Somewhere in the Skies - The Phoenix Lights: 28 Years Later

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

On a special episode of the podcast, we celebrate the 28th anniversary of the Phoenix Lights incident which took place on March 13th, 1997. That night, thousands of witnesses across Arizona saw strange lights in a V formation hovering above the state, particularly over the city of Phoenix. It's become one of the most widely publicized and documented mass UFO sightings in history. And Jason McClellan was one of those witnesses. He joins us to talk about his personal experience witnessing the Phoenix Lights and then he and Ryan go through the entire timeline of events and the aftermath. Follow Jason McClellan on Twitter: https://x.com/Acecentric Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Every day in the Valley, someone will call the police reporting seeing a UFO, strange lights in the sky, moving in strange ways.

But it is very rare for thousands of people to call and report seeing the same lights in the same spot at the same time. It happened last night, and eyewitnesses who saw it say it's like nothing they've ever seen before. You are now somewhere in the skies with your host, Ryan Spray. Welcome to a very special episode of Somewhere in the Skies. Well, today's guest is of no surprise. You did see his image in the featured image. And he's right here with me today. We're going to be talking all about the Phoenix Lights incident.

Jason has an even closer connection to the Phoenix Lights. He was there when it happened and he saw it. So, Jason, welcome back to Somewhere in the Skies, buddy. Oh, Ryan, it is so fantastic to see your face, my friend. I miss you and I am so excited. to be here today. So yeah, we're going to be talking all about the Phoenix lights. I'm sure a lot of our listeners and viewers are very familiar with this case. But for any of our listeners and viewers who are new to the UFO world, we know that our community has probably quadrupled in the past few years.

And people are just getting into this topic and learning about the history of it. You know, we got the Roswells and the Socorros and the Rendon Shums and the Rendoshams. and stuff like that. But Phoenix Lights is up there, really high up there in terms of legitimacy, credibility, theories on what it could have been. But yeah, before we get to your personal connection, my man, could you tell us a little about this event, maybe kind of the broad sweeping overview of what the Phoenix Lights was, if you don't mind? Absolutely. I would love to. As you already said, I mean, for anybody who's dipped their toe into the UFO field or UFO research has most likely come across the Phoenix Lights. But this is essentially the most famous mass UFO sighting when you look into UFOs.

This occurred in March of 1997 in Phoenix, Arizona, as the name implies. But it certainly affected more people and was seen in more places than just Phoenix, Arizona. prompted reports all the way up top of the state even into Nevada coming down through the state and even into Mexico so what what happened on March 13th this was at night this was between you know witness reports vary but between 730 and 10 30 p.m. at night and thousands of people across the state of Arizona reported seeing various things which is not uncommon with UFO sightings everybody interprets things different ways

everybody has different vantage points and things like that. But it's most commonly accepted that perhaps multiple events occurred that night. Multiple different objects in the sky, people saw different things. The first one being what some describe is a mile wide craft, some solid craft consisting of a series of lights. And the number of those lights varies, depending on who you talk to you, but five, six, seven, eight, nine, all sorts of different configurations of lights, but mostly, in sort of a V formation, traversing the entire state. A second event, like people call it,

occurred in the West Valley of Phoenix, and it was a series of lights, sort of in a boomerang pattern that just sort of hung in the air for an extended period of time, for hours even, some report. But, as I said, there were multiple things reported that night. Everybody's description doesn't line up, which, again, has come with UFOs, a lot of different stories, but ultimately, story here is there were unknown lights that were seen by thousands of people in Phoenix. These all were reported. It was investigated, tried to be investigated by government officials. And ultimately, we still don't know what the Phoenix lights were. Right. And we'll get to that investigation, quote unquote, in a little bit.

We've got some really cool archival footage to show you guys of the lights of news footage that came out around the time that the event happened. So we're swinging back into the 90s today. going to be fun to see some of the coverage of this back then. But let's go ahead, Jason. First, I'm going to show one of the videos of the Phoenix Lights that was caught by one of these witnesses. And that's by a gentleman named Tom King, who I actually got to meet when I was out in Phoenix investigating this case, which is another tease of something we're going to talk about a little

bit later, too. And, yeah, Tom was one of those individuals who was able to catch these things on camera. So let me pull that up, and we're going to take a quick look at his video. Why not? They keep coming. Wait. Whoa! Look at all!

I got that one on video. There's four of them. Look at there. Three of them all together. I got the third one popping in there. There's one behind the chin made. One just fired up. I got four of them.

Major sighting here. That's... No, there's five. Oh! Another one just showed up. They're multiple. Whoa! Maybe somebody's setting up light.

Do you see that? No, those are in the sky. There's one underneath the house too. There's one behind the chin. There's one behind the chin. You need to go to pick them from here. I can't see how this works. Holy shit.

No. They're lined up in a pattern, man. There's geometry behind this. All right. So again, you can obviously hear the excitement in their voices, which I always love. Like, especially when we have these new UFO videos with like even the people in the Navy being like, what is going on here? I would assume, you know, that was. Tom in the background talking and it was clear it was unnerving for everyone there.

I mean, no matter what it was, everyone was freaking out. And like you mentioned, Jason, they started calling local law enforcement or, you know, the airport. A lot of people believe that these were coming from either the airport, Sky Harbor or the military bases nearby, which, again, very contentious. We'll get to kind of that, the military aspect of all this too. But yeah, yeah, what did you think of Tom's video there? That's definitely one of the most famous ones, I believe.

