I've always been fascinated with the Phoenix lights, but I was surprised to learn that on that same night, in the Arizona desert, 4 men went missing and have never been seen again. The 4 friends were in the Estrella Mountain National Park off-roading the night of March 13, 1997. Buy tickets for Phoenix Lights 1969 at The Park at Wild Horse Pass in AZ, AZ on & 31, 1969 presented by Relentless Beats. Tickets on sale now.

On March 13th 1997, residents of Phoenix, Arizona started reporting a formation of bright lights moving over their heads The cluster of lights was seen by as many as 20,000 people, making it one of the biggest mass UFO sightings of all time

The event was caught on video from multiple angles, and has been famous among UFOlogists and alien fanatics ever since Can these strange lights be explained? Or were they of alien origin? At 8:15 pm PST, Arizona police received a call from a man named John Kaiser He claimed he could see a cluster of lights moving in a V formation over his house in Prescott

Only half an hour later, those same police were inundated with calls as thousands of people in Phoenix reported the same “v” of flying lights above them Early eyewitnesses saw the lights moving in unison over the city But at around 10 pm the reports changed

People stopped claiming to see the lights moving in a “v” formation, and reported nine of them hovering over the Sierra Estrella mountain range Shortly afterwards the lights disappeared behind the mountains The story was picked up by local media Many residents believed the lights were the front of a giant “v” shaped alien spaceship Arizona Governor Fife Symington even had to address the story at a press conference

He tried to make light of the situation by bringing an aide dressed as an alien onstage It wasn’t until four months later, in July, that the US military finally came forward with an explanation Local Army Captain Eileen Bienz claimed that a squadron of A-10 jets had been flying over Luke Air Force Base, a US air base southwest of Phoenix

The jets had been on a training exercise, Operation Snowbird, and had dropped a series of high-intensity flares, which people then mistook for the alien lights Three Maryland pilots, Lieutenant Colonel David Tanaka, Captain Drew Sullins, and Lieutenant Colonel Ed Jones came forward to confirm the official story They say they were flying that night But if this is true, it still only explains part of the mystery According to Captain Bienz, Operation Snowbird began at 10 p

m PST It cannot then explain all the sightings that occurred earlier that day, especially those seen in Prescott, far away from the area of the operation On top of this, the reports of early sightings don’t seem to fit the behaviour of flares As journalist Tony Ortega worked out, if the lights were above Prescott at 8:15 and Phoenix at 8:45, they must have moved at 400 miles an hour

That’s a pretty fast flare Surprising new witnesses have further complicated the story In April 2017, actor Kurt Russell told The One Show that he was flying his personal plane over Phoenix when he saw six orbs of light darting across the city He called them in to Air Traffic Control, who said that there was nothing in their flight plan Also, despite dismissing the incident in the press conference, in 2007 Governor Fife Symington claimed he had witnessed the event too, saying: '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

” Furthermore, he claimed that, as governor, he requested information from the commander of Luke Air Force Base, and the general of the National Guard; both of whom were just as confused as he was by the incident However, the rapid movement of these flares can be explained if you see them as two separate unrelated instances Reporter Janet Gonzalez says footage shows the lights seen over Prescott were just a formation of planes moving together Mitch Stanley, a witness who observed the lights through a telescope, confirmed this analysis that it was actually just a squadron of jets And while many witnesses in Phoenix claimed the “v” formation was silent, witnesses in quieter areas like Prescott recalled hearing a whooshing noise like a jet engine

The nine lights seen after 10 pm in Phoenix could be military flares from Operation Snowbird, which would also explain the change in the number of lights people claimed to see The Phoenix lights have since appeared again in 2007 and 2008, although this time the military were quick to explain these events as training exercises conducted by F-16 aircraft The explanation that the Phoenix Lights were not one but two separate events has some pretty compelling evidence behind it Yet there are plenty of unanswered questions

