The Phoenix Lights

[00:00:03] 7.55 p.m., Henderson, Nevada. A witness reports a large V-shaped object traveling southeast. 8.15 p.m., a former police officer in Pauldin, Arizona reports a cluster of reddish-orange lights disappear over the horizon. Soon after, in Prescott, Arizona, Tim and Bobby Lay with their son and grandson see similar lights crossing the sky. Five distinct lights in an arc shape, almost like they were atop a balloon.

[00:00:32] They soon realized the lights were headed right toward them. As they drew closer, the family realized the lights actually formed an upside-down V. The object slowly moves overhead and through the mountains in the direction of Phoenix. An amateur pilot, Kurt Russell, flying toward Sky Harbor International Airport, reports the same V-shaped craft to air traffic control.

[00:00:57] From 8.30 to 8.45 p.m., multiple witnesses in Glendale report the same shape, flying high enough to just be obscured by the cloud cover. At 10 p.m. in Phoenix, a large number of reports come in, reporting a row of brilliant lights hovering in the sky. Multiple photos and videos show the most widely reported UFO event in history, now known to enthusiasts as the Phoenix Lights.

[00:01:26] Welcome to the No Such Thing As Goes podcast.

[00:02:10] My name is Greg. You just heard Andy in the intro talking about Kurt Russell. That is correct. But more broadly, the Phoenix Lights. Oh, I just latched on to Kurt Russell, the pilot. That is the Kurt Russell that you think it is. It is? It is 100% that Kurt Russell. I thought it was just a coincidence. I thought it was just somebody that shared the name. Nope. He later revealed in some interviews, I have a clip for one to show you from the BBC. Okay.

[00:02:39] And he didn't even really think about it at the time. He reported seeing these lights and the airport. They told him, we don't see anything here. So he was taking his son, Oliver, to Phoenix to meet up with his girlfriend. He was just dropping him off. So he dropped him at the airport, went back home to L.A., and thought nothing of it. That's crazy. So our first celebrity. A celebrity sighting. On No Such Thing As Goes. Yes.

[00:03:09] If it's your first time listening, I am a hardline skeptic. Andy, how would you best describe yourself? I am a true believer. He's a true believer, ladies and gentlemen. Just like Kurt Russell. Just like the great Kurt Russell. The great Kurt Russell. Yes. All right. So. So more about his story. Like I said, he forgot about it. And like five years go by, and he walks into his house, and Goldie Hawn, who if you don't know, was his wife.

[00:03:38] Our next celebrity. Yes. Was watching a television show, and it was talking about the most sighted UFO event in history. The Phoenix Lights. Okay. And he walks in, still kind of, you know, not paying attention to this either. Just, hey, how you doing? And then he hears the pilot that reported the lights over the Phoenix airport.

[00:04:06] And he goes, wait, I recognize that voice. And it was him. And he's like, hold on a minute. What is this? And he had no idea that he was part of this event that happened. And he didn't know he was one of up to 20,000 people that reported seeing this thing. So, yeah. I'm really surprised by that, because I thought it was just somebody that shared the name. Because I was like, Kurt Russell? When I listened to it, I was like, it can't be.

[00:04:35] It's just a guy named Kurt Russell. But it is. Yeah. It is. Actor extraordinaire. Extraordinaire. Yeah. Kurt Russell. He has escaped from L.A. He's escaped from New York. He escaped from New York. He found the thing. Yeah. He may or may not have been the thing. We don't know. We don't know. All right. So, what else? What else is going on with the Phoenix Lights? I've heard of the Phoenix Lights in passing. Yeah. I don't know any specifics of it.

[00:05:02] I assumed just by the name, it's some lights that happened over Phoenix. Yes. And as we talked about in our previous Aliens 101 episode, these would now be categorized as a triangle-shaped craft. Gotcha. Because a lot of them were reporting V-shaped lights. And as it went over Phoenix and the surrounding areas, people started, you know, at first some of them were just saying lights and it was in the shape of a V.

[00:05:32] But then the more you see, the more it looks like one craft with these lights around the outside. And it's that triangle shape. It's a big black triangle in the sky, basically. Gotcha. Gotcha. And there's estimates from 10,000 to 20,000 witnesses. So, this is one of the bigger reports that you're going to see, if not the biggest.

[00:05:57] Usually, you know, the ones we've talked about is a handful of people, one family, one person. You know, this is an entire region, not only in Phoenix, but that was the majority of it. But, you know, as I talked about, some of the surrounding areas, too. So, we had reports to the FAA. I'm assuming we also had reports to, like, police. Oh, yeah. Police were getting calls. You know, FAA was getting calls. All, you know, all around the region.

[00:06:25] So, like amateur astronomer, kind of home astronomer people. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these people were just sitting outside, not even necessarily looking for something. They just saw it. Yeah, there were, you know, I would assume there were people that were sky watching and that kind of stuff. But, you know, some of the people that I'm going to tell you about were just, you know, sitting outside. So, do we have, like, photographic? Yes, we do. We have photos of this. We have some videos, and we're going to get into some of that with you.

[00:06:54] I'd be interested to see some of them. I don't know if I've seen them. Again, this passing knowledge that I have of it, I think because it was such a big event that that's the only reason that I kind of earned it. It's been talked about on a lot of different shows, mostly that probably you didn't catch. Or I happen to be watched, like, in the background and these things came out. It's not like I'm allergic to it, necessarily. It's just that I don't care.

[00:07:20] And there's been times where, you know, the anniversary of it, which would be coming up soon. Okay. You know, but, like, 10-year anniversary, they might put it on the news or something. You know, so it's something that's been talked about even outside of, you know, the UFO circles. Right. Yeah, it's a little more – it's more widespread. It's more common.

[00:07:41] I'm actually going to touch on some of the reasons why that might be because it was not only witnessed by, you know, Average Joes, the people that I talked about. It was then acknowledged by local government. Oh, okay. In fact, the governor of Arizona at the time was Fife Symington.