Yeah, for sure. That's one that we see a lot of news reports and stories talking about the Phoenix Lights. And like you said, it captures the excitement of observing something that hasn't been seen before. People clearly had not seen that kind of display in the sky before. So it's very exciting and very confusing, too. And that confusion and excitement is what prompted so many people to contact the media, the airports, Luke Air Force Base, Davis-Mawthin Air Force Base, all these different sources trying to get answers. And, you know, when you see a video like that, just without context, you know,

I as a UFO researcher and investigator would look at that and think, yes, this looks very much like military flares because you see a straight line of light. You see them popping on and off. And that's usually a good indicator of military flares. And that's certainly one of the prominent explanations that was eventually offered by the military to explain this. You're right, right. And, well, let's sort of start with that. The, you know, people started reporting this to New Fork, I believe, immediately as it was happening. And the airports and correct me if I'm wrong, but around this time, you know, when the calls first started coming in, they weren't taking responsibility, right? The military and whatnot, weren't they saying like, yeah, we got nothing up there.

Am I correct in that? Correct. Yeah, the military. Well, as far as their willingness to provide any answer. they kind of stonewalled for quite a while. It wasn't until months later, even half a year later, that they offered an explanation. Okay, okay, yeah. And again, this is where this is going to get messy and muddy, you guys.

So bear with us as we kind of stumble through the Phoenix Lights, because there's kind of two incidents. And that's a really interesting aspect of this whole thing, is are we dealing with some sort of cover up or whatnot? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Jason, let's talk about your personal involvement with this case. You were living in Phoenix at the time, and you were a part of this. And again, you now have the bragging rights to say you were part of one of the most famous UFO cases of all times.

So, yeah, give it to us, man. What did you see, set this up for us, if you don't mind. Tell us the story of your sighting. Sure. So this is the quick overview. So I was 17 at the time. I was living in Phoenix's Far West Valley on the other side of the Astray Mountains. And if you've read about this case, you're familiar with the,

Australia Mountains and it's with the flare theory it's commonly brought up that the flares disappeared behind the mountains and it sort of winked out and that's that's because they were descending like military flares do I was on the other side of the Australia Mountains and what I observed and again I can't speak for what other people saw I can only speak to what I saw and what I saw did not descend at all and I was quite familiar with military flares I'll talk about that in a minute But what I saw was sometime during the night, I have no idea when this was because it was so long ago, so I'm not going to pretend to. I'm going to guess it was around 9 o'clock at night.

I saw a series of lights, and I can't remember exactly how many lights, but somewhere between 7 and 9 lights, in either a sweeping arc or a triangle formation in the sky almost directly over my head. I could go out into our yard, stand, look up, and see the series of lights, just suspended in the air. No movement, no sound, no apparent change at all in brightness, intensity, there was no flickering, nothing like that. These lights were just stationary lights hanging in the sky. It was crazy. And they had a slight similarity in appearance to military flares.

And I know that because I grew up, again, way out in the middle of nowhere, and to the southwest me is the Barry Goldwater test range where the military frequently drops these flares in their training exercises. What these flares do is they illuminate the ground for the A10s flying, it illuminates the ground targets so they can do night training. And these high intensity flares when they drop, I've seen them so many times. So it's hard for me to describe what they look like because I can pretty much tell just by looking at something that it's it is a military flare. But these high intensity flares that were used

really only have a burn time of about five minutes. They're suspended by these parachutes. They do kind of drift and burn while the magnesium or whatever they're composed of is burning. And they kind of drift down. You'll see a smoke trail. You'll see, like with Chinese Lantern, you see a pulsing of the light because there is a fuel cell,

you know, something burning there that creates this burning effect, a strobing effect. But what I saw was in the sky for well more than five minutes. And it wasn't that I went away and maybe they dropped more flares in the same spot so I was confused. I watched these things for a good solid 30 minutes to know that they were there for a long period of time. They weren't flares. They weren't at least no flares that we know of.

I mean, these were completely stationary. They didn't wink out. They didn't descend at all. They were in the sky for such a long period of time. And again, these were special high intensity flares that were being used, but they only have a burn time of approximately five minutes. So for me, the flare idea went out the window pretty quickly. It's not something that I seriously considered at the time.

And since then, you know, I did serve as a professional full-time UFO investigator and journalist. And during my time, being a professional UFO investigator, I, you know, probably a professional, examined hundreds of UFO photos and videos every single year during my seven-year span. And, you know, I got pretty good at being able to identify flares and things like that. And, you know, to this day, I haven't been able to satisfactorily satisfactorily come up in my mind with an explanation for what I saw because it doesn't align with flares. It doesn't align with other things. And the flare theory is also problematic for me

because, well, we can get into the government's explanation later and we can go deeper into that. But that's essentially what I saw. Just a series of lights suspended in the sky. No sound, no motion, no apparent change at all. And they were there probably for 45 minutes. I did leave at one point, but when I came back, they were gone 45 minutes later. And then I remember seeing them on the news that night. Wow. So a couple questions, follow-up questions for you. Was there anyone else there when you saw this? And did it ever, you know, cross your mind to try to, record this thing again these are the two questions every UFO witness gets were you alone when this happened and why didn't you get that now today we live the luxury of having you know a camera with us

24-7 and a lot of people do ask that question that if we have this technology right now why aren't more people catching these things on film but again this is back in 97 um so yeah other people there and did it ever cross your mind to try to record this so my family was certainly home um I believe they were just inside watching TV. And I seem to recall, you know, mentioning it to them because they kept seeing you run outside and look at them. But, you know, to them, it was just, oh, there are lights in the sky. That's cool. And, you know, I don't think they ever paid any attention to it or thought that it was something anomalous that they should come and experience as well. So, no, I mean, for me, it also wasn't like this urgency thing or something that I was like,

oh my God, we're being attacked by aliens. It, to me, was just more of intrigue, you know, It was something that I'd never seen before. I thought it was extremely fascinating and my mind couldn't come up with a logical explanation for what I was seeing. And to your second question, you bet I tried to record it. I mean, you're right, it was 97 and my family was probably the only family I knew of at the time you know, and our friends that had a video camera. And this was a, yeah, good old video cameras.

