Tuesday, March 30, 2010

MY UFO EXPERIENCE:
Locals Report Sightings Over Huntington Beach

My UFO Experience
Reader Submitted Report
[Unedited]
3-12-10

3/04/2010

My girlfriend and I were driving North on Bolsa Chica street from Warner in Huntington Beach. In the sky above us, also traveling North, were two fighter Jets flying in a tight formation. We watched them as we drove, I really enjoy the sight of jets.

As we got to the cross street Heil, they broke formation and one flew west of the Naval weapons base and the other flew on the east side. I watch the jet that flew west and noticed there was a small, lone cloud just above the Navel base. Watching the jet and the cloud in my peripherals, this bright ball caught my attention flying directly in front of the jet. The jet, appeared to be on its pursuit. Within a few seconds, the ball flashed super bright and just disappeared. I think the expression of confusion lite-up on my face. My girlfriend asked me what was wrong, and to not alarm her, I just said "nothing." She then said, "I know, I saw it too".

I also wanted to note that we were driving to Target, spend 30 minutes there, and upon driving home in the same area, that same lone cloud was still hovering in the same spot over the weapons base. It just didn't feel right, not another cloud in the sky let alone this cloud hadn't moved for about 40 minutes.

3/12/2010

Today is 3/12/2010. At around 8:10am, Myself and about everyone driving East on Warner passing Springdale, in Huntington Beach, saw this wierd, what appeared almost as a rocket, descending down from about 400-500 ft to the ground. First thought that came to mind is that this was a big nuke that was going to wipe us out. After about 10-20 seconds, I noticed it just appeared to be falling by the trails behind it but it was in fact not moving.

Two minutes later, it then turned into a oval and appeared to be spinning, looked like spinning smoke. I tried blinking or moving my head around incase it was something on my windsheild. However, I could tell I wasn't the only one seeing it as the head's of everyone driving were looking up to the sky and many people were grabbing their phones to take pictures. After another minute, it became a spiral and was spinning into the center, much like a vortex still appearing to be a whitish/gray smoke color. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It did this for about another minute and shot off at an amazing speed, est. to covering a mile per second. After about twenty seconds, it disappeared into the distance, much to far to see with the human eye.

Friday, March 26, 2010

TONIGHT:
C. Scott Littleton Ph.D. - Eye Witness To 'The Battle of Los Angeles' (1942) Joins Frank Warren On The Joiner Report

Scotty Littleton on The Joiner ReportThe Joiner Report

SHOW AIRS TONIGHT, FRIDAY MARCH 26, 2010 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Pacific 10:00 - 12:00 Eastern at THE UFO PARANORMAL RADIO NETWORK
By Frank Warren
The UFO Chronicles
3-24-10

Good friend and colleague Scotty Littleton joins me, Frank Warren this coming Friday night on The Joiner Report. Although no one can better describe Scotty's experience as a witness to one of the most significant UFO events in history then himself (obviously), former student Caitlin Hammer is a close second. Here is an excerpt of an article The UFO Chronicles published on her behalf back in 2006:
"Scotty Littleton awoke to his parents’ whispers in the hall. He peeked out and saw his father’s pale face. As an air raid warden for his beachfront neighborhood, Scotty’s dad had to leave his family and enforce the blackout outside. The shells weren’t exploding over the ocean this time, so it couldn’t be a drill. But neither could he confirm his fears of a real enemy attack –nobody answered the phone at the Civil Defense Headquarters. Only after he walked into the street for a better view did the air raid siren start up.

Mrs. Littleton’s father was staying with the family, and he was slow to get out of bed. Slow to do everything actually. But when Scotty’s dad shouted from the doorway, “Mr. Hotchkiss, I think this may be the real thing,” the old widower bolted down the basement steps.