[00:08:01] And after a couple of months of people questioning his office and other offices and the police and everything, you know, what's happening, what was this, he decided to hold a press conference. Great. And it didn't turn out the way that he had hoped, I don't think. He basically came out. He said, we caught the suspect. We've got him here. We're going to bring him out here to show you.

[00:08:29] And so he dressed up his chief of staff as a gray alien and brought him out in handcuffs. And, you know, nobody needs to worry. We've got it taken care of. Well. I like that. And I'll have the video posted for everybody and I'll have it to show you. UFO enthusiasts were not amused. No. Well, because – We take this seriously.

[00:08:56] Well, because he came out and said there was nothing before that, that he didn't see anything. There was nothing going on. Okay. And then come to find out, 10 years later, he comes back out and says, you know, I had to do that. I was trying to kind of lower the panic levels in the area. But I really did see something. And he described and said he saw the same craft. So after doing this –

[00:09:25] And it led a lot of people to believe that, you know, he was maybe told, hey, you need to go out and say this. Forget about what you saw. Go out and tell everybody there's nothing to see here. And they decided to make it a big joke, which UFO enthusiasts, especially some of the, you know, ones that dedicate their life to this, they, you know, took that as kind of a shot at them the way he did that. I think it's funny.

[00:09:54] I probably would have thought it was funny even if I was one of those people. But I could also see why they would be like, hey, you know, we're trying to do it. It's an event that a lot of people saw. And it doesn't have an explanation, right? It doesn't have a clear explanation. I haven't seen – We're going to get into – I haven't seen the video. I need to see the video of the lights. Yeah. Let's – I'm pretty sure I've seen it before.

[00:10:21] But I think that was just poking fun at a situation on individuals. It seems like thin-skinned people. You don't have the link to the actual – I had it, but I didn't put it in there apparently. I thought I did. That's the most important one. That should have been the first one. I have the Kurt Russell link if you're going to watch that. All right. So Andy showed me a few videos of the Phoenix lights. It is a strange video.

[00:10:51] I'll give you that one. It is a strange sighting. It's weird how they kind of blink on weirdly in kind of a sequence. Yes. Because like he has one light. That stays stationary the entire time. And that's the other weird thing about it too is like none of the lights seem to be traveling. They like light up one after the other. Yeah. But they're not – You can kind of see why people would think it would be either multiple objects or one object. Right.

[00:11:18] Like there's some clips that you see that look like it could be one thing and then, you know, in the next clip it looks like, well, maybe they're just moving in unison. Mm-hmm. But they're so steady. Yeah. They don't really move. It's not – it doesn't look like it's traveling through. Like, you know what I mean? It doesn't mean like it's going from point A to point B. It shows up. Stays the same brightness.

[00:11:44] Of course, this happened over, you know, the total time, you know, was a couple of hours that it was seen. You know, it traveled through Phoenix within, you know, 15, 20 minutes. So it did move. It did move. It moved through and out of the city. Do we have video of it moving? Well, this is 1997, so like some of those appeared to show movement, but like – To me, it doesn't show any kind of movement. Yeah.

[00:12:10] It's very stationary, but they do illuminate one after the other, like in a line. Right. And then they start to go out. So it's lights on, lights off kind of scenario. And you're getting a bunch of amateur video from, you know, all over the place. Right. Because at first I thought, because there's a few things that I've seen, especially going around all this kind of disclosure stuff. Mm-hmm.

[00:12:38] Like I watched one that was like a FLIR camera from the military. Yes. And it's shooting these objects. But those are obviously like flares. Okay. Those are like parachute flares that are dropping down. Yeah. And you can see them losing elevation. Correct. Yeah. You see them kind of dropping slowly. Yes. Right. And they use those for target practice. Right.

[00:13:05] And because they can hit the flares and zero their stuff in. But you see the trails. You see those kind of vapor trails. Obviously, you're not going to see that at night. Capturing that with just standard kind of. Right. These aren't professional cameras for the most part. They're very bright. And I understand like if it is a certain. Like luminosity also can be the same as like size.

[00:13:32] Like you know how there's like a large object and it moves and it's hard from the ground to determine how fast that is actually traveling relatively to you. Because it is such a large object. Right. Luminosity can do kind of the same thing. Well, it depends on your position too. If it's moving right at you. Right. You will see the scale change. Eventually. Eventually. There's the, you know, different perspectives give you a different perspective on the movement of it also.

[00:14:01] With the other videos, you said they show movement. I mean, there's some. Because we're just seeing lights. We're not seeing a structure. There's nothing that's like. I couldn't find one to where it's like, oh, it's going across, you know, and you can see it. But that's what's strange to me is the fact that there's nothing that really indicates movement. Right. Because while it does. Now, I don't know. I also don't understand. Maybe that could be some of the misconception.

[00:14:27] Maybe because of the size of it, you can tell it's, you know, large lights, if not a full large object. How did we jump into it being connected to one ship? Because it doesn't seem like a V shape to me. Well, it's. V is. Yeah. Some of those that you saw, it looks like like they described in one of the witnesses was like arch shape. It looks. Yes. It looks slightly curved. It's a little curved.

[00:14:55] If you were to assume that all the lights are connected to one thing. Yeah. And you could. You could imagine it's almost a triangle, even though the front is rounded. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, like. It's. I think it's people putting. It's the same thing we talk about a lot. You're putting a shape or a face or whatever onto an object you see because you're not sure how it actually fits together. Right. Right.

[00:15:20] You're doing a guess about based on simple things that you are familiar with. You're trying to establish what that actually is. I mean, I can understand because it is kind of in a loose line. Right. Some things line up. Like, in my brain, I saw an arch. If I was going to attribute that to one thing, it would seem very large. Right. And it would be lights on the front dotted around. I don't know if that's the case.

