December 30, 2024 • 42 mins
Recent drone sightings across the United States inspire Ben, Matt and Noel to return with a Classic conspiracy episode: On March 13th, 1997, thousands of people in Nevada, Arizona and Mexico reported seeing bizarre lights in the evening sky -- today, more than two decades later, the Phoenix Lights are still considered to be one of the most significant UFO sightings in recent history. But what exactly were they? What really happened that night in March? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to this Evening's classic episode. Fellow conspiracy realist. I
gotta be honest with you, we don't always line up
our classics as well as we have done this time,
but when we do buzz, when we do, it's totally
on purpose.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Definitely.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah for yeah, that's one hundred percent true. What are
the Phoenix lights?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, in March thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven, thousands of people
in Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico reported seeing bizarre lights twinkling
in the evening sky. Reminds us a whole lot about
some weird bizarre sightings in some place called New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh yeah, New Joysy. But the other thing is, guys,
other people were seeing what appeared to be black objects,
huge ginormous objects of in the sky that just had
They were just shadows basically, with these lights attached to them.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And even two decades after the fact, that lights are
still considered one of the most significant UFO or UAP
if you like sightings in recent history. And now thank
you Fox News more than ever, folks are wondering about
the weird stuff in the sky.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Dudes. Before we move on, I want to show you
an image of something that I took last night from
my space binoculars.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Nice. I like those.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
By the way, these are, it's kind of weird. There's
some lensing going on because of the nature of the
way I took the photograph. And the reason why I'm
showing you guys this in particular is that you can
trick yourself. If you're an amateur and you don't like me,
You've got like a cool toy or something and you're
(01:41):
trying to get optics working up there with light, Yeah,
it can really trick your mind. I'm just putting that
out travels.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, yes.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And the way it's going through that lens and then
going into a camera that also has a lens attempting
to capture that image.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It looks like aura photography.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
It does exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, hey, let's jump into this very precience discussion of
the Phoenix lights.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
They call me Ben we are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. We'd like to do
a check in at the beginning of the every show nowadays, right,
feeling good, feeling great? How are you pretty good?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Not too bad, not too great?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Kin in the middle of the road.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I don't know. I never feel like I have anything
to add at this juncture of the sh I feel
like I'm just like a blank slate.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well, I'll give you something now, I do it. Finally
went to go see a movie after all these years
of not seeing movies. I got to see the new
Tarantino film.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
I really wanted to go with you guys.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yeah once once upon a time in Hollywood. Yeah, I
have my daughter. And that's not kid friendly film, is it?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
It is?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Not? No, certainly not. But in this film there is
a small part for certain Kurt Russell, who you know,
shows up in another Tarantino movie, and he has a
really interesting connection to today's topic.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
He does yes, which will come to the forefront. Assume
as always as you listen along, if the spirit so
moves you give us a call and let us know
your thoughts. You can reach us directly.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
We are one eight three three std WYDK.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And if you are feeling particularly charitable, why not leave
us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Do it?
We we we enjoy it and every review. Every time
we get a nice review, our uber boss appears in
(04:08):
an obsidian mirror and grants us one more day of life.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, and then he says, now get back out there
and give some more ride sharing stuff, because I'm the
uber Boss.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yes, exactly exactly. Today we are diving into a phenomenon
that many of our fellow listeners have asked us about.
Over the course of years, gears and years and years.
This has shown up and we've looked at it a
little bit in the past. But now we are diving
face first full into the deep water of the Phoenix Lights.
(04:39):
To some people, the entire Phoenix Lights phenomenon is a
cynical way of grabbing cash and some publicity. And you know,
in some respects that is true. To others, it's one
of the most well documented UFO sightings in recent history,
due primarily to the video footage available and as well
as the thousands witnesses on the ground and a few
(05:02):
in the air at the time. So today's question is
what happened? Where does the truth fall between these two
rather divisive views. To answer that, we have to travel
back in time. So here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We have to go back to March thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven,
around eight pm, a little bit after that in Arizona,
specifically in Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding towns mostly north
of that. Now, on this day, numerous reports all kinds
of residents from all across this area start describing to
(05:41):
police because they're making nine on one calls. They're making
reports this all over the place of these mysterious lights
that are in the sky. But here's the deal. If
you went through and you cataloged every single one of
the reports that occurred that night, you were going to
hear a lot of different stories about what was actually seen.
Some people describe seeing this strange V shaped formation or
(06:04):
sometimes it's they called it a boomerang, and it just
looks like, you know, like if you were looking at
geese as they're migrating or something, flying V. A flying
V yes, similar to that, with six lights, sometimes more,
sometimes fewer, usually six or fewer that were actually.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Observed, and other people amidst these thousands of witnesses claimed
that they saw hovering lights, meaning lights that moved in
discrete groups, or lights that appeared to fade after they
had passed the observers. And again, most of these observers
are stationary. They are on the ground. They do not
(06:41):
they're not looking through various instruments. They're watching with the
naked eye, so they'll have a hard time guessing the altitude.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yes, we see a large range in how high people
believe these things are, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So let's trace the events because we're fortunate in that
this happened so recently, nineteen ninety seven, there's a wealth
of technology that wasn't available in say, the fifties or
the thirties. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, which
is one of the only organizations that keeps an official
record of these sightings, they received their first call on
(07:17):
their UFO hotline that night from a retired cop in Paulden, Arizona.
That's a small town a couple hours north of Phoenix.
And then after that initial report, the hotline blew up.
People were calling all over the place from locations south
of Paulden, and that indicated to the reporting center that
(07:38):
the aircraft or the UFO, whatever you want to call it,
was heading in a southeastern direction. And some of the
specifics from the reports are a little bit different. But
USA today, a few months after the fact, in the
summer of ninety seven, reported that there were several key observations.
(07:58):
Here they are The craft was enormous. Witnesses described it
sometimes as a mile wide. Two it made no noise,
and three it moves slowly over Arizona, often stopping to
hover in a single location.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And now that is generally with the reports that describe
it as one craft. Essentially that's flying together and all
those lights are just represented attached to that craft right.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Like on its belly. Right. So now we enter into
a tricky situation.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
According to researcher Tony Ortega, there were actually two separate
events on the night of March thirteenth. We have the
mysterious v in question, that configuration of lights that so
many people across the say witness that was seen over
Prescott at about eight fifteen PM and then travels south
to Phoenix at about eight thirty. Then it passed over Tucson.
Finally at eight forty five. That's two one hundred miles
(08:53):
in thirty minutes, which means the v was moving at
about four hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
And remember what Ben said earlier, these people are generally
stationary on the ground and they're observing it going in
that direction, So it you know where it actually was above,
you know, whatever location it was in that time span,
give or take. It's give or take you know, miles.
