The Phoenix Lights - Another Unsolved Mysteries Case

Next up from the Unsolved Mysteries Archives is one of the most famous UFO cases of all time. Perhaps the last globally recognized ufo case of the 20th century and certainly one of the last mass UFO sightings to date.

One thing that did transpire was that those lights slowly blinked out over Phoenix along with the golden age of ufology. Roswell’s 50th anniversary came and went in the summer of the same year. But since then, there have been few, if any, mass UFO sightings in public.

The Phoenix Lights was first featured on Unsolved Mysteries in a May 1998 broadcast. You can watch the full show below. If you only want to watch the Phoenix Lights segment then it starts from this point at around 11 minutes in:



For those unable, or not wanting, to watch then brief notes on the segment follow:

Unsolved Mysteries Show Notes

At 10pm on March 13, 1997, Michael Krzyston captured strange lights hovering above the city of Phoenix, Arizona on video tape. Further footage was shot some fifteen miles away. Over a thousand witnesses reported seeing the lights.
Captain Drew Sullins, spoke for the US military and explained that fighter jets were doing a night training exercise in the area. The jets dropped several flares, resulting in the lights seen. These are shown in the now infamous video….



However, the military claimed that flares were dropped between 9pm and 10pm, while more impressive sightings of lights occurred between 8pm and 9pm, leading to a belief that the military was involved in a UFO cover up.

At 8:10pm, Ross Nickle and family were driving on Highway 89, ninety miles north of Phoenix when his son saw strange lights, when they stopped for a better look, the lights began moving silently and changing colour. He judged the lights to be around 1000 feet in the air.

At 8:30pm, a commercial airline pilot and his wife were driving ninety miles south of the Nickles when they saw the strange lights. He had no idea what the lights were, noting a lack of noise, and that there were five lights were pointing downward in a V-formation.

Fourteen miles southeast of the pilot's sighting still twenty-five minutes before the military dropped flares, Ozma Linderman and her boyfriend saw the strange lights travelling at the same speed. They appeared to be part of the same large object. Seconds later, the object turned red and oval-shaped, shooting rapidly into the sky as it disappeared.

Truck driver Gary Morris was driving at 8:45pm, when he and another trucker saw the lights about ten miles south of Ozma's sighting. Within an hour, the Phoenix lights seemed to have covered a total of 300 miles across Arizona when Michael Krzyston videotaped the lights.


Footage of the later lights seen across Arizona


The military stands by the claim that the flares they dropped were the "Phoenix lights", and that this is what Krzyston's videotape shows. However, no others video of military flares being dropped appeared like the lights Krzyston had filmed. They were also unlike other witness sightings from earlier in the evening.

For the military, the case of the "Phoenix Lights" was closed. But the ambiguity led some to believe the flares' story was a cover up.

Beyond the ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Show

The Unsolved Mysteries show only gave a brief look at the case with a year’s hindsight. The Hale-Bopp comet was clearly visible in the skies during March of 1997. With more people than usual out and looking skyward. But most people weren’t expecting to see a UFO.

Some 128 witness reports (prior to the 10pm flare drops) were compiled in this pdf and are visually presented on this map in chronological order.


One of the very first reports, more than 2 hours before most sightings and the military exercises began, came from Crown King in Arizona at 5:30pm. A family on I-17 saw 3 huge Vs hovering over the mountains as a triangular or diamond craft joined them. Jets pursued the objects which assumed stack formation before they collapsed into a ball of light that soon disappeared.

At 8:20pm someone reported a small orb entering their home in Phoenix. Which seems unconnected, but the witness associated this experience with the Phoenix Lights.

At 8:28pm an amateur astronomer, Mitch Stanley, viewed the odd lights through a telescope and noted they were unambiguously aircraft. Specifically, a formation of five planes that were “…either A-10s or possibly T-37 fighter-trainer.”

As the events of March 13th 1997 unfolded, one of the first to cover the story was Art Bell's radio show. He was live on air that night and spoke with Peter Davenport of NUFORC concerning sightings being reported to him across Arizona.



