The Phoenix Lights: Unravelling the Greatest UFO Mystery in History

Hello everybody welcome back to another brand new episode of decoding the unknown as always I am your decoder Simon say one of my writers in this case Katie's roommate script the Phoenix Lights unraveling the greatest UFO mystery what the greatest mystery it's it's Roz well roswell's not really a mystery is it because then weren't the CIA like yeah it's a weather balloon and then they were like all right all right it's plates it's secret spy planes okay you know what it's not aliens it's never aliens um okay well maybe this is the greatest like mystery because the mystery is I've never heard of it hilarious let's just jump in oh oh my God Simon We may have hit the motherload with this one that we haven't Katie odds of me being convinced about UFOs by the end of this video about point four percent I'd say but as always like Fox Boulder I want to believe I do want to believe I believe I do absolutely believe in aliens I think there are aliens out there probably a lot of them do I believe that they have come to Earth and intervened interfered in like our Affairs or have any interest in US whatsoever no no we're like ants today we're like an amoeba like they are no interest in us I think you and I are on the same page and we accept that there must be other forms of intelligent life out there in the vast expand of expansive space somewhere yes but these other forms of life do not regularly pop down so jolly old Earth too for example a build the pyramids B kidnap some yokels from her apparent reason other than anal probing see aimly brobe some crack cows D scoop up boats and Blades of the Bermuda Triangle yeah it's like all right so the aliens yeah they're super intelligent aliens that have built some sort of magical faster than light ship right and they come to Earth and all they want to do is look at our bottoms they're like I wonder what's in that hole [Music] said what what and Inlet I said what what in the butt I said what what in the body and then they go inside they're like oh dude no like why would they do this I think it's just people who like having their butts touched or something and they're like oh you know people who go to the hospital say well how did that bottle get up there sir sat on it that I did somebody it was aliens I think we can also agree that some other forms of life may be many times more advanced than us humans either due to the fact that their civilizations have millions of years jump on us or that we're actually just a bit crap in comparison taking this as a possibility it's also therefore possible that other life forms or aliens have actually taken time out of their busy schedules to cruise by the little blue planet to see what's going on yeah maybe maybe that's happened maybe they've cruised buying their ships in my life boring let's not look inside their bottoms people have been spotting UFOs for time and Memorial mainly because UFO does not mean alien players not flying saucer it simply means unidentified flying object which could mean anything that the viewer doesn't recognize in that moment it could be a plane a balloon a weird cloud formation the planet Venus or even just optical illusions due to light reflecting off of something it could be even you know you get those sometimes when you like screw your eyes up really hard and you see some crazy stuff or you get those things that float by in front of your eyes like the little eye floaters that's more likely to be a UFO isn't it the massive majority of UFO sighting can be explained and proven to be very much of this world and even if they can't there's generally not any photographic or video evidence to back up a witness's claim so we really only have their word for it so let's now jump into the event commonly referred to as the Phoenix Lights where not only is there photographic and video evidence the event was also witnessed by hundreds if not thousands of people oh I have heard of this and it is quite good it really is quite good but I remember not being convinced by the end of it is there an on-planet explanation for what all these people saw well let's find out the Phoenix Lights cast your minds back to March 1997. do you remember what you're up to no I was like 10. March 1997. I was in year five of primary school I don't even remember the name of my teacher so no I don't remember what was happening on March 60 that was probably in school sorry just March I don't know where I got the 16th from um I was probably in school probably a bit bored we're doing maths or something I was 16 and freshly released from dental and Optical social hell what was that ah I see my braces had come off and I had swapped dorky NHS glasses for contact lenses so I was entering my heartbreaker phase if I had bothered to spend much time looking up into the night sky I would have would I have noticed anything strange probably not even now the only constellation I know is Orion's Belt yeah Ryan's belt's easy and what's the other is it the Big Dipper I know it's got a more like official name but the one that kind of looks like a big saucepan that's the one I know and there's also one that looks like a w and I'm always like ah the consolation of Whistler and anyway I lived in burbsville Surrey never heard of burbs oh like suburbs suburbs bill so light pollution and a general lack of anything interesting ever happened but paid to any extraterrestrial encounters uh we live less than half an hour from Heathrow Airport to a Concord going over was about the only thing of note in those days things were different across the pond in Arizona however yeah can you guys hear that can you guys hear that Drilling in the background it's driving me absolutely potty it's not showing up on my audio meter at all so I guess not but it is loud and it is the third time in two years that my neighbors are having some sort of construction and it drives me absolutely batty like fully batty all day just these drilling sounds through the walls and I'm trying to make videos and I'm trying to concentrate on stuff and it's like I'm quite busy and it's just really annoying [Music] to note that while sightings of strange lights started in Nevada and where even later seen in Mexico were refer to the events on March the 13th 1997 as the Phoenix Lights as that's what it's already commonly known as so why make things hard for ourselves to be honest no one is completely sure whether this was one event or several different ones so the umbrella term of Phoenix light seems to cover everything on March the 13th 1997 a mass sighting of a UFO event to quote Dr Lin katai gold thank you sorry key tie Katie's included a pronunciation guide for me thank you who will pop up more later it was quotes and in all caps the most witness most documented most credible and most important Mass UFO UAP sighting in modern history what is UAP oh it stands for unidentified aerial phenomena by the way just using that all caps what was your name you're a doctor though I don't know what a DOT you're a doctor of when I was at