Unknown Phenomena

The Phoenix Lights: Arizona's Massive 1997 UFO Sighting

On the evening of March 13, 1997, the skies above Arizona became the stage for one of the most widely witnessed unexplained events in American history. Between approximately 7:30 and 10:30 PM Mountain Standard Time, thousands of people — from the Nevada border south through Phoenix and onward to the outskirts of Tucson, a span of roughly 300 miles — looked up and saw something they could not explain. Some witnessed a massive V-shaped or boomerang-shaped formation of amber lights gliding silently overhead, so large that witnesses estimated it stretched anywhere from several hundred yards to a mile or more across. Others saw a stationary row of brilliant orbs hovering above the mountains south of Phoenix, captured on video by dozens of camcorder-wielding residents. The object — or objects — moved without sound, without visible means of propulsion, and without any immediately obvious explanation. Within hours, switchboards at police departments, radio stations, and newsrooms were jammed. Within days, the event had been christened the Phoenix Lights, and a debate was born that continues to this day: what did the people of Arizona actually see that night?

Phoenix, Arizona in March 1997 was a rapidly growing metropolis of approximately 1.2 million people, sprawled across the Sonoran Desert beneath some of the clearest skies in the continental United States. The evening of March 13 was clear and mild — ideal conditions for stargazing and, as it turned out, for witnessing whatever passed through those skies. Arizona was home to major military installations including Luke Air Force Base west of Phoenix and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, as well as the vast Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in southern Arizona, a military training area stretching across more than 2,700 square miles of desert. The state’s military presence was well known to its residents, many of whom were accustomed to seeing fighter jets and training exercises in the sky. Whatever happened that evening, it was not immediately dismissed by a population unfamiliar with aerial activity — which makes the universal bewilderment of the witnesses all the more striking.

One of the most important — and often overlooked — facts about the Phoenix Lights is that the event actually consisted of two distinct phenomena that occurred on the same evening, separated by time and by character. Conflating the two has been the source of enormous confusion. The first event was the V-shaped formation, sighted between approximately 7:30 and 8:30 PM, beginning near the Nevada border and moving steadily south-southeast across the entire state. Witnesses in Henderson, Nevada reported seeing a group of six to ten amber or orange lights in a V-formation at approximately 7:55 PM. From there, the formation was reported in Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Dewey in north-central Arizona around 8:15 PM, then over the Phoenix metropolitan area between approximately 8:30 and 8:45 PM, and finally continuing south toward Tucson. The entire traverse covered roughly 300 miles and lasted approximately three hours. Witnesses consistently described the lights as moving silently, without engine noise, and many reported that the formation appeared to be a solid object — a dark, triangular or V-shaped craft that blocked out the stars as it passed overhead.

The second event occurred later, between approximately 8:30 and 10:00 PM, and was witnessed primarily in the Phoenix area. This consisted of a series of stationary or near-stationary lights — typically described as between six and nine brilliant orbs — that appeared to hover in a curved or arched formation over the Sierra Estrella mountain range south of Phoenix. Unlike the V-formation, these lights did not move across the sky; they appeared, remained visible for a period, and then winked out one by one. Critically, these lights were captured on video by multiple witnesses, providing the most widely circulated visual evidence of the evening. The two events — the transiting V-formation and the stationary Phoenix lights — have very different characteristics and very different possible explanations.

The witnesses to the V-shaped formation constitute a remarkable cross-section of Arizona society: police officers, physicians, pilots, teachers, retirees, and families. In Prescott Valley, callers began flooding emergency lines at approximately 8:17 PM, describing a cluster of reddish-orange lights in a V- or chevron-shaped formation. Witnesses described the formation as enormous — some estimated it was the size of multiple football fields — and moving slowly and silently. A former police officer from Paulden, Arizona, driving north at approximately 8:15 PM, reported seeing a cluster of reddish-orange lights comprising four lights together and a fifth trailing behind. In Phoenix, witnesses who were outside on the clear March evening looked up and saw the V-formation pass directly overhead. Many reported that the lights were not individual points but appeared to be attached to or embedded in a large, dark, solid structure — and that as this structure passed between them and the stars, the stars disappeared from view and then reappeared once the object had passed, strongly suggesting a single, massive object rather than a group of independent lights.