Scotty and his mom were too curious to remain underground. Besides, the old man’s morning breath is deadlier than falling shells, they thought, and ran back up the stairs to the beach at their back door. The two of them stood side by side, clinging together for warmth, their eyes on the sky. Searchlights focused on what appeared to Scotty’s mother as a silvery, lozenge-shaped bug, seemingly paralyzed by the lights, hanging directly over Hermosa Beach.

Glowing shrapnel fell on the beach in front of them, sending the pair back under the eaves for protection. Scotty was so close he could smell the acrid smoke as the shells exploded. His eyes refused to blink and his lower lip dangled. Were the neighbor kids seeing this?

Not far from Strand Street, another air raid warden left his family in the backyard staring skyward. The thing they watched so raptly reminded him of the Graf Zeppelin he’d seen land at Los Angeles’ Mines Field in ‘29, only wider and flatter. He and some neighbors jumped into their cars, tossing a couple of shotguns into the backseat. The object picked up speed and vaulted into the night sky as they followed it, racing down Sepulveda. As it moved away, the warden got one last look at the rectangular silhouette. Three narrow slits, like the gills of a shark, stood out, glow an angry orange-red. And then it was out of range . . .."
More . . .

C. Scott Littleton Bio

Professor C. Scott Littleton was born in Los Angeles, CA, in 1933 and grew up in Hermosa Beach, CA. He attended Redondo Union High School, Redondo Beach, CA (1946-50), served in the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea (1950-52), and attended El Camino College in Torrance, CA (1952-54), before enrolling at UCLA in 1955, where he received his B.A. (1957), M.A. (1962), and Ph.D. (1965). He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at UCLA in 1957.

An internationally recognized expert in comparative Indo-European mythology and folklore, as well as Japanese religion, Professor Littleton has published extensively on Japanese myth and religion, the origin and distribution of the Arthurian and Holy Grail legends, and the theories of the late French mythologist Georges Dumézil. He is the author of The New Comparative Mythology (3rd Edition, University of California Press, 1982) and, with Linda A. Malcor, co-author of From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (Garland, 1994; a revised, paperback edition appeared in 2000). He is the editor of Eastern Wisdom (Henry Holt, 1996), a book surveying the major Asian religions, as well as the author of the chapter on Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, and has contributed chapters on Japanese mythology and religion to several other anthologies, including Roy Willis, ed., World Mythology: The Illustrated Guide (Simon & Schuster, 1993), Michael Coogan, ed., World Religion: The Illustrated Guide (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Raymond Scupin, ed., Religion and Culture: An Anthropological Focus (Prentice Hall, 2000). A semi-popular book, Shinto: Origins, Rituals, Festivals, Spirits, Sacred Places, was recently published by Oxford University Press (2002). He is the general editor of Mythology: The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth & Storytelling by (Duncan Baird Publishers, 2002), as well as of Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology (Marshall-Cavendish, 2004).

Littleton has done extensive field work in a Tokyo neighborhood, focusing on its annual matsuri, or Shinto shrine festival, an account of which appeared in an article entitled “The Organization and Management of a Tokyo Shinto Shrine Festival” (Ethnology 25:195﷓202, 1986). He has also studied contemporary Japanese popular culture, focusing on the teenage dancers and rock bands that perform on Sunday afternoons in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park (e.g., “Rituals of Rebellion among Contemporary Japanese Youth: The Outdoor Disco at Tokyo's Yoyogi Park,” Religion 17:119﷓131, 1987), and is currently researching the possibility that elements of the Arthurian tradition diffused to China and Japan as well as to Europe from its point of origin in the Trans-Caucasian steppes (e.g., “Yamato-takeru: An ‘Arthurian’ Hero in Japanese Tradition,” Asian Folklore Studies 54:259-274, 1995). He has also researched the extent to which the hallucinogen cannabis sativa played a role at the Oracles of Delphi and Dodona (e.g., "The Pneuma Enthusiastikon: On the Possibility of Hallucinogenic 'Vapors' at Delphi and Dodona." Ethos 14:76-91, 1986).