[00:15:49] It is weird that it is very stationary. That's the strangest thing to me. I think a lot of the movement attributed to it could just be that, you know, people saw it all across New Mexico into Phoenix. Like, it was. Maybe it was just so big and maybe it was moving. Or just so bright. Because again. And bright. Yeah. That luminosity, depending on how bright something it is. Right. It works the same as something being large. And. So, it could be a pinpoint of light. I mean, it could be a very strong light somewhere.

[00:16:18] And that still has the same effect. As it being. You know, like you're looking up at, like, the moon. You can't perceive, as you're looking at it, necessarily the movement. But, because it is so large. Right. Like, it's moving. It's moving quicker than what it seems to be. Right. Right. But you can't. You know, in relation. Unless you're actively watching it for a large amount of time. But that. How bright it is also.

[00:16:46] Will make it seem as if it's moving. Maybe slower. Correct. Right. But it doesn't seem to be moving. At all. It seems very stationary. Everybody can see it from different points of view. It's not like. Do we have call-ins that are like, okay, starting at this time. And then now everybody starts to see it at this time. Yeah. I mean, it's going through the course of the night. And it's, you know, starts it in New Mexico and moves through Phoenix. I know this is going to be a hard question for you to answer. Are you able to go.

[00:17:16] There was absolutely no sighting. There was only sightings at this time. And then this time. That are X amount of miles apart. Well, I can't answer you. Like, all of them. I'm just interested to see what the overlap is on reported sightings. I mean, it started at, what did I say? 745. What area? 755 in Henderson, Nevada. Can you pull up a map? I just want to track the time across.

[00:17:47] Because it could just be bright lights that everybody saw around the same time. That would be five hours and five minutes driving from Henderson to Phoenix. And that's over the course of 755 to around 10 o'clock. But that doesn't mean that the reports were not all. Like, what if the reports lasted everywhere for that period of time? You see what I mean? I see what you're saying. But it kind of trickled down. Yeah. But did it?

[00:18:17] Like, I don't see that. Right. And I'm not provided with that information. Right. I have to see the track. And if I see anything that overlaps that says, oh, but these reports, some of these reports happen at the same time as these reports, it doesn't give me travel. Like, it doesn't give me a travel destination. Now, if we wanted to get that information, we do have a source that we could. Oh, okay. Dr. Lynn Katai. Dr. what?

[00:18:44] She was a physician, a child, a pediatrician. Okay. So she has nothing to do with any of this other stuff. No. And she dropped all that because of this event. She was... Yes. She ate her job. Two years before the Phoenix Lights, her and her husband had an experience in their home. There were lights outside. He spotted three amber lights hovering in the distance and told her to come look at it.

[00:19:13] Neither one of them were interested or believed in any of this stuff. So, you know, they looked at it. They saw it. They acknowledged it. Didn't really register. Didn't... They weren't UFO enthusiasts or... Y'all followed. UFOologists. I don't want to say it the right way. Almost said it the right way. Yeah. They weren't that at this point. But it did, you know, it did catch her attention. She's a doctor. She didn't want to bring this out to the public and tell anybody about it.

[00:19:42] Just give me a moment before you side-eye and roll your eyes because it's going to work out better than you think. So, fast forward two years. She sees the Phoenix Lights. She has a recording, I believe, of her own of it. And this triggers something in her. She quits her job. She wants to dedicate her time to figuring out what this is. She starts gathering reports. Starts hearing things in the area.

[00:20:11] You've got the, you know, the governor putting out this report. And so, she's suspicious of that. She's gathering other reports from public officials. And eventually, seven years later, she releases a book. And documentaries. And whatever else she can put out there. She's going on talk shows. She's making appearances on the news.

[00:20:39] And all she has to talk about is the Phoenix Lights. I know that's contrary to what I normally tell you about UFO and other witnesses. That they don't profit off of things. But we could go rent her documentary right now. Oh, I'm sure. As we approach the 30th anniversary. A certain time after you quit your job that you obviously hate. And you saw some lights in the sky. Sorry, audience.

[00:21:09] I had to give him this one. But you quit your job. You obviously hate. And then you see some lights in the sky. And you're going to have to make money somehow. So, sometimes people just need to make some money. Not going to disagree on this one. This was a... And I know there's plenty of people that volunteer their time. There's certain people that have interest in it. And there's certain people that are... They just enjoy doing it. And it's not about credit. It's not about money.

[00:21:39] Like, I get that. You know what I mean? It's kind of a hobby. It's a hobby. It's like collecting coins. Mm-hmm. It's on that level. But it sounds like she saw an opportunity to not... She hates kids. And then she's like... Okay, I got to do this alien thing. I got to make money somehow. There are a few names. Is it a documentary? No. I have not. I didn't read it. Have you read any of her stuff? I haven't read it.

[00:22:07] I've read articles and watched some interviews with her. How does she seem? She seems like somebody that's more than willing to go out there and appear on anything and everything. She is the face of the Phoenix Lights. If you look up Phoenix Lights videos, witnesses, her name will come up almost immediately. I'll watch it eventually. Is she really just hamming it up?

[00:22:33] I purposely cut off one of the videos I was showing you because she came up after and I didn't want you to know the name yet. Is she really hamming it up? She's into it. She's not like, you know, she's not Jojo Susuculos. Yeah. Big hair guy. But she's into it. Gotcha. She really likes the attention, I would say. Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah. And that makes sense to me. There are. So I don't. The problem is there are always bad actors.

[00:23:04] And I don't know. I'm not even necessarily saying that she is. No. And she could have witnessed this. She could have witnessed the thing two years before. There's no. I mean, there's no problem making money off of stuff. Yeah. Like, that's also the thing that I want to be careful of. The reason. There's charlatans and the nearest people that are like. And I don't think she's necessarily taking advantage of people. She's just taking the spotlight. Yeah. And you rolling with it. Here's the strange thing. I'm not mad about that. Here's the strange thing.

