Phoenix Lights Pt. 1
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Around 9:00 PM on March 13th, 1997, Bill Hamilton and Tom King pulled into a driveway in Phoenix, Arizona. Bill's stomach growled with nervous excitement. Bill and Tom were ufologists, but it had been years since they'd had a good lead. However, tonight they weren't just expecting to talk to witnesses. They hoped to see an alien spaceship with their own two eyes.

It was almost too good to be true. After introducing themselves to the homeowner, Bill and Tom lugged their equipment up to the balcony, where several neighbors chatted idly. Suddenly, one of the guests shouted and pointed at the mountains. In the distance, a bright yellow-orange light blinked. Bill gasped and scrambled to turn on his camera. As soon as he knew it was recording, he whipped out his telescope to get a better view.

As he watched, more globes materialized in the night sky, forming a straight line. The lights hovered, motionless for about four minutes. Then, just as mysteriously, they faded from existence. Bill's heart raced. This was the best UFO evidence he'd ever collected. It was everything he could hope for, short of a face-to-face alien encounter.

And with the video, he knew the public might finally take alien sightings seriously. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at TheConspiracyPod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.

This is our first episode on the Phoenix Lights Incident. On March 13th, 1997, thousands, if not tens of thousands of people saw mysterious lights in the sky. Some even spotted what looked like extraterrestrial aircraft. Today, we'll dive into the history of UFOs in the Southwest and discuss the remarkable eyewitness statements from the night of the event.

Then we'll trace the government's haphazard response and the public's demands for answers. Next time, we'll look at possible explanations for the phenomena, like whether the UFOs were secret military aircraft, a string of flares, or an elaborate hoax. Or maybe they really were from another world.

Before we get into today's episode, among the many sources we used, we found The Phoenix Lights by Dr. Lynn Kitai and The Phoenix Lights Mystery by William Hamilton to be extremely helpful to our research. Stay with us.

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Hello there, I'm Mike Flanagan, and welcome to Spectre Vision Radio's production of Director's Commentary. Director's Commentary is a deep dive into a film through the eyes of the filmmaker or filmmakers who made it. It combines an in-depth interview format with a classic Director's Commentary track, the likes of which used to be common on physical media releases, but sadly are becoming more and more rare these days. Filmmakers talking about film with filmmakers. For people who love film.

and filmmakers. The Phoenix Lights are considered one of the most significant mass UFO sightings in American history. Strange lights were spotted by thousands of witnesses. Unlike other UFO incidents, this didn't happen in an era of Cold War paranoia. We can't chalk the sighting up to anxiety about nuclear fallout or a public that wasn't used to seeing jet airplanes.

The event happened less than three decades ago, in 1997. And to understand the Phoenix Lights, we need to take a step back and look at the history of sightings in this area, which stretches back decades. The scorched desert of the Southwest seems to draw extraterrestrial visitors like a siren song. Locals have reported over 20,000 UFOs since 1905.

The most well-known event was the supposed 1947 crash landing of an alien spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico. And while almost everyone's heard of Roswell, fewer are familiar with another UFO sighting in the same region just three years later. On March 16th, 1950, people in the small rural town of Farmington, New Mexico were treated to a shocking aerial display.

Around 11:00 AM, a crowd gathered to watch a cluster of bright lights dancing over the treetops. A local mechanic counted about 17 flying lights zipping back and forth, nearly colliding with each other before veering away at the last second. After about five minutes, the lights disappeared behind the tree line. The next day, hundreds of UFOs appeared all over town.

A local geologist estimated the objects moved at approximately 1,000 miles per hour. For context, at the time this was much more than the speed of the world's fastest fighter jet. But these objects didn't even move like regular aircraft. They made 90 degree turns in midair.

As far as we know, nothing on Earth could do that. Even if someone had invented such an airplane, it would have made a lot of noise. But these UFOs were totally silent. After a bit of hand-wringing, the Air Force eventually swept the incident under the rug. The Farmington Armada, as it became known, was never perfectly explained.

It was just another unsolved mystery of the Southwest. And the Armada wasn't a fluke, especially during the 1950s and 60s. The government collected thousands of reports of lights and strange aircraft. Some people even saw these objects up close. Consider the Kingman event.

On May 20th, 1953, a former Air Force engineer, Arthur Stancil, was put on a special assignment and transported into the desert near Kingman, Arizona, just outside of Las Vegas. Stancil arrived late at night. He headed toward a large, roped-off area surrounded by guards who were protecting a crashed flying saucer.

It was made of two fused together metal plates with a curved hatch in the front. It was open and inside, Stancil claimed he saw a dead humanoid creature in a metallic suit. Unfortunately, there's no way of verifying if Stancil's tale is true. However, he was highly regarded by his peers.