Littleton’s other research interests include nineteenth-century travel accounts—with Horace L. Hotchkiss, he is co-editor of The Diaries of Blakely Wilson: An American Traveler in Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land, 1874-1876 (Mellen Press, 1998)—and occult and paranormal phenomena, with emphasis upon the UFO phenomenon and alien abductions. The latter interest is reflected in his science fiction novel, Phase Two (Red Pill Press, 2009), which concerns alien abductions, and an article entitled, "Divine Rebels, Alien Dissidents: Does the Mythology Surrounding Lucifer, Prometheus, and the Ancient Mesoamerican Deity Quétzalcoatl Reflect a Pro-Human Faction in the 'Alien Raj?'" (UFO Magazine 17, No. 2:48-51 & 80, 2002), as well as his participation in the annual Aztec UFO Symposium, Aztec, NM (2006), where he discussed the mysterious object that flew over Southern California in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942, and precipitated the so-called “Battle of Los Angeles,” to which Littleton was an eye-witness. He is also the author of a memoir, 2500 Strand: Growing up in Hermosa Beach, California, During World War II (Red Pill Press, 2008), which includes a chapter devoted to the “Battle of Los Angeles.”

Littleton’s articles and reviews have appeared in American Anthropologist, Ethnology, Ethos, Journal of American Folklore, Journal of Asian Studies, Monumenta Nipponica, Journal of Folklore Research, Western Folklore, Asian Folklore Studies, Religion, History of Religions, Natural History, Journal of the Classical Tradition, Cosmos, and The Journal of Indo-European Studies, where he also serves as mythology co-editor. In addition to major essays on Indo-European mythology and the theories of the late Georges Dumézil in Mircea Eliade, et al. eds., The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan, 1987, 2004) and Simon Glendinning, ed., The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 1999) he has contributed articles on a variety of subjects to The Encyclopedia of Religion and War (Routledge, 2004), The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004), and several other scholarly encyclopedias and compendia. He is also the author of the basic article on “Mythology” in The World Book Encyclopedia (Scott Fetzer, 1991), as well as over fifty short articles on various mythological subjects in both The World Book Encyclopedia and the Academic American Encyclopedia.

He has received grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (twice), the American Philosophical Society, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and has served as a Visiting Fulbright Lecturer at The University of Tokyo and Waseda University (1980-81), Tokyo, Japan, and as a Senior Fulbright Researcher at Waseda University (1994). In 1991 he received The Graham L. Sterling Memorial Award, given annually to a distinguished member of the Occidental College faculty.

Littleton retired from full-time teaching at Occidental, after forty years, in May of 2002, and lives with his wife, Mary Ann, in Pasadena, CA. His e-mail address is: sarmatiandude@charter.net. His personal website is http://faculty.oxy.edu/yokatta/, and he also has accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

Show time: Friday, March 26, 2010
  • 7:00 - 9:00 pm Pacific
  • 9:00 - 11:00 p.m. Central
  • 10:00 - 12:00 pm Eastern
UFO Paranormal Radio Network

Listen and or participate in the conversation using PalTalk.

How to download PalTalk and get to the virtual auditorium.

More . . .

LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE ARCHIVES - CLICK HERE


See Also:

Exclusive
THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES


Exclusive
THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES
- Part 2 -


SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE


HELP SUPPORT THIS SITE






ABOUT DONATIONS




follow The UFO Chronicles on twitter



THE UFO CHRONICLES

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Thursday, March 25, 2010

MY UFO EXPERIENCE:
Witness Recounts Triangular Shaped, Silent Craft Over Clear Lake California

My UFO Experience
By Reader Submitted Report
[Unedited]
3-25-10

     In August 1994 I was newly divorced and living alone with my dog in a rural area of Clear Lake, California. My place was on a small mountain top with no neighbors and a very good view of all the surrounding countryside. One night I stepped to my back porch for a smoke and for a look at the stars, which were very bright in that rural setting. Suddenly I saw a very bright light coming straight at me from the northwest over a low hill.

