August 28, 2019 • 41 mins
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):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They call me Ben. We are joined as always
with our super producer Paul Mission controlled 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
(00:45):
pretty good? Um? Not too bad, not too great? You
can in the middle of the road. I don't know.
I never feel like I have anything to add at
this juncture of the show. I feel like I'm just
like a blank slate. Well, I'll give you something. 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. I really wanted to go
(01:06):
with you guys. Yeah, once once upon a time in Hollywood,
I had my daughter in and that not kid friendly
film as a it is 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.
(01:26):
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. We are one
eight three three st d w y t K. And
if you are feeling particularly charitable, why not leave us
(01:47):
a review on your podcast platform of choice? Do it?
We we uh, we enjoy it and every review, every
time we get a nice review, our here are Uber
Boss appears in an obsidian mirror and grants us one
more day of life. Yeah, and he says, now get
back out there and give some more ride sharing stuff,
(02:11):
because I'm the uber Boss. 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,
years and years and years. This has shown up and
we've looked at it a little bit in the past.
But now we're diving face first full into the deep
water of the Phoenix Lights. To some people, the entire
(02:36):
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 of
witnesses on the ground and a few in the air
(02:57):
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. We have to go back
to March thirteenth, nineteen nineties seven, around eight pm, a
(03:18):
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 uh to police because
they're making nine when one calls. They're making reports this
(03:38):
all over the place of these mysterious lights that are
in the sky. But here's the deal. If you 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 described seeing this strange V shaped formation or
(03:59):
sometimes it's they called it a boomerang um and it
just looks like, you know, like if you're looking at
geese as they're migrating or something flying v yes, similar
to that with six lights, sometimes more, sometimes fewer, usually
six or fewer that were actually observed. And other people
amidst these thousands of witnesses claimed that they saw hovering lights,
(04:23):
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 they're they're not looking through various instruments.
They're watching with the naked eye. So they'll have a
hard time guessing the altitude. Right, we we see a
(04:45):
large range and what how high people believe these things are, right, Yeah,
So let's let's let's trace the events because we're fortunate
in that this happened so recently. There's a wealth of
technology that wasn't available and 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
(05:08):
these sightings. Uh. They received their first call on 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 location south
of Paulden, and that indicated to the reporting center that
(05:32):
the aircraft or the UFO whatever you wanna 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 nine, reported that they there were several key observations.
(05:53):
Here they are. One, the craft was enormous. Witnesses described
it sometimes as a mile wide. Two made no noise,
and three it moved slowly over Arizona, often stopping to
hover in a single location. And now that is generally
with the reports that describe it as one craft. Essentially
(06:14):
that's flying together and all those lights are just represented
attached to that craft right like on its belly. Right.
So now we enter into a tricky situation. Yeah, it's true.
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
(06:35):
people across the state witnessed. That was seen over Prescott
at about eight fifteen PM, and then traveled south to
Phoenix about a thirty Then it passed over Tucson finally
at eighty five that's two hundred miles in thirty minutes,
which means the V was moving at about four hundred
miles per hour. And remember what Ben said earlier, These
(06:56):
people are generally stationary on the ground and they're observing
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 when
this part's wild, because you had a huge disparity in
(07:18):
whether or not people were seeing it up high or
down low. Literally, some early eyewitnesses perceived that it was
high in the sky, and then you had other swearing
that it was a low moving almost a hovercraft kind
of the hovering very low and slow. Well, yeah, some
people described it as being right above their homes as
it was going across, and that's been depicted over the
(07:40):
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, um kind of to
the northeast, and people were describing it 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
(08:02):
come right over top of that mountain as well. And
he we'll get into more of the specific later. It's
just just think about how fascinating that would be to
actually observe that. 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.
(08:23):
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 about ten pm in the sky southwest of Phoenix.
A string of lights appeared in the heavens and slowly
(08:43):
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 conflating the reports. Did
these two separate events happen so closely together in a
chronological sense that later people are saying, well, I saw
(09:05):
something weird too on the same night, so logically it's
the same thing. I can see that. Yeah, that makes
also that would that would account for the disparity, right
and uh in height? Yeah, well, now what twenty two
years later plus we are or how much has been
conflated just historically now at this point, after that initial
(09:27):
day of report, it's weird. And we'll see that mainstream
media had a an unusual role to play in this.
But let's see what Uncle Sam said. Initially, lots of
people freaked out. The 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,
(09:48):
nothing unusual here, what do you what are you beefed
up about? Or whatever? You know, that's military jargon, I guess.
And later these military bases and the government would change
their story. Since a little bit of foreshadowing, this is
where we can see a little bit of that telephone
game you're alluding to, Matt and how quickly things got
(10:09):
out of hand. So we said the event happened, let's
call it mid March. It did not become national news
or even general knowledge until June, when USA Today put
out a story with the headline skies phone lines light
up Arizona on their front page. Misinformation was already spreading
(10:31):
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 re enactment
of how those kind of question answers sessions can go.
So who wants to be the researcher? Who wants to
(10:52):
be the witness? 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 boom cut and that's all it takes.
