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