I knew that I was on the path of a military fly zone that went from one Northern California air force base to another. We knew this because military helicopters, transports and fighter jets were often seen going back and forth in this air corridor.

I figured it was the headlight of a helicopter since it seemed to be moving relatively slow and low. The light got brighter and brighter as the craft approached my position. Suddenly the light changed and I saw three red running lights in a rough triangle as it passed over me. I did not recognize the shape. I'd never seen anything like it.

I was looking at it and trying to see what kind of craft it might be when suddenly I noticed with a start that there was absolutely no noise. Now I was intrigued! I stepped out into my backyard away from the lights of my house and watched this craft as it flew slowly over my position. I realized that I could hear the air rushing past this craft but other than that it was totally silent. I watched it as it kept on going on the corridor until it was out of sight.

It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The total silence and triangle shape was unnerving. I thought it might have been some US military craft of some kind or though less likely, perhaps a UFO using that flight corridor for some reason. I could not really say how big it was because there were no reference points. I knew it was something unusual because I heard the air rushing past the craft as it went overhead.

Doing research in the years afterwards I saw some of the photos of triangular craft that people have taken and it looked exactly like that. I have come to the conclusion that it was a secret US Military craft, flying at night in an area where it was unlikely to be seen, but that is just my best guess.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Breaking UFO News:
Local Woman Takes Pictures of UFO Over Sydney, Australia

Fiona Hartigan Photographs UFO Over Sidney, Australia
UFO buzzes Sydney - and here's the proof

By The Daily Telegraph
3-23-10


"IT EMERGED from a blazing light in the clouds, descending on a busy street before zipping off silently into the sunset."
Fiona Hartigan     Just what - or who - propelled the strange flying disc across Sydney's skyline may never be known.

But while the close encounter was over in seconds, it was enough to convince mother-of-two Fiona Hartigan that she'd just seen a UFO.

And she has the photos to prove it.

Ms Hartigan yesterday said she had just got out of her car on Sunday evening to snap a few sunset photos when the amazing events began.

"As I was about to take the picture this black object appeared and then it started to move," she said.

"It started off about 800m away but it came closer - to about 400m - and then two other little round things appeared from this bright orange light above.

"There was no noise. It was calm and peaceful but it was very weird."

Ms Hartigan said the main UFO then shot off above Governor Macquarie Drive at Chipping Norton, with the smaller UFOs zipping away in the opposite direction.

"I don't know how to explain it - I'm still totally bewildered," she said.

To the sceptic, Ms Hartigan's photo might show a speck of dust on the lens or something small floating in the air close to the camera.

But close encounters like Ms Hartigan's came as no surprise to UFO Research NSW spokesman Doug Moffett: "It could be some electrical anomaly that no one has ever seen, it could be an extra-terrestrial craft, it could be something else.

"There does appear to be a blur around the image, which could just be the way it's shaped, or - and this is pure speculation - it could be due to its propulsion system.

"Whatever the case, it's an opportunity to learn something new."

Mr Moffett said there were between 1000 and 1500 UFO sightings in Australia every year, "but that is just the tip of the iceberg".

"Why would anyone make these stories up? They are setting themselves up for ridicule," he said.

Monday, March 22, 2010

What Were Those Lights in The Phoenix Sky?

Phoenix Lights UFO
By CNN
6-19-1997


Researchers still sorting out hundreds of witness accounts

Editor's Note-March 13th was the anniversary of one of the most significant UFO events in history; The UFO Chronicles will underscore the event with various articles both past & present, throughout the month-FW

     PHOENIX (CNN) -- When it appeared in the Arizona sky on the night of March 13, it was witnessed by hundreds of people. Neither researchers nor witnesses have yet figured out what Arizonans saw in the event now dubbed "the Phoenix Lights." But that hasn't stopped them from trying to puzzle it out.