The witness saw a boomerang. Yeah, exactly, because now we
(11:15):
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, beyond 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. Can I can I
(11:36):
point out really quick? I really miss headlines like skies
phones light up, Arizona. 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 very dirty punts,
but I'll send it along. The question here now becomes
(12:00):
actually happened up there twenty two years ago, Phoenix, Arizona.
We'll tell you. After a word from our sponsors. Here's
where it gets crazy. Let's roll out the theories. Guys,
(12:20):
what do you say, Let's dive into Okay, let's dive
into it UFOs. Okay. Sure. So the first thing that
we can absolutely confirm is that something that was illuminated
was in the sky on that night. Something definitely happened. Yes,
I mean for for real, Because a lot of times,
when you were thinking about these kinds of things, you
(12:41):
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 by the way of thinking
about these things. Critically, you have to question the veracity
of a witness statement. Right. Sure, in this case you
still have to do that to an extent, but you
have so many people seeing it that we can confirm
(13:01):
that something was in the sky, something occurred, and there
was video documentation and and uh photography, there were a
lot of photographs of that night. Now Here is where
we bring in our friend Kurt Russell. Okay, okay, so
on a talk show, British talk show years ago. I
think it was around the time that Guardians of the
(13:23):
Galaxy one or two was coming out. I can't remember. Okay,
so doesn't want to, 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 the presenter brings up the Phoenix Lights. He
just starts telling the story of the Phoenix Lights and
(13:44):
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,
and he tells a story about how he was taking
his son. He had just got his pilot's license. He
(14:05):
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. They're six lights. You don't have them on
your radar. Well, then that's odd. I'm just letting you know.
And then he lands and goes about his day. But
(14:29):
fairly odd that someone is prominent, as Kurt Russell ends
up being, you know, a pretty major witness to this phenomenon,
is confirmable in anyway. It is he he has talked
about it. He actually named the what is it the
call not the call sign, but the tower. It's the
tail number or whatever of the plane. Like he calls
(14:50):
out exactly what it was like. So he said he
saw the plane and could even see the tail. No,
he knew it because he was the pilot. Oh no,
his plane. Okay, that makes sense. I mean to me,
it's not that weird, because this is this is post
big trouble in Little China where everything changed for him,
(15:10):
you know, and he's just flying around and just seeing. Yeah,
I mean you're staring to 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 what
(15:36):
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. Especially
this is again important as time wound on, descriptions included
(15:59):
things 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. It reminds
me of descriptions of chariots of fire in ancient writings.
(16:20):
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. Eric von Dannikin, Yes, I love to
drop that name. It's true. Uh. For the more upologists
believe still that the story goes much deeper than the
(16:43):
two events that were reported. They often also insist the
events are either related or the same phenomenon, and that
the attempt to separate these events is either misguided or
purposefully misleading. You have oversearchers say that before the lights
were seen over Phoenix, they were spotted near Henderson, Nevada,
(17:05):
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.
Like they they saw the lights, they stopped the car,
no one said anything as they watched them in silence,
(17:25):
And then when it was over, instead of going holy smokes,
what was that, they said, all right, well, Denny's closes attend,
so get back on the road. I just want to
point out really fast that Henderson, Nevada is very close
to Las Vegas. That's on the outskirts and it's to
the north west of Phoenix, right, So like, if you're
(17:46):
imagining that line of travel down from generally Las Vegas,
it's that same direction that it was reported earlier. That's perfect.
We need to orient ourselves geographically. Let's bring in the professionals,
the the professional non governmental UFO observers. Let's let's introduce
(18:06):
move ON because they got involved in this, right, boy
do they ever? So you know how much of a
good acronym? So move ON 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. Mouf On is not
officially persuaded that this was an extraterrestrial event at all,
(18:30):
and I would think 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? Move On said, in the
form of their investigator Jim Mann, we have evidence that
it was an extremely bizarre event, but we can't put
(18:50):
a label on it other than that it was an anomaly.
Man then added, the Arizona move On investigated three 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 one thing.
(19:10):
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 Noel and myself we are not members of moved On,
(19:33):
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. We were at a god,
it wasn't that long ago. We were at move On
meeting not I don't even know what it was, was was
(19:53):
seventeen one of those years us time moves so strangely
and out. But what we saw in that meeting where
individual investigators coming up and giving the reports about all
the research they've 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
(20:16):
what they put in, but at least the people that
we witnessed, Uh, the effort is there. Yeah, and it
seemed a very productive meeting. I was I 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. Uh.