But still that's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Well, in this part's wild because you had a huge
disparity in whether or not people were seeing it up
high or down low.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Literally, some early.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Eyewitnesses perceived that it was high in the sky, and
then you had others swearing that it was a low
moving almost a hovercraft kind of the hovering very low
and slow.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Well, yeah, some people described it as being right above
their homes as it was going across, and that's been
depicted over the years as that other people have seen
it as well, above above the mountains, even because there
are several large mountains, especially in the Phoenix, Arizona area
kind of to the northeast, and people were describing it
(09:58):
as coming over those there's a huge mountain. I think
it's called Squaw Peak, right near the center of Phoenix,
and people saw it come right over top of that
mountain as well. Anyway, we'll get into more of the
specifics later. It's just just think about how fascinating that
would be to actually observe that.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Sure. Yeah, and as we'll find, this is not uncommon
for the residents of Phoenix, Arizona. Here's the second event
that happens on the same night, March thirteenth. News of
that eight thirty pm siding that you just described, NOL
traveled very quickly and so more people were outside with
video cameras when the second and unrelated event happened at
(10:41):
about ten pm in the sky southwest of Phoenix. A
string of lights appeared in the heavens and slowly sank
until they disappeared behind the nearby astraya mountain range. So,
given that there were two different events, one of the
big questions is where people can inflating the reports. Did
(11:02):
these two separate events happen so closely together in a
chronological sense that later people are saying, well, I saw
something weird too on the same night, so logically it's
the same thing. I can see that.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Yeah, that makes also that would that would account for
the disparity right in height.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, well, now what twenty two years later, yep, plus
we are or how much has been conflated just historically
Now at this point, after that initial day of reporting.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
It's weird and we'll see that mainstream media had an
unusual role to play in this. But let's see what
Uncle Sam said. Initially, lots of people freaked out. They
contacted military bases in Arizona and they said, all right,
what's what's going on? What's all the hubbub bub and
the military bases every single one said, nothing unusual here,
(11:55):
what are you what are you beefed up about? Or whatever?
You know, that's military jargon again, and later these military
bases and the government would change their story. So that's
a little bit of foreshadowing. This is where we can
see a little bit of that telephone game you're alluding
to met and how quickly things got out of hand.
(12:15):
So we said, the event happened, let's call it mid March.
It did not become national news or even general knowledge
until June eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, when USA Today put
out a story with the headline skies phone lines light
up Arizona on their front page. Misinformation was already spreading
(12:36):
like wildfire. Many people weren't sure exactly what they saw.
Some time had passed. That means they were in a
suggestible state. And we have a pretty accurate reenactment of
how those kind of question answer sessions can go. So
who wants to be the researcher? Who wants to be
(12:57):
the witness?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Researcher? Sure? Would you say it looks like a craft? Well,
I don't know. It happened so fast. Perhaps it had
a rough shape, a triangle, a boomerang. I guess, so maybe.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Boom cut and print and seeing that's all it takes.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The witness saw a boomerang.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, exactly, because now we have Now we have a
witness who is very clearly not trying to like trick anybody,
not out to get any money or you know, be
on TV or whatever they're they're honestly thinking, well, I
I yeah, I guess it could have been a boomerang
or something like that. I thought that was very well acted.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Can I can I point out really quick I really
miss headlines like skies phones light up Arizona.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
It's just good economy of language. You know, the British
are great at it, very good. I've got to send
you those compendiums of brilliant headlines that are like that.
Well some of them are very dirty puns, but I'll
send it along. The question here now becomes what actually
happened up there twenty two years ago, Phoenix, Arizona, nineteen
(14:11):
ninety seven. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. Let's rule out the theories. Guys,
what do you say, Let's dive into Okay, let's dive
into it UFOs.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Okay. Sure, So the first thing that we can absolutely
confirm is that something that was illuminated was in the
sky on that night.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Something definitely happened, yes, point checkplate.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I mean for real, Because a lot of times, when
you were thinking about these kinds of things, you have
one or two witnesses, right, or you know a small
handful of witnesses, and you have to just by critical,
you know, by the way of thinking about these things critically,
you have to question the veracity of a witness. Sure,
in this case you still have to do that to
(15:03):
an extent, but you have so many people seeing it
that we can confirm that something was in the sky,
something occurred, and there was video documentation and photography. There
were a lot of photographs of that night. Now Here
is where we bring in our friend Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Okay, lay it on me.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Okay, So on a talk show, British talk show years ago.
I think it was around the time that Guardians of
the Galaxy one or two was coming out. I can't remember.
He was in two. Okay, so he wasn't one too,
but he was really prominent too well, Guardians of the
Galaxy was occurring. Kurt Russell is on a British talk show.
He's sitting next to Chris Pratt and the presenter brings
(15:45):
up the Phoenix Lights. He just starts telling the story
of the Phoenix Lights and Kurt Russell answers it wasn't
even a question or anything. Kurt Russell just responds by saying,
I know exactly what that was because I was the
pilot that that actually called this in when he was
coming into the airport. What And he tells a story
(16:07):
about how he was taking his son, he had just
got his pilot's license. He was taking his son, Oliver
to go see a friend out in Phoenix, and he
was flying out there and as he's approaching to land,
he sees these six lights and he makes a report
and describes him. He says, well, yes, they're unidentified. There's
six lights. You don't have them on your radar. Well
(16:28):
then that's odd. I'm just letting you know. And then
he lands and goes about his day. But fairly odd
that someone is prominent as Kurt Russell ends up being,
you know, a pretty major witness to this phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It is he he has talked about it.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
He actually named the what is it the call not
the call sign, but the tower or it's the the
tail number or whatever of the plane. Like he calls
out exactly what it was, Like, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
So he said he's all the plane and could even
see the tail.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
No, he knew it because he was the pilot.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Oh no, his plane. Okay, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
I mean to me, it's not that weird because this
is post big trouble in Little China where everything changed for.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Him, is true, and he's just flying around and just
seeing UFOs.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, I mean, you stare into the abyss man. So
technically it's absolutely true for several months. The Phoenix lights
were inarguably, regardless of how you feel about quote unquote aliens,
they were UFOs. People had multiple, often contradictory ideas about
(17:41):
what could have been up there. Some of these ideas
were more plausible than others, so much more plausible than others.
But the point is no one was completely sure. Ufologists
hit the scene very quickly, and when they investigated this
story they found wildly varying descriptions of the lights. This
is again important as time wound on, descriptions included things
(18:05):
that you had mentioned earlier, Matt, huge boomerang shaped aircraft,
luminous globes, one of my favorites, spinning disco balls. Maybe
those guys were already out partying with some hallucinogens or something,
in which case they add an amazing night.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
It reminds me of descriptions of chariots of fire in
ancient writings, of having our understanding of technology in current time,
attempting to explain what we're seeing that is of a
technology of a further advanced time. Yeah, that's just at
least the image I get. I'm not saying that's what
I think it is.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Eric von Danikin. Yes, love to drop that name. It's true. Furthermore,
ufologists believe still that the story goes much deeper than
the two events that were reported. They often also insist
the events or either related or the same phenomenon, and
that the attempt to separate these events is either misguided
(19:00):
or purposefully misleading. You have vo researchers say that before
the lights were seen over Phoenix, they were spotted near Henderson, Nevada,
and then afterwards they were spied in Mexico. And then
they also say some people had strange reactions to the light,
encountering temporary amnesia or reacting in an oddly unemotional way.
(19:25):
Like they saw the lights, they stopped the car, no
one said anything as they watched them in silence. And
then when it was over, instead of going holy smokes,
what was that, they said, all right, well, Denny's closes
at ten, so ge get back on the road.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I just want to point out really fast that Henderson,
Nevada is very close to Las Vegas. It's on the
outskirts and it's to the north west of Phoenix.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Great.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So, like if you're imagining that line of travel down
from generally Las Vegas. It's that same direction that it
was reported earlier.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That's perfect to orient ourselves geographically. Let's bring in the professionals,
the professional non governmental UFO observers. Let's introduce MOFON because
they got involved in this, right, boy do they ever?
Speaker 4 (20:15):
So you know how much I love a good acronym.
So MOFON or the Mutual UFO Network, is a US
based nonprofit organization that we have talked about many times
on this show, made up of civilian volunteers who study
alleged UFO sightings. MOFON is not officially persuaded that this
was an extraterrestrial event at all, and I would think
(20:36):
they'd be the first ones to be like, you know, yes,
we need more confirmed UFO accounts. So I'd love to
hear what their argument is. And here it is. Thus quote,
do we have evidence that it was an extraterrestrial event?
