The Phoenix Lights

On the evening of March 13, 1997, two distinct events occurred over Arizona. First, from roughly 7:30 to 8:45 p.m., witnesses from Prescott through Phoenix to Tucson reported a huge, silent, V-shaped formation of lights, many describing a single solid craft blotting out stars. Second, around 10 p.m., a string of bright lights appeared to hover over Phoenix's southwestern horizon and was widely filmed. The second event matches military flares dropped over a training range. The first has no confirmed explanation. The case is among the largest mass sightings in modern American history.

Reports of the V began near Henderson, Nevada and tracked southeast across Arizona over about an hour, consistent with a slow-moving formation or object on a north-south course. Witnesses in the thousands described five to seven lights in a V or boomerang, silent, enormous, and low. Some saw distinct lights in formation; others insisted on a single dark mass with lights embedded, including witnesses who watched stars disappear behind it.

At about 10 p.m., a separate arc of lights appeared over the Estrella Mountains southwest of the city and slowly sank. This is the footage most news coverage used. The Air National Guard later confirmed that A-10 aircraft from the Maryland Guard, operating in the Barry M. Goldwater Range, dropped long-burning LUU-2 flares at that time and place. Analyses matching the lights' disappearance to the mountain ridgeline support the flare identification for this event.

Governor Fife Symington mocked the affair at a press conference with a costumed alien. Ten years later he stated he had personally witnessed the V and believed it was a craft of unknown origin.

Thousands of witnesses, including pilots, police, and the sitting governor. Councilwoman Frances Barwood pressed for an investigation and got none. Researcher Lynne Kitei documented the events for years.

Extensive witness testimony and multiple videos, nearly all of the 10 p.m. flare event. The V event produced few usable images: a handful of stills and video of lights whose spacing changes, consistent with independent objects in formation.

No agency investigated the V. Luke Air Force Base stated no unusual radar targets were recorded. The flare explanation for the 10 p.m. event came from the Guard itself.

Skeptics attribute the 10 p.m. event conclusively to flares and the earlier V to a formation of aircraft, most often cited as A-10s in transit at altitude, with the "single craft" perception explained by the brain's tendency to connect lights into an object against a dark desert sky. Changing light spacing in the video supports separate aircraft. Proponents respond that no squadron has ever been identified for the V corridor's timing, that thousands of close witnesses described a structure occluding stars at low altitude, and that a governor of the state says he saw it too. The two-event structure means both sides are partly right about "the Phoenix Lights," which is why the case never resolves.