(20:37):
That was one thing I was thinking about. And I
have a question for any ethologist in the in the
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
(20:59):
investigating aations. I don't know. I don't have a I
don't have a badger in this 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
(21:19):
aren't aliens. This is just a cash grab by people
who want to build the credulous. It's much worse. These
are These are man made events, but they're not made
by the government. You recognize. They're made by a different government,
a deeper government, a deep state, something we would call
(21:40):
a new world order. Some fringe researchers active in nWo
research believe that the second event was sort of a
red herring. They claim the military at Fort Huachuka south
of Tucson, Arizona, actually dropped flares and that those created
(22:01):
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 test that created
indistinct shapes in the night sky. You love this met
via some sort of holographic projection device. Whoa, we're getting
into blue beam territory here and watch out. That is
(22:23):
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 weather
phenomenon or is a space weather phenomenon that was going
on where there was going to be a meteor shower
hail Bop, right, yeah, in a comment, and it's you know,
if they were going to do some kind of psychological research,
(22:46):
it would have been a great night to choose. That
is true. That is true. And then we bring in
the Heaven's Gate strand to this web. That is the
that is the religious movement often called a cult, uh,
that was convinced they would be able to leave their
corporeal forms and travel to their religions paradise via the
(23:09):
Hilbop comment, Uh, if they took 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 pair of governmental cabal,
(23:32):
what would you have to gain by pulling a stunt
like this? You know? Is it? Is it just bragging rights?
Walk up and kind of you know, uh, swing your
business round at the Builderberg conference. God so weird, I
can imagine. I mean, if I really put on my
tinfoil hat just to to see I can imagine it
(23:55):
being a test to see how the public is going
to react to a mass scale will um vision in
the sky like this, no matter what people are seeing
right um? If there 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? Yeah,
(24:17):
and how would we how would we propagate it most effectively?
So these are questions that currently do not have answers
everyone can agree on. We would like to point out
our Blue Beam 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
(24:39):
you think about it, especially given the recent breakthroughs in
imaging technology. But so far we have been talking primarily
about motivations or explanations that exist in the heavens. We're
going to pause for a word from our sponsor and
then turn with a bit of a more let's call
(25:02):
it an earthly explanation. Alright, 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 has reported this for
some local papers, believes that he has arrived at solid
(25:26):
explanations for both of the events over Arizona that evening. First,
that infamous V formation happened around right, so Ortega spoke
with a young man who had a ten inch dobson
Ian telescope. This kid was named Mitch Stanley. He spotted
(25:47):
the V from his backyard and he was able to
see close enough that he could discern it was a
formation of airplanes. He used a magnification of sixty x
that more or less put some sixty times closer to
the V than people who are 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.
(26:10):
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
of plane they were. There was no doubt he said
that these were definitely planes. He doubled down on that,
And if you look at some of the video footage
that was captured on that night in it looks like
(26:32):
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 are numerous videos
that you can see online of this. To me, to
my eyes, that's what it looks like. I can imagine
(26:53):
if it really were six individual planes with the wings
going out and 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 like it's connected.
And if you've got highly experienced pilots, particularly those who
were in a military flying in formation, it's going to
(27:14):
be so rigid and flying, you know, with 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. Oh yeah, totally, I can see that. I
just want to put that out there. Well, what about
the second event where Taka has an explanation for that too, right, Yeah,
(27:34):
it's true. This was seen as a string of flares
dropped by the Maryland Air and National Guard over the
North Tech Military Range and Ortega rights on this one. Uh.
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 the past directly over their heads,
(27:54):
the explanation of the flares made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
News organizations didn't differentiate between the two events or report
on the Stanley identification. That's perfect because that that's one
of the key pieces in this story. So USA Today, right,
and UH, a couple of other outlets, they just report
(28:15):
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. 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,
(28:38):
they originally said Nope, nothing to see here, move along,
mosey on down, out of the way. Uh. They later
came forward and change their story. You see, Phoenix has
two Air Force bases pretty near the city, and to
some weekly eventually broke the news that the Maryland to
Air National Guard was in Arizona for winter training and
(28:59):
they had a school out of a ten fighters over
the gunnery range that night. These fighters had dropped flares
an Arizona National Guard pr officer or Public Information Officer
p i O named Captain Eileen Biens, had determined that
the flares were dropped at get this ten pm over
(29:20):
the North Tach 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. Local governments came forward. Then incumbent Arizona Governor
Fife Symington. I love that name. Fife Symington's thought people
(29:44):
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 speech. He even had
one of his poor aides come up on stage in
an alien costume and he it's like, all right, everybody
calmed down, you know, let's just have a good time
(30:04):
out here in Arizona. But then later on a few years,
as the years passed, he pulled a total one eight.
Oh yeah. He he told the story about how, oh,
I actually saw something on that night. I was mentioning
that there's a thing called Squaw Peak there near the
(30:25):
middle of Phoenix. He's the guy at least from the
reporting that I read. He's the person who said, yes,
I saw something come over squaw Peak and it was
like that v formation. It was the lights like that
and that's right in the middle of Phoenix, in the
Phoenix area. Um, And he apologized and he was just like, hey, yeah,
um my bad. Um. The lights are a great mystery
(30:51):
that couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical,
according to his own eyewitness account of it, even though
he made fun of it. Interesting, huh, preaching to the converted,
I guess. Interesting. 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
(31:14):
and then for the next months and months and months
she was just made fun of relentlessly at her office
and in public, 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
(31:35):
out that, with a few notable exceptions, the majority of
witnesses were watching again with the naked eye stationary positions
on the ground, so they can be easily fooled into
inaccurate estimates of very important factors like size, altitude, and speed.
