S4 Ep46: Vortices, and Portals, and Lights! Oh My! The Phoenix Lights and Other Strange Goings On in Arizona
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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade Challenger school class. They're studying Charlotte's Web. What words did this author use to describe this barn? Descriptive words. Wonderful. Can you find some adjectives in there? New is...

an adjective describing rope rubber is an adjective and it modifies boots those students are seven starting early and starting right makes a real difference learn more at challengerschool.com if you had the whole universe at your fingertips where would you go if the universe contained portals to other places would you visit the rings of saturn the moons of jupiter

Or would you travel farther out to find somewhere livable, far, far away from this burning hell rock careening toward oblivion? Why on Earth, if you could visit anywhere in the universe, would you visit Earth?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I've never lived in the Southwest, but I know plenty of people who have. The people who occupied our house before us moved to Arizona because they were tired of the cold. It was a wild choice to me, considering Arizona is very rapidly running out of water. My best friend has a house in Vegas and fantasizes that our kids will someday live there together.

This makes me laugh and laugh. The idea that Vegas will be anything other than a Mad Max hellscape by the time our kids are grown-ups is hilarious. In a devastating way. Anyway, my point is, I'm not entirely clear why anyone would choose to live in the desert these days, but sure, it's a lovely place to visit, and clearly the aliens agree because they seem absolutely gaga over the American Southwest. ♪

Before Sedona, Arizona became a hotspot for UFO activity, it was a hotspot for healing and tofu. Until the 1980s, Sedona was your run-of-the-mill hippie-slash-wellness-type community, with lots of spiritual retreats and self-help gurus with crystals and caftans.

The area is stunning, with gorgeous red rocks and other nifty desert landscape stuff that people dig. And it is generally accepted that the area was considered a sacred site to the people who inhabited it before white people, specifically the Hopi, Apache, and Yavapai.

Though further digging into that reveals that the use of the term sacred in reference to the land most likely came from indigenous leaders referring to the land and the earth in general as sacred when their people were being pushed out and eradicated by white people and manifest destiny. As in, this land is sacred to our people because we've been here for centuries, not this land is sacred because there are magical vortices of healing on it.

you know, all it takes is one white lady named Debbie to come along and be like, sacred, you say? And before you know it, there are magical tchotchke shops on every corner. In this case, the white lady was a psychic named Paige Bryant, who in 1980, according to the website thesanctuaryatsacredmesa.com, quote, said a spiritual being named Albion told her about the vortexes in an audio recording called The Earth Changes Survival Handbook, end quote.

It is unclear to me if Albion told her about the vortices in an audio recording, or if Paige told her listeners about the whole thing with Albion in an audio recording. The website goes on to explain, quote, End quote.

Weird, the things we choose to honor and the things we choose to ignore. Also, not clear as to what the Mayan calendar has to do with Sedona, Arizona. That would be like visiting Ireland on an important date in the Jewish calendar. Anyway, according to Paige Bryan, it wasn't just by happenstance that this particular spot was where people came to get their chakras aligned and have their cheese cheed. It was the vortices.

These are pockets where electromagnetic currents are very strong. The electricity that is generated by the liquid core of the Earth, combined with inconsistencies in the Earth's crust, allows that energy to escape, creating stronger magnetic fields in those places. And it has something to do with ley lines, because duh.

In fact, U.S. geological survey maps of the area show parts of Sedona with a magnetic field 500 times higher than the surrounding area. But, you know, all it takes is for one white guy with a ponytail named Doug to come along and be like, electromagnetic vortices, you say. And before you know it, there are alien souvenir shops everywhere. ♪

It wasn't long before the UFO and alien enthusiasts co-opted all the vortices for their UFO and alien agenda. No longer were these vortices just places of healing. Now they were beacons or something? Portals? Wormholes? I don't know. What do I look like, a scientist? There are four criteria a location must meet in order to be deemed a UFO hotspot.

The area must have the following. An historic past as a holy or sacred site with ancient monuments. A detectable energy field that is different from the surrounding countryside. A long documented history of UFO sightings and or anomalous experiences. And there is a military presence in the area, which makes Sedona, Arizona a veritable 1970s era Studio 54 of UFO hotspots.