school we had all these prospectuses which are these things you get you know when you're going to University and this was in the past but this was probably around 2005 I think when I was leaving school and they had like um all of these different you know what you can study at different universities and we found that you can study to be doctor of guitar and so for the longest time it was just that I want you a doctor of doctor of guitar was like this joke a school and in retrograde it sounds super lame but we thought it was very funny at the time that people could be doctors of guitar so that's a little big setup for the joke Lynn what are you a doctor of guitar ah God it's not funny at all it's just cringe starting at around 7 30 PM people started seeing strange Amber lights in the sky these lights were large round were witnessed traveling Southeast from Henderson Nevada over Rocky and mountainous terrain towards Phoenix Arizona the number of Lights have seen varied but there were at least five with one leading and two on each side forming a v wedge Boomerang or triangle shape some witnesses also saw two smaller lights trailing at the rear of the V docking and undocking from the main formation the lights out position relative to each other giving the impression that they were all part of one enormous flying object potentially up to a mile wide oh my Lord but this is happening at night and immediately a man wasn't just a bunch of airplanes isn't it all flying in I don't know can they fly in formation yeah of course they can we've all seen it many times and they also have lights on them some witnesses confirmed that stars couldn't be seen between the lights meaning that they would joined together by some kind of structure now it doesn't mean that if there's a bright light like I'm looking into this very bright light that lights up my studio right now every everything around me is dark for the TV up there um because I'm looking at a very bright light but when I look at where I can see like oh no my office is illuminated because that's how Optics work smart other people confirm that they actually saw a boomerang or v-shaped craft the lights moved silently and extremely slowly sometimes flying no more than 100 feet or so above people who happen to be outside whoa okay Witnesses agree that the lights were self-contained and not shining down like spotlights people then reported the craft or lights zooming off at top speed as the lights continued towards the more populated areas of Arizona more and more calls started coming into 911 operators later in the evening going on for 10 pm hundreds of people saw several orbs in the sky now generally described as bright or brilliant lights in a row they were higher up than they had been reported over Nevada and Northern Arizona earlier in the evening these lights appeared one by one and were visible for over 20 minutes holding position and altitude before eventually disappearing in a different order a first while there was little local press about it not much air time was given to the phenomenon but with so many people unsure about what they had seen Phoenix councilwoman Francis Barr would eventually started bringing it up in City Council meetings ostensibly as a public safety issue through her surprise nobody seemed remotely interested in talking about the strange lights in the meeting and according to barwood in the 2005 documentary The Phoenix light she was approached by a city manager after the meeting who said you shouldn't have asked that question oh my yeah but is there any record of that or is this just one woman's story was a city manager for the CIA or something he's a city manager is that important it's not a mayor or something is it may as important Mayors do anything or do they show up to like a groundhog out of a hole and tell people where the wind is coming what does a mayor do I don't even know yeah yeah I don't know man barwood was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery now especially as she had the backing of hundreds of Phoenix residents who were still calling confirming what they had seen and asking questions as might be expected however barwood was quickly made a laughing stock both in the council offices and in the Press cardoon was printed with a light switch on her forehead with the caption those mysterious lights over Phoenix they're on but nobody's home barwood is also shown wearing an i heart UFOs badge and say an assigned saying Francis Emma stopped the cover-up barwood she was also subjected to workplace bullying with colleagues already giving out business cards with their name on it and speak to the tin foil I will hear you printed on them people are a bit harsh though aren't they although if you're like everyone's people so many people saw this right if there was such a like 100 belief in these lights rather than people just thinking it's silly they wouldn't be they wouldn't be making fun of her would they they'd be like oh no she's just like really into getting to the truth and all of the rest of us are just like can we just come with our jobs please the aliens if they came they have gone I mean come on haven't these people got anything better to do yeah it does seem a bit harsh from her colleagues like chill out guys it's okay Daddy chill all she's doing is looking out for the Public's interest she even wrote a letter to then Senator John McCain asking for an investigation to be carried out he passed a request on to the National Archives but didn't state that it was a councilwoman who was asking only parted on as a concern coming from a constituent also anything sent to the National Archives has just filed away not investigated so nothing happens sounds like John McCain did exactly the thing that this dude it's like okay okay you have definitely going to uh I'm sending that to the National Archives they look right into that they're definitely not going to Archive it away in a hole I'd never look at it again Air Force had no interest in launching an investigation and eventually in June the governor ran at Arizona 5 Simington held a press conference saying that they get to the bottom of the mysterious light later on the same day he called another press conference to close down the story oh that is suspicious though isn't it old saving to the Eli we're definitely going to look into this bring bring hello Fife it's the CIA here it does feel like he got shut down by the government right because if this was aliens the government's not shutting him down they're like okay we're looking to the alien thing okay five have a great day but if it's something the CIA was up to or the Air Force well you know like some secret government [ __ ] then they're very likely to give the governor a call and be like listen Fife um we're not going to threaten you it's just like you need to do us a favor because we're the cim will destroy your family don't make me destroy you saying that they found the culprit he brought out someone dressed in a space alien suit that the cia's idea just to confirm this was a joke and not a real