There is only one known video of the first wave of sightings (before 8:45pm). Taken by Terry Proctor.



There appears to be a triangular or V shaped object with 5 lights traversing the sky. But analysis of the footage has shown that the lights were from separate objects.

A few months later on June 19th of 1997, Arizona Governor Fife Symington held an embarrassingly silly press conference claiming he’d “found who was responsible". Then revealing an aide dressed as an alien and ripping his mask off in true Scooby-Doo style.



Ten years later in 2007, Symington told a UFO investigator he'd seen the earlier lights and had a personal close encounter!

“I’m a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies,” he said. “It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don’t know why people would ridicule it… [it was] enormous. It just felt otherworldly.”
He added: “In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly.”

UFOS Flew Over Phoenix in '97, Symington Says

Aside from his legal issues, Symington’s claim to have seen the lights are in doubt as his original story didn’t stand up to scrutiny. He claimed he’d seen TV news reports and drove out to a park to see a huge V shaped craft around 8:30pm. However, there were no TV news reports until the flare drops at 10pm.

In mid-July of 1997 the Arizona Republic Newspaper covered the story with a front-page headline and feature (which has been edited for brevity below):

PHOENIX SIGHTING IN US SPOTLIGHT

…Since March, Arizona military bases said they had nothing in the air that would have caused the mysterious lights seen from Phoenix on March 13. But the bases didn't check visiting aircraft.

That is until they were asked to by Capt. Eileen Bienz, public affairs officer for the Army and Air National Guard. She started a one-woman investigation….

What Bienz found out about was Operation Snowbird, which brings in aircraft from bases in the northern United States from November to April. Hence the name.

A flight schedule from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, shows that a squadron of planes from Operation Snowbird left at 8:15 p.m. on March 13 and returned at 10:30 p.m… Luke Air Force Base confirmed that the Maryland planes were authorized to use the Barry Goldwater range from 9:30 to 10 p.m. on March 13…the planes were probably in a formation, then peeled off one or two at a time to perform the run…

During the run, they would drop high-intensity flares, called Luu-2, made of either magnesium or cesium… and take a long time to drop…The planes completed their required runs and their time at the busy range was coming to a close. But the A-10s still had a bunch of flares on board, and Davis-Monthan doesn't let planes land with flares aboard.

Jim Delitoso of Village Labs was at a loss for words when told of the Snowbird planes.. he said that optical analysis of photos and videotapes show the lights couldn't be flares and that a computer simulation matching witness accounts places the lights nowhere near the gunnery range.

"I'm open-minded that it could be flares, but we have no evidence of that," Delitoso said.

The Maryland Air National Guard is also keeping an open mind, said Sullins, its spokesman.

"All I'm saying is, yes, we had aircraft flying in that area doing night illuminations." he said. "These guys were flying it. They were there. We can prove it. Whether people want to believe it was the mysterious lights, it's up to them."

Ultimately, the evidence pointed heavily to military events occurring between 8pm and 10pm being the root cause of the Phoenix Lights. Without that evidence being conclusive enough to convince everyone. And so the story rolled on with small additions here and there.

Peter Davenport of NUFORC presented his story of a 3am call, on Friday 14th March 1997 regarding the sightings some hours earlier. Allegedly from an Airman stationed at Luke Air Force Base who claimed that two USAF F-15 fighters had been “scrambled” from Luke AFB, to intercept a mysterious object. It had almost collided with a small Cessna aircraft and fired a beam of light towards the ground. Davenport claims to know his name but the airman never spoke publicly again. The caller and story have never been verified, but you can hear the call in his 2015 presentation around the 48 mins. mark here [direct link]



In 2017 Kurt Russell, after not mentioning it for 20 years, suddenly told BBC viewers in the UK that he was a pilot who reported the lights back in March 1997.

Even today, numerous podcasts, documentaries, news broadcasts and websites will occasionally discuss the Phoenix Lights.

Summary

Not everyone is convinced. But there seems to be little doubt that the sightings around 10pm were the product of military flares, as claimed.