But yeah, I did actually take the video camera out and try to try to record these lights. So I did and I don't remember how long I filmed them or how good the footage was. But yeah, as I always say, that footage is lost and I've never been able to discover it, not because Mino Black stole it, but because my parents probably recorded

over the footage by recording one of my brother's soccer games or something. So, you know, I can't tell you how many hours I've spent pouring through boring family home videos, you know, looking through the tapes, hoping that there's like a piece of footage there, you know, somewhere that I haven't seen yet. But yeah, I did.

I definitely got it on camera. I just have never been able to find that footage. Wow, good for you, man. Yeah, well, hey, maybe it's still very... Well, good for me. It tortures me to this day that I don't have it. I know, but at least you try. No, that was pretty...

So you were pretty young when that happened. Did you have an interest in UFOs prior to seeing this? Or was this kind of your first initiation into this topic? It was certainly my first kind of notable UFO sighting. I'd spent a lot of time in the desert, well, I lived in the desert, in the middle of the desert, middle of nowhere. So the only thing for me to do on weekends with my friends was go camping. So we spent a lot of time camping out looking at the stars and, you know, I would see interesting things as you do if you just stare at the sky. But my interest was always there in space, in astrobiology, in just the universe in general, and the mystery.

that come with that. So, you know, always a big believer in in extraterrestrial life, thought that the universe is teeming with life. And, you know, I always had that interest. And certainly I grew up on sci-fi, a big Star Trek, Star Wars fan. Those were the shows that I would watch. So I had the interest, but the siting itself was the first major UFO sighting that I'd personally been involved with. And at the time, it didn't really affect me that much, again, beside just the intrigue that I had. You know, I'd say UFO sightings I've had since then have had more of a wow factor on me. But yeah, I mean, it didn't start my UFO career, but it certainly kind of got me a little more excited about it. Well, let's move on with the timeline of the event. Now, once all these calls started coming in and the news started.

started covering it, there was no, you know, putting the lid back on this thing. It was out there. Hundreds and hundreds of people like you mentioned saw it. And people were looking to the government to start to, you know, deal with this. Local government, we're talking the governor of Phoenix at the time, Fife Simonton. And what ended up happening? And we're going to show the video. I know you've seen it a million times, Jason, but for a lot of people who aren't aware, The governor did talk about what had happened and wanted to touch on that, yes, we're investigating it, and we think we found the culprit to the Phoenix lights. So let's go ahead and play the infamous video of Fife Simington and the press conference. It's a serious offense for anyone, human, space alien, or otherwise, to engage in mysterious activity in our nighttime skies.

That is why I will personally ask that the perpetrator be prosecuted to the fullest for the havoc, brought on our entire community. And now I'll ask Officer Stein and his colleagues to escort the accused into the room so that we may all look upon the guilty party. Don't get him too close to me, please. This just goes to show that you guys are

entirely too serious. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find Anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away.

All through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. There it is, Jason. There it is. The infamous press conference. So did you happen to see this back in the day when it actually aired live?

I do remember seeing it, yeah. And we do have a special guest joining us today. Oh my, is that the actual mask? What? Explain this to me. It's the same one that was not the actual one, but yes, the same costume that Fife Simeington's Chief of Staff wore. Yeah.

And that is courtesy of our good friend and fellow rogue planeteer, Maureen Ellsbury. She got that many years ago. And she gifted it to me when she moved back to, Seattle. But yeah, that's the actual one. And it sat in a storage locker. So Arizona heat and everything, it's, you know, being this rubber mask, it's very much dried out and very crumbly. So I wouldn't attempt to put it on right now. Yeah, I don't blame me. We won't make you do that. So, yeah, with Simonton at that time, the Phoenix Lights wasn't that big of a deal. It was locally, there was a lot of buzz, a lot of intrigue and people asking questions and wanting answers.

But remember, this happened in March. And it wasn't until June of that same year, in 97, that it started getting national press. The USA Today had a front page story about the Phoenix Lights. And so it was in June when Symington held that press conference. Okay, okay. Yeah, I remember hearing about the USA Today headline. And that's, again, like you said, that's when it went worldwide. And everyone started talking about it.

I think the pressure started coming on to kind of the people in Phoenix to explain this for the military to explain this. Because again, these things were seen over the major airports. They were seen over the city. This could be a potential threat. We have to keep that in mind, right? A lot of that credit, if not most of that credit, goes to Francis Barwood, who was a Phoenix City councilwoman at the time. And she's the one who during a council meeting suggested that they should look into this because a lot of consensuates were calling in and saying, hey, what's going on here? Is there any answers to explain this? So she brought it up during a council meeting and she was met with ridicule and scorn. And she even says that a city manager came up to her after her and said, you shouldn't have said that.

And, you know, she took it seriously. And she fielded phone calls from thousands of witnesses. You know, she took it very seriously and wanted to help people find answers. But her colleagues, you know, and people from the governor's office, they kind of harassed her at work. You know, they would hang little goofy, funny alien jokes, you know, in her office and on her photo in the hall and, you know, tell people that they want to talk to her. They need to speak into the tinfoil and things like that. I mean, she was just just made fun of because she was looking into this matter seriously. And, you know, around that time, too, was also Fyfe Samington seemingly joking about it as well.