alien they took the costumes at or revealing aside disheveled and probably quite swear to human inside you're the governor of a state what are you doing spending you're not a mayor I know what I say I know what Governors do I really don't know what Governors do but look I know Governor's important because it's like you're like the president of a state right and States like isn't California like the sixth largest economy in the world or something I don't know about Arizona as far as I know they may iced tea so they're probably not like that but still I know it's important I know you're like the chief you're the big wig wait is the senator the bigwig oh I don't know Americans your system's very complicated but look I'm sure unlike the mayor of a town you have something better to do Fife Simington said this just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious the audience laughs and that's basically the end of it this made barwood pretty pissed off as it seemed like it was not only making fun of her personally but also of what she estimates to be around 10 000 people who saw the strange lights and had been contacting her ever since she started asking questions while the story was now global news it always just ended with a bit of a shrug on anniversaries of the event the same old Witnesses regularly pop up again but even though this is the longest lasting UFO ever events on record also seen by the most amount of people it's just sort of been put quietly to the side so are all these people Kooks did they see something explainable but top secret oh I wasn't anyone in the media investigating and the answer is the answer actually quite disappointing love it foreshadowing there Casey is it is it gonna be disappointing is it is an episode of decoding the unknown gonna have a disappointing end my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined where it turns out that it's not you know a monster or it's like Scooby-Doo it's always a man in a mask it's decoding the unknown it's always not [ __ ] aliens explanations all right let's look at this sensibly it's probably the military doing some military stuff Arizona is a well-known hotbed of extraterrestrial activity just look at Travis Walton abduction story although the state is only about number seven in the list of U.S states for UFO sightings oh there you go California is first by Ma followed perhaps unsurprisingly by Florida and per capita because I imagine about four people live in Arizona I just like if you showed me a map of America don't know where Arizona is it could be next to Florida it could be next to um hmm oh what's that state in the top left of Washington state it could be like up there it could be bottom left California it could be there it could be close to like Vegas or it could be in the top right and I have no idea what that top right kind of state is because when you look at a Bank of America of the states they all get really big out west and you've got that like north east corner which looks like I don't know if they took one Texas and divided it up into like 50 difference not 50. but like 20 different states maybe Vermont just taking a great taking a guess you know there's people out there if you play that Geo guess again and they could be like I don't even know where Arizona is and then and then someone would be like doing the Geo guesser and which is a game where it drops you into Google Street View somewhere in the world and you have to guess where you are and people do it and they get it within miles like super close and within seconds and they're like uh yeah I'm in Argentina I'm near this town because I know the name of that town or like the Street paintings you know the the lines on the street or like this in Argentina or that's an Argentinian post box like that these people are wild it's so impressive sorry that was a bit of a tangent next as well as being large population centers meaning that there's more people to log reports Bingo both also have space four spaces that's a relatively new thing isn't it meaning that while a lot of things in the sky might be unidentifiable to the general public they're probably just rocket satellite space debris or other stuff connected to launching things into the air there isn't a space force base in Arizona or Nevada though so we might be able to rule that out also if the lights were a string of satellites or something like that it would also been easy to check and confirm but this was never given as a serious explanation while they were really close to the ground weren't they didn't they say there was like 100 feet and I know judging distance can be incredibly challenging um but it's definitely not satellites because they're really far away what Arizona does have however in close proximity to where the lights were seen is an airport the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport no less and the Luke Air Force Base which has been used as a pilot training base for many years which comes complete with various large training ranges so let's start here in search for answers about the Phoenix Lights the March 1997 sightings weren't even the first time lights like this have been seen in the area two years prior in 1995 Dr Lynn kitai took photos of glowing Amber lights in front of South Mountain in Arizona in just two months before the main event she saw a line of three lights and a line of six more above them or your basic point-and-click cameras weren't up to much in the mid 90s the photo she caught bore a resemblance of a slightly fuzzy one to the lights that later appeared in March intrigued she placed a call to the local babe to see if they were interested in the story or if they knew of anything happening that could explain the lights she'd seen there probably are a bloody Dr Kita again right to me it's like people who email me and they'll write me over and over again asking me to cover like oh my God can you cover this it's amazing and I'll click on something you know we like there's a conspiracy website or something but people just like they'll be like hello Simon have you have you got my emails have you thoughts about covering this because I keep emailing and you don't get back to me and I never see this appear on any of your channels and it's like what the [ __ ] do you think I am what why'd you have some expectation that I'm gonna cover your crazy story leave me the [ __ ] alone how'd you get my email they said no one had called about anything like that even though she had the previous night well they're probably like yeah we're ignoring the call that you made because we're talking to you you know you made that call it's not like some suspicious cover-up they suggested calling Luke Air Force Base a sensible idea kitai says that the base denied doing anything the night before practically before she'd even finished asking yeah because they're the military they're like wait you'll be like hello ring ring is that the military were you up to anything last night are they like no thank you like why would they say Yes And even if they say yes they're