The Phoenix Lights

The March 13, 1997, Phoenix lights event plus a couple similar sightings are relentlessly trumpeted as an extra-terrestrial visitation. Unfortunately, other than the word of eyewitnesses that they saw something in the sky, there is zero evidence to support such a fantastic claim as visitors from outer space. This would have made a superior segment on The History Channel's "U.F.O. Hunters", but is not acceptable as a feature, simply because there is not enough material. The interviews especially wear thin, becoming more and more redundant. "The Phoenix Lights" will probably leave most viewers thinking less would have been best. - MERK

I welcomed the omission of buffoon debunkers & was impressed with the honest details by the experiencers themselves. While focusing on the inexplicable AZ mass sighting of 1997, this film also includes the history & scientific analysis of the data, which has been missing in most films of this genre. Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, a military/Vietnam/Commercial pilot, PhD optical experts & others of note confirm these century old global events, yet with photo & first-hand witness testimony verifying mile wide advanced technological vehicles appearing silently right over their heads, others would either ignore, continue to dismiss & even bash the credible documentation that something cryptic is going on for which there is no explanation - 26 yrs. Later - as well as berate this courageous attempt to educate the public. Definitely worth checking out.

This is one of the best documentaries ever produced on the subject. And they finally take it to the next level, meaning that they are compelling us to consider the real implications of contact with intelligent life from another world, and encouraging us to consider our place in the cosmos, and the fact that we are part of a larger community. Everyone should watch this and regain a sense of awe and wonder at the incredible potential awaiting us. We must grow up as a race and turn our gaze outward AND inward.

"The Phoenix Lights," for all its importance and for all the obvious conviction behind it, gets itself all twisted into a pretzel because neither the visuals nor the witnesses seem able to distinguish between two entirely independent events.

Near sundown, a giant V-shaped formation of lights, perhaps a mile across, passed southward over Henderson, Nevada, interrupting a Little League baseball game. Hundred of witnesses stared up at the thing. It moved slowly and silently out of sight at low altitude. After dark, it passed down I-10 and flew over Phoenix, continuing southward towards Mexico. There is no question about its existence or its properties. It was witnessed by thousands of people, including law enforcement officers, professionals of various types, air traffic controllers, and military and civilian pilots.

Later that night, some Air Force Warthogs apparently dropped a series of bright flares during an exercise. The flares were in a series and disappeared one by one behind the mountains into the target area. The flares were photographed by numerous people, many of the good folk of Phoenix having been alerted to and excited by strange happenings in the sky, by this time.

Nobody knows what the first thing was. So the response of the public becomes, by default, the more interesting story. Somehow, the original story bled into the second. The huge triangle is dismissed as "Air Force flares." A Phoenix councilwoman, entering her office, was asked the morning after the event if she knew anything about the triangle. She'd heard nothing about it but she brought the subject up at the meeting, where it was dismissed with a single joking reply. Her question made it into the media, however, and her office phone lit up. When her answering machine could no longer handle the volume, the phones of other offices were called into play. She estimates the number of phone calls from eyewitnesses to the original incident at a thousand. She managed to respond in person to several hundred of them. In its description of the reports, the media singled out one, from a young boy who thought they were airplanes. Thereafter, the sightings were described as man-made objects mistaken for something else. The governor's response was to make a public announcement dismissing the affair, while accompanied by a staff member dressed in an extra-terrestrial costume.

The film was organized by a married couple, both doctors, living on the outskirts of Phoenix. Both had seen the giant triangle with its quiet amber lights. But although the movie was written by one of the docs, it couldn't be more confusing. She evidently saw lights on several different occasions and there were times -- long moments -- in which I didn't know which sighting she was talking about or which picture of which sighting I was looking at.

Too much time is wasted on "ancient visitations" and that sort of irrelevant stuff. And all the witnesses, including the two docs, seem convinced that they observed something from outer space. In the film, the witnesses describe the triangular orange lights as having a calming effect, almost deliberate. One likens it to a parade designed to show humans that "they" have no destructive intentions.

I'm a kind of scientist too, and I'm not so sure about all that. It's too much akin to Kierkegaard's "leap of (or to) faith", the "faith", in this case, lying in what Alan Hyneck called the extra-terrestrial hypothesis. It seems undeniable that something was there -- but what? Sure, it could be a space ship with aliens inside, or a kind of drone, but other explanations are possible. We now believe that matter can take four forms -- solid, gas, liquid, plasma -- but suppose there are others that occur more rarely and take forms like triangles or spheres. Suppose the objects aren't objects at all, but neural impulses in the mind of some cosmic intelligence? Can we be sure they aren't? Every explanation seems as absurd as any other.

The film is screwed up and that's too bad because we need to know more about the thing and its movements than we do about feelings of awe and visits in Biblical times. I'm personally convinced that something is going on because when I was in high school, at three in the morning of a bitterly cold night on an empty rural road, a friend and I witnessed the antics of a moon-like sphere in the crystalline atmosphere. It was fuzzy and bright, flew against the wind, wobbled slowly from side to side, made not a sound, and did a right-angle turn. I don't know what it was, although I waved and shouted at it. Nobody knows what it was. But if you're going to speculate, I would hope you would organize a film better than this.

The visual evidence shown in the film was not terribly convincing, in my opinion; however, the witness testimonies and statistics were very compelling in support of some sort of aircraft that could be explained as extraterrestrial, or some very advanced technology that we possess.

The film points out that if the event were part of a covert military or other governmental operation, it would not take place over highly populated areas. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the event was not a covert military operation.

It is obviously true that the film is not presented as a balanced expose that provides all sides of the story. But, I was OK with that, because it was not expressed or even implied to be a purely journalistic piece as such. It's a documentary that presents evidence and reasoning for the existence of extraterrestrial crafts, and therefore extraterrestrial beings, most likely.

It left me considering the possibility of extraterrestrial visitations. And why not? Considering the statistical odds of other life forms existing on planets in solar systems in our universe, and that some are likely to have had technology for thousands of years longer than we, it seems possible that we are being visited. And, the evidence reasoned in the film at least should cause us to wonder, and not summarily dismiss it as flares, which seems more like a propaganda story that was fed to the masses than accurate.

Jared.