[00:23:34] You didn't give me that much on this. Like, I'm not mad about that. We do a podcast talking about this stuff. No, no, no. And that's what I'm saying. Like, this is one of the few people that you will see that is like immediately going, I'm going to make this and this and this. That didn't come into it, you know, going, I'm just going to make documentaries about all this. There's obviously people that go out there and do that type of thing or do podcasts about the thing. Right. But she had this one experience and took it upon herself to write all these books, which is perfectly fine.

[00:24:03] I don't see a problem with that. I'm not discouraging it at all. But I haven't read or watched any of her content. Right. If I did that, I might my opinion may change because she could say some crazy stuff. From what I've seen of her, she's not like, like I said, not really taking advantage of anybody. She's taking the money in how she can. Good for her. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not bad mouthing her in any way. I'm not. I just was like, no.

[00:24:30] But I mean, normally when I tell you these stories, I go, you know, they're not making any money off of this. Why would they make up the story? But obviously she didn't make up this story. 10 to 20,000 people made up the story. There was a lot of sightings on this. There were a lot of people that came in. And again, I don't know what those lights are. But anyway, we're wasting a lot of time talking about it. Let's go. So another key figure in this is former Phoenix City Councilwoman Frances Barwood.

[00:24:57] She's got a lot of this information out to the public because she was getting reports and getting phone calls into her office about all these sightings. And so she went to the next city council meeting and she brought it up.

[00:25:12] It was a couple of weeks after the actual event, but she asked if anyone knew what it was or, you know, if they had anybody that could check into it, any of the other council people and pretty much got shunned and shut down. She said the other council members, they just kind of stared at her and dismissed it, wouldn't answer her questions. And after they adjourned, she was approached by one of them and they said, you shouldn't have asked that question.

[00:25:43] So she feels like she's getting kind of blackballed on this. You know, she's got people in her area that they wanted answers. They wanted to know what was going on. And she continues to get phone calls. She gets hundreds of calls from witnesses and they're all reporting the same thing. And so she starts speaking out and trying to find out from other government officials. Can somebody give me an answer? My people that voted me in would like some answers on this.

[00:26:11] And continues just running into shut doors and silence. Nobody answers it. Question. Geographically, the lights were spotted. Which direction? Say that video. Going southeast. Southeast. What is southeast of Phoenix, Arizona? Military bases? You might throw in you off. There are military bases in the area. And we will get to that.

[00:26:41] In fact, we will get to it momentarily. Oh, okay. Let's. Continue with what the other stuff is. I'm just interested. Like, are they looking toward something in specific? Like, you know what I mean? Because they're looking over the city skyline, obviously. And I'm just interested in the direction. What could be some plausible explanations? Right? Because, you know, you have to do that first.

[00:27:10] How far outside the city limits is it? The person recording the video estimated about 25 miles away. It seemed very stationary again. All right. So, there is Luke Air Force Base, which is 30 minutes by car. Okay. In this general southeast direction from Phoenix. Okay. So, definitely in line. We will come back to military bases and events shortly. Sounds good.

[00:27:40] Okay. Cool. We will definitely touch on that. I promise. So, as we were saying, we were talking about former councilwoman Frances Barwood. She was collecting reports, getting witnesses, but getting absolutely no answers whatsoever. So, finally, the Arizona Republic decided to respond to her. Which is a newspaper in the area. Okay.

[00:28:10] Not in a positive way, though. So, there were a couple of cartoons they put out. One with rockets going in one ear and out her other. There was one where they put Spock in it. Okay. Joking on her. You know, just silly stuff. Again, local, respected people mocking what happened. Do you... And... Was she deserving of the ridicule?

[00:28:40] Was she being, like, an extremist with anything? From what I can tell, she was just trying to get answers for her people. Like, she worked for this region. She was a councilwoman. And she was getting constant calls. It couldn't have been out of just, you know, hey, I need these people to stop calling me. Sure. But she seemed, you know, legitimately interested in it. And not in an overboard kind of way. She was just asking people questions.

[00:29:09] Well, I mean, did this become her identity as a politician? Is kind of my question. Because there are more important things to worry about. I get that. And so I do understand, you know, the newspaper. You know, maybe they were like, hey, get back on track. Yeah. Yeah. So, understandable. But this is also within a couple of months. Right. You know, and I'm sure it's not her entire day making phone calls about the Phoenix Lights. Well, I can see, like, some lambasting.

[00:29:38] Because that becomes your political identity. That seems like a little bit of a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, I don't think that she was crazed over it or anything. I just think that, you know, she was, it was a bit of her being harassed from the public. And her going, look, I'm trying to do my job. This is what they're asking. But I think that's the dangers also, like, of focusing on a minority of people. Because, yeah, there are going to be some people that continue it.

[00:30:08] Right. And I'm not trying to discount the sightings because I don't know what they are. I looked at them. I don't know what they are. And I get people want answers to things. But sometimes, you know, there is that element of, like, you have to continue with the day of life. And if you have, you know, 20 people that are constantly calling you and you devote your time to those 20 people versus the thousands of people that you have to represent. Well, she claims to have been getting hundreds of calls. I don't know how many people were in her, you know, region. Yeah, district or whatever.

[00:30:37] Yeah, like, but that's still a good chunk. It's not like 10 people were calling. True. The claims were hundreds. You're talking, you know, over the entire area was thousands of people. So it's not like it was, you know, a couple of people calling. It was still, you know, just playing a little devil's advocate there. Like, sure, it's probably something that she didn't spend her entire workday on. But could it have been that she was spending too much time on it?

[00:31:07] There's still a balance that you have to make. I understand both sides of that. And like I said, it was over a couple of months. So now you're running into the press conference from the mayor. Right. And of course, the mayor is mocking it while she's trying to take it seriously. So then you kind of create another narrative there. So you've got another whole storm going on. And, you know, she's come out and said, you know, she doesn't blame him whether he was pressured into it or whether he was just doing it to ease everybody's minds. It's I do.