not going to give you any information why would they instead they pointed her to Sky Harbor Airport another imminently sensible suggestion she called there and eventually got through to someone in air traffic control who confirmed that people were working there the previous night and they had seen some strange lights in the sky but these lights had not appeared on their Radars when Kita excitedly asked of the lights have been the man just said beats me and that was the end of it yeah because I'm sure they see weird stuff all the time and they're like oh it's just probably like maybe it was one of those glowing blood bugs that was really close to the Tower or something you know blah blah blah there's always some that for people who see these all the time and like the pilots who are up there and they see those streaks of light or whatever they're always like yeah it's just some normal [ __ ] it happens it happens so were the lights really like everyone says they were also we're talking about two different things here the v-shaped craft with lights that flew over Witnesses and the line of orblights over Phoenix unfortunately or maybe rather conveniently no photos or video were taken of the boomerang or v-shaped craft although all Witnesses described it in almost exactly the same way when kitai took her first video of a line of Lights in front of the mountain she talked about them being large but you don't really get a sense of that in the footage she explained this by saying quote the video doesn't do it justice in real life they're huge they're Amber there's no flaring they're like a ball on the video they flicker they're white they're much smaller but nonetheless the formations themselves are compelling so uh hmm okay Lynn yeah this is one of those things it's like yeah when you film stuff it's like it doesn't always look like it does in real life and I don't know sometimes it's like it does appear a bit more rubbish doesn't it than it actually is but then like for example the moon always looks massive but then you took a photo take a photo of it looks small because it's just an optical illusion it looking massive because comparing it to the horizon line when it's in a photo it's uh it's small because it's like I I don't know the reason but you all know the optical illusion right so going back to the slow flying craft some witnesses reported seeing the underside of it as it went over them and that it had an iridescent undulating look surely something that size and shape with no visible means of propulsion must be from another world right well let's take a quick reality check secret military Tech ah you can never really truly rule out top secret operations of course there's of course there's no way to prove this but you can bet your backside that the US military is testing out all kinds of tech at any given time without letting Joe public know what's happening yeah it's why they have that thing called the black budget where billions isn't it like hundreds of billions of dollars just get put into and no one knows what they're doing with it they're making cool [ __ ] all the time which leads to like stealth aircraft and all of that cool technology that the military now has Jesus that drilling is driving same I know you guys can't hear it somehow through the miracle of Technology but I'm trying to like read this and it's just constantly like I'll just be reading and it'll be like and you're like oh that's not distracting at all right now it's just it just interrupts my thoughts all the time oh my God it's I don't know what to do I've got a headache the size of Nebraska let's go next we're gonna have a shout at them how long are you doing this boy you must be able to hear that surely we know the v-shaped craft couldn't possibly have been a plane or helicopter but what about something like an Airship well that makes sense and it would be very quiet as well wouldn't it a really massive helium-filled Airship shaped like an arrowhead or wedge that would Glide nicely through the air with minimal sound and who knows how big we could build one probably not a mile wide that's just impractical but something big enough to really impress on Lookers below as we don't know exactly how high the thing was flying it's hard to be able to gauge the size of it accurately and there is no known photo or video of the flying craft why not though there were tens of thousands of people who said they saw this 1997 there were there were definitely video cameras like not everyone had them on their phone obviously but I've got holiday videos and me as a kid well before 1997. why would it be flying so low though maybe it was being tested and it was not responding to controls properly maybe it was actually the shadow of the Airship that people saw although it was in the evening so Shadows are on likely but if it's not that it still has to be something to do the military right like something top secret that they wouldn't want to give away merely to aswaj hundreds of eyewitness reports pointing out that they'd seen something well but unexpectedly the official explanation for the Phoenix Lights is somewhat prosaic and homegrown with not even a spy balloon in sight operation Snowbird it turns out that what people were seeing was not in fact one enormous alien spacecraft the size of more than 10 Boeing jumbo Jets put wing dip to wingtip it was of course a military training operation called operation Snowbird in which five planes A-10 Jets to be precise to Fairchild Republic 8 and Thunderbolt 2s nicknamed warthogs to be even more precise were flying in formation towards Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson yep that's what I'm thinking formation flying that's how it works later the line of bright orbs witnessed over Phoenix at around 10 pm where actually military lu2 illumination flares dropped from Planes at a great height of 15 000 feet or 4.5 kilometers the flares were attached to small Parish shoots meaning that it looked like they hung in the air for some time before they disappeared it was just the flares were falling behind the mountain or going out the operation was run by Maryland Air National Guard out of Tucson Air Force Base accounting for the question of why nothing appeared to be on the books from the Luke Air Force Base for that night there's as they were not flying through any restricted airspace they weren't flagged as anything particularly unusual an amateur astronomer looking through a telescope the night of March 13th spotted a formation of 15 planes over Scottsdale Arizona with each light being a pair of lights on the tip of each plane so there you go Phoenix Lights explained boom done oh yeah and that's a wrap so wait why are we only halfway through this script very curious but hold your horses viewers listeners people shouting from the rooftops that this is just a cover-up I called this the official explanation and to be honest I'm not convinced don't worry we're not at the end of the story yet and we're not the sort of people just to let a hazy government stay to statement put us off