MoveOn said, in the form of their investigator, Jim Mann,
we have evidence that it was an extremely bizarre event,
but we can't put a label on it other than
(20:57):
that it was an anomaly. Man then added the Arizona
move On investigated three hundred and twenty five cases of
reported UFOs last year and the majority were explained. Twelve
were filed away as unknown, and that would be last
year for that would be twenty eighty one.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Thing, you know, move On is not a perfect organization,
as its fair share of critics, especially given some of
the political infighting and allegations of racism within the ranks.
But when it comes to their analyzes of these different reports,
they are from what we can tell. And again, Paul
Matt Noll and myself we are not members of Moufon,
(21:38):
but it seems like they would rather know the truth.
So if they investigate something and they have a plausible,
you know, weather balloon explanation, then they'll take it if
it seems true, and that's respectable.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
We were at a guy, wasn't that long ago? We
were at a MoveOn meeting. Not I don't even know
when it was. Was it twenty eighteen or twenty seventeen,
one of those years, twenty eighteen, It must have been
twenty eighteen. Time moves so strangely now, But what we
saw in that meeting were individual investigators coming up and
(22:11):
giving the reports about all the research they'd done on
specific sightings, and it was fascinating to see how much
care was put in by you know, each individual member
who like who knows exactly what they put in, But
at least the people that we witnessed the effort is there.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, and it seemed a very productive meeting. I was.
I enjoyed it. There were, of course, maybe a couple
of more eccentric people, but that can happen almost in
any free public gathering. I mean, we were there, Yeah,
we were there. That was one thing I was thinking about.
And I have a question for any uthologist in the
(22:49):
listening audience today. How do you feel about people who
seem quote unquote too eccentric for a meeting. Do you
think it is important that they have a space to
speak or do you think that they discredit the overall investigations.
I don't know. I don't have a badger in this
(23:09):
bag or a horse in this race, but I would
be interested to hear what people have to say, especially
if you have attended many such conferences or meetings. So
that's not where the conspiracy theories end. Some people say, no,
of course, these aren't aliens. This is just a cash
grab by people who want to build the credulous. It's
(23:31):
much worse. These are man made events, but they are
not made by the government you recognize. They're made by
a different government, a deeper government, a deep state, something
we would call a new world order. Some fringe researchers
active in nWo research believe that the second event was
(23:54):
sort of a red herring. They claim the military at
Fort Huachuka south of Tucson, Arizona, actually dropped flares and
that those created the you know what seemed to be
that second event with the lights, and they did this
to confuse people and hide evidence of a psychological warfare
(24:15):
test that created indistinct shapes in the night sky. You
love this mat via some sort of holographic projection device.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Whoa, we're getting into bluebeam territory here, watch out. That
is my favorite. Well, you know, the other thing is
they would have known that there would be a lot
of people out looking at the sky because there was
a weather phenomena or a space weather phenomena that was
going on where there was going to be a meteor
shower hail bop right, yeah in a comment and it's
(24:47):
you know, if they were going to do some kind
of psychological research, it would have been a great night
to choose that is true.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
That is true, And then we bring in the Heaven's
Gate strand to this web. That is the religious movement
often called a cult, that was convinced they would be
able to leave their corporeal forms and travel to their
religion's paradise via the hail Bob commet if they took
(25:18):
their own lives, which is unfortunately what happened. Maybe a
story all its own, So add that to the mix.
Maybe that's where the psychological warfare aspect is kind of
coming into play. But the issue here for New World
Order stuff is still one of motivation. Why go to
all this trouble? If you are a very powerful, shadowy
paragovernmental cabal, what would you have to gain by pulling
(25:40):
a stunt like this? You know? Is it just bragging rights?
Walk up and kind of you know, swing your business
around at the Builderberg conference.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
God so weird, I can imagine. I mean, if I
really put on my tinfoil hat just to see, imagine
it being a test to see how the public is
going to react to a mass scale vision in the
sky like this, no matter what people are seeing, right,
(26:13):
if they're so, I guess the motivation would be if
we were to fake an alien invasion of some sort,
how would the human beings on the ground react?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, and how would we propagate it most effectively? Yeah?
So these are questions that currently do not have answers
everyone can agree on. We would like to point out
our Bluebeam episode if you want to learn more about.
That is a fascinating story, and it's one of those
that feels a little bit less impossible each time you
(26:45):
think about it, especially given the recent breakthroughs in imaging technology.
But so far we have been talking primarily about motivations
or explos nations that exist in the heavens. We're going
to pause for a word from our sponsor and then
return with a bit of a more let's call it
(27:08):
an earthly explanation A Right, we're back, And while we're back,
let's go back to Tony Ortega, who mentioned earlier. Ortega,
who is a journalist and has reported this for some
local papers, believes that he has arrived at solid explanations
(27:33):
for both of the events over Arizona that evening. First,
that infamous v formation.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
The one that happened in around eight eight thirty.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Right, So, Ortega spoke with a young man who had
a ten inch Dobsonian telescope. This kid was named Mitch Stanley.
He spotted the V from his backyard and he was
able to see close enough that he could discern it
was a formation of airplanes used magnification of sixty x
(28:03):
that more or less puts him sixty times closer to
the V than people who were viewing it unaided, and
he said he could see each light in the sky
was actually a double with one light under each squarish wing.
The planes looked small in his scope, and that suggests
they were flying at a very high altitude, which comes
into play later. But he did not know what type
(28:24):
of plane they were. There was no doubt, he said
that these were definitely planes. He doubled down on that.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
And if you look at some of the video footage
that was captured on that night in nineteen ninety seven,
it looks like people are talking about this big black
V right or the boomerang. It looks in some of
those videos like there is blacked out sky with a
light in the center of it, and that occurs six
individual times, kind of in a formation. And again there
(28:52):
are numerous videos that you can see online of this.
To me, to my eyes, that's what it looks like.
I can imagine if it really were individual planes with
the wings going out in the way they do in
that V formation, they're gonna overlap enough where the you know,
the blacked out sky behind those wings, it's gonna look
(29:12):
like it's connected. And if you've got highly experienced pilots,
particularly those who were in a military, flying in a formation,
it's gonna be so rigid and flying, you know, with
such regularity with that formation that I can imagine as
it's going overhead or something, you would visualize the entire
thing as one.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Oh yeah, totally, I can see that.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, what about the second event where Teka has an
explanation for that too, Right.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
This was seen as a string of flares dropped by
the Maryland Air National Guard over the North Tack Military
Range and or take a rights on this one. The
problem developed later when people conflated reports of the two sightings,
like we mentioned earlier. For the many people who had
seen the earlier V pass directly over their heads, the
explanation of the flares made absolutely no sense whatsoever. News
(30:03):
organizations didn't differentiate between the two events or report on
the Stanley identification.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
That's perfect because that's one of the key pieces in
this story. So USA Today, right, and a couple of
other outlets, they just report this stuff, hit the UFO
angle hard and don't differentiate between the things. That doesn't
mean that they're guilty of purposely trying to mislead people.
(30:31):
Just to the point we mentioned earlier, you're asking people
what happened after the fact, and it's very plausible for
them to assume the same thing was occurring the military
and government. As we mentioned, they originally said Nope, nothing
to see here, move along, mosey on down, out of
the way. They later came forward and change their story.
(30:54):
See Phoenix has two Air Force bases pretty near the city,
and two some weekly eventually brew the news that the
Maryland to Air National Guard was in Arizona for winter
training and they had a squad of E ten fighters
over the gunnery range that night. These fighters had dropped flares.