[00:31:36] It feels like she understood that, too. So it feels like she's keeping it going by even leading credence to the fact that he was pressured to do it. Well, I mean, that's, you know, that's just the narrative. So, you know, like these are things that are going to come out no matter what. And you have to answer it both ways. So I don't blame her for that either. I don't blame her for saying, hey, you know, he did what he had to do. So she continued her investigation.

[00:32:05] The government then comes in. And they finally. What do you mean by the government? She's the government also. Well. You mean the federal government. The federal government comes in. So there were a series of military flares dropped by an A-10 warthog during a training exercise. I just talked about flares. Did you just say that? Wow. I did talk about flares. I left that one B because I knew it was coming up. Okay. So it was during a training exercise.

[00:32:33] The Air National Guard stated that the lights observed around 10 p.m. They specifically said 10 p.m. Now we know this was going a couple hours. Did they give that time for a reason? That's the time they gave. So they were like parachute flares. No, it was Operation Snowbird, a training mission at the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, which is right outside of Phoenix.

[00:33:00] They specifically mentioned that the exercise happened around 10 p.m. As you would imagine, the believers did not accept this explanation. Now, what kind of. Because they were like the illumination flares, right? I have video of similar flares. Let me see again. So this is a similar flare exercise. It's not the exact one that was run. It's not Operation Snowbird, but it does look similar. If you look at the beginnings of the flares. Right.

[00:33:29] It has a similar shape. What distance is this video captured from? Is what I'd be interested in. Yeah. I can't tell you the difference in the distance between this and some of the videos. And again, we'll have this posted. This will all be posted. We'll probably just post these things on our own. Once again, this is just an example of military flare exercises. It is not a specific one, so there could be some variation.

[00:33:56] And depending on distance, like the smoke trails, you're not going to see those at a greater distance. Right. And there's more videos that you could look at. This is just the one that I saw that looked pretty close. But they also have things that last a little bit longer in the sky. When I talked about the parachute flares. Yes. That's why I said not exactly that. Those things hover more in the spot. And again, because they are so bright, it appears to be moving very slowly.

[00:34:26] Because it works the same way as something being very large. I will say there is a downward motion. There is a significant downward motion for those flares. In this flare video. Yes. That we did not see in the videos that we watched of the Phoenix Lights. Right. But if you look at the parachute flares, they move very slowly because they're used specifically to... I'm not saying that that completely disproves the flare theory.

[00:34:55] I understand questioning that. And then comparing that to what they saw. And once again, to be clear, this video that we're going to post and that he just witnessed is not... They didn't release a flare video and say, this is what we did. Right. So there's no direct comparison. There's no video evidence of Operation Snowbird as you wouldn't expect there to be. But to speak to the people that are questioning it, I can understand where they're coming from. Correct. Because it is much more stationary. Right?

[00:35:24] And I get it. Like, it makes sense. It is interesting, though, that it kind of lines up. Because you have one light illuminating, then another light following. They're in a sequence that they light up. And if there are those kind of parachute flares, they do hang in the air longer, then they are so bright that they will look like they don't move as much. Yeah.

[00:35:47] And I will say, depending on the amount of video that you take, the distance you're from from it, that will change... And how bright the flares are. And how bright they are. That will change your perspective. And it could possibly make it look like they are not dropping. And what happens if those flares that look like they didn't move were staggered maybe a mile apart from each other? Right. You know what I mean? The illuminance will look similar.

[00:36:17] But they will appear to be, number one, creating that arc. And then also staying in place longer. Because then you start to get some kind of illusion, right? Where the first one that's closest, again, 25 miles away versus 26 miles away versus 27 miles away. That's not a lot of space. Right. When you're from a distance, right? They seem to be all at a similar distance away. Correct. But they're moving at different times.

[00:36:46] There's arguments to be made on both sides of this one. Because there is slight movement. You see that arc that kind of forms. You start to see a little bit of movement. It's not a lot. No. It looks very stationary. If it's moving, it's moving very slow. Yeah. Also, just a side note, there are videos. Of people even now that look at an airplane and go, oh, that's not moving. What's wrong? And they, come on, guys. Yeah.

[00:37:16] But it's a big, big airplane. It's the angle you're looking at it. Yeah. So it's how it's approaching you. Yeah. It's how the size of the airplane versus you. It has to do with the altitude of the airplane itself. Yeah. Depending on how you perceive motion. I mean, there's still precedent for people mistaking things. Like you, you're saying it looks like it's not moving. We have calls that would back up that it was moving, but we don't know that it was, it could have been stationary or it could have been moving. And you can't really tell by all the videos.

[00:37:44] And again, I'm not seeing a necessarily sequence to the reports. Right. And I can't verify that. If everybody saw it, you know, there might be more reports later on. This would be a whole different show if I could go and track down minute by minute. Here's the other thing is, as we go through these episodes, we like asterisk things in our brains. And we even talk about it when we're not doing the show. Hey, we need to come back and revisit this. Yeah.

[00:38:13] And I think he, can I say something? I'm going to announce something. And I think maybe we might've already talked about it a little bit. Maybe not. I can't remember. We haven't done that in many episodes and I still can't remember anything. We're eventually working on going weekly. So we're going to be able to drill into very specific things. So we'll do our normal episodes every other week. I don't think we've really mentioned that yet, but I think like this kind of stuff, like there are things that we can explore deeper and we can go deeper into some of these.

[00:38:42] Andy's are Andy already has plans to break out an episode, right? Like aliens. One of one is kind of broke out already to Phoenix. Like this episode, like more stuff will break out of that because the one-on-ones are kind of a overview of, of everything. It's a grab bag of everything. And then there's also individual stories to be told in between there. But when we have an episode like the Phoenix lights, which is a breakout episode of aliens. One-on-one, uh, we'll be able to do another episode.

[00:39:10] We're able to dive deeper into the nitty gritty of it. Yeah. We want to come back to some of these, uh, and honestly to give Greg a little bit of a chance to have a little bit more than getting angry about everything. Yeah. I'm also learning a lot. I mean, I don't know if y'all have seen the last few episodes of like, oh no, that's Kecksburg. Oh no, that's Delphos ring or like this or like that. Yeah. Like I've been able to identify more things and that's part of this. But there's still things that he, he hasn't seen, hasn't experienced. Yeah.