digging a little bit deeper so well here is the rub the rub on the face of it planes and players are a boring but sort of expected answer this sort of thing there are many odd points of the story though that makes it sound less convincing as it goes on for one the Phoenix Lights event happened in mid-march 97 yet it wasn't until July four months later the captain Eileen beans of the Arizona Air National Guard finally had enough of all the UFO nonsense and started investigating no planes were doing anything out of the ordinary at Luke Air Base that night but it turns out that a squadron from the Maryland Air National Guard who would temporarily based out of Tucson had been flying around as part of their operation Snowbird training exercise so why did it take four months for someone to bring this to the Public's attention seems awfully suspicious to suddenly come out with an explanation so long after the event that people just aren't forgetting about and while it might explain things on the surface it doesn't add up at all yeah I'm totally into this just being a cover-up for whatever the military are really up to it's not aliens it's just like okay the military are like yeah we were doing this uh flight formation thing will you guys leave us alone now and we're not going to tell you about our special space helium balloon thing that we were testing out it's just it's just they're covering up for military [ __ ] like spy planes and [ __ ] why we don't maybe I wish we knew what they were testing now it's been like ages 97. it's been Ages come on it's been like 30 years tell us at the time even at the time Captain Eileen beans confirmed that where the Maryland Air Guard said they were flying didn't exactly match the course of the lights that people have been seeing they started in Nevada for Pete's surely someone somewhere would have already known a training operation over multiple States airspace was going on I don't know whether these particular lights showed up on any radar as barely the airport didn't keep records for long and nobody inquired about it until it was too late to find out apparently the flares had to be dropped as planes weren't allowed to land and them still on board so one or all Pilots were getting rid of them before returning to base lots of lights weren't seen however only about six and they were all in the uniform row would all of the planes have just offloaded their spare flares at the exact same time over a densely populated area or could one plane just drop them and they'd all spread out pretty equally even though I'm making the sound unlikely I'm actually less convinced that the row of orb scene over Phoenix were extraterrestrial now as it seems like military for theirs might be a good shout yes and I I think a plane could very easily drop things in sequence the military's really good at doing things orderly like the planes they fly in like you see those jets flying through the air in a formation and you're like how's that work that's amazing world traveling league if someone asks me to drive along the highway at the exact same speed as someone I find it very challenging you'd be like I'm a little bit faster a little bit slower a little bit faster but these planes are just like perfect and all of the flares could drop and I'm sure it would be perfect it's not that complicated you know what's complicated all of the other [ __ ] that planes doing so getting them to drop at the same time doesn't seem like a particularly Big Challenge does it I know first blush it seems like a stupid suggestion as people know what flares look like and they also emit smoke and move around quite noticeably and are unlikely to be able to hold a straight line for many minutes at a time so your average flare they ain't yes but there's also I'm sure there's special flares and that didn't they say they had parachutes and all of that stuff the illumination flares the Maryland Air Guard reportedly dropped though were parachute players exactly and they're designed to illuminate a large area for several minutes for search and rescue teams in 1997 people couldn't whip out a cell phone and immediately start recording good quality videos the videos we do have are a bit jerky and grainy and are from varying distances so it's quite hard to work out how far away how high up and therefore how large the lights are it's also probable that from a distance any trailing smoke wouldn't be visible especially at night against the contrast of the bright flare exactly like when you see a fire at night you don't see the smoke you see the fire I also saw a video shot by Dennis P framer who is apparently the chief investigator of the Arizona branch of mufon the mutual UFO Network in January 2013 using a fancy Canon xha1s high definition camera he took a video of some illumination flares being dropped over the Barry Goldwater training range in Arizona and guess what they look not only exactly like the line of lights over Phoenix but also like the orbs photographed by Dr Keitel two years earlier oh my God what a shocking Revelation who could have predicted this these only last about four and a half minutes a far cry from the 20 minutes for the ones over Phoenix but who's to say they were the exact same type yeah I'm sure there are some that say like five minute burn time and there are others that figure that's a 20 minute burn time again not rocket science is it from a distance with the camera in manual mode the other flares looked very much like the Phoenix Lights fremath also says that he's over 50 miles away from the training range when he turned to night vision mode it was clear that the orbs were in fact flickery flares and you could even make out the smoke trial very easily the players were on parachutes which couldn't be made out on the video and held their formations well without appearing to move around much will drift apart when new ones drop there are a slight delay so it looks like they just blink out of nowhere this doesn't really explain the fact that the Phoenix Lights blinked Out in different order to the order they appeared but maybe some of the flares just burned a bit quicker again this is it's always like just as that balance right and it's like well which is the more likely answer it's either aliens or its flares burning at a slightly different rate to each other I wonder which one's more likely the flare thing or the aliens um come on use your big brains people it's not hard this type of flare can be dropped from a huge range of heights and nobody on the ground would truly have any idea how up and their how high up and therefore how big they are if the players were dropped miles away from the onlookers and at a high altitude it might not be evident to the naked eye that they are in fact moving before they burn out or disappear behind a mountain Dennis frameth also noted that they get calls in to report UFOs every time the military drops players at higher altitudes as they can be seen from much farther away and therefore by more people Dr Lin Kita is staunching her belief that the rose of orbs