An Arizona National Guard PR officer or Public Information Officer
(31:18):
PIO named Captain Ellen Biens had determined that the flares
were dropped at get this ten PM over the North
Tack Range thirty miles southwest of Phoenix at a pretty
high altitude fifteen thousand feet, so they would be falling
in the air for a long time. Another thing happened.
(31:40):
Local governments came forward then incumbent to Arizona Governor Fife Symington.
I love that name. Fife Symington thought people were being
too uptight about this and taking it too seriously, so
he arranged a joke press conference. He had a lot
of UFO jokes in his beach. He even had one
(32:01):
of his poor aid to come up on stage in
an alien costume, and he was like, all right, everybody,
calm down, you know, let's just have a good time
out here in Arizona. But then later on a few years,
as the years passed, he pulled a total one to eighty.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Oh yeah, he told the story about how, oh uh,
I actually saw something on that night. I was mentioning
that there's a thing called Squaw Peak there near the
middle of Phoenix. He's the guy, at least from the
reporting that I read, he is the person who said, yes,
I saw something come over a Squawpeak and it was
(32:41):
like that v formation. It was the lights like that,
and that's right in the middle of Phoenix, in the
Phoenix area, and he apologized and he was just like, hey, yeah,
my bad. The the lights are a great mystery that
couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetric according
to his own eyewitness account of it, even though he
(33:03):
made fun of it.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Interesting, huh, preaching to the converted, I guess interesting.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well, ultimately, what it sounds like is a politician that
was afraid of, you know, ridicule, because we do know
that there was a I believe a city council member
who brought it up in a meeting and then for
the next months and months and months she was just
made fun of relentlessly at her office and in public.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Right, right, And this remains a divisive topic for people
in the area or ufologists versus skeptics today. You know. Skeptics,
for their part, are quick to point out that, with
a few notable exceptions, the majority of witnesses were watching
again with the naked eye stationary positions on the ground,
(33:49):
so they can be easily fooled into inaccurate estimates of
very important factors like size, altitude, and speed. But for
the ufologists is one big advantage, at least in terms
of rhetoric and argument. They can say, well, it wouldn't
be the first time that the government did something sketchy
(34:11):
and then lied about it. It's absolutely true. The only
comeback you have for that is to say, that doesn't
mean that this is one of those cases. Right, Just
because a car has driven through Bedford, Massachusetts, doesn't mean
that all cars drive through Bedford, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
True.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
True, I'm phrasing that in an awkward way. But it's interesting,
and now it brings us to the conclusion we have
to ask, what do you think. Let's walk through it.
Let's say let's just speculate here. Let's say that the
most out there conspiracy theories are correct that in March
(34:55):
of nineteen ninety seven, extraterrestrials or extra dimensional entity were
time travelers or whatever, came to the Phoenix, Arizona area
and did a flyover. Thousands of people saw it. Why
would they do that?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
They didn't know where they were, They were lost, they
were trying to find Hollywood. They saw the lights of
Las Vegas and they made a pass over Las Vegas
because they saw the pyramid down there, the Luxor, and
they were like, oh, well, this is obviously you know
this is the ancient shape they've you know, paid homage
to us. Oh wait a second, what's going on down there?
(35:31):
They did a scan, they realized it was people, you know,
just throwing their money into slot machines, and they went, oh, geez,
that's not where're supposed to be. Let's keep going down
the path here. They went over Phoenix and they were like, eh,
they kept going, sorry everybody in Phoenix. And then they
finally they made it down down Mexico Way and they
(35:53):
just stayed. They just stayed there because they really liked it.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I mean, you know, we've all been there, right, Yeah,
but at least in the state of mind, in a
Mexico state of mind. Okay, that's one idea. Okay, let's say,
what if it was US military craft? Why and how
would they do this? Well? Currently, this seems to be
the most solid explanation, but there's one big gap in
the story, one that rightly bothers a lot of people.
(36:19):
We don't know foreshore, where the craft originated. Nobody requested
the radar information from the FAA Federal Aviation Administration within
two weeks. The records for this kind of stuff are
usually deleted within that two week span, so we'll never
know exactly where those planes came from outside of you know,
(36:41):
these statements of journalists and statements from the military, the
mystery remains.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
I've got something to point out here with the whole
explanation of the military craft being a ten fighters. Do
you guys know what an A ten fighter is? Noel,
Are you familiar with that? No, it's there generally referred
to as a warthog. Have you have you ever heard
one of these? You've heard them in military movies. I've
wonder super loud?
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, yes, that I was picturing.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
I'm assuming Ben is have you actually witnessed one of those?
So I wonder if we can play a quick sound
for you if we can find one. If we did
find one, it's going to be right here. The A
ten war hog is a loud Dijet fighter plane. So
(37:31):
look it up in your time if you have a moment,
imagine six of those flying in formation, even if they're
at high altitude, you're going to hear them. And a
lot of these reports were it was silent craft.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Well, also, we have to we have to point out
that there are people who have problems with that report
to the idea that they were silent, because as loud
as something is, you get it high enough in the air,
it's going to be beyond the bound of human hearing.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Sometimes you're right, you're right, you're.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
A And again we don't know. We can't accurately judge the.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Altitude, right, And we also cannot confirm whether or not
it was the quote unquote a ten wordthog sighting or
the flare sighting, because the flares would be nice and silent.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Right, Oh, nice, very good point. We hope you enjoy
this episode. We're presenting what we found to be the facts,
as well as what we found to be the more
controversial claims. As always, your decision is your own. We
don't want to tell you what to think, but we
darnshore want to hear what you think about it. And
(38:43):
there is one interesting thing I found that I thought
might be useful to some of us listening in the
Phoenix area. There is a Phoenix Lights Festival aliens or not,
it seems like one heck of a party. Since twenty fifteen,
it's given the Valleys electronic dance music scene a signature
(39:04):
event to call its own. I've looked at some pictures
from the party, and while you probably won't meet a
legit extraterrestrial, you're gonna have some interesting encounters. Some eccentric
individuals will make their way to you. You'll have some
memorable events.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
That's right. And you'll never see me there. Why not
just because I because of your cost dance.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Oh it's DM man, you don't have to dance, just
very phil callings about it. Furthermore, regardless of what you
think mundane or something more, the Phoenix Lights have captured
the imaginations of millions of people over the past more
than two decades, including a ton of people in Hollywood,
not just Kurt Russell.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Oh sure, I mean the phenomenon was a key plot
point for the hugely influential found footage horror film Phoenix Forgotten,
which at this point has been forgotten largely. Yeah, I
was not aware of it in the first one. Did
you guys see it?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I have not seen it. I've not seen it.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Apparently come out last year.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
I've seen trailers for it. I mean, honestly, it looks
like a Blair Witch movie based on the Phoenix Lights
being the main occurrence, and that's why these people try
and figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Found footage films are so tricky. Blair Witch was great,
Chronicle was great. If you remember that one, Yeah, that's
where the kids get destructive telekinetic powers from object from space.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I actually haven't seen that one, and it's been on
my watch list for I don't even know how many years.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I'd be really interested to see what you think, because
they do pretty well found footage. But there's one last note.