But for the ufologists there is one big advantage, at
(31:58):
least in terms of rhetoric argument. They can say, well,
it wouldn't be the first time that the government did
something sketchy and then lied about it. It's absolutely true. Uh,
you know. The only 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
(32:20):
driven through um Bedford, Massachusetts doesn't mean that all cars
drive through Bedford, Massachusetts. True, I'm phrasing that in an
awkward way, but but it's interesting, and now it brings
us to the conclusion we have to ask, what do
you what do you think? Let's walk through it. Let's say,
and let's just speculate here. Let's say that the most
(32:46):
out there conspiracy theories are correct that in March of
extraterrestrials or extra dimensional entities or time travelers or whatever
came to the Phoenix, Arizona area and did a flyover.
Thousands of people saw it. Why would they do that?
They didn't know where they were they were lost. They
(33:07):
were trying to find Hollywood. Um, 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?
They did a scan, they realized it was people, you know,
(33:28):
just throwing their money into slot machines, and they went, oh, geez,
that's now we're supposed to be let's keep going down
the path here. They went over Phoenix and they were
like yeah, and they kept going sorry everybody in Phoenix.
And then uh, they finally they made it down down
Mexico Way and they just stayed. They just stayed there
(33:49):
because they really liked it. I mean, you know, we've
all been there, right, Yeah, at least in the state
of mind, in the Mexico state of mind. Okay, that's
one idea on 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
(34:12):
a lot of people. We don't know for sure where
the craft originated. Nobody requested the radar information from the
f A, a 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
(34:33):
those planes came from. Outside of you know, the statements
of journalists and statements from the military, the mystery remains.
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? No?
If you are you familiar with that, it's they're generally
(34:54):
referred to as a war tog. Yeah. Have you have
you ever heard one of these? You've heard them in
military movies that I was picturing. I'm assuming Ben has
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 Aton war Hog is
(35:23):
a loud Dijet fighter plane, So look it up in
your time if you have a momentum, 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 where it was silent craft well also we have
to we have to point out that there are people
who have problems with that report to the idea that
(35:44):
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. Sometimes you're right,
you're right, you're and again we don't know. We can't
accurately judge the the altitude, right, and we all we
(36:05):
also cannot confirm whether or not it was the quote
unquote aton word hog sighting or the flair sighting because
the flares would be nice and silent. 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 the more controversial claims.
(36:28):
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. Uh. And 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. Uh, aliens are not.
(36:51):
It seems like one heck of a party, since it's
given the Valleys electronic dance music scene a signature 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. Uh.
(37:15):
And you will never see me there. Why not just
because because you're a cost dance Oh it's a it's man,
you don't have to dance. Just very Phil Collins about it. Uh. Furthermore,
regardless of what you think mundane or something more, the
Phoenix Lights have captured the imaginations of millions of people
(37:36):
over the past more than two decades, including a ton
of people in Hollywood, not just Kurt Russell. Oh sure,
I mean the phenomenon was a key plot point for
the uh hugely influential found footage horror film Phoenix Forgotten,
which at this point has has been forgotten largely. Yeah,
I I die. I was not aware of it in
(37:57):
the first one. Did you guys see it? I have
not seen it. I've got apparently can last year. 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. Found footage films are so tricky.
Blair which was great, Chronicle was great. If you remember
(38:18):
that one, that's where the kids get destructive telekinetic powers
from uh object from space. I actually haven't seen that one,
and it's been on my watch list for I don't
even know how many years. 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 have
(38:41):
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, Arizona has the
highest number of UFO sightings per capita in the entire
or United States of America. So if there's anything uh where,
(39:06):
if there's any situation where something like the Phoenix Lights
would occur again, it would be Arizona statistically. 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 and other reporting if you search for for her
(39:27):
Lynn Katai again. Um k I T E I I believe, Yes,
it's some interesting stuff. I don't know. We'd love to
know what you think, so find us talk to us
on Facebook. We are at Conspiracy Stuff and we have
a page they're called Here's where it Gets Crazy, where
you can talk about this episode and any other episode.
(39:49):
You can give us suggestions for future topics, anything you
want us to talk about. They do us thing for us.
I would really appreciate if you go to whatever podcast
platform a choice that you can se whom this show
on and leave us a nice review, especially Apple Podcast,
because that's a big helpful way for people to discover
the show. You can also find us on our personal
(40:12):
instagrams or Twitter. I am at then Buland on Instagram
and at then Bolland h s W on Twitter, and
you can find me on Instagram at how Now Noel
Brown And just to remember something here in my notes
that I just didn't even look at that Phoenix City
councilwoman or former Phoenix City councilwoman. Her name was Francis
(40:33):
Barwood and she was She was the first public official
to actually discuss the Phoenix Lights in a public setting
where she literally was just like, hey, so what was
that thing? And know what what is it? And the
council people around her, we're making fun of her and
all those things. Anyway, you can look it up, you
can learn more, go ahead and do it. If you
don't want to do any of that stuff, well you
(40:54):
can also can you can you call a number? We
have a number, don't Yes, it is one three three
std W I t K. You don't like using phones,
Maybe you exist in some sort of cloud of sentient Google.