So a lot of that ridicule played into, you know, played as obstacles for anybody trying to get serious investigation into this. Right, right. And, you know, serious is another way to look at it because a lot of the witnesses, they didn't think it was funny that Fife Siamington did this. joke press conference, which he called kind of a prank on the media because the media was pushing for answers. So he gave him his answers. And the calls started flooding in to Francis Barwood. Again, kind of the unsung hero, I think, in the entire event that occurred and kind of the, you know, the hitch she took. I actually have some archival footage from a news segment that took place locally in Phoenix of Francis talking about getting these calls and how she perceived.

what the governor had done at the time. So let's go ahead and take a look at that. Bear with me, guys, here. Make sure I have the right one. Yeah, let's hear from Francis Barwood. Ms. Barwood asked for a similar investigation not long ago. We have her on the telephone now. Ms. Barwood, what's your reaction at this point?

Well, I've gotten many phone calls from people that are very upset that this is a joke. And I'm wondering, you know, now with the confusion, And is he really going to do an investigation or was the entire thing a joke? Well, we just heard from his chief of staff that they have, in fact, asked for an investigation. We'll see if that turns out to be a joke as well. But the investigation you called for never panned out. You got roundly criticized for that as well. Right, and that was kind of surprising because, you know, all I did was ask for us to look into what so many people saw

and to find out if one, if it was military, and shame on them for doing it, two, if it was a hoax, and how did they do it, and three, if it was something else, but at the very least, look into it and see what it was. Do you at all feel like the governor and his office were making fun of you? I would hope that, you know, he hasn't gone to that level. I get an awful lot of that from the mayor himself, so I doubt. I'm hoping what he's done is made, you know, his little joke, for the session because to thousands of people, this is a very serious thing and they're very,

very concerned, you know, that nobody wants to even look into it. City Councilwoman Frances Barwood, what are callers telling you? Well, a lot of things. They said, you know, what's going on? He goes into the court and he comes out and he changes his mind and, you know, just a whole bunch of stuff, but everyone that's called me. Again, this local politics drama is what I live for, especially when it comes to a UFO event. So yeah, you want a little more political drama with that.

Yeah. During that interview or during the press conference, I think that was during the time when Samington was actually being indicted for multiple counts of fraud. Right. Yep, there's that too. Didn't he, no, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't he save a president's life or something like that? He did. He saved Bill Clinton's life, apparently. Yeah. So what happened was he was convicted of multiple counts.

a bank fraud or something and that was eventually overturned but before the feds could uh you know retry or bring that bring the charges again um bill clinton pardoned him and apparently when they were kids simington saved uh clinton from from a riptide from drowning or something so where you go guys you never know when something will come back to either bite you in the ass or help you out so keep that in mind keep that in mind for future politics but i do think think Symington gets a bad rap and we'll talk about that but uh you know for people who just casually look into this case and they see that press conference you know all of a sudden Symington is vilified and he's the bad guy in this whole thing when actually I think he comes out looking pretty good

right he does have a redemption story in all this um well let's hop into that uh so you know fife Simington clearly didn't take this too seriously um he did want to do this press conference to kind of calm people down and hopefully just put it to rest. Like it was clearly something prosaic. We might not know exactly what it is, but there is an explanation. We're fine, moving on. But the people of Phoenix were not ready to move on. They wanted answers because the thing with this is people had so many varying experiences with it. Some saw it really up close, some far away. Some said that like they had this instant amnesia when the event happened. You know, I've explored cases of this as well where people saw UFOs and immediately forgot about it, like within seconds,

almost like the men in black syndrome, or their emotions were manipulated, or something like that occurred. And there are people with the Phoenix Lights who have said that that happened. So clearly that wasn't just a balloon or a flare that did that to them. Is it something within them, their physiology, their mental state during the event, adrenaline emotions? I don't know. But people were pissed about this press conference. Francis Barwood eventually, I believe, was voted out because of the stigma behind her defending this thing and keeping it going. And again, unsung hero of all this, but let's get to it.

Fife Seinfeldon, his redemption. Before that, for anyone who wants to hear more from Francis Barwood, we did have her as a guest at the International UFO Congress. I forget what year that was, but there is, you know, recording of her. her presentation from that event. So if you want to hear all about her story and everything she went through during that incident, you can find that presentation from the International UFO Congress. Yeah, I believe it was 2013. I was researching it last night. Sounds right. And it's pretty emotional. Yeah, she goes through her whole journey with all of this.

And again, I kind of took the hits for for everybody with it, unfortunately. But okay, Fifee Simington. Redemption Story. Let's play. this clip from John Hook, a local news anchor, very famous in Phoenix. I had the pleasure of doing an interview with him and Jeremy Corbell, which people still bring up to this day. I've looked so young and skinny back. I'm so glad you were there to do that. You saved this all by doing the interview. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was super fun. But, yeah, so Fife Simonton did this really in-depth interview with John Hook. And I'm going to play a little bit of that now and get his redemption story. So he would eventually come forward and admit that he also was a witness to this. Check this out, guys. March 13, 1997. This event called Lights Over Phoenix. What did you see?

Well, I saw a huge craft just kind of come right over a squaw peak that was just breathtaking. And I'm not sure about the date. You've got a better memory for the dates than I do. But there was no, like the Clinton Day, no. No. No. I was on a strict diet. No, I'm serious, I'm serious now.

That it was a, unquestionably it was a UFO, which means unidentified flying object. Doesn't mean we're being visited. Well, it's nothing like anything I've ever seen. And you're an Air Force guy. Yeah, yeah, and a pilot. I've got a lot of hours flying. So it was pretty breathtaking. Did it frighten you?