UFO sightings, as I mentioned earlier, are fairly common in
the Phoenix area, and there are reports of strange lights
in the desert sky multiple times every single year. But
it goes a little bit further. According to the Washington Post,
(41:00):
Arizona has the highest number of UFO sidings per capita
in the entire United States of America. So if there's
anything where if there's any situation where something like the
Phoenix lights would occur again, it would be Arizona statistically.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
If you're really interested in this stuff, we recommend looking
up someone named Lynn Katai. She made a documentary about
the subject, she wrote a book. You can find a
lot of links in other reporting if you search for
her Lynn Katai again, Ki t Ei, I believe yes,
(41:38):
it's some interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let us know
what you think. You can reach.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
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If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 1 (42:13):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to this Evening's classic episode. Fellow conspiracy realist. I
gotta be honest with you, we don't always line up
our classics as well as we have done this time,
but when we do buzz, when we do, it's totally
on purpose.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Definitely.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah for yeah, that's one hundred percent true. What are
the Phoenix lights?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, in March thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven, thousands of people
in Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico reported seeing bizarre lights twinkling
in the evening sky. Reminds us a whole lot about
some weird bizarre sightings in some place called New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh yeah, New Joysy. But the other thing is, guys,
other people were seeing what appeared to be black objects,
huge ginormous objects of in the sky that just had
They were just shadows basically, with these lights attached to them.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And even two decades after the fact, that lights are
still considered one of the most significant UFO or UAP
if you like sightings in recent history. And now thank
you Fox News more than ever, folks are wondering about
the weird stuff in the sky.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Dudes. Before we move on, I want to show you
an image of something that I took last night from
my space binoculars.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Nice. I like those.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
By the way, these are, it's kind of weird. There's
some lensing going on because of the nature of the
way I took the photograph. And the reason why I'm
showing you guys this in particular is that you can
trick yourself. If you're an amateur and you don't like me,
You've got like a cool toy or something and you're
(01:41):
trying to get optics working up there with light, Yeah,
it can really trick your mind. I'm just putting that
out travels.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, yes.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And the way it's going through that lens and then
going into a camera that also has a lens attempting
to capture that image.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It looks like aura photography.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
It does exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, hey, let's jump into this very precience discussion of
the Phoenix lights.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
They call me Ben we are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. We'd like to do
a check in at the beginning of the every show nowadays, right,
feeling good, feeling great? How are you pretty good?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Not too bad, not too great?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Kin in the middle of the road.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I don't know. I never feel like I have anything
to add at this juncture of the sh I feel
like I'm just like a blank slate.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well, I'll give you something now, I do it. Finally
went to go see a movie after all these years
of not seeing movies. I got to see the new
Tarantino film.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
I really wanted to go with you guys.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yeah once once upon a time in Hollywood. Yeah, I
have my daughter. And that's not kid friendly film, is it?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
It is?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Not? No, certainly not. But in this film there is
a small part for certain Kurt Russell, who you know,
shows up in another Tarantino movie, and he has a
really interesting connection to today's topic.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
He does yes, which will come to the forefront. Assume
as always as you listen along, if the spirit so
moves you give us a call and let us know
your thoughts. You can reach us directly.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
We are one eight three three std WYDK.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And if you are feeling particularly charitable, why not leave
us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Do it?
We we we enjoy it and every review. Every time
we get a nice review, our uber boss appears in
(04:08):
an obsidian mirror and grants us one more day of life.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, and then he says, now get back out there
and give some more ride sharing stuff, because I'm the
uber Boss.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yes, exactly exactly. Today we are diving into a phenomenon
that many of our fellow listeners have asked us about.
Over the course of years, gears and years and years.
This has shown up and we've looked at it a
little bit in the past. But now we are diving
face first full into the deep water of the Phoenix Lights.
(04:39):
To some people, the entire Phoenix Lights phenomenon is a
cynical way of grabbing cash and some publicity. And you know,
in some respects that is true. To others, it's one
of the most well documented UFO sightings in recent history,
due primarily to the video footage available and as well
as the thousands witnesses on the ground and a few
(05:02):
in the air at the time. So today's question is
what happened? Where does the truth fall between these two
rather divisive views. To answer that, we have to travel
back in time. So here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We have to go back to March thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven,
around eight pm, a little bit after that in Arizona,
specifically in Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding towns mostly north
of that. Now, on this day, numerous reports all kinds
of residents from all across this area start describing to
(05:41):
police because they're making nine on one calls. They're making
reports this all over the place of these mysterious lights
that are in the sky. But here's the deal. If
you went through and you cataloged every single one of
the reports that occurred that night, you were going to
hear a lot of different stories about what was actually seen.
Some people describe seeing this strange V shaped formation or
(06:04):
sometimes it's they called it a boomerang, and it just
looks like, you know, like if you were looking at
geese as they're migrating or something, flying V. A flying
V yes, similar to that, with six lights, sometimes more,
sometimes fewer, usually six or fewer that were actually.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Observed, and other people amidst these thousands of witnesses claimed
that they saw hovering lights, meaning lights that moved in
discrete groups, or lights that appeared to fade after they
had passed the observers. And again, most of these observers
are stationary. They are on the ground. They do not
(06:41):
they're not looking through various instruments. They're watching with the
naked eye, so they'll have a hard time guessing the altitude.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yes, we see a large range in how high people
believe these things are, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So let's trace the events because we're fortunate in that
this happened so recently, nineteen ninety seven, there's a wealth
of technology that wasn't available in say, the fifties or
the thirties. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, which
is one of the only organizations that keeps an official
record of these sightings, they received their first call on
(07:17):
their UFO hotline that night from a retired cop in Paulden, Arizona.
That's a small town a couple hours north of Phoenix.
And then after that initial report, the hotline blew up.
People were calling all over the place from locations south
of Paulden, and that indicated to the reporting center that
(07:38):
the aircraft or the UFO, whatever you want to call it,
was heading in a southeastern direction. And some of the
specifics from the reports are a little bit different. But
USA today, a few months after the fact, in the
summer of ninety seven, reported that there were several key observations.
(07:58):
Here they are The craft was enormous. Witnesses described it
sometimes as a mile wide. Two it made no noise,
and three it moves slowly over Arizona, often stopping to
hover in a single location.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And now that is generally with the reports that describe
it as one craft. Essentially that's flying together and all
those lights are just represented attached to that craft right.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Like on its belly. Right. So now we enter into
a tricky situation.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
According to researcher Tony Ortega, there were actually two separate
events on the night of March thirteenth. We have the
mysterious v in question, that configuration of lights that so
many people across the say witness that was seen over
Prescott at about eight fifteen PM and then travels south
to Phoenix at about eight thirty. Then it passed over Tucson.
Finally at eight forty five. That's two one hundred miles
(08:53):
in thirty minutes, which means the v was moving at
about four hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
And remember what Ben said earlier, these people are generally
stationary on the ground and they're observing it going in
that direction, So it you know where it actually was above,
you know, whatever location it was in that time span,
give or take. It's give or take you know, miles.
But still that's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Well, in this part's wild because you had a huge
disparity in whether or not people were seeing it up
high or down low.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Literally, some early.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Eyewitnesses perceived that it was high in the sky, and
then you had others swearing that it was a low
moving almost a hovercraft kind of the hovering very low
and slow.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Well, yeah, some people described it as being right above
their homes as it was going across, and that's been
depicted over the years as that other people have seen
it as well, above above the mountains, even because there
are several large mountains, especially in the Phoenix, Arizona area
kind of to the northeast, and people were describing it
(09:58):
as coming over those there's a huge mountain. I think
it's called Squaw Peak, right near the center of Phoenix,
and people saw it come right over top of that
mountain as well. Anyway, we'll get into more of the
specifics later. It's just just think about how fascinating that
would be to actually observe that.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Sure. Yeah, and as we'll find, this is not uncommon
for the residents of Phoenix, Arizona. Here's the second event
that happens on the same night, March thirteenth. News of
that eight thirty pm siding that you just described, NOL
traveled very quickly and so more people were outside with
video cameras when the second and unrelated event happened at
(10:41):
about ten pm in the sky southwest of Phoenix. A
string of lights appeared in the heavens and slowly sank
until they disappeared behind the nearby astraya mountain range. So,
given that there were two different events, one of the
big questions is where people can inflating the reports. Did
(11:02):
these two separate events happen so closely together in a
chronological sense that later people are saying, well, I saw
something weird too on the same night, so logically it's
the same thing. I can see that.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Yeah, that makes also that would that would account for
the disparity right in height.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, well, now what twenty two years later, yep, plus
we are or how much has been conflated just historically
Now at this point, after that initial day of reporting.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
It's weird and we'll see that mainstream media had an
unusual role to play in this. But let's see what
Uncle Sam said. Initially, lots of people freaked out. They
contacted military bases in Arizona and they said, all right,
what's what's going on? What's all the hubbub bub and
the military bases every single one said, nothing unusual here,
(11:55):
what are you what are you beefed up about? Or whatever?
