriptions of the same event is pretty standard. There were potentially multiple events and multiple objects in the sky that night, including what some describe as a mile long V-shaped craft displaying 5 to 7 amber or reddish orange lights that traveled from Nevada all the way down to Mexico. A mile long. That's pretty wild, right? But the most commonly reported event from that night was a series of 5 to 7 stationary lights that appeared in the sky over Phoenix's far west Valley. This has been and always will be a special UFO case for me because I, like thousands of other Arizonans, witnessed the Phoenix Lights. Now, my brain sucks, and I certainly don't pretend to remember with any great accuracy the details of what I experienced that night 27 years ago.

Jason: 00:05:06

But I do remember being perplexed and excited as I gazed at those bizarre lights in the sky. I remember watching the story covered that night on the local news, and I remember the national attention the incident received when word of the Phoenix Lights spread to national and international media. The event, or events of March 13th, 1997 made national news on June 18th, 1997, when USA Today ran a front page story with the title "Skies, Phone Lines Light Up Arizona." Many different phone lines lit up in response to this mysterious aerial display. But Francis Barwood's phone was flooded with calls from witnesses and concerned residents. Barwood was a member of the Phoenix City Council at the time of the Phoenix Lights incident. She brought up the event a few weeks after it occurred at a city council meeting because she wanted to know if the council could look into the lights to determine what they were. But she was met by blank stares and ridicule from her colleagues. The public, however, was happy that someone was willing to listen and to seek answers.

Jason: 00:06:08

Hundreds of residents called Barwood's office, and she launched her own investigation into the incident. Her efforts were unsuccessful, however, being stonewalled at every turn. Fife. Symington, who was Arizona's governor at the time of the Phoenix Lights, held a press conference a couple of months after the incident in response to the public's outcry for answers. He announced that the party responsible for the incident had been apprehended. At Symington's instruction, police officers escorted this culprit, a large headed extraterrestrial in handcuffs, in front of the media. Symington removed the head from this costumed individual, revealing his chief of staff. The press conference was a stunt orchestrated by Symington to defuse the situation and to calm the public's nerves. Understandably, the governor's apparent mockery of the situation insulted many who witnessed the UFO event, but he did later clarify that he was simply attempting to prevent mass panic, and he also later admitted that he too witnessed the Phoenix Lights. Symington testified in 2007 at the National Press Club that what he observed over Phoenix that night "defied logic," and challenged his reality.

Jason: 00:07:22

He described seeing a "massive delta shaped craft" that silently navigated over North Phoenix. Symington, who is a pilot and former Air Force officer, opined to CNN that "unless the Defense Department proves us otherwise, it was probably some form of alien spacecraft." After seeing whatever it was that appeared over Phoenix in 1997, Symington became an advocate for "more openness and a serious pursuit of the facts by our government" regarding UFOs. Like Barwood, Symington was stonewalled in his attempt to get answers about what appeared over Phoenix in 1997. The military did eventually offer an explanation for the Phoenix Lights. After months of denying that any military planes were in the air on the night in question, it was later discovered that the Maryland Air National Guard had a visiting squadron performing exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range, located southwest of Phoenix, as part of Operation Snowbird, a program where units from states with bad weather come to Arizona to perform exercises in the winter.

Jason: 00:08:31

Because, if you don't know, Phoenix has amazing winter weather. This squad of eight A-10s finished its training runs that night, then reportedly dropped all remaining high intensity flares as the squad returned to its base of origin, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. This mass flare drop is what the military offered as its official explanation for the Phoenix Lights event. The problem with this story is that the location where the squadron reportedly dumped its remaining flares doesn't align with where witnesses saw the lights that night. The time these flares were allegedly dropped also doesn't match the time that witnesses reported seeing the anomalous lights over Phoenix. Many accepted the offered flare story, but there are many witnesses who noticed the discrepancies with the military's explanation. I'm in that group. I grew up in Phoenix's far west Valley. I'm talking about the middle of nowhere. Nothing but desert all around. From our property, it wasn't uncommon to see military flares being dropped by A-10 fighter jets out at the Barry Goldwater range. I was very familiar with the appearance and behavior of these high intensity flares. Although what I saw on March 13th, 1997 did resemble the appearance of flares,