No, I think I was kind of in all, really, you know. How big? Bigger than I've ever seen in the sky. Like an aircraft carrier in the sky? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that, you know. And it was hard to define because of the light in terms of the size, but it was absolutely silent and that's sort of eerie embedded lights.

And, you know, so that's what I saw it. I wasn't expecting to see anything because I was looking out over at Luke to the west. And then all of a sudden these people in the park area just on the west side of 51, there were a bunch of people there. Everybody said, look at that. And we turned around and this thing was coming from the northwest, traveling to the southeast. There have been so many different sort of sightings and inexplicable phenomena that, you know, but the display. But the disparity in terms of technological progress would be so vast that we would be, I think, of sort of no consequence to whoever is visiting us, because the technology to get here would be just beyond anything we could imagine.

Did it hover? No, it was just going in a straight line. Slow pace. Yeah, slow pace, yeah. And then, you know, there were all the sightings. There were the sightings of the America West Plain coming into Sky Harbor said he could have landed on it. It was enormous. Like an aircraft carrier in the sky?

Yeah, I think that's a fair description. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. There we go. There's Mr. Fife Simonton's redemption story. So what did you think, Jason, when you heard that, you know, after making fun of this and everything, he now admitted to being a part of it. But not only that, like believing this was not of earthly explanation in his opinion.

Yeah, what do you make of all that? Yeah, that was amazing when he actually started talking about it and we learned the backstory and the things that were going on behind the scenes. You know, like I said, the knee-jerk reaction. for UFO researchers, you know, seeing the press conferences thinking that Symington was making a joke of it and he didn't take it seriously and all that. But in fact, we found out that he was actively trying to get answers. He was pressing the Air Force bases and he was getting stonewalled. They weren't giving him any answers and he was getting frustrated by that.

Here he is, the governor of the state unable to get answers from the military bases within the state. It was very frustrating for him. And yeah, as he said, he was a captain in the Air Force, a pilot. And he said that he'd never seen anything like that before. And he's also another view said that he's convinced that what he saw was not from this world. You know, James Fox has interviewed him in his documentaries. In 2007, Siamington moderated the National Press Club event that Leslie Kane and James Fox put together. So we spoke about it there too.

Simington's testimony, you know, as a witness to the Phoenix Lights has been hugely powerful and just illustrates the problems of trying to get answers when it comes to UFOs and the difficulty getting government bodies to talk to each other and share information. Right, right, exactly. And, you know, I know you've written about the Phoenix Lights a lot back in the day when you were working with open minds. And, yeah, you've done a lot of great work on this case overall. And when it comes to covering this case as a journalist, you also have to cover the skeptical side of all this, the theories, the explanations of what the Phoenix Lights could have been. So I guess let's kind of fast forward a little bit to what some of those theories that have been posed, Jason, about what the Phoenix Lights were, what the military came forward and said was going on.

Yeah, could you maybe run us through some of those theories? on exactly what this event could have been, these videos that were caught later in the night, I believe, around 10-ish, 1030, even though people started reporting these V-shaped craft around 8 o'clock, 8.30. Yeah, yeah, what were some of those theories posed and what the Phoenix lights were?

Well, certainly we have just regular planes flying in formation. Being a night sky, it's hard to tell when things are separate individual sources of light or if they're connected to one larger craft. And even the accounts, many of them, of the accounts that talk about a singular large craft, you know, there's not a lot of ability to determine detail other than saying, well, it kind of blocked out the stars or whatever. And many of them even talk about the light's changing position, you know, or the triangle shape with a

light in front of it and a light trailing it. A lot of different stories there that, you know, maybe could be explained by separate craft. I don't know. But Flares, obviously, is the one that comes to mind the most because the appearance is very close to flares. And it does seem from some of the videos that have been popularized that there were flares being dropped. And that's what the military says. There were exercises taking place that night. And I certainly don't discount that. I think certainly that could that could be the case. And I know Dr. Len Ketai, one of the leading, probably the leading experts on the Phoenix Lights, she's devoted a lot of her life to to being the go-to person for that. Love, love Lynn, and she does a great job. But something that she says,

and a lot of people repeat, is that, as I mentioned, with my personal sighting, it's not uncommon to see flare drops in this area. And Dr. Kitae uses that as a basis to say, obviously people in Phoenix have seen this before. They would know what flares look like. And that's a big jump, because most people haven't seen military flares drop. Even in Phoenix, where you can see it quite frequently, the fifth largest city in the country, four and a half million people or something, still not everybody's going to be looking

in the same spot in the sky at the same time. Not everybody's going to have the same vantage points. So it's not something that people immediately identify. So it's always possible that many people saw flares, and for the first time, as we just saw in San Diego, right? There was a big, big hullabaloo in San Diego this year with clear military, military flares dropped over a military testing range, you know, pretty clear cut. But with the Phoenix Lights, the flare theory, you know, was heavily investigated.

And again, with the military not offering explanation, you know, until half a year later, what they eventually settled on for their expectations. explanation was that the flare, these were military flares and they were dropped by a group that a squadron that flew out of Davis-Montan Air Force Base in Tucson, which is two hours south of Phoenix, and they were a part of what they call Project Snowbird, which is an arrangement they work out with squadrons from other states where, you know, in March they're usually dealing with snow and bad weather, they come to Arizona for their training because we don't have those issues. We just have beautiful weather all the time.

So that's what they identified. They identified a squadron from the Maryland Air National Guard that was in Davis-Mothan Air Force Base doing their training at the Berry Goldwater Test Range. And I believe it was, they claimed it was their last day of doing the exercises. and before they returned to base, they jettisoned all their remaining flares and went back to Tucson. There are a lot of problems with that.

