Phoenix Lights
A mass sighting of a light formation crossed Arizona.
1997 CE · 33.45, -112.07 · status: disputed
The account
Thousands, including the state's governor, saw lights; two events are conflated — a V-formation and later high-altitude lights.
The sceptical view
The later lights were flares dropped on a military range; the earlier V remains debated.
The researched reading
A genuine mass sighting of two different things: military flares and an earlier formation that fits aircraft. Thousands of witnesses make it real, but not necessarily anomalous.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 50% | Two events were merged. The 10 p.m. lights over the Estrellas match LUU-2 illumination flares dropped by Maryland Air National Guard A-10s on the Barry Goldwater Range, and they set behind the mountains as flares do; the earlier V was seen by an amateur astronomer through a telescope as separate aircraft flying in formation. |
| Undetermined | 14% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 11% | People routinely ‘join the dots’ of a light formation into a single solid object, and later media coverage fused two different events and inflated the size and silence of the ‘craft’. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 10% | Some witnesses, including then-governor Fife Symington, describe a vast solid craft blotting out stars, which ordinary formation flights do not fully explain. |
| Secret human technology | 9% | The aircraft flying the V have never been named; a military formation flight without lights visible from below remains possible. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 3% | Thousands of independent reports rule out a hoax of the original sighting, though some later videos were misattributed. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | A slow, silent formation crossing the whole state does not resemble any known unusual natural light. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 1% | No weather or atmospheric effect is a good match. |
Official position: The US Air Force attributed the later lights to flares dropped during a training exercise; no official explanation was given for the earlier V-formation.
How the account grew
Two separate sets of lights over Arizona on 13 March 1997 merged in popular memory into one vast silent craft. Reporting tied them to A-10 formations and flares, while the governor turned from mocking the reports to saying he had seen something otherworldly.
| Year | Who | Added |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Witnesses from Nevada to Tucson; the Ley family | A V or carpenter's-square shape with five lights passes slowly overhead around 8 pm; around 10 pm a row of brilliant lights hangs over Phoenix and is widely filmed. |
| 1997 | Gov. Fife Symington | A press conference where an aide appears in an alien costume. |
| 1997 | The Arizona Republic | Reports in July that a Maryland Air National Guard unit dropped flares that night; an amateur astronomer had seen individual aircraft through a telescope. |
| 2000 | Maryland Air National Guard history | Names the 104th Fighter Squadron as responsible for the 10 pm lights. |
| 2007 | Fife Symington; Lt. Col. Ed Jones | Symington says he saw an enormous craft and kept silent to avoid panic; a pilot confirms flying in the flare-dropping formation. New lights that February are attributed to F-16 flares. (dropped: The governor's earlier mockery.) |
| 2008 | Phoenix residents; police helicopter | Another round of lights is shown to be flares tied to helium balloons released by a resident. |
| 2017 | Phoenix Forgotten | One of several found-footage and horror films (2007 to 2025) drawing on the event; skeptics also float an experimental V-shaped airship. |
Connections in the atlas
- The 2008 Phoenix lights hoax
- ? What were the Phoenix Lights?
- Edgar Mitchell
- Leone Jensen at the Hotel San Carlos
- Tinley Park lights