You know, that's military jargon again, and later these military
bases and the government would change their story. So that's
a little bit of foreshadowing. This is where we can
see a little bit of that telephone game you're alluding
to met and how quickly things got out of hand.
(12:15):
So we said, the event happened, let's call it mid March.
It did not become national news or even general knowledge
until June eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, when USA Today put
out a story with the headline skies phone lines light
up Arizona on their front page. Misinformation was already spreading
(12:36):
like wildfire. Many people weren't sure exactly what they saw.
Some time had passed. That means they were in a
suggestible state. And we have a pretty accurate reenactment of
how those kind of question answer sessions can go. So
who wants to be the researcher? Who wants to be
(12:57):
the witness?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Researcher? Sure? Would you say it looks like a craft? Well,
I don't know. It happened so fast. Perhaps it had
a rough shape, a triangle, a boomerang. I guess, so maybe.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Boom cut and print and seeing that's all it takes.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The witness saw a boomerang.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, exactly, because now we have Now we have a
witness who is very clearly not trying to like trick anybody,
not out to get any money or you know, be
on TV or whatever they're they're honestly thinking, well, I
I yeah, I guess it could have been a boomerang
or something like that. I thought that was very well acted.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Can I can I point out really quick I really
miss headlines like skies phones light up Arizona.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
It's just good economy of language. You know, the British
are great at it, very good. I've got to send
you those compendiums of brilliant headlines that are like that.
Well some of them are very dirty puns, but I'll
send it along. The question here now becomes what actually
happened up there twenty two years ago, Phoenix, Arizona, nineteen
(14:11):
ninety seven. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. Let's rule out the theories. Guys,
what do you say, Let's dive into Okay, let's dive
into it UFOs.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Okay. Sure, So the first thing that we can absolutely
confirm is that something that was illuminated was in the
sky on that night.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Something definitely happened, yes, point checkplate.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I mean for real, Because a lot of times, when
you were thinking about these kinds of things, you have
one or two witnesses, right, or you know a small
handful of witnesses, and you have to just by critical,
you know, by the way of thinking about these things critically,
you have to question the veracity of a witness. Sure,
in this case you still have to do that to
(15:03):
an extent, but you have so many people seeing it
that we can confirm that something was in the sky,
something occurred, and there was video documentation and photography. There
were a lot of photographs of that night. Now Here
is where we bring in our friend Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Okay, lay it on me.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Okay, So on a talk show, British talk show years ago.
I think it was around the time that Guardians of
the Galaxy one or two was coming out. I can't remember.
He was in two. Okay, so he wasn't one too,
but he was really prominent too well, Guardians of the
Galaxy was occurring. Kurt Russell is on a British talk show.
He's sitting next to Chris Pratt and the presenter brings
(15:45):
up the Phoenix Lights. He just starts telling the story
of the Phoenix Lights and Kurt Russell answers it wasn't
even a question or anything. Kurt Russell just responds by saying,
I know exactly what that was because I was the
pilot that that actually called this in when he was
coming into the airport. What And he tells a story
(16:07):
about how he was taking his son, he had just
got his pilot's license. He was taking his son, Oliver
to go see a friend out in Phoenix, and he
was flying out there and as he's approaching to land,
he sees these six lights and he makes a report
and describes him. He says, well, yes, they're unidentified. There's
six lights. You don't have them on your radar. Well
(16:28):
then that's odd. I'm just letting you know. And then
he lands and goes about his day. But fairly odd
that someone is prominent as Kurt Russell ends up being,
you know, a pretty major witness to this phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It is he he has talked about it.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
He actually named the what is it the call not
the call sign, but the tower or it's the the
tail number or whatever of the plane. Like he calls
out exactly what it was, Like, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
So he said he's all the plane and could even
see the tail.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
No, he knew it because he was the pilot.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Oh no, his plane. Okay, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
I mean to me, it's not that weird because this
is post big trouble in Little China where everything changed for.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Him, is true, and he's just flying around and just
seeing UFOs.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, I mean, you stare into the abyss man. So
technically it's absolutely true for several months. The Phoenix lights
were inarguably, regardless of how you feel about quote unquote aliens,
they were UFOs. People had multiple, often contradictory ideas about
(17:41):
what could have been up there. Some of these ideas
were more plausible than others, so much more plausible than others.
But the point is no one was completely sure. Ufologists
hit the scene very quickly, and when they investigated this
story they found wildly varying descriptions of the lights. This
is again important as time wound on, descriptions included things
(18:05):
that you had mentioned earlier, Matt, huge boomerang shaped aircraft,
luminous globes, one of my favorites, spinning disco balls. Maybe
those guys were already out partying with some hallucinogens or something,
in which case they add an amazing night.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
It reminds me of descriptions of chariots of fire in
ancient writings, of having our understanding of technology in current time,
attempting to explain what we're seeing that is of a
technology of a further advanced time. Yeah, that's just at
least the image I get. I'm not saying that's what
I think it is.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Eric von Danikin. Yes, love to drop that name. It's true. Furthermore,
ufologists believe still that the story goes much deeper than
the two events that were reported. They often also insist
the events or either related or the same phenomenon, and
that the attempt to separate these events is either misguided
(19:00):
or purposefully misleading. You have vo researchers say that before
the lights were seen over Phoenix, they were spotted near Henderson, Nevada,
and then afterwards they were spied in Mexico. And then
they also say some people had strange reactions to the light,
encountering temporary amnesia or reacting in an oddly unemotional way.
(19:25):
Like they saw the lights, they stopped the car, no
one said anything as they watched them in silence. And
then when it was over, instead of going holy smokes,
what was that, they said, all right, well, Denny's closes
at ten, so ge get back on the road.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I just want to point out really fast that Henderson,
Nevada is very close to Las Vegas. It's on the
outskirts and it's to the north west of Phoenix.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Great.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So, like if you're imagining that line of travel down
from generally Las Vegas. It's that same direction that it
was reported earlier.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That's perfect to orient ourselves geographically. Let's bring in the professionals,
the professional non governmental UFO observers. Let's introduce MOFON because
they got involved in this, right, boy do they ever?
Speaker 4 (20:15):
So you know how much I love a good acronym.
So MOFON or the Mutual UFO Network, is a US
based nonprofit organization that we have talked about many times
on this show, made up of civilian volunteers who study
alleged UFO sightings. MOFON is not officially persuaded that this
was an extraterrestrial event at all, and I would think
(20:36):
they'd be the first ones to be like, you know, yes,
we need more confirmed UFO accounts. So I'd love to
hear what their argument is. And here it is. Thus quote,
do we have evidence that it was an extraterrestrial event?