There is a long history of sightings and experiences in the area. In fact, Sedona boasts the highest number of sightings per capita in the U.S., one of the most active places for sightings in the world. People report seeing fireballs of various colors and Earth-type lights that are captured on camera where you couldn't see anything with the naked eye.

In one year alone, there were 120 reported sightings in Arizona. Bradshaw Ranch nearby has the most sightings and happens to be an area very highly guarded by the Forestry Service. And of course, where something is heavily guarded, rumors of paranormal stuff are sure to follow, especially when the military is involved. ♪

The area has seen some very enterprising types come in and capitalize on the hullabaloo by offering tours. Take, for instance, the late John Bradshaw and his son Bob, who lead tours of the area, including their former property, Bradshaw Ranch. Bradshaw Ranch is located in a national forest and is said to have been confiscated by the U.S. government because it supposedly contains one of the strongest interdimensional portals on Earth.

Well, actually. The initial story was that in 2001, the ranch was sold to the U.S. Forest Service via the Trust for Public Land, a non-profit California public benefit corporation, for $3,150,000.

But Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA investigator, and Paul Bebin, an investigative journalist, visited the ranch with a film crew for a History Channel documentary and discovered that that might not have been the real case. They found evidence that the land wasn't sold. Bustamante told Sedona Red Rock News in 2023, quote, "'Bradshaw Ranch was never sold. It was seized through something called eminent domain.'"

And Bob Bradshaw would neither confirm nor deny this, only saying, "...it's complicated."

Not sure how the detail of the interdimensional portal got added to the story, but I'm not surprised. Whatever the case may be, regular Joe looky-loos are not allowed in the forest at night. But you can go on a tour there. You just have to GTFO before the sun goes down. You can see orbs, weird lights, and whatnot. And reports show that most things happen in the last hour of twilight. But of course, it's not just Bradshaw Ranch. ♪

Melinda Leslie of the Center for the New Age offers a two-hour UFO tour. Melinda is a perfect person to give this kind of tour because, she says, she's been abducted by aliens multiple times.

According to an interview she gave for The Independent in 2016, Melinda says her first abduction was in California in 1993. Quote, we were taken into a low-lit room and undressed, then put through a series of examinations. They took some eggs from me, then they attempted to extract sperm from my friend Mike. Unfortunately, he had a vasectomy, so they had some trouble with that. End quote. Wait, hold on.

Couldn't they have extracted his sperm the same way they extracted her eggs? Like, they know that even after a vasectomy, there's still sperm in the balls, right? They have to know that by now. They have the technology to travel millions of light years and through wormholes and shit, and you're telling me they don't know they can just get the sperm from the balls?

Anita Owens owns a company called Sedona UFO and Vortex Tours, the largest UFO tour operation in the States, whose website boasts that it's, quote, the only tour company where you do not have to share your night vision goggle, end quote. Take that, other UFO tour companies. According to a bunch of techie websites, these military-grade goggles are more sensitive to light and provide a clearer and brighter image. You can see a million more stars than with the naked eye.

Anita's tours include a history of the land and indigenous communities.

The website also boasts, quote, the vortex energy here is the most powerful anywhere on the planet and sightings are guaranteed. Wherever your curiosity for UFOs, extraterrestrial life or the cosmos comes from, there's a Sedona UFO tour guide and experience that might get you answers you seek, end quote. You hear that, Neil deGrasse Tyson? You didn't have to go to all that school, sucker.

According to the website, quote,

Perhaps they are angels wanting to engage with you in a playful yet very intelligent manner, making you a true believer in the spiritual realm." Also, everyone on the tour gets a free gift. Though, honestly, if it's not a ticket off this rock on one of those UFOs, I'm not interested. Actually, you should take a look at the website. It's like the Dr. Bronner's soap bottle of websites, complete with Bible verses and everything.