The earlier sightings, before 10pm attract more controversy. Of the 128 witness reports from BEFORE the flare drops around 10pm, 95 of them mention sighting a V or triangular shape or formation. With 46 believing this to be a solid object. The remainder only mention lights.

The first 2 (maybe 3) sightings were supposedly before sunset and also well before the military exercises had begun. It begs the question, what was really happening on March 13th 1997 over Arizona? Maybe these witnesses were mistaken? It was nothing more than the military exercises as reported.

Or had something else occurred that we’ve not been made aware of?

It's very difficult to prove something didn't happen. So as long as there are unanswered questions and doubts can be thrown over the official explanations, then the Phoenix Lights will remain cemented in UFO lore. Growing old, but not fading away like those flares behind the mountain range.

Great information and right to the points--thank you for this, mirageman!
The Phoenix Lights are a classic "must-know" example case for anyone interested in Ufology, even if some consider it solved. The entire story covers a bit of everything--possible military explanations, otherworldly spacecraft, and a whole batch of unanswered questions (or questions with vague answers). It may be an older one, but sometimes the most intriguing sightings have been hanging around for quite some time (even some of the older solved ones offer something to learn from).
And Fife Symington's press conference was really something.

After decades of studying I've found that all of the major UFO events had nothing to do with UFOs.

Roswell

Phoenix

Kecksburg

Rendlesham

Travis Walton

Bob Lazar

all are conclusively shown to have Earthbound explanations or be outright hoaxes if you really dig into them.

I've just spent that last hour searching military jet chatt flares (all types of flares) and other heat seeking missle countermeasures that may have been used and the flares don't behave as in the OP's video, but drones do. So, I'm thinking government drones, hey, we're watching you.

originally posted by: abe froman
After decades of studying I've found that all of the major UFO events had nothing to do with UFOs.

Roswell

Phoenix

Kecksburg

Rendlesham

Travis Walton

Bob Lazar

all are conclusively shown to have Earthbound explanations or be outright hoaxes if you really dig into them.

That's quite the list you have there but, if all had been conclusively shown to have earthbound explanations, then why are they still being debated? Conclusions are ar only that if everybody believes them, which clearly they do not.

a reply to: fromtheskydown

Because people want to believe so bad they ignore evidence.

For example, the skinny Bob footage was shown to have a stock filter applied to make the film look old.

True believers say the filter was added to genuine footage to discredit it.

Lol.

a reply to: abe froman

This is true.

One of the biggest stymies in ufology is the firm emotional bias this subject elicits in so many of its enthusiasts and even a few researchers. It gets in the way.
Not everyone in ufology leaves themselves with so little headroom, of course, but a lot of them do, and it isn't getting them anywhere.
Even if you've seen UAPs in person and witnessed high-strangeness events (I have), you shouldn't take every case at face value. Just because one might (might) be "real", doesn't mean they all are. Too much preset bias in this field; Ufology needs to be studied objectively.

originally posted by: abe froman
a reply to: fromtheskydown

Because people want to believe so bad they ignore evidence.

For example, the skinny Bob footage was shown to have a stock filter applied to make the film look old.

True believers say the filter was added to genuine footage to discredit it.

Lol.

Of course because people have their own filters when it comes to belief or disbelief. I have been delving into UFOs since around 1975 and there are still cases which leave me inconclusive. I am receptive to the phenomenon being real but not so receptive to it being a result of aliens from another galaxy etc.

originally posted by: wavelength
a reply to: abe froman

This is true.

One of the biggest stymies in ufology is the firm emotional bias this subject elicits in so many of its enthusiasts and even a few researchers. It gets in the way.
Not everyone in ufology leaves themselves with so little headroom, of course, but a lot of them do, and it isn't getting them anywhere.
Even if you've seen UAPs in person and witnessed high-strangeness events (I have), you shouldn't take every case at face value. Just because one might (might) be "real", doesn't mean they all are. Too much preset bias in this field; Ufology needs to be studied objectively.

