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Ancient peoples around the world have reported unidentified lights in the sky for thousands of years. The ancients believed that the gods themselves came down and visited them on a regular basis. Native Americans in Arizona were no different. These interactions were memorialized in petroglyphs and through oral traditions preserved as myths and legends. It is only when humans achieved high altitude flight that visits from the gods became visits by Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
On March 13, 1997, Arizona experienced one of the
largest mass UFO sightings in history, the so-called Phoenix Lights. Lights
of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people during a three-hour
period, over a distance of three hundred miles stretching, from
the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. There
were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of
lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in
the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force identified the second
group of lights as flares dropped by military aircraft. The
initial sightings remain unexplained.
The first call came from a retired police officer in Paulden, Arizona, a
small town about two hours north of Phoenix at approximately 7pm. After that, calls began pouring into
television stations and the police. The
reports were unanimous on several key points: there was a triangular craft that
was enormous (some witnesses described it as a mile wide), it was totally
silent, it moved slowly, and it often stopped to hover.
A drawing of the object created by witness Tim Ley appeared in USA Today
The Governor’s office was besieged with
calls, especially after a USA Today
article in June brought international attention to the incident. To stem a mounting sense of panic in the
state, Governor Fife Symington held a
press conference during which he claimed to have “found who was responsible”
for the lights. Symington then brought
in his chief of staff dressed in an alien costume, handcuffed and looking
contrite. Crisis averted. Ten years later, however, Symington confessed
before the National Press Club, that he had pulled this stunt only to avert
public panic. He said that he himself
had seen the object and that it was, “enormous
and inexplicable.”
The Great UFO Secret (Six Short Stories of First Contact)
Legends of the Superstition Mountains
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