In all seriousness, though, Anita says the company gives a portion of their proceeds to single moms, which is really great. If you're more interested in the vortices for their healing powers and less interested in watching lights in the sky, you can take the Vortex tour, which includes a chakra reading and a crystal. But Anita's isn't the only game in town. ♪

The Sedona Mago Retreat offers all kinds of vortex-related events. According to their website, you can choose which vortex you want to visit based on what kind of healing you're looking for. And the healing is gender-based. According to their website, quote,

This is the energy of the divine feminine, one that helps you return to harmony with your true self and with nature. On the other hand, if you feel you have lots of dreams, little to forgive, but nothing gets completed, then a visit to Airport Mesa and the Courthouse Butte in Sedona may offer help. Both are masculine-based vortexes. Masculine energy strengthens your self-confidence and motivates your energy to get up and get going.

It is the energy of the doer, the energy of worthiness, and the energy of self-discipline that allows you to get things done. End quote. Sigh. I... I don't even know what to say about this. Honestly, this one broke my brain. I guess men are just naturally more confident because of their electromagnetic energy and not because they're conditioned from birth to think they can do no wrong?

Who knew it was my feminine energy that made me constantly feel the need to apologize and create patterns that prevented me from moving forward in life? I need a nap. Anyway, I would venture a guess that most of these tour companies wouldn't be a thing if it hadn't been for one fateful night in 1997 when the skies alit with something very strange. ♪

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On March 13th, 1997, while I was busy shaving my head and being really angry at everything, a lot of folks over in the Phoenix area in Arizona were busy seeing strange lights in the sky. Over a period of about 12 hours, thousands of people apparently witnessed some awful strange goings-on up there. The timeline went a little something like this.

7.55 p.m. in Henderson, Nevada, a V-shaped object is reported heading southeast. 8.15 p.m. in Pauldin, Arizona, a cop reports seeing reddish-orange lights disappearing over the southern horizon. Around this time, there was also a family in Prescott Valley, Arizona, reporting a cluster of lights that moved into a V formation as they got closer and then moved between the mountains toward the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

8:30 to 8:45 p.m. in Glendale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, lights were observed high enough in the sky that they were at least partially blocked by a thin layer of clouds at the time. 10 p.m. in Phoenix, a bunch of people reported a row of lights that hovered and then fell. There were a lot of pictures and videos taken of this, making some say that this is the most widely witnessed UFO event in history.

According to a piece from KTAR News from 2019, quote, the first event was described as a V-shaped object the size of a commercial plane soaring through the sky. One witness from Prescott, who wished to be known only as JR, said he watched a boomerang-shaped object glide over Granite Mountain, and it was at least a mile wide. He said there's no way it was from this planet.

End quote. In fact, one such witness was none other than Hollywood star Kurt Russell.

Russell, who was not only Goldie Hawn's husband and a major movie star, also had a pilot's license and was flying his son to visit his girlfriend, as celebrities with their own airplanes are wont to do. Here's Russell recounting the experience on a BBC talk show in April 2017. Oliver and I were flying him, I was flying him to go see his girlfriend.

and uh... we're on approach and uh... i saw six lights over the airport and absolute uniform in a v shape i was just looking at him i was coming in where maybe a half a mile out and oliver said pa what are those lights then it kind of like came out of my reverie and and i said i don't know what they are i said he said are we okay here and i said yeah i'm gonna call him and i reported it and they said we're not painting anything we don't show anything i said well okay i'm i'm

I'm going to declare it's unidentified, it's flying, and it's six objects. We landed. I taxied, dropped him off, took off, went back to L.A. Never said a word. He never said a word. I never thought of it. Two years later, Goldie is watching a television show when I came home.

And the show is on UFOs. I came home, "Hey, honey, how's it going?" And I'm kind of hearing the TV going, and I stopped and I started watching, and it was on that event. Now, that was the most viewed UFO event. Over 20,000 people saw that. And I'm watching this, and I'm feeling like Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters of the Third Count". It's like, "Why do I know this?" You know? And it's not clear to me.