Number one being the time that they proposed this happens, it doesn't line up with witness accounts. Number two, what I already mentioned about the flares and, you know, their five-minute burn times, that clearly wasn't seen in many of the sightings. You also have the fact that, I mean, from what I understand, and again, I'm not in the military, I'm not a pilot who does this type of stuff, but from what I understand, it's not uncommon to jettison the remaining flares before returning to base.

I think that's ridiculous because these flares are actually thousands of dollars, military spending, you know, and government spending, that apparently is not an issue, but I would think they would want to keep those unless they can't be reused once they're loaded for some reason. But also, where these things were seeing over a metropolitan area, major metropolitan area, and Phoenix, Arizona, March, hate to tell you, but we've always been in a ginormous drought. Everything is dry, and the state would catch on fire. If you're just dropping these flares, you know, randomly over wherever you want, because I'm dumping and going back to base. It's horribly irresponsible, and Francis Barr would even touch on that.

And it's sloppy, it's dangerous, and somebody should be held accountable for that. But even the pilots who participated in that training, that testing from the Maryland Air National Guard didn't come forward for a long time and people saw that as a red flag. However, as I pointed out, this really wasn't a national story. It gained some momentum in June and that's when some calls were made, that's when people started. hearing about it, but, you know, with all of the height that was generated, they certainly didn't think, well, that could have been us. It wasn't something they really talked about or considered thinking, maybe we should come forward and admit this. So, you know, there are lots of excuses, lots of long-drawn-out

stories, but ultimately, the biggest, you know, being, Symington getting stonewalled, not being able to find answers, Francis Barrowood, not being able to get answers, and the general public being ultimately delivered an answer that doesn't line up with the facts. Welcome to Uphology 101. Never seems to line up. Well, one of the points to bring up, Jason, is very important, and that's timing. Now, again, the flares wouldn't last that long. They would burn if they hit the ground, very irresponsible.

There's so many factors that just don't line up with that explanation. And also, the fact that people were seeing a solid craft, as they say, around 830. Now, again, that's, you know, open for speculation as well. Was it one solid craft? Was it five airplanes in a V formation? We don't know. Let's, I guess, backtrack just a bit. Now, a few years ago, and a lot of people put this in the chat already.

Talk about Kurt Russell. Talk about Kurt Russell. He does have a connection to the Phoenix Lights. Let's go ahead and play the video. This came from a press junket he was doing with Chris. for I believe it was Guardians of the Galaxy. Two, I think, that Kurt Russell was in. And the topic of the Phoenix Lights came up by the host.

And then Kurt Russell just let it rip. So let's go ahead and play that for the audience right now. Place in Arizona, an unidentified pilot, according to the press cuttings, flying near an airport in Arizona with his son when he spotted six lights in the night sky. So he called from the airplane to air traffic control to say, I'm seeing these lights here. I wasn't expecting any other planes. There's none supposed to be on my landing path.

Can you tell me what's going on? They said there are no other planes. He said, I'm seeing six bright lights coming towards me. Mystery unresolved. Except. Oh? Tail number for that plane was Bonanza two tango Sierra, and I was the pilot. No way.

Oliver and I. Dan, dun, dun. Yes, take this box. Doesn't say that in the briefing. Take by, or I should have read to the end. Oliver and I were flying in, I was flying him to go see his girlfriend. And we were on approach. And I saw six lights over the airport and absolute uniform in a V shape.

And I, and Oliver said to me, I was just looking at him and I was coming in, we're maybe a half a mile out. And Oliver said, Pa, do you, what are those lights? And I, and I, then it kind of like came out of my reverie and, and, you, I, and I, then it kind of like came out of my reverie and, And I said, I don't know what they are. I said, are we okay here? And I said, yeah, I'm going to 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 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. But as I'm, 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 Dreyfus in Close Encounters or Third Count. It's like, why do I know this? you know what and it's not clear to me and finally I said then they said the pilot reported it

a general aviation pilot reported on landing I had never thought of it since then and I said that was me I that was me and I said wait a minute I'll go to my log books so I went to my logbooks and there was the flight at that time and I didn't mention anything about the UFO the fascinating part of that to me is that it would just went literally out of my head yeah and Oliver never mentioned it and had I not seen that show I'd never thought of it again that to me was the weird part there we go Kurt Russell possibly was the first you know civilian pilot to report this thing what'd you think when you first heard about this man well it's pretty cool and I love the response too because that's kind of the response that a lot

of people have with UFO sightings, you know, you see something like, like I did. You see something. You kind of scratch your head. You're, you're confounded by it. But later, when you hear about it, you know, oh, yeah, I did see that. Hmm. Other people saw it too. Interesting. And I love how Goldie Hawn was just watching TV, watching a UFO show. And he's all, wait a second. Randomly. I'm guessing it was probably like one of James Fox's documentaries or something, possibly. But yeah, and then the other weird thing he says at the end is that he didn't log the UFO when he put it in his journal there and that he doesn't know why he didn't again that kind of harkens back to this idea of whatever these things were it made people almost forget it immediately now again we're not here to discuss the woo

factor of all this but it does have to be posed a theory that whatever these things were in phoenix uh was able to mess with people or again like you've always said day. Memory is faulty. We can't trust it when it comes to these things. And we truly don't know what's going on. So I thought that was a cool little tidbit to add in there that Kurt Russell was a part of the Phoenix Lights incident, especially in a press jacket for that movie. That's the fun thing about historical cases. You know, over the years, we always get these little nuggets that adds something new to it and keeps it alive and introduces it to new people and helps new people get involved in the investigation process.