If the earlier lights were a formation of jets, what were they doing there? Why haven’t their pilots come forward to put the story to rest? And why did air traffic control not find any squadron flights in their schedule? Unfortunately, even amongst all the frantic phone calls and investigations about the sighting, no-one thought to request the radar tapes from the FAA Radar tapes are typically deleted after 11 days, meaning the best lead on the lights is gone forever We may never know the full truth behind the mystery of the Phoenix Lights

On March 13, 1997, mysterious lights flying in a V-formation pierced the sky over Phoenix, Arizona. Thousands of people, including then-Governor Fife Symington, reported seeing these lights, which came to rest on the horizon for an hour before fading away. The inhabitants of Phoenix believed they had seen something extraordinary, a message from extraterrestrials who had made contact with our world.

The “Phoenix Lights” were discussed among citizens and in newspapers for four whole months until the Maryland Air National Guard finally announced that they had been running an exercise over Phoenix on March 13, one they called “Operation Snowbird”. A-10 planes traveled in a V-formation, the National Guard said, before dropping high-intensity flares over Phoenix. Most people were satisfied with this explanation.

On April 21, a film based loosely on the “Phoenix Lights” hits theaters. Phoenix Forgotten, produced by Ridley Scott, follows three teens in 1997 who venture out into the desert with their camcorders, hoping to see more of the lights above the city. They disappear, and in Blair Witch fashion, their later-discovered footage is what makes up the film itself.

Marketing for Phoenix Forgotten has included video footage and news clippings now beloved by actual UFO theorists and paranormal researchers, including the below clip from a CNN special featuring actual UFO believer and former Arizona Governor Fife Symington. In the clip, he laughs off the UFO theory but later tells CNN that he was convinced the “Lights” were not from our world. He was only trying to reduce panic among his constituents, he said.

What Is With Arizona, New Mexico, and Aliens?

The American Southwest has long been a hotbed of UFO speculation for many, many reasons. The first reason alien sightings persist in Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico is because of the presence of the Southwest’s many labs and military bases, including Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the long-forgotten Trinity nuclear test site (aka White Sands National Monument) in Socorro, New Mexico. Because much of the land out there is wide open desert, the Southwest is a common area for military testing, which creates “unexplained” sightings.

Second, the American Southwest is home to a melting pot of cultures, many of which maintain mystical beliefs, including American and Mexican Catholics, many Pueblo tribes, and those who follow Santería, an Afro-American religion of Caribbean origin, which is blended into New Mexico’s celebration of Día de los Muertos.

Third, the “Phoenix Lights” were far from the first time Americans in the Southwest had seen strange lights on the horizon, and because of “sightings” across the area, a half-ironic party culture has emerged. Arizona and New Mexico play host to quite a few UFO-themed parties, music festivals, and theorists’ conferences, all built around the idea that people want to believe. Arizona Republic columnist Dave Walker wrote in the 1990s, “Whatever they were, the Lights have become as much of a national calling card for Arizona as disgraced politicians, mediocre pro sports teams and soul-searing summer heat.”

So What Lingers for Believers?

Lights similar to the ones over Phoenix were allegedly seen as far south as Mexico that night, and multiple witnesses reported feeling light-headed after seeing the lights. Some even told the press they had experienced temporary amnesia and were out-of-sorts for days.

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In 2016, a man in Florida taped a similar-shaped V formation of lights over his car, and when he uploaded the video to YouTube, UFO researchers were amazed, recalling the “Phoenix Lights” all over again. A similar shape was spotted in Los Angeles and over Geneva, Ohio, within the same 24 hours.

Even stranger, pilots who were flying over Phoenix during the “Lights” sighting reported seeing the lights in their formation, though they hadn’t been warned of any military exercise.

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Though Phoenix was given an explanation, fans of UFOs and paranormal researchers have been doing their best to disprove the “military exercise” explanation for decades.

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Phoenix Forgotten is playing in select theaters now.