I have witnessed some baffling high-strangeness events as well. Some stretch back to my childhood and more recently, although not so much in the last few years. They have you questioning your own sanity.

a reply to: abe froman

Unfortunately, ufology has become a huge LARP (or entertainment business). The truth has been obscured by grifters and/or is often used as a cover story for the military to hide secret testing.

The other problem is that we humans are poor observers. Especially of objects and events that are outside our own experience and knowledge.

In the Phoenix Lights case I can only see the flares being used as a cover story if the military already intended to carry out another operation (maybe testing a new stealth craft) at an earlier or similar time. Without prior knowledge, then it would be very unlikely the military could arrange such a display within a short time. So I think an ET visitation is one of the least likely explanations here.

The evidence heavily points to a military exercise in play over Arizona and a lot of mistaken witness reports. But maybe the military were playing war games and also testing a new toy Just to see what the reaction would be.Yet there is little proof of that, beyond a couple of witnesses claiming they also saw jets following a strange object.

a reply to: mirageman

Thanks for this second 'Unsolved Mysteries' episode breakdown - keep 'em comin'! Excellent work.


A curious side story involves a disabled veteran called Richard Curtis (no relation, I assume, to the Blackadder/Four Weddings/Vicar Of Dibley writer!) who dabbled in video photography and claimed to have filmed a huge structured craft from his roof during the earlier event that evening. He telephoned local councilwoman Frances Barwood at her home number, who asked him to make some copies and send one to City Hall. Two weeks later, though, Curtis rang Barwood again to say that before he could make copies, two Men In Black had visited him, claiming to be from Barwood's office. They took the original tape and promised to return it.

Naturally enough, the MIB were never seen again and the footage was never seen by anyone else. A manager at the hotel where Curtis resided claimed to have seen the MIB exiting a black car but never saw them return from Curtis's room; the car simply 'vanished'.

Barwood says both of Curtis's phone calls were recorded and that she played them to Jim Delitoso (who seemed to be the go-to expert on the case, according to her). Barwood also claims her phone had been tapped, and the final twist to this odd tale is that copies of the phone calls eventually disappeared from Delitoso's Village Labs.

So, basically, we have NOTHING... except yet another Story. Even Curtis himself has since disappeared, so make of this whole saga what you will.

An interview with Curtis by Fox10 News is included in this clip (courtesy of Reddit), and Barwood tells her own story below.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

....A curious side story involves a disabled veteran called Richard Curtis ...who dabbled in video photography and claimed to have filmed a huge structured craft from his roof during the earlier event that evening. He telephoned local councilwoman Frances Barwood at her home number, who asked him to make some copies and send one to City Hall. Two weeks later, though, Curtis rang Barwood again to say that before he could make copies, two Men In Black had visited him, claiming to be from Barwood's office. They took the original tape and promised to return it. Naturally enough, the MIB were never seen again and the footage was never seen by anyone else.

Yeh! Of course, they did! LOL. Sounds like one of Linda Moulten Howe's stories.

So he had two weeks to make a copy of the tape? In those days, you would have to connect it up to your VCR and copy it in real time. But that doesn't take two weeks. I am assuming this guy's disability was not a physical one?

Meanwhile, Terry Proctor managed to get his video out there without getting a call from MIB.






I am also dubious about the call to Peter Davenport of NUFORC [Link to his presentation and recording of the call].

It involves an airman from Luke AFB claiming F15s chased an unknown object across Arizona starting around 8:28pm, He somehow links in Air Force One [President Clinton was in Florida that day] , a near miss with a light aircraft and a full lockdown at Luke AFB. However, there is also a single independent witness report from a truck driver who saw 3 jets over Luke AFB. [No 25 on the Phoenix Lights Sighting Map

a reply to: mirageman

In doing some postings previously peppered into other Phoenix lights threads……since the focus is on the earlier sighting ….. here’s one of my posts gif pics.



Imo…..I’m inclined to think it was some kind of aero club transiting to somewhere. Perhaps a air show or convention. I can’t say that flying at night in a loose “V” formation, is breaking any FAA rules……as I recall they where flying almost parallel to the highway heading south. As I understand wee bit flying….they could have been flying IFR (Instruments Flight Rules) ….and using the lights of the highway as guides.