MoveOn said, in the form of their investigator, Jim Mann,
we have evidence that it was an extremely bizarre event,
but we can't put a label on it other than
(20:57):
that it was an anomaly. Man then added the Arizona
move On investigated three hundred and twenty five cases of
reported UFOs last year and the majority were explained. Twelve
were filed away as unknown, and that would be last
year for that would be twenty eighty one.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Thing, you know, move On is not a perfect organization,
as its fair share of critics, especially given some of
the political infighting and allegations of racism within the ranks.
But when it comes to their analyzes of these different reports,
they are from what we can tell. And again, Paul
Matt Noll and myself we are not members of Moufon,
(21:38):
but it seems like they would rather know the truth.
So if they investigate something and they have a plausible,
you know, weather balloon explanation, then they'll take it if
it seems true, and that's respectable.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
We were at a guy, wasn't that long ago? We
were at a MoveOn meeting. Not I don't even know
when it was. Was it twenty eighteen or twenty seventeen,
one of those years, twenty eighteen, It must have been
twenty eighteen. Time moves so strangely now, But what we
saw in that meeting were individual investigators coming up and
(22:11):
giving the reports about all the research they'd done on
specific sightings, and it was fascinating to see how much
care was put in by you know, each individual member
who like who knows exactly what they put in, But
at least the people that we witnessed the effort is there.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, and it seemed a very productive meeting. I was.
I enjoyed it. There were, of course, maybe a couple
of more eccentric people, but that can happen almost in
any free public gathering. I mean, we were there, Yeah,
we were there. That was one thing I was thinking about.
And I have a question for any uthologist in the
(22:49):
listening audience today. How do you feel about people who
seem quote unquote too eccentric for a meeting. Do you
think it is important that they have a space to
speak or do you think that they discredit the overall investigations.
I don't know. I don't have a badger in this
(23:09):
bag or a horse in this race, but I would
be interested to hear what people have to say, especially
if you have attended many such conferences or meetings. So
that's not where the conspiracy theories end. Some people say, no,
of course, these aren't aliens. This is just a cash
grab by people who want to build the credulous. It's
(23:31):
much worse. These are man made events, but they are
not made by the government you recognize. They're made by
a different government, a deeper government, a deep state, something
we would call a new world order. Some fringe researchers
active in nWo research believe that the second event was
(23:54):
sort of a red herring. They claim the military at
Fort Huachuka south of Tucson, Arizona, actually dropped flares and
that those created the you know what seemed to be
that second event with the lights, and they did this
to confuse people and hide evidence of a psychological warfare
(24:15):
test that created indistinct shapes in the night sky. You
love this mat via some sort of holographic projection device.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Whoa, we're getting into bluebeam territory here, watch out. That
is my favorite. Well, you know, the other thing is
they would have known that there would be a lot
of people out looking at the sky because there was
a weather phenomena or a space weather phenomena that was
going on where there was going to be a meteor
shower hail bop right, yeah in a comment and it's
(24:47):
you know, if they were going to do some kind
of psychological research, it would have been a great night
to choose that is true.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
That is true, And then we bring in the Heaven's
Gate strand to this web. That is the religious movement
often called a cult, that was convinced they would be
able to leave their corporeal forms and travel to their
religion's paradise via the hail Bob commet if they took
(25:18):
their own lives, which is unfortunately what happened. Maybe a
story all its own, So add that to the mix.
Maybe that's where the psychological warfare aspect is kind of
coming into play. But the issue here for New World
Order stuff is still one of motivation. Why go to
all this trouble? If you are a very powerful, shadowy
paragovernmental cabal, what would you have to gain by pulling
(25:40):
a stunt like this? You know? Is it just bragging rights?
Walk up and kind of you know, swing your business
around at the Builderberg conference.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
God so weird, I can imagine. I mean, if I
really put on my tinfoil hat just to see, imagine
it being a test to see how the public is
going to react to a mass scale vision in the
sky like this, no matter what people are seeing, right,
(26:13):
if they're so, I guess the motivation would be if
we were to fake an alien invasion of some sort,
how would the human beings on the ground react?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, and how would we propagate it most effectively? Yeah?
So these are questions that currently do not have answers
everyone can agree on. We would like to point out
our Bluebeam episode if you want to learn more about.
That is a fascinating story, and it's one of those
that feels a little bit less impossible each time you
(26:45):
think about it, especially given the recent breakthroughs in imaging technology.
But so far we have been talking primarily about motivations
or explos nations that exist in the heavens. We're going
to pause for a word from our sponsor and then
return with a bit of a more let's call it
(27:08):
an earthly explanation A Right, we're back, And while we're back,
let's go back to Tony Ortega, who mentioned earlier. Ortega,
who is a journalist and has reported this for some
local papers, believes that he has arrived at solid explanations
(27:33):
for both of the events over Arizona that evening. First,
that infamous v formation.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
The one that happened in around eight eight thirty.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Right, So, Ortega spoke with a young man who had
a ten inch Dobsonian telescope. This kid was named Mitch Stanley.
He spotted the V from his backyard and he was
able to see close enough that he could discern it
was a formation of airplanes used magnification of sixty x
(28:03):
that more or less puts him sixty times closer to
the V than people who were viewing it unaided, and
he said he could see each light in the sky
was actually a double with one light under each squarish wing.
The planes looked small in his scope, and that suggests
they were flying at a very high altitude, which comes
into play later. But he did not know what type
(28:24):
of plane they were. There was no doubt, he said
that these were definitely planes. He doubled down on that.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
And if you look at some of the video footage
that was captured on that night in nineteen ninety seven,
it looks like people are talking about this big black
V right or the boomerang. It looks in some of
those videos like there is blacked out sky with a
light in the center of it, and that occurs six
individual times, kind of in a formation. And again there
(28:52):
are numerous videos that you can see online of this.
To me, to my eyes, that's what it looks like.
I can imagine if it really were individual planes with
the wings going out in the way they do in
that V formation, they're gonna overlap enough where the you know,
the blacked out sky behind those wings, it's gonna look
(29:12):
like it's connected. And if you've got highly experienced pilots,
particularly those who were in a military, flying in a formation,
it's gonna be so rigid and flying, you know, with
such regularity with that formation that I can imagine as
it's going overhead or something, you would visualize the entire
thing as one.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Oh yeah, totally, I can see that.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, what about the second event where Teka has an
explanation for that too, Right.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
This was seen as a string of flares dropped by
the Maryland Air National Guard over the North Tack Military
Range and or take a rights on this one. The
problem developed later when people conflated reports of the two sightings,
like we mentioned earlier. For the many people who had
seen the earlier V pass directly over their heads, the
explanation of the flares made absolutely no sense whatsoever. News
(30:03):
organizations didn't differentiate between the two events or report on
the Stanley identification.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
That's perfect because that's one of the key pieces in
this story. So USA Today, right, and a couple of
other outlets, they just report this stuff, hit the UFO
angle hard and don't differentiate between the things. That doesn't
mean that they're guilty of purposely trying to mislead people.
(30:31):
Just to the point we mentioned earlier, you're asking people
what happened after the fact, and it's very plausible for
them to assume the same thing was occurring the military
and government. As we mentioned, they originally said Nope, nothing
to see here, move along, mosey on down, out of
the way. They later came forward and change their story.
(30:54):
See Phoenix has two Air Force bases pretty near the city,
and two some weekly eventually brew the news that the
Maryland to Air National Guard was in Arizona for winter
training and they had a squad of E ten fighters
over the gunnery range that night. These fighters had dropped flares.
An Arizona National Guard PR officer or Public Information Officer
(31:18):
PIO named Captain Ellen Biens had determined that the flares
were dropped at get this ten PM over the North
Tack Range thirty miles southwest of Phoenix at a pretty
high altitude fifteen thousand feet, so they would be falling
in the air for a long time. Another thing happened.