were not flares yeah of course she is because she's railroaded on her opinion like a I just don't I believe that you believe this doc but like I think you've also you've got so locked into that belief that when you're presented evidence of another belief you're like nah nah nah nah I'm still right even though you can look at that modern footage the Canon footage and be like arcade does it you must at least be like it looks I mean it's pretty similar isn't it like I feel like an objective Observer would be like okay look at these two things and she's like no no mine were different I'm the alien or person me on our website the phoenixlight.net the flare theory is listed in the myth section She also asked pretty fairly quote if flares are routinely dropped over the Barry Goldwater range and they have done so since 1941 wouldn't it be logical to assume that most people in Phoenix are used to seeing them what would prompt thousands of people to suddenly call into local newspapers police stations news stations radio stations and Luke Air Force Base all on the same night and all around the same time it is plainly obvious that many people saw something very strange not something as mundane or routine as a flare drop and felt compelled to report it and find out what it was accrete that's fine so this is something that similar to flares very similar people that is different probably some secret military technology people thought it was weird so they phone in it doesn't mean it's aliens through that Lin true that I would feel the same had I not seen Dennis frame of's footage I guess the Maryland Air Guard just dropped the flares from much higher than usual maybe in an area that they weren't really supposed to so more people ended up being able to see them yes very reasonable explanation there Katie I agree I agree with I even have local evidence that military flares can in fact burn for over 20 minutes I live not cut not far from Camp Pendleton in Orange County and someone on our neighborhood Facebook group posted a picture of three vertical orbs in the night sky saying that they had hovered there for nearly 20 minutes this is starting to sound familiar quote sometimes there are two then a third appeared what could this be someone else replied probably night illumination from Pendleton they are usually fired out of an 81 millimeter mortar they burn long and bright floating down on a parachute it's fun if you're not the enemy we're about 30 miles away for reference and then there's a picture from what I assume is Katie's house looking over a lovely backyard by the way um to wow those things are hella bright if that's 30 miles away that's so crazy that they have these giant like to me a flare is like I think you shoot up in the air on like a life raft or something but that they have these things they launch out of an 81 millimeter mortar that parachute down and illuminate a whole area is crazy that's so cool just throw a spanner in the works though Jim dilette's dilettoso who founded Village Labs an image Processing Company ran all kinds of software comparisons with the video footage of the Phoenix Lights orbs compared with the flares he had about 6 000 frames of the lights to work with and measured the brightness over the course of the film it stays the same whereas a Flare's brightness oscillates up and down he also processed photographs of the Phoenix Lights compared with Flare lights to study the color content and the results were very different okay well I'm just gonna be like different types of players ain't it having seen more flare evidence however I contend that maybe he was comparing the Phoenix Lights with a different type of player not the illumination type that it probably was he was also working with 1997 camera and film footage not the high def staff that frameth was able to shoot in 2013. their camera technology came a long way in 26 years guys the images deleted was processing would not have been able to accurately capture or represent much about a ball of light that far away okay so I think I've managed to convince myself that the rows of lights over Phoenix were in fact military flares boo hoo but what about the wedge-shaped or v-shaped craft that was spotted earlier on in the evening was that just a bunch of flamed planes flying in formation after all the v-shaped craft for me the biggest piece of evidence against the A-Tech jet explanation is all the eyewitness accounts yeah I know people see what they want to see and exaggerate and even just flat out life of various reasons but the similar accounts given by numerous people who weren't connected in any way are very compelling I never even heard of this event prior to many people making requests for this episode and when I watched the 2005 documentary The Phoenix Lights as part of my research I was shook even discounting the line of orbs later scene over Phoenix as flares a group of planes flying in formation just does not in any way shape or form explain what these people experienced when the V of Lights flew over them earlier that evening if we take their word for it at least here's why the explanation of five planes going over is totally ludicrous and it was a lot of people right how many people and I mean we it has to only be the people who immediately called in because people who are saying that they saw it later and calling in and being Witnesses later they've all heard the original Witnesses so they can all be discounted the only people we can really listen to are the immediate people who called in when it was happening okay number one all the witnesses in the documentary were grown adults Who would know what planes were they lived near an international airport and an Air Force Base so we're used to seeing planes at all times of day and night they did not report seeing five planes they reported seeing five extremely large Lights Number Two the lights were agreed to be orange yamber large circles or ovals as though they were attached to the underside of something they were not spotlights or searchlights shining down on people they were extremely large circles of self-contained light passing overhead number three some of the Witnesses who were outside and underneath the lights as they passed over said that they were no more than 100 to 150 feet above them and they were almost completely silent there's no way in hell that any type of plane could fly back close to you without you being able to hear it unless it's just deafened you because of how close it is also there would be some sort of downdraft or turbulence which nobody reported what about a stealth plane isn't a B2 stealth bomber kind of wedge-shaped yes it is but it's also not a mile wide it also can't cruise by super slowly and the stealth part refers to being less detectable by radar it still makes a noise that people can hear number four the lights went by extremely slowly way slower than a plane would be able to fly and maintain itself in the air these lights were going across horizontally and level not going up and down and moving about some witnesses then said