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Next up from the Unsolved Mysteries Archives is one of the most famous UFO cases of all time. Perhaps the last globally recognized ufo case of the 20th century and certainly one of the last mass UFO sightings to date.

I like the idea of looking for patterns in ufo flaps and events. One sound criticism of the government not ever doing a serious scientific study is that the patterns of UFOs have rarely been looked at.

And because UFOs can’t be really tracked, all we have is highly circumstantial pattern evidence of what is going on.

The only one I know is John Keel, who had a lot of insights into that in his investigations. Vallee, too to a lesser extent.

Vallee has contributed insights into the psychological impact of UFOs.

And how the phenomenon has, notwithstanding the grifters, enchanted so many people.

And have they dried up after the Phoenix lights flap… And close before that, the Hudson Vallee and Belgium wave triangle flaps---1983-4 to 1990

Maybe the phenomenon has decided to chill out on public displays of its powers and decided to just harass individuals for the most part.

a reply to: peaceinoutz

Relying on a government to tell you about UFOs is probably futile. The military will always insist that sources and methods of detection are a national security issue.They don't want to reveal how much they do know, nor will they want adversaries to find out how much they don't know. If you tell the public, you tell the world. Add to that, if some new radical discovery is made, then the first thought will be to weaponize it.

Civilian efforts have had little impact. What have organizations like MUFON, NUFORC etc really achieved beyond collecting reports for years?

Tracking and resolving UFO cases is a high cost, low probability exercise. Most of the time (around 90-95% of cases) are due to misperceptions of natural phenomena or man-made technology. Other than perhaps to illustrate how human perception is fallible, these cases are of little value.

To bring this on topic, were the Phoenix lights something more than a military exercise?

Or were hundreds of witnesses simply mistaken and unable to discern what they had seen?

originally posted by: mirageman
To bring this on topic, were the Phoenix lights something more than a military exercise?

Or were hundreds of witnesses simply mistaken and unable to discern what they had seen?

Comparing this to other cases of misperception...not all the witnesses are mistaken.

Some percentage of witnesses have the misperception, while other witnesses have a more accurate perception. What UFO "believers" tend to do is focus on the witnesses with misperceptions and ignore the witnesses with more accurate perception. In this case I think it can be argued that the witness with the best perception is the one who saw the UFO at the highest magnification through a telescope, who you mentioned, Mitch Stanley. Terry Proctor's video is also good evidence showing it wasn't one solid V, but 5or 6 separate objects. There were some witnesses who thought the 8:30pm UFO was planes and though some witnesses said they couldn't hear plane noise (maybe not over the city background), other witnesses could hear plane noise (maybe they were in areas with less background noise that could mask the noise of distant airplanes.)

Some people talk about a conspiracy involved in the Phoenix UFO case. You mentioned a possible conspiracy to stage a second UFO event to cover the first. I don't know about that, but the real conspiracy was not by the government but by UFO believers like Frances Barwood who ignored Mitch Stanley, the witness who got the best look at the UFO.

The Great UFO Cover-up

We can compare this to Yukon and other satellite re-entry cases, and see that witnesses of the same events perceive them differently, some see a structured craft (the humand mind's tendency to "connect the dots" and make sense of ambiguous data), while others more accurately see the individual lights. It happens again and again and again...Jim Oberg has done some research on this topic, the most recent such event was a giant UFO over Hawaii, with an amazing number of structured craft misperceptions, and people flatly denying the explanation of individual lights, just like in the Phoenix lights case.

The Great Hawaii “UFO Mothership” of October 24, 2020

That covers not only the Hawaii mothership but also similar cases of misperception, relevant to the Phoenix Lights case.

The still open mystery of Phoenix lights is why can nobody identify the aircraft that Mitch Stanley saw:

originally posted by: mirageman
At 8:28pm an amateur astronomer, Mitch Stanley, viewed the odd lights through a telescope and noted they were unambiguously aircraft. Specifically, a formation of five planes that were “…either A-10s or possibly T-37 fighter-trainer.”