Google can exist in cloud form um. Then you could
probably still find your way into writing an email. There
must be a way. We are conspiracy at i heart
(41:17):
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know
(41:38):
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They call me Ben. We are joined as always
with our super producer Paul Mission controlled 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
(00:45):
pretty good? Um? Not too bad, not too great? You
can in the middle of the road. I don't know.
I never feel like I have anything to add at
this juncture of the show. I feel like I'm just
like a blank slate. Well, I'll give you something. 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. I really wanted to go
(01:06):
with you guys. Yeah, once once upon a time in Hollywood,
I had my daughter in and that not kid friendly
film as a it is 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.
(01:26):
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. We are one
eight three three st d w y t K. And
if you are feeling particularly charitable, why not leave us
(01:47):
a review on your podcast platform of choice? Do it?
We we uh, we enjoy it and every review, every
time we get a nice review, our here are Uber
Boss appears in an obsidian mirror and grants us one
more day of life. Yeah, and he says, now get
back out there and give some more ride sharing stuff,
(02:11):
because I'm the uber Boss. 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,
years and years and years. This has shown up and
we've looked at it a little bit in the past.
But now we're diving face first full into the deep
water of the Phoenix Lights. To some people, the entire
(02:36):
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 of
witnesses on the ground and a few in the air
(02:57):
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. We have to go back
to March thirteenth, nineteen nineties seven, around eight pm, a
(03:18):
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 uh to police because
they're making nine when one calls. They're making reports this
(03:38):
all over the place of these mysterious lights that are
in the sky. But here's the deal. If you 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 described seeing this strange V shaped formation or
(03:59):
sometimes it's they called it a boomerang um and it
just looks like, you know, like if you're looking at
geese as they're migrating or something flying v yes, similar
to that with six lights, sometimes more, sometimes fewer, usually
six or fewer that were actually observed. And other people
amidst these thousands of witnesses claimed that they saw hovering lights,
(04:23):
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 they're they're not looking through various instruments.
They're watching with the naked eye. So they'll have a
hard time guessing the altitude. Right, we we see a
(04:45):
large range and what how high people believe these things are, right, Yeah,
So let's let's let's trace the events because we're fortunate
in that this happened so recently. There's a wealth of
technology that wasn't available and 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
(05:08):
these sightings. Uh. They received their first call on 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 location south
of Paulden, and that indicated to the reporting center that
(05:32):
the aircraft or the UFO whatever you wanna 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 nine, reported that they there were several key observations.
(05:53):
Here they are. One, the craft was enormous. Witnesses described
it sometimes as a mile wide. Two made no noise,
and three it moved slowly over Arizona, often stopping to
hover in a single location. And now that is generally
with the reports that describe it as one craft. Essentially
(06:14):
that's flying together and all those lights are just represented
attached to that craft right like on its belly. Right.
So now we enter into a tricky situation. Yeah, it's true.
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
(06:35):
people across the state witnessed. That was seen over Prescott
at about eight fifteen PM, and then traveled south to
Phoenix about a thirty Then it passed over Tucson finally
at eighty five that's two hundred miles in thirty minutes,
which means the V was moving at about four hundred
miles per hour. And remember what Ben said earlier, These
(06:56):
people are generally stationary on the ground and they're observing
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 when
this part's wild, because you had a huge disparity in
(07:18):
whether or not people were seeing it up high or
down low. Literally, some early eyewitnesses perceived that it was
high in the sky, and then you had other swearing
that it was a low moving almost a hovercraft kind
of the hovering very low and slow. Well, yeah, some
people described it as being right above their homes as
it was going across, and that's been depicted over the
(07:40):
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, um kind of to
the northeast, and people were describing it 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
(08:02):
come right over top of that mountain as well. And
he we'll get into more of the specific later. It's
just just think about how fascinating that would be to
actually observe that. 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.
(08:23):
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 about ten pm in the sky southwest of Phoenix.
A string of lights appeared in the heavens and slowly
(08:43):
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 conflating the reports. Did
these two separate events happen so closely together in a
chronological sense that later people are saying, well, I saw
(09:05):
something weird too on the same night, so logically it's
the same thing. I can see that. Yeah, that makes
also that would that would account for the disparity, right
and uh in height? Yeah, well, now what twenty two
years later plus we are or how much has been
conflated just historically now at this point, after that initial
(09:27):
day of report, it's weird. And we'll see that mainstream
media had a an unusual role to play in this.
But let's see what Uncle Sam said. Initially, lots of
people freaked out. The 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,
(09:48):
nothing unusual here, what do you what are you beefed
up about? Or whatever? You know, that's military jargon, I guess.
And later these military bases and the government would change
their story. Since a little bit of foreshadowing, this is
where we can see a little bit of that telephone
game you're alluding to, Matt and how quickly things got
(10:09):
out of hand. So we said the event happened, let's
call it mid March. It did not become national news
or even general knowledge until June, when USA Today put
out a story with the headline skies phone lines light
up Arizona on their front page. Misinformation was already spreading
(10:31):
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 re enactment
of how those kind of question answers sessions can go.
So who wants to be the researcher? Who wants to
(10:52):
be the witness? 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 boom cut and that's all it takes.