And since he initially relayed his story using a pseudonym, we can assume he wasn't after fame. Plus, his diary entry from May 20th confirmed he left for a special top-secret mission. Accounts like his suggested UFO incidents in the American Southwest were a somewhat common phenomenon.

Which raises one question: Why is the vast, empty desert such a hotspot of paranormal activity? Perhaps something connected Kingman, Farmington, Roswell, and all the other UFO sites. The Southwest is home to some of the United States' most top secret military installations.

The biggest is the Nevada Test and Training Range, known as The Range. Located about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, The Range is a patch of land roughly the size of Connecticut, and it's owned and operated by the US military. Between 1951 and 1962, the Air Force detonated hundreds of atomic bombs over the region.

When an international treaty banned above-ground testing, the military moved their experiments underground. By the time they finally wrapped up their studies in 1992, they'd detonated over 1,000 atomic bombs in the Nevada desert. These explosions may have attracted the attention of interstellar travelers.

In fact, Kingman, Arizona, where Arthur Stancil saw the crashed saucer, is less than 300 miles from the range. And the Farmington Armada appeared about 200 miles from the nation's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. These may sound far away, but for a UFO going 1,000 miles per hour, that's about a 12-minute jaunt.

As for the famous Roswell crash, it happened right next door to the White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was tested. So perhaps alien visitors are attracted to the Southwest because it's a hotbed of nuclear activity. And these weapons tests might draw visitors from space straight to our planet. Of course, few people actually expect to see a UFO.

even if they live near a hub for alien sightings. That's why these incidents can be so life-changing. This was certainly the case with Dr. Lynn Kitai. Dr. Kitai was a health communicator and video producer who lived on the outskirts of Phoenix in the 1990s. She was an ordinary woman who lived a quiet, uncomplicated life. She never thought much about what lay beyond our solar system,

But that all changed on February 6th, 1995. After settling in for the night, Dr. Kitai's husband, Frank, yelled for her. When she rushed into the living room, she found Frank pointing out the window toward the city. Above the horizon, three amber-colored spheres hovered in a pyramid about 50 feet above the ground. They were only 300 feet away from her, but they made no sound.

They reminded Kitai of Christmas lights, but something about them simultaneously felt soothing, yet totally alien. She stared, frozen as if in a trance. Then suddenly the spell broke. Kitai rushed to the closet and rummaged through piles of junk until she found a camera. Frank called out for her to hurry. The orbs were disappearing.

Kitai ran back and clicked the shutter until the film ran out. As she did, the globes faded away one by one, leaving only empty darkness behind. When she developed the film, most of her pictures were blurry. Only a few were useful, depicting the orbs over her neighbor's house. One photo also showed a row of four lights above the Phoenix skyline, many miles away.

Dr. Kitai hadn't even noticed them when she'd snapped the pictures. She was too distracted by the nearby amber spheres. The distant lights must have faded between the time she snapped the two pictures because in the second, the middle two orbs were missing. Dr. Kitai framed the picture with the four lights and hung it on her mantle. But over time, she wondered if she was remembering the incident accurately.

Maybe the photo was just some sort of optical illusion. But two years later, the orbs returned. On January 22nd, 1997, Dr. Kitai saw three amber spheres floating in a straight line over the horizon. They hung motionless in the air for about four minutes before fading away. Then, the next evening, it happened again.

First three, and then six yellow lights blinked into existence. This was the third time she'd seen the orbs, and now the mystery consumed her. Desperate for answers, she called the local newspaper, Luke Air Force Base, and the Federal Aviation Administration. After hours on the phone, she reached an air traffic controller at the Sky Harbor International Airport.

To her amazement, he'd seen the same objects she had. He told her six orange lights had appeared out of nowhere around 8.30 the previous evening. His radar screens hadn't showed anything unusual. But when he'd looked through binoculars, there they were, clear as day. Six amber balls suspended motionless above the ground.

Now, Dr. Kitai knew she wasn't imagining things. Other people besides her and Frank had seen them, but there was still so much she didn't know. And Dr. Kitai could sense these orbs were important somehow. She felt connected to them. Soon, Dr. Kitai pressed pause on her career and devoted her life to documenting the lights as best she could.

She took more photographs and recorded videos of the orbs. Unfortunately for her, they reappeared night after night, allowing her to record many minutes of invaluable footage. But by early March, Dr. Kitai had grown restless. Recording the lights wasn't enough for her anymore. She wanted real answers.

