Mystery Lights Over Phoenix

April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:46am

by KTAR Newsroom

People are looking for an explanation for mysterious red lights that appeared in the north Phoenix sky Monday night, reminiscent of a similar event 11 years ago.
Dozens of listeners called News/Talk 92-3 KTAR just after 8 p.m. reporting they were watching the four mystery lights.
``From my position, it looked like they were just hanging, not moving at all," said one man, who called 92-3's ``Gaydos After Dark." He said he ``absolutely" saw something.
A woman caller said, ``It looked like four red tower lights, but it was pretty high up in the air. I called my husband and he said, `Get home, what's wrong with you?'"
A man in north Phoenix told CBS-5: ``They were about 3,000 feet high, approximately. They looked as though they were kind of hovering or floating from west to east, very slowly. They were up there for 15 or 20 minutes."
Those who saw them said the lights were visible about 13 minutes before moving off to the east.
Deer Valley Airport, which was the closest air field to the lights, had no explanation for them. Neither did Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport or Luke Air Force Base, which said it had no jets flying at the time.
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said, ``A lot of people were reporting seeing some strange lights in the sky around Phoenix last night. Air traffic controllers at the control tower at Sky Harbor saw them. But, we have no idea what they were."
Gregor added, tongue-in-cheek, ``It could be aliens coming down to save us from ourselves, you never know. The only thing I do know is if they were coming down, they weren't talking to air traffic controllers. "
On March 13, 1997, thousands of people reported seeing a v-shaped formation of lights over north Phoenix. They lasted about three hours. Some described them as forming a carpenter's square.
Among those who saw the lights in 1997 was former Gov. Fife Symington, who initially played down the episode. However, he said last year that he believes the lights came from ``crafts of unknown origin" and, ``It remains a great mystery."