The witness saw a boomerang. Yeah, exactly, because now we
(11:15):
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, beyond 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. Can I can I
(11:36):
point out really quick? I really miss headlines like skies
phones light up, Arizona. 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 very dirty punts,
but I'll send it along. The question here now becomes
(12:00):
actually happened up there twenty two years ago, Phoenix, Arizona.
We'll tell you. After a word from our sponsors. Here's
where it gets crazy. Let's roll out the theories. Guys,
(12:20):
what do you say, Let's dive into Okay, let's dive
into it UFOs. Okay. Sure. So the first thing that
we can absolutely confirm is that something that was illuminated
was in the sky on that night. Something definitely happened. Yes,
I mean for for real, Because a lot of times,
when you were thinking about these kinds of things, you
(12:41):
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 by the way of thinking
about these things. Critically, you have to question the veracity
of a witness statement. Right. Sure, in this case you
still have to do that to an extent, but you
have so many people seeing it that we can confirm
(13:01):
that something was in the sky, something occurred, and there
was video documentation and and uh photography, there were a
lot of photographs of that night. Now Here is where
we bring in our friend Kurt Russell. Okay, okay, so
on a talk show, British talk show years ago. I
think it was around the time that Guardians of the
(13:23):
Galaxy one or two was coming out. I can't remember. Okay,
so doesn't want to, 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 the presenter brings up the Phoenix Lights. He
just starts telling the story of the Phoenix Lights and
(13:44):
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,
and he tells a story about how he was taking
his son. He had just got his pilot's license. He
(14:05):
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. They're six lights. You don't have them on
your radar. Well, then that's odd. I'm just letting you know.
And then he lands and goes about his day. But
(14:29):
fairly odd that someone is prominent, as Kurt Russell ends
up being, you know, a pretty major witness to this phenomenon,
is confirmable in anyway. It is he he has talked
about it. He actually named the what is it the
call not the call sign, but the tower. It's the
tail number or whatever of the plane. Like he calls
(14:50):
out exactly what it was like. So he said he
saw the plane and could even see the tail. No,
he knew it because he was the pilot. Oh no,
his plane. Okay, that makes sense. I mean to me,
it's not that weird, because this is this is post
big trouble in Little China where everything changed for him,
(15:10):
you know, and he's just flying around and just seeing. Yeah,
I mean you're staring to 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 what
(15:36):
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. Especially
this is again important as time wound on, descriptions included
(15:59):
things 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. It reminds
me of descriptions of chariots of fire in ancient writings.
(16:20):
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. Eric von Dannikin, Yes, I love to
drop that name. It's true. Uh. For the more upologists
believe still that the story goes much deeper than the
(16:43):
two events that were reported. They often also insist the
events are either related or the same phenomenon, and that
the attempt to separate these events is either misguided or
purposefully misleading. You have oversearchers say that before the lights
were seen over Phoenix, they were spotted near Henderson, Nevada,
(17:05):
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.
Like they they saw the lights, they stopped the car,
no one said anything as they watched them in silence,
(17:25):
And then when it was over, instead of going holy smokes,
what was that, they said, all right, well, Denny's closes attend,
so get back on the road. I just want to
point out really fast that Henderson, Nevada is very close
to Las Vegas. That's on the outskirts and it's to
the north west of Phoenix, right, So like, if you're
(17:46):
imagining that line of travel down from generally Las Vegas,
it's that same direction that it was reported earlier. That's perfect.
We need to orient ourselves geographically. Let's bring in the professionals,
the the professional non governmental UFO observers. Let's let's introduce
(18:06):
move ON because they got involved in this, right, boy
do they ever? So you know how much of a
good acronym? So move ON 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. Mouf On is not
officially persuaded that this was an extraterrestrial event at all,
(18:30):
and I would think 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? Move On said, in the
form of their investigator Jim Mann, we have evidence that
it was an extremely bizarre event, but we can't put
(18:50):
a label on it other than that it was an anomaly.
Man then added, the Arizona move On investigated three 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 one thing.
(19:10):
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 Noel and myself we are not members of moved On,
(19:33):
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. We were at a god,
it wasn't that long ago. We were at move On
meeting not I don't even know what it was, was was
(19:53):
seventeen one of those years us time moves so strangely
and out. But what we saw in that meeting where
individual investigators coming up and giving the reports about all
the research they've 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
(20:16):
what they put in, but at least the people that
we witnessed, Uh, the effort is there. Yeah, and it
seemed a very productive meeting. I was I 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. Uh.
(20:37):
That was one thing I was thinking about. And I
have a question for any ethologist in the in the
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
(20:59):
investigating aations. I don't know. I don't have a I
don't have a badger in this 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
(21:19):
aren't aliens. This is just a cash grab by people
who want to build the credulous. It's much worse. These
are These are man made events, but they're not made
by the government. You recognize. They're made by a different government,
a deeper government, a deep state, something we would call
(21:40):
a new world order. Some fringe researchers active in nWo
research believe that the second event was sort of a
red herring. They claim the military at Fort Huachuka south
of Tucson, Arizona, actually dropped flares and that those created
(22:01):
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 test that created
indistinct shapes in the night sky. You love this met
via some sort of holographic projection device. Whoa, we're getting
into blue beam territory here and watch out. That is
(22:23):
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 weather
phenomenon or is a space weather phenomenon that was going
on where there was going to be a meteor shower
hail Bop, right, yeah, in a comment, and it's you know,
if they were going to do some kind of psychological research,
(22:46):
it would have been a great night to choose. That
is true. That is true. And then we bring in
the Heaven's Gate strand to this web. That is the
that is the religious movement often called a cult, uh,
that was convinced they would be able to leave their
corporeal forms and travel to their religions paradise via the
(23:09):
Hilbop comment, Uh, if they took 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 pair of governmental cabal,
(23:32):
what would you have to gain by pulling a stunt
like this? You know? Is it? Is it just bragging rights?