Jason: 00:09:48

it's the behavior of these lights that led me to largely discount flares as a likely identification. These lights were seemingly directly over my head as I stood in my yard, watching with confusion and curiosity. These brilliant lights never altered in position or intensity. They just hung there motionless for at least 40 minutes. The LUU-2B/B aircraft parachute flares that the squadron was reportedly dropping that night has a burn time of somewhere between . . . you ready? 5 to 10 minutes. That's quite a bit shorter than 40 minutes. And my house was 50 or so miles northeast of the Barry Goldwater range. So the flare explanation has never been a serious contender, in my opinion, and it certainly hasn't been a serious contender for the many witnesses across the state, including witnesses in neighboring states who attest that they saw a massive low flying craft in the sky that night. And remember, one of those witnesses was the governor, Fife Symington, who described seeing a "massive delta shaped craft" flying silently over North Phoenix, which, by the way, is 80 miles or so northeast of the Barry Goldwater Range.

Jason: 00:11:12

The Arizona Republic, the largest newspaper in Phoenix, published a story on March 13th of this year about the anniversary of the Phoenix Lights, as it typically does. The article's author contacted Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix's West Valley for a new comment about the Phoenix Lights. The base's chief of media relations responded, stating, "Unfortunately, no one at the 56th fighter wing is going to be able to speak on this specific subject as the event happened over 26 years ago. We're happy to discuss our modern operations or how we're preparing pilots for the future of warfare, but we just don't have any experts to speak toward.Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena reports from the 1990s." According to the article, the base spokesperson added that, "Arizona has a lot of UFO sightings, but it also has a lot of military bases and a lot of Air Force activity and a lot of flights and different types of aircraft. Not everyone is familiar with those." And while these are very valid points, it's also true that not everyone is familiar with the specific details of the Phoenix Lights incident that make the military's official explanation problematic.

Jason: 00:12:19

I've seen lots of UFOs, and because I spent so many years working professionally in the UFO field, I've been able to eventually identify most of the UFOs I personally seen. But the Phoenix Lights remains with the dozen or so that I haven't been able to satisfactorily assign to something conventional or mundane. I don't think what I saw that night was any type of mysterious craft, but I remain open to that possibility. I also think it's very unlikely that what I observed were military flares. But again, I remain open to that possibility. Still, to me, the Phoenix Lights remains unresolved, and like so many other witnesses, I remain hopeful that someday additional information will be revealed that might shed additional light on what it was that put on a spectacular aerial show for thousands of Arizona residents back in 1997. But that, my friends, concludes our episode for today. But before I go, I want to give you a heads up about something I've been working on. I've been publishing a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn for a while now that provides a rundown of recent UFO related headlines.

Jason: 00:13:30

I'm likely phasing that out soon, but that's because I'm getting ready to launch a new digital zine covering UFO news, events, and more. I'm planning to publish the first issue at the beginning of April, so be on the lookout for that. As you pursue your UFO research, do what works for you. But consider my five recommendations to guide your UFO research quest: Always treat the UFO subject with the cautious and responsible skepticism it deserves. Question everything. Have the courage to form your own opinions. Keep truth as the focus of your quest, even if the truth conflicts with your opinions, and be open to modifying those opinions as you consider new information. And lastly, don't be a dick. As always, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know if there's a case or topic you'd like to have featured or address on a future episode, a general comment, or anything else. I'd love to hear it and I'm easy to reach. You can always contact me on the platform formerly known as Twitter at @aceentric, or shoot me an email at Jason@RoguePlanet.tv.

Jason: 00:14:28

I'm Jason McClellan. Thanks for hanging out today. Join me again next time as we try to figure out together what the fuck is up with these UFOs.

Music: 00:14:36

UFO? UAP? Which is right idiomatically? Just my luck, now I'm stuck. Scratch my head and say yeah what the fuck? UFO or UAP? It's all so confusing to me. Beyond frustrated. Damn my luck. Pondering insane thoughts. What the fuck?