Absolutely, absolutely, you know. And we've had a lot of celebrities come forward. Russell Crow saw a UFO. What's that dude? Machine Gun Kelly. The list goes out of here and on. What's the guy who went out to Skinwalker Ranch as well? The rapper there. Oh, yeah, post Malone. Post Malone.

There we go. Yeah, yeah, man. Crazy, crazy, the way this topic has exploded into the mainstream like never before. Well, all right. So we kind of run through the theories of what the Phoenix lights were and weren't in the timeline of events. So how does, in your opinion, Jason, living in Phoenix, how does the city embrace this event? You know, in Roswell, they have a festival every year. Same with a lot of other small towns that have had famous UFO sightings.

What is kind of the overall consensus in Phoenix of this event? Has it hurt the town? Has it helped? Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? they resident? There's not a whole lot here about the Phoenix Lights. You know, it's a lot of people, again, fifth largest city in the country. So we've got millions of people kind of doing their own thing. There is a electronic music festival, I think, called the Phoenix Lights Festival or something like that. But I don't think it's at all related. But, you know, there's not any annual festival or anything

official that happens here to celebrate it or anything like that. But when you talk to people, here, good chance that the person you're talking to either saw the Phoenix Lights or know somebody who did. Certainly with this topic, opening up as an acceptable conversation to have with people, an acceptable topic to talk about, people are more and more willing to, you know, stand up and say, yeah, I saw that too. Pretty cool. But it's just kind of accepted here that it happened. It was cool. But we don't brag about it like Roswell does. I feel like that should be fixed. Yeah, yeah, you guys are a bit more reserved. Well, we should mention, I believe it's the Heritage Center in Phoenix does have like a small exhibit that you can walk through and see the

timeline of the events, the photos taking the videos, which is really cool. I had the opportunity to walk through that with Dr. Lynn Kittai, one of the original videographers of the Phoenix Lights. She's just a wealth of information. Yeah. One of the coolest things that, you know, related to the Phoenix Lights here is, you know, credit to Len Ketai because she does every, year, host a screening of her documentary about the Phoenix Lights and always has special guests come and, you know, speak before or after the showing. It's a pretty cool event, and she keeps that going and new witnesses come forward, new information comes out, and she updates the film, she updates her website, so that's always interesting. And, you know, Fife Siamington, I think, has been there,

but he certainly was a guest at the International UFO Congress last year, the year before, I believe. But yeah, I mean, she keeps it alive, keeps it going, and, you know, I think we'll do more to, you know, have more of a presence here in Phoenix, not on the scale of a Roswell UFO festival, but, you know, little things like that with exhibits and things like that to help people understand the details of the case, because as with most UFO cases, even monsters like Roswell, most people in the general public and even within the UFO community only know a little bit of the little bit. bit of the information, just few bits and pieces here and there. Because this is you and I like to always say, Ryan. It's fascinating when we speak at conferences and Comic-Conns and things like that. How common it is for people to come up and talk about things like Roswell, but not even know where Roswell is or they think Roswell is the same thing as Area 51, things like that. So a lot of the details are lost on people and that's understandable because people aren't

diving in and researching UFOs. just casually interested in something strange that happened. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that you and I are a huge advocate of is getting the younger public interested in this topic, in the case history. You know, so many people have, you know, admittedly said, I just got into UFOs back when the New York Times article came out and the Navy videos came out. Like, I know I have a lot of catching up to do.

And that's cool. But I think, again, it's important to get the younger people involved and interested and know what has come before these Navy UFO videos. And the Phoenix Lights is one of those. And what we do over at Mysteries Decoded, the television show on the CW, is introduce these cases to a younger generation that's never heard of Brazwell, never heard of the Phoenix Lights. And you actually are going to be making an appearance on an upcoming episode of Mysteries Decoded. And we've got a little bit of a, I guess, backstage look at some of the stuff that's going to be going on. There's me with Link Katai. There's Jason, me and Jennifer Marshall, my investigative partner at Mysteries Decoded.

Tom King down there in the bottom, looking at his amazing cameras. He has set up, trained on the skies of Phoenix constantly. Dude's got like a whole HQ there. We got to go visit him at his house. He also has a life-sized, not R2D, too. but one of the droids from Star Wars that he built from scratch, which is the coolest thing ever. Oh, my God.

We got some of Linkettized photos there of the Phoenix Lights. And two gentlemen, I just want to touch on here as well, are at the bottom there, Clifford Mahoud, Zuni Trivolder in Phoenix, who actually I got the immense pleasure of hiking up in the mountains in Phoenix to look at some petroglyphs of what is claimed to be the star people. and their possible connection to the Phoenix Lights incident as well. We did lose Clifford not too long ago, unfortunately. So again, it was such an honor to get to finally meet him and hike the mountains.

And dude, this guy had like a kidney transplant, I think maybe six months before I hiked this mountain with him. And he beat me up there. So that tells you a lot right there. Cliff was a badass. He really was. He really was. And again. And a sweetheart.

Is he going to be in the episode? Do you know for sure? Yes. I have seen a rough cut of the episode. He made it in there. We do dive deep into the Native American aspect to the UFO phenomenon and it's possible connection to the Phoenix lights. I won't give away too much on that side of it. But I do think there might be something to be said about it. And then the last image I want to touch on in this upcoming episode of Mysteries Dakota is you only see the back of him.

But up there we have a pilot who Jennifer and I had the pleasure of interviewing. I don't know. They might show his face. They might not. He did want to remain anonymous when we interviewed him. That might have changed once the episode airs. So you guys will have to check that out. But he was a pilot and did witness the Phoenix Lights that night.