the craft suddenly sped off not something a blimp or Airship would be able to do it is all very suspicious isn't it all right what do you that's just a little weird it again it doesn't make me think it's aliens it's me it just makes me think the military has some cool number five some people thought the lights were fixed in place to a structure and extrapolated that it would have been about a mile across on its winding widest point there isn't enough evidence to confirm the lights were part of a bigger craft but the formation the witness saw held its shape the whole time but it's doubtful that we're capable of building an aircraft at large at the moment yeah definitely it's a mile wide no shot but formation it's night time it's things in formation right there's nothing really against that other than the Stars thing which I think we already talked about number six according to the amateur astronomer he saw five planes in the sky and the lights people reported were just Wing lights on the planes I'm sorry but these planes could have been there totally independently of this other light event if the planes were high up enough that two Wing lights looked like one they would be so high as to not be particularly noticeable to anybody on the ground these people are saying that the lights were large and flew silently and smoothly over their heads not that they saw five tiny lights twinkling in the sky yet totally different things no number seven if the eyewitnesses were off about the size of the thing and it really was some sort of secret military equipment or test why would they fly it so low and so close to homes and also down the 10 freeway over the middle of a crowded City while they probably didn't mean to because they probably didn't want this whole conspiracy theory did they people were actively paying attention to the night sky as the Hell Bop Comet was still visible so if it was a secret test they couldn't have chosen a worse route or time there's also a lot of far less populated terrain just a few miles away from where the military trains all the time number eight a few people might be discredited as having fallen victim to an optical illusion or something but so many people in different areas reported seeing the same sort of craft so you can't help but think that there must be something to it yeah totally agree I don't think these people imagined it I think they definitely saw something weird as well as that here are some other things that don't add up and really stop pushing my thoughts towards a cover-up it's just but it's like it's not like they're trying to cover up like something it's just a military test isn't it people who are active in the Air Force at the time recounting the craft lights and not being able to identify what they were planes should have other lights on even on training exercises and probably especially if they're doing training exercises in the dark over a major city a 9-1-1 operator at the time of the incident reported that the lines were full of people calling in to report the lights but nobody seemed scared only interested she said this was downplayed by the local press who only reported that a few calls had come in she also said that Pilot's air traffic controllers airport workers police officers and other people who may have knowledge of planes Etc were all calling in to report their lives a former councilwoman Francis barwood said that after receiving thousands of calls from eyewitnesses in support of an investigation into the lights she and her team tried to talk to every person who had left a message over the council's summer break she estimates that over the course of a couple of months she personally spoke to 700 people with every single one saying the same thing apart from one person in the documentary she says and the one was the one they decided to publicize which was the kid who said it was airplanes other lights in other countries notwithstanding similar Amber orbs have been seen in and near the area of the Phoenix Lights on multiple occasions before and since as another interesting tidbit the first pilot to radio in about the lights was approaching the airport in a small plane with his son they both saw six lights uniformly spaced in a v-shape the pilot radioed the tower to make sure that they were clear for landing and that the lights weren't other planes or something they should be worried about the tower confirmed that the lights were not planes as nothing was on the radar the pilot landed fine and took off again later that night he forgot all about it until two years later and his partner was watching something about the Phoenix Lights On TV and the original call-in from the pilot was mentioned all of a sudden the pilot remembered that it had been him who had called in and his son had completely forgotten about the incident and he hadn't even putting in his in his logbook temporary Amnesia was reported from other Witnesses too not debris Amnesia he just doesn't remember a pretty insignificant detail from two years previously until he's minded of it it's like it ever that thing where it's like oh yeah you've been to this place before you know like my wife or something will be like sure we've been it before and I'll be like nah and then she'll be like oh yeah and there was this thing with that and I'll be like oh yeah we have been here before you know it's not like you have amnesia you just don't remember so why should we take any stock in this Pilot's claims well he was Hollywood actor Kurt Russell no he wasn't and while he hasn't said he saw an alien craft he said he has said that to him the lights were unidentified flying objects while Kurt's absolutely bang on isn't he if it was an if it was an alien spacecraft he'd probably remember that [ __ ] wouldn't he it'd be like that time I saw aliens rather than that time I saw some random like glowing lights that were probably just military something or other or just insignificant so I remember five Simington the Arizona State Governor who brushed away concerns with a press conference with someone dressed up in an alien costume yes definitely years later he totally backtracked and said him he himself had witnessed the craft and couldn't explain it to avoid causing a panic and to try and cope with all the media interests that cropped up he just had laughed it off but now he admits that he saw something unexplainable in the show called UFO Hunters he says quote I describe what I saw as being otherworldly according to katar news Simonton said I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies it was bigger than anything I've ever seen it remains a great mystery other people saw it responsible people I don't know why people would ridicule it dude you ridiculed yourself what are you chatting about yeah you did dude you ridiculed yourself also you know every machine that flies except for all the secret ones mate a lot of time has passed now and if flares and aircraft aren't the answer we're still no closer to finding out any more about the strange lights over Nevada and Arizona that night in