Walk up and kind of you know, uh, swing your
business round at the Builderberg conference. God so weird, I
can imagine. I mean, if I really put on my
tinfoil hat just to to see I can imagine it
(23:55):
being a test to see how the public is going
to react to a mass scale will um vision in
the sky like this, no matter what people are seeing
right um? If there 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? Yeah,
(24:17):
and how would we how would we propagate it most effectively?
So these are questions that currently do not have answers
everyone can agree on. We would like to point out
our Blue Beam 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
(24:39):
you think about it, especially given the recent breakthroughs in
imaging technology. But so far we have been talking primarily
about motivations or explanations that exist in the heavens. We're
going to pause for a word from our sponsor and
then turn with a bit of a more let's call
(25:02):
it an earthly explanation. Alright, 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 has reported this for
some local papers, believes that he has arrived at solid
(25:26):
explanations for both of the events over Arizona that evening. First,
that infamous V formation happened around right, so Ortega spoke
with a young man who had a ten inch dobson
Ian telescope. This kid was named Mitch Stanley. He spotted
(25:47):
the V from his backyard and he was able to
see close enough that he could discern it was a
formation of airplanes. He used a magnification of sixty x
that more or less put some sixty times closer to
the V than people who are 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.
(26:10):
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
of plane they were. There was no doubt he said
that these were definitely planes. He doubled down on that,
And if you look at some of the video footage
that was captured on that night in it looks like
(26:32):
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 are numerous videos
that you can see online of this. To me, to
my eyes, that's what it looks like. I can imagine
(26:53):
if it really were six individual planes with the wings
going out and 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 like it's connected.
And if you've got highly experienced pilots, particularly those who
were in a military flying in formation, it's going to
(27:14):
be so rigid and flying, you know, with 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. Oh yeah, totally, I can see that. I
just want to put that out there. Well, what about
the second event where Taka has an explanation for that too, right, Yeah,
(27:34):
it's true. This was seen as a string of flares
dropped by the Maryland Air and National Guard over the
North Tech Military Range and Ortega rights on this one. Uh.
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 the past directly over their heads,
(27:54):
the explanation of the flares made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
News organizations didn't differentiate between the two events or report
on the Stanley identification. That's perfect because that that's one
of the key pieces in this story. So USA Today, right,
and UH, a couple of other outlets, they just report
(28:15):
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. 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,
(28:38):
they originally said Nope, nothing to see here, move along,
mosey on down, out of the way. Uh. They later
came forward and change their story. You see, Phoenix has
two Air Force bases pretty near the city, and to
some weekly eventually broke the news that the Maryland to
Air National Guard was in Arizona for winter training and
(28:59):
they had a school out of a ten fighters over
the gunnery range that night. These fighters had dropped flares
an Arizona National Guard pr officer or Public Information Officer
p i O named Captain Eileen Biens, had determined that
the flares were dropped at get this ten pm over
(29:20):
the North Tach 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. Local governments came forward. Then incumbent Arizona Governor
Fife Symington. I love that name. Fife Symington's thought people
(29:44):
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 speech. He even had
one of his poor aides come up on stage in
an alien costume and he it's like, all right, everybody
calmed down, you know, let's just have a good time
(30:04):
out here in Arizona. But then later on a few years,
as the years passed, he pulled a total one eight.
Oh yeah. He he told the story about how, oh,
I actually saw something on that night. I was mentioning
that there's a thing called Squaw Peak there near the
(30:25):
middle of Phoenix. He's the guy at least from the
reporting that I read. He's the person who said, yes,
I saw something come over squaw Peak and it was
like that v formation. It was the lights like that
and that's right in the middle of Phoenix, in the
Phoenix area. Um, And he apologized and he was just like, hey, yeah,
um my bad. Um. The lights are a great mystery
(30:51):
that couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical,
according to his own eyewitness account of it, even though
he made fun of it. Interesting, huh, preaching to the converted,
I guess. Interesting. 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
(31:14):
and then for the next months and months and months
she was just made fun of relentlessly at her office
and in public, 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
(31:35):
out that, with a few notable exceptions, the majority of
witnesses were watching again with the naked eye stationary positions
on the ground, so they can be easily fooled into
inaccurate estimates of very important factors like size, altitude, and speed.