And then they said, a general aviation pilot reported on landing. I'd never thought of it since then. And I said, that was me. That was me. And I said, wait a minute, I'll go to my logbook. But action film icon Kurt Russell wasn't the only person of note to have witnessed whatever it was that was happening in the skies that night.

Fife Symington III was the governor of Arizona at the time and held a press conference to assuage locals of any concerns by telling them the Department of Public Safety would be investigating the incident. To lighten the mood, however, he had one of his staff members stand beside him wearing an alien costume. Beat him at their own game. Am I right? I don't know. Anyway, it wasn't until 10 years later that Symington admitted that he himself had seen the lights.

He went on a little bit of a press junket after speaking to documentary filmmaker James Fox for his movie Out of the Blue, in which Symington recounted his experience. Speaking to a local paper, Symington said, quote, I'm a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it. Responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it. End quote.

I mean, you kind of ridiculed it when you had a staffer dress up like an alien for the press conference, my dude. Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha wasn't so sure. He told the Arizona Daily Star in 2010 that he'd, quote, "...investigated two separate sightings over Phoenix that March night and traced them both to A-10 aircraft flying in formation at high altitude."

Damn, Magaha brought the sauce.

According to a piece from the Arizona Republic from 2007, air traffic controllers in the area came forward to say they didn't see anything at all from that night on their radar. And at first, the powers that be over at Davis Month and Air Force Base said there were no military maneuvers taking place that night in the area. However, two months later, they were like, oh, my bad, there actually were maneuvers that night. We, um...

Looked at the wrong logbook at first. Oopsie, LOL.

It took another two months, so four months after the event, for military to come up with an official version of the event, which went like this, as summed up by Robert Schaefer of the Skeptical Inquirer in a piece from 2016. Quote, The Phoenix Lights episode actually consists of two unrelated incidents, although both were the result of activities of the same organization, Operation Snowbird, a pilot training program operated in the winter by the Air National Guard

out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. In the first incident, something described as a large flying triangle was sighted during the 8 o'clock hour. Five A-10 jets from Operation Snowbird had flown from Tucson to Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas several days earlier, and because this was the final night of the operation, they were now returning.

The A-10 jets were flying under VFR, visual flight rules, so there was no need for them to check in with airports along the route. They were following the main air corridor for air traffic traveling that route, the highway in the sky. Why a UFO would follow U.S. air traffic corridors is a mystery.

Because they were flying in formation mode, they did not have on their familiar blinking collision lights, but instead their formation lights, which look like landing lights. In any case, Federal Aviation Administration rules concerning private and commercial aircraft lights, flight altitudes, etc. do not apply to military aircraft.

The A-10s flew over the Phoenix area and flew on to Tucson, landing at Davis-Monthan about 8.45 p.m. Some witnesses claim that it was a single, huge, solid object, but the sole video existing of the objects shows them moving with respect to each other, and hence were separate objects. End quote. ♪♪

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade challenger school class. They're studying Charlotte's Web. What words did this author use to describe this barn? Descriptive words. Wonderful. Can you find some adjectives in there? New is...

An adjective describing rope. Rubber is an adjective and it modifies boots. Those students are seven. Starting early and starting right makes a real difference. Learn more at challengerschool.com.

My main question here is why the military doesn't have to check in with airports along their route. How top secret does a training exercise need to be that you can't let air traffic control know that you're going to be there in advance? Isn't that like a safety issue for other people flying in the area? And if it's that top secret, shouldn't you do it somewhere where other people like Goldie Hawn's husband aren't going to be flying?

What if Mr. Goldie Hawn had hit one of those planes? What then? Where would we be without the Christmas Chronicles 1, 2, and the promised forthcoming 3? The reason, by the way, so many people happened to see this particular training exercise when others seemed to fly under the radar, as it were, is because a lot of people were out stargazing that particular night, waiting for a glimpse of the Hale-Bopp comet, which was scheduled to make an appearance.

The second event of the night, Schaefer explains, was a routine flare drop exercise, and since it was the end of that particular training operation, they just had a lot of flares to drop. The military explained that the reason the flares seemed to hover was because the heat they emitted filled their little parachutes, making them act like hot air balloons.