So what were they, A-10s or T-37s? Or what other aircraft that look similar could they have been?

Some Hawaii UFO witnesses are so confident it was a giant aircraft and hot individual aircraft, but we see this same hubris about the witness misperceptions in the Hawaii and other cases (read some of the social media posts on the Hawaii mothership case where they are sure it's not a satellite re-entry, very much like the denials in the Phoenix 8:30 case of it being 5 or 6 aircraft).

originally posted by: peaceinoutz
I like the idea of looking for patterns in ufo flaps and events.

There is defintely a pattern in the satellite re-entry cases which Jim Oberg has been publishing about (see link above). One pattern is a significant percentage of witnesses "connecting the dots" of lights in the sky, thinking they are all connected to one giant object (even when they are not). This seems highly relevant to the Phoenix lights case as it appears to be what happened in this case also even though the lights were on individual planes (as confirmed by not only Mitch Stanley, but also by Terry Proctor's video).

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: peaceinoutz

Relying on a government to tell you about UFOs is probably futile. The military will always insist that sources and methods of detection are a national security issue.They don't want to reveal how much they do know, nor will they want adversaries to find out how much they don't know. If you tell the public, you tell the world. Add to that, if some new radical discovery is made, then the first thought will be to weaponize it.

Civilian efforts have had little impact. What have organizations like MUFON, NUFORC etc really achieved beyond collecting reports for years?

Tracking and resolving UFO cases is a high cost, low probability exercise. Most of the time (around 90-95% of cases) are due to misperceptions of natural phenomena or man-made technology. Other than perhaps to illustrate how human perception is fallible, these cases are of little value.

To bring this on topic, were the Phoenix lights something more than a military exercise?

Or were hundreds of witnesses simply mistaken and unable to discern what they had seen?

Who knows. However, I will add my own 2 coppers.

My dad and two of my cousins lived in Phoenix during this time. My dad was out of town and missed the whole thing, but my cousins did not. One lived in Paradise Valley, the other, In Mesa. The one in Paradise Valley was in her yard that night with the neighbors when they saw them. They seemed to fly over them, and when they did, they blocked out the stars in the sky as they passed, suggesting possibly a solid object. Her neighbor tripped out, and scrambled to get his camcorder, but by the time he dug it out, set it up and got outside, the lights had already passed, and what footage he got was unimpressive and showed little more than a couple blurry lights receding, according to my cousin. They all agreed that whatever it was, it looked pretty damned BIG. Not like 747 big, but a couple times the size.

My other cousin was home, having a beer and watching TV with the kids. His wife was in Mesa at her brother's house and phoned him, telling him to go outside and see if he could see anything weird. He went outside, and saw in the distance what looked like either a line or cluster of lights. He couldn't tell if it was solid, but said the lights were pretty spread out.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Comparing this to other cases of misperception...not all the witnesses are mistaken. Some percentage of witnesses have the misperception, while other witnesses have a more accurate perception. What UFO "believers" tend to do is focus on the witnesses with misperceptions and ignore the witnesses with more accurate perception....

It's also unlikely that people who don't see what they perceive to be "unusual" will report anything at all!

The still open mystery of Phoenix lights is why can nobody identify the aircraft that Mitch Stanley saw..

It's possible the military were up to something that they weren't willing to divulge. Or might have nothing at all to do with them.There are often these loose ends that never get clarfied.

I’ll add this to the mix….I don’t remember if I ever posted my zoomies below.

Notice the green within …… at first, I thought they could be plane navigation lights, and maybe they are.

But when you see as shown in the original video …. the loose “V” formation is moving from right to left heading south….that being the case….standard civilian aircraft has the Red (port) nav light on the left wingtip and the Green (starboard) nav light on the right wingtip.

You should be seeing red lights (if these are lights at all) in the zoomies since it’s the left side of the aircraft (object) facing you as it flies…not green lights.

I have no idea, what if any, of this is affected by the atmospheric conditions and or the camera lensing, focusing, or my zooming in to show the green hue lighting. Hmmmm








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