But for the ufologists there is one big advantage, at
(31:58):
least in terms of rhetoric argument. They can say, well,
it wouldn't be the first time that the government did
something sketchy and then lied about it. It's absolutely true. Uh,
you know. The only 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
(32:20):
driven through um Bedford, Massachusetts doesn't mean that all cars
drive through Bedford, Massachusetts. True, I'm phrasing that in an
awkward way, but but it's interesting, and now it brings
us to the conclusion we have to ask, what do
you what do you think? Let's walk through it. Let's say,
and let's just speculate here. Let's say that the most
(32:46):
out there conspiracy theories are correct that in March of
extraterrestrials or extra dimensional entities or time travelers or whatever
came to the Phoenix, Arizona area and did a flyover.
Thousands of people saw it. Why would they do that?
They didn't know where they were they were lost. They
(33:07):
were trying to find Hollywood. Um, 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?
They did a scan, they realized it was people, you know,
(33:28):
just throwing their money into slot machines, and they went, oh, geez,
that's now we're supposed to be let's keep going down
the path here. They went over Phoenix and they were
like yeah, and they kept going sorry everybody in Phoenix.
And then uh, they finally they made it down down
Mexico Way and they just stayed. They just stayed there
(33:49):
because they really liked it. I mean, you know, we've
all been there, right, Yeah, at least in the state
of mind, in the Mexico state of mind. Okay, that's
one idea on 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
(34:12):
a lot of people. We don't know for sure where
the craft originated. Nobody requested the radar information from the
f A, a 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
(34:33):
those planes came from. Outside of you know, the statements
of journalists and statements from the military, the mystery remains.
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? No?
If you are you familiar with that, it's they're generally
(34:54):
referred to as a war tog. Yeah. Have you have
you ever heard one of these? You've heard them in
military movies that I was picturing. I'm assuming Ben has
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 Aton war Hog is
(35:23):
a loud Dijet fighter plane, So look it up in
your time if you have a momentum, 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 where it was silent craft well also we have
to we have to point out that there are people
who have problems with that report to the idea that
(35:44):
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. Sometimes you're right,
you're right, you're and again we don't know. We can't
accurately judge the the altitude, right, and we all we
(36:05):
also cannot confirm whether or not it was the quote
unquote aton word hog sighting or the flair sighting because
the flares would be nice and silent. 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 the more controversial claims.
(36:28):
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. Uh. And 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. Uh, aliens are not.
(36:51):
It seems like one heck of a party, since it's
given the Valleys electronic dance music scene a signature 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. Uh.
(37:15):
And you will never see me there. Why not just
because because you're a cost dance Oh it's a it's man,
you don't have to dance. Just very Phil Collins about it. Uh. Furthermore,
regardless of what you think mundane or something more, the
Phoenix Lights have captured the imaginations of millions of people
(37:36):
over the past more than two decades, including a ton
of people in Hollywood, not just Kurt Russell. Oh sure,
I mean the phenomenon was a key plot point for
the uh hugely influential found footage horror film Phoenix Forgotten,
which at this point has has been forgotten largely. Yeah,
I I die. I was not aware of it in
(37:57):
the first one. Did you guys see it? I have
not seen it. I've got apparently can last year. 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. Found footage films are so tricky.
Blair which was great, Chronicle was great. If you remember
(38:18):
that one, that's where the kids get destructive telekinetic powers
from uh object from space. I actually haven't seen that one,
and it's been on my watch list for I don't
even know how many years. 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 have
(38:41):
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, Arizona has the
highest number of UFO sightings per capita in the entire
or United States of America. So if there's anything uh where,
(39:06):
if there's any situation where something like the Phoenix Lights
would occur again, it would be Arizona statistically. 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 and other reporting if you search for for her
(39:27):
Lynn Katai again. Um k I T E I I believe, Yes,
it's some interesting stuff. I don't know. We'd love to
know what you think, so find us talk to us
on Facebook. We are at Conspiracy Stuff and we have
a page they're called Here's where it Gets Crazy, where
you can talk about this episode and any other episode.
(39:49):
You can give us suggestions for future topics, anything you
want us to talk about. They do us thing for us.
I would really appreciate if you go to whatever podcast
platform a choice that you can se whom this show
on and leave us a nice review, especially Apple Podcast,
because that's a big helpful way for people to discover
the show. You can also find us on our personal
(40:12):
instagrams or Twitter. I am at then Buland on Instagram
and at then Bolland h s W on Twitter, and
you can find me on Instagram at how Now Noel
Brown And just to remember something here in my notes
that I just didn't even look at that Phoenix City
councilwoman or former Phoenix City councilwoman. Her name was Francis
(40:33):
Barwood and she was She was the first public official
to actually discuss the Phoenix Lights in a public setting
where she literally was just like, hey, so what was
that thing? And know what what is it? And the
council people around her, we're making fun of her and
all those things. Anyway, you can look it up, you
can learn more, go ahead and do it. If you
don't want to do any of that stuff, well you
(40:54):
can also can you can you call a number? We
have a number, don't Yes, it is one three three
std W I t K. You don't like using phones,
Maybe you exist in some sort of cloud of sentient Google.
Google can exist in cloud form um. Then you could
probably still find your way into writing an email. There
must be a way. We are conspiracy at i heart
(41:17):
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know
(41:38):
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more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
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