She started digging and eventually found the phone number for an investigator at the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON. This was a non-profit organization that studied alleged UFO sightings. They arranged to meet on March 14th so she could tell him about the lights she'd documented. She hoped he could spread the word and let the general public know what was happening in her town. But when the day finally arrived,

All of Phoenix already knew. They'd seen the lights for themselves. On March 13th, 1997, Dr. Lynn Kitai photographed glowing amber orbs above the Phoenix skyline, just as she had many times before. By this point, the lights had become almost routine for her. But March 13th was anything but ordinary. That evening,

Many people witnessed bizarre, inexplicable aircraft all across the Southwest. It was one of the most public UFO displays in history. The first sighting came at 7:55 p.m. Arizona time, about an hour after sunset. A young man south of Las Vegas noticed a V-shaped object the size of a Boeing 747 flying southeast towards Phoenix.

It was quiet and had six lights on the underside. An hour later, two ex-Air Force officers were driving in northwestern Phoenix when they saw the same V-shaped light formation. They guessed it was about 2,000 feet in the air and moving at a crawl.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Tim Lee stood outside of his house admiring the night sky with his 10-year-old son. The boy pointed out the strange V-shaped structure flying through the sky. It appeared to be several city blocks wide from end to end, and its lights grew bigger and bigger. It was getting closer to Tim. As it passed right over his head, Tim got a good look at the UFO.

It was about 100 feet above him and totally transparent. Behind it, through it, Tim could still see the stars, distorted and wavy as if he were peering through a glass of water. Tim's uncle came out of the house and together they watched the shape pass overhead and then fade away, leaving only the lights behind.

Several witness stories were even more incredible than that. Stacey Rhodes was driving down I-10 when she spotted the massive triangular object. It stretched out over both sides of the highway, so her car had to pass beneath it. Stacey said she was moving at 80 miles per hour, yet it took almost two minutes to get clear of it. In other words, the object was two to two and a half miles long.

As far as we're aware, no government has ever come close to building an aircraft that big. The sightings continued for several hours all across the Phoenix area. Actor Kurt Russell even saw the V-shaped lights while flying his private plane. When he radioed the airport control tower, they told him whatever the lights were, they were invisible to civilian radar systems.

But this didn't mean officials were ignoring the reports. The military was apparently on the case. According to some witnesses, two fighter jets departed Luke Air Force Base in search of the mysterious orbs. But as the planes closed in, the objects collapsed and disappeared into a ball of light. This wasn't the end of the Phoenix Lights incident.

Around 10:00 PM, the UFOs reappeared over the city, but they disappeared again within minutes. By now, Dr. Kitai was there to record the incident. She was unaware of the numerous sightings from earlier that evening. For the budding ufologist, it was just another successful but routine night of UFO spotting. After she snapped her photos, Dr. Kitai turned in for the night.

But the other people of Phoenix weren't quite so ready to move on from what they'd seen. Emergency phone lines across the region flooded with panic calls. Local news stations wanted in on the story. When Dr. Kitai awoke the next morning, she realized perhaps the tide had turned in Phoenix. Everyone suddenly cared about the lights in the sky.

When she visited ufologist Richard Motzer that morning, he was fielding calls from curious reporters who wanted more information. Luckily, Dr. Kitai had just what they were looking for: her video recording from the night prior. She passed this to Motzer and left so he could continue his interviews with the press.

When she got home, Dr. Kitai had a voice message from the air traffic controller she'd spoken to in January. He told her he'd seen the same lights yet again. And just like before, they were invisible to radar. It felt like everything was finally coming together. Everyone had seen Dr. Kitai's lights.

And when she turned on the TV, local news stations were all playing her videotape of the orbs. She switched from channel to channel. Fox, ABC, Channel 3 News. The coverage was relentless. Most of the reporting focused on the orbs that had appeared in town at 10 p.m. And the whole spectacle was dubbed horror.

The Phoenix Lights. Dr. Kitai had already put her career on the back burner to investigate these strange oddities, but the Phoenix Lights event gave her a new outlook. This could be her new career. She had experience educating the public about health. Perhaps her new purpose was to educate them about UFOs.

She soon became a go-to expert on the lights. She offered her services to a local UFO investigation group called the Village Labs. She found her history of sightings helped tremendously when she interviewed other witnesses. She could be compassionate and non-judgmental in a way many people couldn't.

As she compiled more information, Dr. Kitai took copious notes and relayed them to the head of Village Labs. She felt at home there, surrounded by other like-minded people. But in spite of all her investigations, the public had very little information on the event.

The press couldn't explain the incident, and the group that should have had answers, the U.S. government, was deafeningly silent. And when they finally did offer a solution, it was so outrageous, Dr. Kitai suspected they were covering up a real alien sighting.

March 13, 1997, thousands of Phoenix residents saw eerie lights and bizarre aircraft in the night sky. But for nearly two months, government officials stayed mum about the phenomenon. This left an opening for ufologists like Richard Motzer to try to explain what had really happened. Motzer was an old-school UFO investigator at MUFON.

