The Unexplained Phoenix Lights Phenomenon

**The Unexplained Phoenix Lights Phenomenon** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded to YouTube on May 18, 2018. It was the fifth episode of the fourth season of BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural, and the sixty-third episode overall. You can watch it here.

## Description

Lights in the sky. Extraterrestrials, or something even stranger? Featuring alien expert Giorgio Tsoukalos, host of History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens.”

## Notable Events

Ryan and Shane interviewed Giorgio Tsoukalos, host of *Ancient Aliens,* "to gain further insight on [the] case."

## Background

Around 7 p.m. on March 13, 1997, in Phoenix, Arizona, a V-formation of five lights were sighted in the sky.

One day earlier, an unidentified airman testified that the Luke Air Force base had gotten a call at 8:32 p.m, from the Prescott Valley Airport, saying that a flying object had nearly missed a small Cessna. Upon return of two F-15s to investigate, one of the pilots, according to the airman, was "scared out of his mind," and had described a V-formation of lights in the sky. The Air Force later denied this ever taking place.

According to the National UFO Reporting Center, the first call on March 13 came in at 8:16 p.m. from a retired police officer in Paulden, Arizona. NUFORC then claimed that it started to receive many other calls from south of Paulden, and that over 700 witnesses called in. A video captured by a man named Terry Proctor showed the sighting as well.

Around 10 p.m., a second set of lights was spotted, although this time it showed nine lights. This comprised most of eyewitness testimony, including clips from TV like CBS Channel 5 News, MSNBC News Investigates, and Fox News Channel 10. Technician Dana Valentine claimed that "[he] could see the outline of a mass behind the lights, but you couldn't actually see the mass... it was more like a gray distortion of the night sky, wavy." A *USA Today* article said that air traffic controllers could not see the lights on radar, even when seen with their own eyes.

The general witness consensus was that the lights compromised parts of one large ship, though some said each were individual crafts. Believers of the former said that the spacecraft was large, made no sound, moved slowly, and would occasionally hover. Speaking to the size of the craft, Sue Watson described it as "a [shopping] mall flying over [her] home... it was a totally rounded boomerang shape." A *USA Today* article put the video clips through a computer and analyzed that the formation of the lights was 6,000 feet long.

Bill Greiner, truck driver and witness to the lights, said that he had seen two "orbs," one floating over an Air Force base and later pursuing two F-16s that had flown into the air. He testified that "before this, if anybody'd told me they'd saw a UFO, I would've said, 'yeah, and I believe in the Tooth Fairy.' Now I've got a whole new view. I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I've seen something that don't belong here."

On May 6 of the same year, Frances Barwood, councilwoman of the city, asked Frank Fairbanks, city manager, if there was going to be an investigation. Barwood reported that after asking "if anybody knew what this object was and could [they] check into it... [Barwood] was met by a whole bunch of stares." After, she said that a city manager had pulled her aside and had said "you shouldn't have asked that question." Barwood was later taunted by members of the council, and for a few months, the case remained with no new evidence.

In June, the case was brought into national interest. Fife Symington, governor, held a press conference where he claimed to have found the culprit behind the lights, bringing out the accused―someone in a large alien suit―as a joke. However, after, he publicly admitted to seeing the lights, and while his office inquired about the object, they never received an answer.

Ryan and Shane interview with Giorgio Tsoukalos, who informs them that seven years earlier, a similar event in Belgium occurred, with thousands of witnesses and the same setup of lights. Tsoukalos also mentions that there were "ancient" cases of similar events, in Alexander the Great's and Constantinople's time.

Ryan asks why Tsoukalos thinks that the government approaches UFOs with "trepidation," and Tsoukalos explains that modern governments are experiencing a "paradigm shift," where people are becoming more open-minded to the possibility of UFOs.

The case never received further address by the government, and the Air Force maintained that the lights were from the source of flares. In 2014, a music festival was founded under the name "Phoenix Lights."

## Theories

* The lights were actually flares dropped in a formation as a high-altitude training exercise.
	+ Earlier in the year, a local news source had taped flare exercises, and some say that these flares looked very similar to the Phoenix lights.
	+ The official statement made by the United States Air Force claims that the flares were apparently dropped over the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range near Gila Bend, Arizona.
	+ However, the Tucson Air Force Base, the base responsible for the alleged flares, originally stated there were no planes at the time, and while the U.S. Air Force reported it had dropped flares at 10 p.m, the same time the second set of lights were spotted, it did not explain the first set of lights seen three hours earlier.
* The lights are not flares, but actual UFOs, and therefore proof of extraterrestrial light.
	+ Three years after the Phoenix light sightings had occurred, a National Guard flare demonstration was performed in order to mimic the lights, but residents did not agree, saying that the flares "flickered and moved erratically," unlike what they'd witnessed.
	+ Special effects expert Jim Dilettosa remarked that, when analyzing the videos, he and his team could not find a possible explanation, ruling out "lasers, flares, holograms and aircraft lights as sources."
	+ Seven years earlier, in Belgium, a similar phenomenon occurred.

## Quotes

* Shane: "Yeah, you know, that's that thing. You look at the, look at the darkness long enough, you're gonna see something."
	+ Ryan: "Yeah. Seven hundred people are all going to hallucinate at the same time."
* Ryan: "I think it's possible that, uh, aliens knew they were gonna be seen, or *didn't* know they were gonna be seen, one of them fucked up, was asleep at the wheel, forgot to turn on the cloaking device or some crazy shit like that..."
	+ Shane: "Just a button."
	+ Ryan: "And now he's fired, he's looking for work, his wife divorced him, his little alien kids don't have income to live off of... It's a really bad situation for that alien father."
	+ Shane: "I don't think aliens have money."
* Ryan: "Well, um, maybe [the aliens] saw, they saw us and went, 'hm, not interested. Swipe right,' or left, or whatever the fuck Twitter is―wait, fuck, not Twitter, Twin―*Tinder,* I sound like an eighty-year-old man right there."
	+ Shane (imitating an eighty-year-old man): "'Yeah, whatever *Twinder* is!'"
* Ryan (on a witness): "And why the fuck is this guy with a telescope―he just *happens* to be using a telescope at the exact time, of one of the, like, the craziest events of all time?"
	+ Shane: "Gotta be honest, telescope people are weird. You know, you don't wanna be one of those."
	+ Ryan: "He's, he's actually a favorite among skeptics. They're like 'see, this guy was using a high-powered telescope with his mama.' Which he was, he was―"
	+ Shane: "No, I, I don't doubt that he was, that him and his―mama―were out with their telescope, I'm just saying telescope people... I mean, how much are they spending on these telescopes, they're gonna be out there every single night, with, like, a margarita, being like 'let's see what I find... ope, empty sky again! Wow, what a night! Well, that's been eight hours!'"