Listen, at this point it's been generally well established that folks are going to flip out and jump to all kinds of conclusions when they see unexplained aerial phenomena, which is the more modern day term for UFO. So why doesn't the military tell people before they do these training exercises? A lot of this, it seems, could be solved with a quick memo beforehand.

So tomorrow, it's going to look like UFOs will be invading via the Phoenix area. Please rest assured the lights you will see in the sky are not aliens, but are in fact A-10 jets dropping a bunch of flares because if we don't use up all the flares by tomorrow night, the government will give us fewer flares next time, and we all know we need as many flares as we can get our hands on for all those flare-related emergencies we're always having.

Not only did they not alert people ahead of time, but for some reason it took them four whole months to come up with the explanation. Here's the thing. If you don't want people making up stories, give them more info. ♪

One of the pilots who participated in the flare exercise confirmed that that was indeed what had happened. But prominent UFO researcher and believer Alejandro Rojas told the Arizona Republic in a piece from 2024 that he didn't think the military's official version could account for everything people claimed to have witnessed that night.

For example, Unsolved Mysteries dropped the mic with this claim, quote, End quote.

Eyewitness Ross Nickel told Unsolved Mysteries that at 8.10 p.m. that night, quote,

I'm guessing 1,000 feet. And there was absolutely no sound. During the whole time, from the start to the finish, there was absolutely no sound. End quote. The piece in the Arizona Republic spelled out a few other inconsistencies with the military's official version. Quote, Witnesses often describe the Phoenix Lights as forming a solid triangular or V-shaped object, which doesn't align with the explanation of flares drifting in the wind.

Many witnesses said the lights moved silently, without the sound typically associated with military aircraft. A 1997 article in the Arizona Republic reported that military bases say repeatedly they had nothing in the air.

The length of the sightings was longer than what would be expected for flares descending from an aircraft. Typically, flares used in military training exercises are visible for a few minutes to around 10 minutes. The lengthier duration reported by witnesses of the Phoenix lights contrasts with this expectation. Some witnesses said the lights moved at a speed and altitude inconsistent with flares or conventional aircraft, end quote.

However, Christopher Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, told the paper that he thought the average witness seeing the flares from a distance and not knowing what they were might have connected dots that weren't actually there. Quote,

End quote.

As far as I know, no one was standing on a rooftop holding a sign welcoming the aliens. People were just saying, what the fuck are those UFOs? Because they were, indeed, unidentified flying objects. Even my guy Fife wasn't like, it was aliens! He was just like, in my experience as a pilot, I've never seen an aircraft like that. Although he did say it's pretty conceited to think that in this great big giant universe we're the only intelligent life. But that's just, like, a fact.

Also, it couldn't have helped that a local paper ran a story about the incidents with a photo not from the event, but one for which the caption read, quote, for 106 minutes on March 13th, people saw something like this V-shaped object flying over Arizona. UFOs? The only thing certain is that it still haunts them, end quote. In fact, it wasn't even a photo. It was a sketch from an eyewitness.

Now, you and I both know, stranger, that most people don't read captions. Hell, most people don't even read the article. So how much do you want to bet that people saw that photo and thought it was an actual photo of the thing they saw in the sky that night? So, of course, everyone was running around jumping to conclusions. The newspaper is printing eyewitness sketches and the military is being like, wait, no, uh, we were wrong. But also, you're going to have to wait four months for us to tell you what it really was.

Come on. I was born at night, but not last night.

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Most UFO or UAP sightings can actually be easily explained away. Whether it's skydivers, weather balloons, or military training exercises, usually there is something tangible to point to, and the powers that be are all too quick to do that pointing. But in 2018, something happened that no one has really been able to explain away.

On February 24th of 2018, three commercial planes, a Phoenix Air Learjet 36, an Airbus A321, an American Airlines Flight 1095, and air traffic control reported an unexplained object over the desert of southern Arizona and New Mexico. At 3:30 p.m. that day, the Albuquerque air traffic control received reports from aircraft flying east that something passed over them at an elevation of around 40,000 feet.