So we're going to get his side of the event, what he thinks it could have been, could have not been, and everything in between. So I wanted to show that little image of him there to tease you guys. But yeah, the episode is going to premiere August 24th on the CW guys. Check your local listing. for that, we are going to revisit the Phoenix Lights like never before. And Jason will be featured in that episode as well.

It was such a pleasure, buddy, meeting you up there. Which mountain was that that we were on? It was South Mountain. South Mountain. Yeah, it was fun being up there. You get a bird's eye view of the city. It was awesome. Ah, so beautiful.

And the reason that Jennifer and I were re-investigating, I guess, the Phoenix Lights is because there were recent sightings of the same sort of phenomenal. happening in the area. I believe it was, you know, just a couple years ago. Um, but again, it could have been anything, but we thought it was worth reopening the investigation and connecting it to what these lights could have been recently in Phoenix. So yeah, yeah, definitely check that out, guys, if you can. Um, that's kind of it, my man, in terms of the Phoenix lights, but we do have some

listener questions here. If you're willing to stick around for just a little bit, um, for some of these, what do you think? What do you say? You bet. Awesome. Um, let's see. here. This is an interesting one. Austin asks, Jason, have you since encountered any story of

evidence that beat your own experience? Yeah, what, I guess any cases that really stick out to you that you personally looked into that really stand the test of time? Hmm. Well, like I said, I mean, for me with, in terms of the Phoenix lights, it didn't really impact me that much at the time, you know, aside from lights in the sky that shouldn't really be there and, you know, kind of confused me. I think many other witnesses at the Phoenix Lights have far more exciting stories than I do. But in terms of other sightings I've had personally, I mean, I think many of the craft or objects I've seen, you know, and I told you this on the show before, Ryan, but I've lost count of the UFOs I've seen. And when I say UFO, meaning things in the sky that I haven't

ever been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for. I say about a dozen, dozen UFOs. And several of those have been, you know, strange, strange shapes, low hanging in the sky from rectangles to even like a hexagon, just some weird, weird things that, again, you know, don't make sense in my mind. They don't belong where I saw them. So personal experience, and this is something you cover extensively, Ryan, personal experience, there's no substitute for. When it comes to UFOs, like your own experience really is the best evidence that you can have because you can see all the photos and all the videos and hear all the incredible stories, but you aren't there. You don't know what this person saw and you didn't experience what they

experienced. I can look at a photo and say, yeah, that looks like this. That's most likely what it was, but I wasn't there. I didn't see it. They were, they have their own experiences. So to equate, levels of, you know, evidentiary value or credibility or something that's more wow factor. And being in UFO so long, I've seen so many more things that are far surpass anything that I've experienced personally. That's fair, man. Yep. Yep.

And like you said, we weren't there when it happened. So we can't really have a final determination of what the Phoenix lights were, what these things you were saw and what thousands of people all over the world are safe. on a daily basis. And other people have video of the Phoenix Lights. Where's my video footage? Is of you playing baseball or something, probably, right? Probably my little, my brothers were little and very much involved in sports all the time,

soccer and baseball. So it's probably one of their games that recorded over it. But as I said, I mean, that's why I scan that footage, hoping for like a cut, between stop and record, where I can have a flash of the Phoenix Lights. that I could get a still from, but it's lost forever, man. It's lost. Alas. I just got to let it go.

Just let it go. Crash Bob SquarePants. Some people said they received a message. This is only a demonstration. Did you get anything similar, Jason? Now, this is another theory we didn't touch on with Phoenix Lights. Is this idea that maybe this was some sort of stealth craft or balloon low altitude thing that they were testing? And they wanted to see how many people would report this.

thing. Right. And test it out. And, you know, once it got on the news and everything, everyone was saying they saw it. Do you think this could have been some sort of test that they were trying to see how the public would react to it or how many people would actually see this stealth craft? Again, we're talking mid-90s. This was the height of, you know, the bombers and the stealth technology really coming to light for the public, at least. It was probably being tested much earlier than that as we always hear that thing. What do you think about this, all being some sort of? sort of test on the public? You know, in this field, you learn to consider all possibilities, and that's certainly one of them.

You know, I can't rule that out. It might seem far-fetched, but, you know, the government and the military has conducted testing on the public before. And, you know, we could posit that same, same possibility with, like, the Tick-Tac video and all that stuff, you know, were they actually testing their own soldier, their own pilot? to see if they would release this information, you know, how well they would follow protocol, you know, what information would get leaked. You know, we can speculate all day, but, you know, with the Phoenix Lights, yeah, I mean, I heard that a lot from a lot of people who have talked about

this. And I could even convince myself that, you know, something was forcing me to go out and observe this thing because I did have this impulse to continuously look at it and go. out and check on it. So I don't think that's likely just because, you know, that that is a stretch. I think many, many, many, many, many other things are more likely possibility than that. But I certainly entertain it. Well, hey, my man, thank you so much for, you know, sharing your personal sighting with us of the Phoenix Lights. I think it's so cool to meet someone that was actually there when this famous event happened and you have your own side to it, your own thoughts, your own theories, so do hundreds of other witnesses who saw that. And I think it's cool that we got

kind of the, I guess, the insider's view of it, if you will. But yeah. So guys, I want to thank everyone who tuned in today to listen to Jason and I talk all about the Phoenix Lights. I hope you enjoyed this kind of overview of the event. It was super fun again, going through the history of it. And yeah, Jason, where can we find everything you're up to, my man, before we get going here? Twitter's the best place. I post everything there. So at Acentric, right under my face there. And yeah, that's how you can find everything I do. Stick around backstage. I'll chat with you in just a sec. And thank you so much again for joining me on some of the same. Thank you, Ryan, and thank you everybody for listening.

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