[00:39:39] And so there's, I can't say experienced that's, that's reserved for people that have encounters. Yeah. You're not an experiencer. We hope, we hope one day that we're both experiencers that we, uh, you know, but that's kind of, that's kind of where we're going now. That's a tangent. Now go ahead and put us back on track. So yeah, we, that's one of the explanations. That's the major explanation for these sightings.

[00:40:02] Uh, but before we get away from this, we need to get back to the, our good councilwoman Barwood. Okay. She did get one more report after some of this kind of died down. Uh, I'm doing a smile right now because I feel like he's going to talk about somebody that got abducted. No. Oh, I, there will be something that is returning material, but it was not an abduction. Okay.

[00:40:32] So she gets a call from a retired veteran named Richard Curtis. Uh huh. He claims to have detailed video footage of a large solid triangular craft that flew over Phoenix. Okay. So a little bit better footage than we've seen. He had high end video equipment and he got the video as the client craft flew over his home. Now you might say, give me the butt.

[00:41:00] You might say, why don't, why didn't I show you this? Correct. Cause it doesn't exist. It's taken by the government. It does exist. She had only had photos of lights. So she was excited to get this. She said, can you get it brought to my office? Can you get it to me? He says, yeah. Can you mark that as personal and confidential? So that only I see it. I can do that. Says Mr. Curtis. Well, a week goes by.

[00:41:31] They haven't shown up yet. So she calls Mr. Curtis back. Was this a joke? Did you, do you have this footage? Are you, are you going to get it to me? Oh, well I, you should have it by now. Shortly after we spoke on the phone, two men came from your office and they asked for the tapes. So he gladly gave them to him thinking nobody else knew about this. Well, Ms. Barwood says there's a problem with that.

[00:42:00] But there's only women that work in my office. There are not two men who are wearing black suits. Okay. Looking very identical. Wait, can I get out? Can we stop for, can we pause for a quick second? Yes. Who told this story? Councilwoman Barwood. She told the story. And. She told the story. Guess who else is still around? Curtis. Yes. They both tell the story. They both tell the story independently. Okay.

[00:42:29] I, I'm, I'm having a problem with this one because now it makes me feel like what's what? Councilwoman what? Barwood. Barwood. Councilwoman Barwood might be feeding in a little bit too much of this nonsense. I feel like maybe the cartoons that are lambasting her had a point. It seems like this is what she was doing. So you don't think it was a coincidence as we talked about before. This was March of 1997.

[00:42:58] What came out in July of 1997? Just months after. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones showed up at her door. At his, at Curtis's door. Also. On a side note. That same year. Maybe connected. Maybe not. Okay. Alien Resurrection and Starship Troopers also came out. I don't know if that has anything to do with the men in black.

[00:43:27] That movie sucked. It was very bad. That was very terrible. So I don't think it had anything to do with the men in black as Starship Troopers. Alien Resurrection really blew. I didn't like it. Because they did like the hybrid where they kind of like genetically fused the alien. They fused her. Yeah. That movie sucks. Yeah. God, they should have stopped making alien movies. The TV show is pretty good. I'm just saying there are some theories that. You watch the, you watch the TV show. What was the name of the TV show? Alien Earth. Alien Earth. That was pretty good. That was weird. Very good.

[00:43:57] It was weird and I loved it. It was so weird. It got really into the corporations. I'm way off track. All right, go ahead. Well, as I was saying, there's a theory that Hollywood is easing us into. Why is it always? Disclosure. Wow. Like the new Steven Spielberg movie. Disclosure Day. So maybe we're getting something. We already talked about Close Encounters and some other movies and Men in Black.

[00:44:25] And, you know, some of those are touchy subjects for some people. But it's just the theory. You know, could they soften the blow? Could they tell us, you know. They've been softening the blow for 60 years. Yes. But some of them could be more accurate than others. Such as the Men in Black. I'm going to go on a tangent here. I was thinking about something. And we'll probably cut all this. I doubt it.

[00:44:56] There could be an argument for these, the hiding of the existence of aliens when this country was more religious. Like the problems that would come up because people are like, but no, the book of Genesis says this. Now, people involved in organized religion are, like, it's a little bit less.

[00:45:22] And I can understand maybe if the country was mostly believing in that, that maybe there would be more, you have to worry about maybe people going everything that I knew was wrong. And maybe you would have bedlam. And I'm not saying that people are necessarily enlightened, more enlightened, because they're obviously just as stupid as they always have been.

[00:45:49] But do you think that part of the cover-up is to preserve people's things that people believe in already? Is that something that's wrapped up in the conspiracy and cover-up stuff? Possibly. I mean, there's... You feel uncomfortable. You look uncomfortable, Andy. No, I was thinking ahead. Oh, okay.

[00:46:16] But, I mean, this is a good side tangent. Okay. And, like... Do you think they are trying to... Because the problems that you have, you start to break down people's faith in something? I... Like a religion? I can see how it all makes sense from a certain perspective. Right. And, again, you're dealing with, like, maybe people that are a little more, like, fundamentalist when it comes to the Bible. Yeah.

[00:46:44] The people that go, oh, everything in the Bible is real and it really happened. And... But it's... I mean, there's things that we're going to talk about on other episodes where one thing happens and can it spread through a community? Sure. Right. So, you know, you put that on a larger scale where, you know, you have a small group of, you know, fundamentally religious people that follow a certain... Doctrine. Doctrine.

[00:47:09] And are they paranoid enough and convinced enough that that spreads to another group? And threatened enough by the existence of this, which breaks their belief system. Right. And so, do people outside of that look at that and go, maybe we should be worried, too? Or, you know, even though they don't believe the same thing, is it... Panic spreads easily. It's an easy thing to do.