(31:40):
Local governments came forward then incumbent to Arizona Governor Fife Symington.
I love that name. Fife Symington thought people were being
too uptight about this and taking it too seriously, so
he arranged a joke press conference. He had a lot
of UFO jokes in his beach. He even had one
(32:01):
of his poor aid to come up on stage in
an alien costume, and he was like, all right, everybody,
calm down, you know, let's just have a good time
out here in Arizona. But then later on a few years,
as the years passed, he pulled a total one to eighty.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Oh yeah, he told the story about how, oh uh,
I actually saw something on that night. I was mentioning
that there's a thing called Squaw Peak there near the
middle of Phoenix. He's the guy, at least from the
reporting that I read, he is the person who said, yes,
I saw something come over a Squawpeak and it was
(32:41):
like that v formation. It was the lights like that,
and that's right in the middle of Phoenix, in the
Phoenix area, and he apologized and he was just like, hey, yeah,
my bad. The the lights are a great mystery that
couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetric according
to his own eyewitness account of it, even though he
(33:03):
made fun of it.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Interesting, huh, preaching to the converted, I guess interesting.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well, ultimately, what it sounds like is a politician that
was afraid of, you know, ridicule, because we do know
that there was a I believe a city council member
who brought it up in a meeting and then for
the next months and months and months she was just
made fun of relentlessly at her office and in public.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Right, right, And this remains a divisive topic for people
in the area or ufologists versus skeptics today. You know. Skeptics,
for their part, are quick to point out that, with
a few notable exceptions, the majority of witnesses were watching
again with the naked eye stationary positions on the ground,
(33:49):
so they can be easily fooled into inaccurate estimates of
very important factors like size, altitude, and speed. But for
the ufologists is one big advantage, at least in terms
of rhetoric and argument. They can say, well, it wouldn't
be the first time that the government did something sketchy
(34:11):
and then lied about it. It's absolutely true. The only
comeback you have for that is to say, that doesn't
mean that this is one of those cases. Right, Just
because a car has driven through Bedford, Massachusetts, doesn't mean
that all cars drive through Bedford, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
True.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
True, I'm phrasing that in an awkward way. But it's interesting,
and now it brings us to the conclusion we have
to ask, what do you think. Let's walk through it.
Let's say let's just speculate here. Let's say that the
most out there conspiracy theories are correct that in March
(34:55):
of nineteen ninety seven, extraterrestrials or extra dimensional entity were
time travelers or whatever, came to the Phoenix, Arizona area
and did a flyover. Thousands of people saw it. Why
would they do that?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
They didn't know where they were, They were lost, they
were trying to find Hollywood. They saw the lights of
Las Vegas and they made a pass over Las Vegas
because they saw the pyramid down there, the Luxor, and
they were like, oh, well, this is obviously you know
this is the ancient shape they've you know, paid homage
to us. Oh wait a second, what's going on down there?
(35:31):
They did a scan, they realized it was people, you know,
just throwing their money into slot machines, and they went, oh, geez,
that's not where're supposed to be. Let's keep going down
the path here. They went over Phoenix and they were like, eh,
they kept going, sorry everybody in Phoenix. And then they
finally they made it down down Mexico Way and they
(35:53):
just stayed. They just stayed there because they really liked it.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I mean, you know, we've all been there, right, Yeah,
but at least in the state of mind, in a
Mexico state of mind. Okay, that's one idea. Okay, let's say,
what if it was US military craft? Why and how
would they do this? Well? Currently, this seems to be
the most solid explanation, but there's one big gap in
the story, one that rightly bothers a lot of people.
(36:19):
We don't know foreshore, where the craft originated. Nobody requested
the radar information from the FAA Federal Aviation Administration within
two weeks. The records for this kind of stuff are
usually deleted within that two week span, so we'll never
know exactly where those planes came from outside of you know,
(36:41):
these statements of journalists and statements from the military, the
mystery remains.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
I've got something to point out here with the whole
explanation of the military craft being a ten fighters. Do
you guys know what an A ten fighter is? Noel,
Are you familiar with that? No, it's there generally referred
to as a warthog. Have you have you ever heard
one of these? You've heard them in military movies. I've
wonder super loud?
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, yes, that I was picturing.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
I'm assuming Ben is have you actually witnessed one of those?
So I wonder if we can play a quick sound
for you if we can find one. If we did
find one, it's going to be right here. The A
ten war hog is a loud Dijet fighter plane. So
(37:31):
look it up in your time if you have a moment,
imagine six of those flying in formation, even if they're
at high altitude, you're going to hear them. And a
lot of these reports were it was silent craft.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Well, also, we have to we have to point out
that there are people who have problems with that report
to the idea that they were silent, because as loud
as something is, you get it high enough in the air,
it's going to be beyond the bound of human hearing.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Sometimes you're right, you're right, you're.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
A And again we don't know. We can't accurately judge the.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Altitude, right, And we also cannot confirm whether or not
it was the quote unquote a ten wordthog sighting or
the flare sighting, because the flares would be nice and silent.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Right, Oh, nice, very good point. We hope you enjoy
this episode. We're presenting what we found to be the facts,
as well as what we found to be the more
controversial claims. As always, your decision is your own. We
don't want to tell you what to think, but we
darnshore want to hear what you think about it. And
(38:43):
there is one interesting thing I found that I thought
might be useful to some of us listening in the
Phoenix area. There is a Phoenix Lights Festival aliens or not,
it seems like one heck of a party. Since twenty fifteen,
it's given the Valleys electronic dance music scene a signature
(39:04):
event to call its own. I've looked at some pictures
from the party, and while you probably won't meet a
legit extraterrestrial, you're gonna have some interesting encounters. Some eccentric
individuals will make their way to you. You'll have some
memorable events.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
That's right. And you'll never see me there. Why not
just because I because of your cost dance.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Oh it's DM man, you don't have to dance, just
very phil callings about it. Furthermore, regardless of what you
think mundane or something more, the Phoenix Lights have captured
the imaginations of millions of people over the past more
than two decades, including a ton of people in Hollywood,
not just Kurt Russell.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Oh sure, I mean the phenomenon was a key plot
point for the hugely influential found footage horror film Phoenix Forgotten,
which at this point has been forgotten largely. Yeah, I
was not aware of it in the first one. Did
you guys see it?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I have not seen it. I've not seen it.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Apparently come out last year.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
I've seen trailers for it. I mean, honestly, it looks
like a Blair Witch movie based on the Phoenix Lights
being the main occurrence, and that's why these people try
and figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Found footage films are so tricky. Blair Witch was great,
Chronicle was great. If you remember that one, Yeah, that's
where the kids get destructive telekinetic powers from object from space.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I actually haven't seen that one, and it's been on
my watch list for I don't even know how many years.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I'd be really interested to see what you think, because
they do pretty well found footage. But there's one last note.
UFO sightings, as I mentioned earlier, are fairly common in
the Phoenix area, and there are reports of strange lights
in the desert sky multiple times every single year. But
it goes a little bit further. According to the Washington Post,
(41:00):
Arizona has the highest number of UFO sidings per capita
in the entire United States of America. So if there's
anything where if there's any situation where something like the
Phoenix lights would occur again, it would be Arizona statistically.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
If you're really interested in this stuff, we recommend looking
up someone named Lynn Katai. She made a documentary about
the subject, she wrote a book. You can find a
lot of links in other reporting if you search for
her Lynn Katai again, Ki t Ei, I believe yes,
(41:38):
it's some interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let us know
what you think. You can reach.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
three STDWA. That's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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