March 1997. in fact oh there we go Arizona is near Nevada couldn't have put that together I feel like we mentioned Nevada before Bingo correct in fact his anniversaries come and go the same familiar faces keep popping up to keep the story in the public Consciousness that doesn't do much to help the cause if you ask me is having Dr Lin kitai pumping out the same catchphrase as an interview after interview just lessons their impact she wrote and directed the 2005 Phoenix Lights documentary by the way and it was also based on a book she wrote oddly enough called The Phoenix Lights a skeptic's discovery that we are not alone she says at one point talking about how the craft may have Come From Another Dimension we may just be looking on the am dial for an FM frequency all right look dark you and I have a very very different definition as skeptic okay this seems quite profound but when you hear her just saying it by wrote in later interviews it just starts to sound a bit kooky and the effect just isn't the same also it's a little Annoying that all of these people have described decided to ascribe meaning to their encounters and go on about opening up their hearts to communication with other beings are like they're some kind of expert another possible take is that the Extraterrestrial craft was real and the military scrambled attacked their own event onto it that would try to explain the whole night the account of The v-shaped Craft was different enough to the row of lights over Phoenix however that the two events are now considered separate things because of the time passed between the event and the military tossing out operation Snowbird as an explanation it just served to convince people that what they really saw was From Another Dimension or Another World I don't understand why people are so quick to jump to this when there's no real evidence for it whatsoever it's like yeah it could be some secret military [ __ ] or it could be aliens why would you jump to aliens because something we know like I've said I believe aliens are real but something we know for a fact is real and here on Earth secret military why don't we jump to that explanation rather than the Aliens explanation I don't understand how people's brains work who jump to aliens what would be the downside of a visit from Stellar visitors though if this is being covered up what is the New World Order actually afraid of maybe it's just afraid of hard work the place is kind of a mess right it's a bit embarrassing when you know someone's coming around to see you you can miraculously do about a month's worth of cleaning and tidying in about half an hour so imagine what we could do to spruce up the planet of beings from a different galaxy or Dimension did decide to pop on it pop in again quick everyone stop fighting clean up those oceans plant few million trees very quickly we don't want the aliens to think we're gross idiots yeah the aliens couple it's like wait you guys aren't you all won race aren't you all not race like um is it race what's it called like humans species big brain are you all one species while you're fighting each other what's going on why are you killing each other you're one species that would be like us aliens killing each other we're aliens why would we kill each other it's crazy isn't it crazy you're crazy in the Phoenix Lights episode of UFO Hunters I was quite surprised that conspiracy-minded ufologist which apparently is the correct way to pronounce that word that I learned sure you'd think UFO ufologist or maybe it's ufologist well it is ufologist but it's dumb Phil Barnes decided at the end that what flew over these people's heads was a rigid Hull Airship oh Bill you've really let the side down here what about the size and Swift acceleration why was it flying so low Bill why it might be worth saying though that while a lot of people have stared fastly clung to the idea that the lights were extraterrestrial in origin some remain more level-headed in that while they can't rule aliens out they can't exactly rule them in I like all these level-headed people they remind me of me Jim de la toso who ran the image testing on the video footage perhaps sums up his uh my feelings the best when he was quoted in the Arizona Republic as saying quote I don't know what it was I only know what it was not he's talking about planes and flares if you don't get it so yes the debate rumbles on with neither side likely to change their mind until a definite first Contact is made or the experience is somehow recreated to everyone's satisfaction yeah with the military aren't gonna do are they because it's secret even though it's 30 years ago come on Military tell us what you were really up to I want a cool explanation personally I think I do agree about the flares part sorry Dr Lin as they can last a lot longer than people realize but the reports from earlier in the evening about the large fee or wedge formation of huge light slowly overhead is much more difficult to explain away although there's no actual footage of it which is obviously an issue yet why did no one point how many people called in I really want to know because if it was like 10 people I'd be like shut up it was like a thousand I'll be like it's a lot but why did no one point a video camera at it in more recent times there have been confirmed hoaxes such as in April 2008 when mysterious lights once again appeared over Phoenix this turned out to be someone intentionally pranking the public by tying road flares to helium balloons and letting them go at one minute intervals from his back Garden a movie called Phoenix forgotten came out in 2017 which used the old found footage Trope to tie the Phoenix Lights event to the fictional disappearance of some teen ages Ridley Scott is listed as one of the producers but is only a 5.3 on IMDb so I won't bother with that one yeah 5.300b is bad because IMDb doesn't everything seem to be between six and eight unless it's shockingly poor or shockingly good in conclusion then while I might have made myself part of a cover-up I don't really understand I'm more or less convinced that any orbs rows of lights in the sky Etc can be explained satisfactorily as illumination flares that Flying Wedge though that's a different story and that's where we end today's episode thank you so much for watching need to take a little mental break from all the drilling next door and um maybe I'll have some lunch fascinating story thanks for sharing Simon and I'll see you next time [Music] foreign thank you

Channel: Decoding the Unknown

Views: 305,834

Keywords: watch history's greatest mysteries, history's greatest mysteries full episodes, phoenix lights movie trailer, history's greatest mysteries, history's greatest mysteries clips, history's greatest mysteries scenes, phoenix lights footage, phoenix lights, phoenix light, phoenix arizona, unidentified flying objects, ufo sightings, aliens caught on camera, history, ufos caught on camera, history shows

Id: 978heKmAXW0

Length: 51min 7sec (3067 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023