[00:47:35] I mean, even in this instance, you know, did we have a few people that made reports that they call their neighbors and say, hey, did you see that? And then did they go, oh, yeah, I saw it, too. And then, like, I'm not saying that's what happened here. That's not what I'm talking about, necessarily. Well, no, but it's... I'm not talking about the spread of something. I'm talking about people feeling threatened. But it works the same way. People feeling threatened. It works the same way, though. By it. Like, you tell one person one thing and they tell ten people the same thing.

[00:48:04] How does that spread? It's a telephone game. Does it get worse as it goes along? Well, and again, that's not what I was saying. I was saying that certain people are going, like, people with strict beliefs in religion or whatever would go every... Like, would that cause a panic? Would it cause more... The question is, would it cause more a panic if it was a cover-up?

[00:48:32] This is coming from the guy that said there's not a conspiracy. So you're saying if it was a cover-up and word got out that people, that they were covering it up, would that be worse than if... No, no, no, no, no. Listen. Again, this came from me who said I don't understand... That's why I think I'm not following it 100%. This came from me who... I'm going, I don't understand the purpose of a conspiracy to cover things up because what

[00:49:01] does anybody have to gain from it? A conspiracy... Conspiracies do happen all the time that involve the government. There's all kinds of stuff that happens. And that's just the name of the game. You're not going to know everything that happens. And it's multiple actors working together to cover something up and to complete something... Like, to do something. But that always... A conspiracy requires gain from it. Right? We've talked about it a little bit before. There is no gain to saying, The Earth's round.

[00:49:30] No, it's not. It's flat. Like, there's nothing to be gained there. Something like that, no. There's no gain from a flat Earth. Now, if there is... I'm worried about the population, right? And I said before, What is the population going to do? Going to freak out? Why would they freak out about these? It's the aliens. Unless it gave them an existential crisis. I believe in this religion.

[00:49:55] I believe that Adam and Eve were the first two people, and Earth was created in seven days, and that was it. If you introduced the fact that there's alien life, does that make people... I think there are people that would panic in that way and go, oh, my life has been a lie. Is it the same amount of people when they initially say, theoretically, if there was always a cover-up, were they covering up more in the 50s because they were worried about that when people were more traditional versus now?

[00:50:24] Well, that may be true. I'm not saying anything's true. I'm doing a thought exercise here. I'm trying to give it an hour for conspiracy theories. That... I mean, I'm saying that might be a good argument that maybe back then you had more of a reason for a cover-up. Definitely, as far as the, you know, is there life out there, it would be a small group of people that would panic just by that answer being yes.

[00:50:52] Because I think at this point, most people think, a lot like you've explained, there's some sort of life out there. Is it intelligent? Is it, you know, to the level that somebody believes is going to vary? But I think most people would agree that somewhere out there, something is alive besides us. Right, and that's not a fact, by any means. No, no, no. It's like, I just kind of look at it, and I don't know. There's a bunch of other hypotheses that go around that, why we haven't encountered life,

[00:51:21] why there may not be any life. It could be either way. I would just go, there's a very real possibility that there is probably some single cell organisms, other life. We may have to get into the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox, I'm familiar with that. I figured you knew of that. Yeah. So that's something we may need to, maybe that's a weekly episode that we just talk about. Yeah. That could be a good thing.

[00:51:45] I think a lot of people probably at this point would tend to believe that there is intelligent life out there. I would say it's a good chunk. If not, you know, I would have to look at some surveys or something, but I would think a good chunk of people. It's a hard thing to determine. But I'm not even saying they believe that they visited us, just that there's another intelligent life somewhere.

[00:52:10] And the thing that I want to make clear is I don't believe, I think I've said it before, I don't believe there's life out there. I believe there's the possibility of life. And that's what I think most people believe, that there is a possibility that there is another planet that can have life. Yeah. And I would say we're at a point in our culture that most people kind of think there's somewhat intelligent life out there somewhere. It's hard to rule out. It's really hard to rule out.

[00:52:39] It's hard to say that, you know, as vast as we've come to know the universe is, there's got to be somewhere that something developed at least similar to us. Maybe. I mean, that's the thing is it's a possibility. Is it a fact? No, we don't know. We probably will never know. Maybe we will. I mean, there might be a situation where we, you know, there's an asteroid or something. You know, who knows? I don't know. And there's a chance that our government could be going, hey, we've met these people and they're nice. Don't wrap it all into that. Anyway. Yeah, get us back on track again.

[00:53:08] Let's go back to 1997, touching on the beginnings of your rant and the religious aspects of it. Oh, God. Really? There was another thing going on in 1997 during the time of the Phoenix Lights. Sure. There was a very famous. Oh, my God. I didn't even think about it. Very visible comet. Hanley's Comet. Yes. And. Old Hale Bop.

[00:53:38] Oh, my gosh. I didn't even think about this. It was discovered in 1995 by Alan Hale. Yep. And Thomas Bop, who sounds like a fun guy to hang around. I mean, sounds like a killer guy. It had two distinct tails and a blue, two distinct tails, a blue ion tail and a white dust tail. Yep. It was brighter than most of the stars at its peak. Are we trying to connect these lights to that?

[00:54:07] No, I'm just saying things that were going on. Okay. We're just. Coincidences. Coincidences. We got to build some content here. Coincidences. No, not coincidences. That was the wrong word. Don't take that a certain way. Okay. No, but we're just saying here's some things that happened around the time. Yeah. And I mean, if you missed it then. Which added maybe to the fervor. Yes. Okay. If you missed it in 1997, there's still a chance you could catch it. It'll be back in the year 4380. Now, are we going to talk about the other stuff at Ben Haley's Comet?

[00:54:37] When did that happen? It was visible for 18 months from May 1996 to December 1997. There you go. Okay. In March of 1997. Oh, no. That was when the comet was closest to Earth. And somebody's going to hit your ride to it. And at its very brightest. On the night of March 13th. Uh-huh. Which we've talked about in this episode. Correct. It was a moonless night.