All of the planes were flying between the southwest corner of New Mexico and the Sonoran Desert National Monument, southwest of Phoenix. The Learjet was the first to say something, asking Control if they had seen anything pass over his plane. Control was like, "Nope." The pilot said that something did, and another pilot said he saw it and called it a UFO. They are also heard on the recording saying that they didn't know what it was, but were sure it wasn't another plane and it was going in the opposite direction.

The American Airlines pilot was told to keep an eye out. While initially skeptical, they then reported seeing something, not a plane, fly 2,000 to 3,000 feet above them. The Airbus pilot said they couldn't make out what it was, but it had a beam of light or a big reflection of light flying several thousand feet above them, again going in the opposite direction. This whole thing took just six minutes.

The FAA's official statement to the press about the event? No comment. Quote, End quote.

Um, what? Not even a "It was swamp gas, nothing to see here" folks? The official line is literally "Your guess is as good as mine"? Yikes. Nowadays, the Pentagon doesn't want to continue funding UAP research, even though Luis Elizondo, the former senior leader of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the secretive Pentagon unit that studied UFOs, has stated UAPs could be a tactical threat to the military and national security.

Like, sure, maybe they're not aliens, but obviously they're something because people do actually see them and we now have actual video of some of them, so like, shouldn't we be trying to figure out what the fuck they are? Elizondo resigned from his military position in October 2016 and became the global security director for To The Stars, then called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded in 2014.

To The Stars is an aerospace company whose co-founder is Tom DeLonge. If that name sounds familiar to you, you probably had frosted tips in your teens and were worried that Y2K would end the world, or at the very least make it so you couldn't be in AOL chat rooms anymore. Tom DeLonge was the guitarist for Blink-182. I love a career pivot.

So what's more likely, that magical electromagnetic fields are portals of wellness and outer space? Or that an area that attracted a certain kind of person who tends toward a more out-there kind of world or universe view has become a kind of snake-eating-its-own-tail situation where fervid beliefs and confirmation bias has them all seeing otherworldly lights or phenomena that are easily explained away as something much more mundane?

That people come away feeling healed not because of magic, but because of clean air and a week or two of slower, more intentional living? Meditation has proven beneficial effects. It doesn't matter if you do it in Sedona, Arizona or Tokyo, Japan. But all that doesn't negate the fact that the military does have an annoying habit of being less than forthcoming with some information. And there are more than a few events they don't seem to be able to explain away at all.

I get that they need to have secrets or whatever, but after all this time, shouldn't they have better cover stories? By now, shouldn't they know better than to be like, "We conducted a training exercise between 9 and 10 when the event was witnessed between 8 and 9?" Shouldn't it take them less than four months to come up with an explanation? Shouldn't they have better answers than, "Uh, we really don't know?"

So, sure, maybe your first thought doesn't go to it was aliens. But at this point, I think it's fair if maybe your third or fourth thought, after receiving less than satisfying official explanations, is, I don't know, Bob, it might be aliens. I can't say whether or not electromagnetic fields create portals to outer space. I'm no scientist. Or a white guy named Doug with a ponytail.

And maybe the aliens like Sedona for the same reason humans do. It's beautiful, and something about it makes you feel better when you're there. But I will say this. If aliens travel millions of light years and through wormholes just to get to Arizona, what does that say about the rest of the universe? Is Arizona really the best they've found? And if so, no offense, Arizona, but, like, we're doomed.

Next time on Strange and Unexplained, if ever there was an example of the dangers of an untherapized psyche, Esther Cox might be it. After suffering a trauma, some pretty nasty entities started hanging around and making life a living hell for everyone in her small home, leading to the Great Amherst Mystery.

Strange and Unexplained is a production of Three Goose Entertainment with help from Grab Bag Collab. This episode was written by me, Daisy Egan, with research by Keely Hines, sound design and engineering by Jeff Devine, music by Epidemic and Blue Dot Sessions. If you have an idea for an episode, head to our website, strangeandunexplainedpod.com, and fill out the contact form. I will write back.

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