Skeptics have proposed that the V-formation was simply a flight of military aircraft flying in a triangular pattern. Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer observing the sky that night through a telescope, reported seeing what appeared to be individual aircraft — possibly military planes flying in formation. His observation has been cited by skeptics as evidence that the V-formation was nothing more than conventional aircraft misidentified by witnesses unfamiliar with nocturnal aerial formations. However, proponents of the unexplained interpretation counter that the absence of engine noise — consistently reported by witnesses across hundreds of miles — is inconsistent with conventional aircraft, particularly the number of planes that would be required to produce a formation a mile or more across. Among the most prominent witnesses was Dr. Lynne Kitei, a Phoenix physician who reported seeing the lights on multiple occasions beginning in 1995 — two years before the famous March 1997 event. Kitei photographed and filmed the lights, compiled witness testimony, and eventually produced a documentary film arguing that the phenomenon represented something genuinely anomalous.

In June 1997, the United States Air Force released an official statement attributing the stationary Phoenix lights (the second event) to A-10 Warthog aircraft from the Maryland Air National Guard’s 175th Wing, which were conducting training exercises at the Barry M. Goldwater Range as part of Operation Snowbird. According to the Air Force, the A-10s dropped LUU-2B/B illumination flares — parachute-suspended magnesium flares that burn at approximately 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for up to five minutes while descending slowly. Because the flares were dropped over the Goldwater Range, approximately 60-70 miles southwest of Phoenix, the Sierra Estrella mountain range between the range and the city would have been invisible in the darkness, making the flares appear to hover in the sky when viewed from Phoenix. As each flare burned out, it would wink out abruptly — consistent with the video evidence. The Air Force explanation is widely accepted for the second event but does not address the first event, the V-shaped formation seen earlier over northern Arizona.

Perhaps the most extraordinary chapter in the Phoenix Lights story involves Fife Symington III, the Governor of Arizona in 1997, who was himself a witness to the event. In the days following the March 13 sighting, Symington held a press conference that became infamous: to lighten the mood — or, depending on one’s perspective, to ridicule the witnesses — Symington had a member of his staff dressed in an alien costume paraded before the cameras. For a decade, Symington maintained the public position that the Phoenix Lights were nothing to worry about. Then, in 2007, Symington stunned the UFO research community by publicly admitting that he had personally witnessed the V-shaped formation on the night of March 13, 1997. “I’m a pilot,” he told reporters, “and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen.” He called the object “otherworldly” and expressed regret for his earlier mockery. Symington’s testimony was particularly significant because of his credibility: as both a sitting governor and an experienced pilot, he was not a witness who could be easily dismissed.

The Phoenix Lights did not occur in isolation. Between 1989 and 1990, thousands of people in Belgium — including police officers, military personnel, and air traffic controllers — reported seeing enormous triangular or V-shaped craft flying silently at low altitude over the Belgian countryside. The Belgian UFO wave was officially investigated by the Belgian Air Force, which scrambled F-16 fighter jets to intercept the objects on several occasions and publicly acknowledged that it could not identify the craft. The similarity between the Belgian triangular craft and the object reported over Arizona in 1997 is striking: both were described as enormous, silent, V-shaped or triangular, and equipped with bright lights. Other similar mass sightings include the 1942 Battle of Los Angeles, in which anti-aircraft batteries fired on an unidentified object over Los Angeles, and the 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, in which unidentified radar returns were tracked over the U.S. Capitol. The recurrence of large, triangular, silent craft in mass sightings across decades and continents suggests either a pattern of misidentification or a pattern of genuine phenomena that has yet to be officially acknowledged.

The Phoenix Lights remain what they have always been: two events, one partially explained, one not explained at all. The stationary lights over Phoenix at 10:00 PM have been convincingly attributed to LUU-2 flares dropped by A-10 Warthogs on the Barry M. Goldwater Range — an explanation supported by timing, trajectory, video analysis, and official Air Force confirmation. But the V-shaped formation that traversed 300 miles of Arizona between 7:30 and 8:30 PM remains unexplained. Hundreds of witnesses — including experienced pilots, police officers, and the Governor of Arizona — described a massive, silent object that blocked out the stars as it passed. No aircraft formation has been conclusively identified as the source. The consistency of the witness accounts, spanning hundreds of miles and multiple communities, makes mass hallucination or collective misidentification an unsatisfying explanation. Something flew over Arizona on March 13, 1997, that thousands of people saw and that nobody has adequately explained. The lights have faded from the sky. But they have not faded from the mystery.