[00:55:06] So, it made it a perfect storm for people wanting to spot the Hellbop Comet. I like this. Okay. Go ahead. I don't like the rest of it. Was it a case of overactive imaginations? Was it mistaken identity? Was it a coincidence that so many people were already out searching the night sky looking for a once-in-a-lifetime comet? Ooh, that's an interesting point. And a UFO flew across the desert. Yeah.

[00:55:34] Oddly enough, the Heaven's Gate cult. There it is. They believed that the comet was concealing a spacecraft. Yeah. And it was here to take them away. Uh-huh. And, unfortunately... Yeah. 39 members committed suicide to follow Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles to reach the next level or Heaven or whatever aboard this spaceship. Now, see...

[00:56:04] I'm not... No. I know you're not connecting the two. I am not... In any way, I am saying that there were a lot of people looking to the sky at this time. This is why I get mad about things, though. It's specifically things like the Heaven's Gate cult. I get mad because I get worried. Unfortunately, a lot of this stuff is connected. I get worried. Yeah. I'm not talking about the connection between the stuff.

[00:56:30] I get worried that people start to go that direction with some of these things. I get worried the more fanatical that people get about it, the more likely they are to do dumb stuff to themselves and other people. Well, I want to cover some of this stuff that lines up just to show you and everybody else there's a fanatical side to some of this. 100%. Are these two connected in any way?

[00:56:58] They didn't directly connect their cult to the Phoenix Lights. I'm not saying that. Right. I'm saying it was something fanatical that happened at the time. There is a side to some of this stuff that... And that's not my point. I get worried about everybody in the community because when they become so... When you become so wrapped up and devoted to something and to an idea, it becomes dangerous in a way. That's why I want to point some of this stuff out too, though. Yeah. We want to point out the flaws.

[00:57:27] There's an awareness level of it. As much as I said I'm a true believer at the beginning of this episode, I don't want to take it to a level or anybody else to take it to a level to where you're doing something... You take it to the extremes. Extreme. Yeah. Based on something that is just maybe a natural phenomenon. And I would say the majority of people really take this as... Even...

[00:57:58] It's a fun ride to go on. Even the people that take it pretty seriously are not fanatical. Right. You've got to be worried about when it does go to that. Like... And... Because you can be fanatical about anything. Anything can drive you to a hard at... Like a hard line. Yeah. That is a 100% extreme... Which sounds weird coming from the guy that gets mad about all these things. I'm a... I am... I describe myself as a hard line skeptic. But... Well...

[00:58:26] I'm not going to go around and do terrible things in the name of skepticism. Yeah. And I mean, this is just something that coincidentally did happen at the same time. So let's just kind of wrap it up here. You know, there was so many people that witnessed this event. The government quickly came out with an explanation. It makes this one of the more controversial, especially modern day UAP events.

[00:58:56] Just, you know, whether you believe either side of it, it still makes it controversial. Because there were so many witnesses. Because there was an answer that people didn't like. And the local government made some missteps that kind of... Made some definite missteps. There... There's been no ongoing government projects that we know of, as we talked about before.

[00:59:20] But because of that quick answer, could this have been some kind of government experiment? Government... I'm not even saying... But I am saying... Could it be reverse engineered stuff? But I'm not saying that. Could it have just been... A training exercise. It's 1997. There's some cutting edge technology. It could have been also something very dumb. It could have been the flares. It could have been parachute flares.

[00:59:46] There's also another theory that it could have been a big public experiment. Just test the public. Why? We're just going to report this. Why? I don't... Alright, that's fine. But those things don't make any sense to me either. Let me test the waters. It's people... Are people paying attention to the sky? That's the only thing you're going to get from this. All I know is... Any of these things are possible. Because I know something happened. Oh, God bless it. Yeah.

[01:00:16] And if you would like to let us know what you think happened... Where can you tell us that kind of stuff, Greg? Well, you can go to our website. Which is no such thing as ghost.show. And you can leave us a voicemail. You can. And you can tell us your experience. You can tell us what you think of the episode. You can also, on the website, stop by the merch tab. Yeah, that's right. You can get a t-shirt and get a hoodie. That's what we have right now. We've talked about it before. We're working on more designs. Maybe we'll do an alien design. We're definitely working on a squawk design.

[01:00:46] Most definitely. Because we love squawk around here. Squawk is the best. What else? Social media, Andy. Tell us all that. There's Instagram. No such thing as ghostpod. There is TikTok. No such thing as ghostpod. There is Facebook. No such thing as ghosts. And we have an email. No such thing as ghostpod at gmail.com. Feel free to reach out to us on any of those platforms and say something to us. And wherever you're listening to us, if you have that ability, give us five stars. Five stars.

[01:01:13] And write a review, especially on Apple Podcasts because it helps us get recognized and notice that it helps get a podcast out there. We need everyone to know about these conspiracies. Calm down. These theories. These facts. But also, we're trying to get more reviews on Apple Podcasts.

[01:01:36] So, if you leave a review, reach out to us one way or another and tell us you left a review. Okay? And we'll go back and we'll check on. But we're going to enter everybody's name, I think, probably, you know, in a few months. We'll nail that time down. But we'll put everybody into the raffle. Get a free t-shirt. The faster we get reviews, the faster we give away a shirt. Which is a weird thing to say, but we need more people to participate in that. So, go ahead and do that.

[01:02:06] I mean, I guess if it's just two of you guys, then it's just two of you guys. I mean, better odds, I guess. But we'd like it to be less odds for you. Sorry. That's not the way that sounds. Can't give everybody a t-shirt. I tell you what. If we get... Here's this. The next five reviews we get, I'll give everybody a t-shirt. Oh. The next five. That means Greg really liked this episode. He's in a good mood today. I'm in a great mood. I'm giving t-shirts away.

[01:02:35] He is confident that UFOs visited Phoenix, Arizona in 1997. Oh, boy. And that the government tried to cover it up. I don't like that you always try to... So, we will catch you on the next episode. You all keep believing.