During Dr. Kitai's initial dealings with him, he was very enthusiastic about the evidence she'd collected. So much so, he shared it with the local news. He also charted where each sighting took place and interviewed more than 70 witnesses. But as he dug deeper, he began to second guess his initial assumption that the orbs were extraterrestrial. In July,

Motzer published a report contradicting Dr. Kitai's findings. In it, he claimed the Phoenix lights were actually distant military flares. Others in the ufology community disagreed. They thought there had to be more to the story. And the public was growing increasingly restless for a real answer. Finally, a councilwoman of Phoenix, Frances Barwood, broke the silence.

On May 10th, the front page of the Arizona Republic proclaimed Barwood had opened an investigation into the incident. She promised her constituents one way or another she would discover the truth. Barwood directed her staff to collect as much evidence as they could. She told the press that she believed the lights were some kind of Air Force experiment. But she was open to other possibilities. It could have been a hoax.

and she didn't rule out the possibility of alien visitors. Barwood's tentative support thrilled ufologists, who felt like they finally had a champion in the local government. However, the statement wasn't exactly a boon for her reputation. Local newspapers mocked Barwood. Even though they'd stoked the fire of the UFO fascination,

They had no problem raking the official over the coals for her open-mindedness. To make matters worse, Barwood quickly realized her actual authority in the manor was non-existent. Less than two weeks after her big announcement, the Phoenix City staff sent her their findings. Essentially, a collective shrug. They said they didn't have the resources or expertise to investigate anything UFO related.

Furthermore, the commanders at Luke Air Force Base, the people who could have found answers, refused to do so. A spokesperson for the base told reporters UFO investigations were outside their jurisdiction. This wasn't true. The Air Force had a history of looking into UFO sightings, especially through an infamous program called Project Blue Book.

But in this case, they apparently didn't want to get involved. Either way, no help was coming. But Barwood's campaign generated significant press attention. And on June 18th, USA Today published the first national piece on the Phoenix Lights. It concluded they may have been the most significant UFO event since Roswell.

Before long, the mystery of the glowing orbs turned into a national sensation. It was such a big deal, Senator John McCain of Arizona announced he was shocked no one had conducted an official inquiry. He told radio listeners his constituents deserved an explanation. As the national discourse reached a fever pitch, ufologist Bill Hamilton contacted Arizona's National Guard.

He asked a spokesperson if she knew of any military activities in the air on March 13th. She responded, no. But only weeks later, she changed her tune. On July 25th, she told the Arizona Republic she was fed up with calls about UFOs, so she'd done her own investigation. And after a bit of digging, she'd found the truth. She revealed...

On the night of March 13th, pilots from the Maryland Air National Guard conducted a training exercise near Phoenix. Part of their mission involved dropping bright flares suspended by parachutes. Residents looking in that direction would have seen a string of bright lights blink on over the horizon, then disappear after a few minutes.

The military's explanation was good enough for many people to stop worrying about UFOs and get on with their lives. But for Dr. Kitai, it was insufficient. She'd seen these lights many times before, and she thought they couldn't be ordinary flares. The closer she looked, the more she saw signs of a cover-up. Someone had to stay focused on the truth. So rather than give up, she dug in.

Dr. Kitai met with a public relations officer from the Maryland National Guard. She discovered the flare theory from March 13th had originated high up in their chain of command. No one who'd actually been part of the mission could confirm this was what had really happened. Dr. Kitai wanted to expose the military's lies, but this was only one small part of what motivated her. The mystery was also personal.

Everything Dr. Kitai had experienced, from her first sighting on her balcony in 1995 to the Phoenix lights, had changed her life. She transformed from an educator to a student who was searching for answers. And beyond that, the orbs had changed the way she saw the universe. Each time she saw them, she felt a deep sense of connection to something bigger than herself.

Many of her fellow experiencers had felt the presence of a higher power. Dr. Kitai wanted to tell more people about these sensations. She wanted to share them. She'd been gifted a divine revelation, and it was her responsibility to share it with the world. So she started a new project, a book called

She also planned to use her skills as a video producer to make a documentary on the Phoenix Lights. Everything was progressing, and Dr. Kitai felt more passionate than ever before. She poured into her work until January 12, 1998, when she and her husband settled down on their balcony to enjoy the cool mountain breeze.

She began to wax poetic, telling her spouse about the pole of destiny she felt. Suddenly, her words caught in her throat. Below them, in the fog, two amber orbs hovered, motionless. The Phoenix Lights were back. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast.

We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts or email us at conspiracystoriesatspotify.com. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story and the official story isn't always the truth.

Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Xander Bernstein with writing assistance by Amber Hurley and Angela Jorgensen. Fact-checking by Cara Macerlene and research by Chelsea Wood. Sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor.

I'm your host, Carter Roy. This episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. When you feed your pet Hills, you help feed a shelter pet, providing dogs and cats in need with science-led nutrition that helps make them happy, healthy, and ready to be adopted.

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