Tim Ley and his family are among the hundreds of witnesses who have come forward to talk about the Phoenix Lights. They first saw the lights while looking north from their Phoenix home.

Now, their recollections of what they saw have been transformed into computer images, using a combination of digital photos of the landscape taken by Ley and computer drawings of the objects his family saw in the sky.

"When it finally got here and we realized this thing was coming right over us, we really started getting antsy," Ley said. Then, said he and his son Hal, it went directly overhead in complete silence.

Tim Ley said that when the right side of what appeared to be a giant V-shaped craft passed directly over him, the left side was a couple of blocks away.

His wife, Bobbi, who also saw the aerial light show, said the size of the craft they saw was overwhelming. But, she said, "It didn't seem threatening. ... When it was right overhead and we couldn't hear a sound, it was like you're just awestruck."

Jim Dilettoso of Village Labs, who has been researching UFOs for 20 years, is in the process of reconstructing the incident with a virtual reality model.

The Leys are among the hundreds of witnesses he interviewed about the Phoenix Lights. He said he considers the family to be "very reliable," and their data "very important," because by their account they were so close to the craft.

While nobody knows for sure what the Leys and hundreds of others saw, Tim Ley is sure his family will never forget that night. He said it has changed his outlook on the UFO movement, turning him from a "polite skeptic" to someone quite open to the experiences of UFO believers.

"We just re-experience it every time we tell it," said his wife. "It's like it was just yesterday. We've never seen anything like it."

Friday, March 19, 2010

THE PHOENIX LIGHTS, THE REAL INVESTIGATION

Phoenix Lights Flare Map By Motzer

By Richard Motzer
Field Investigator for Arizona MUFON
© July, 1997


Editor's Note-March 13th was the anniversary of one of the most significant UFO events in history; The UFO Chronicles will underscore the event with various articles both past & present, throughout the month-FW

Richard Motzer     In the May issue of the MUFON UFO Journal, there appeared a very misleading article by Bill Hamilton on the Phoenix Lights of March 13, 1997. That article represented a biased judgment of events and incorrect facts. Now, with these facts in mind, I am presenting the true information of the still ongoing investigation.

At about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the 13th of March, Peter Davenport at the UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, WA, started receiving calls, first from the northwest part of Arizona, of a formation of lights moving south toward Prescott, AZ. These lights formed a basic triangle with as many as six or seven lights per side with two red lights trailing.

The real time line for this event is somewhere around 8:00 p.m. MST. As the calls kept flowing in, the description changed as to how many lights were involved. Some even said there were no lights at all, but they could see a black mass blocking out the stars as it passed between the viewer and the sky. The general description was of a "V," but it also resembled a crown with lights that formed an upward triangle. These lights were not like aircraft landing lights but more like stars. This description would change as the objects moved into the Phoenix area. The only consistent properties of the object(s) would be that there were no sound and very slow movement. However, if there was only one object, it could not have covered that distance in such a short time. This is a real "Catch-22," but may be the key to the solution. I know of three V formations that night and there may be more.

As the readers may know, all of this was broadcast worldwide at 11:00 PST on Art Bell's Coast-to-Coast talk radio program. I knew it would be a very busy day for me the next morning, so I retired. I was involved with the videos of this event even before it happened. I received a call from Tom Taylor, our state director for MUFON, that a person in Paradise Valley had been taping lights west of the TV towers on South Mountain for over two years, suggesting that I make contact with her to view the footage. I did so and set the next Wednesday, the 12th at 9:00 a.m., for her to come to my home to view the tapes. Due to the death of Mr. Taylor's mother, I changed the meeting date to the 14th, Friday, the day after the events of the 13th. While talking to her on the phone, I discussed the idea that she might be seeing flares from the Gila Bend Gunnery Range. She felt this was not the case, so we met Friday around 10:15 a.m. Even before her arrival, the news media were at my house getting my reaction to the events of the night before. I had only seen one video, the formation shot by Chuck Rairden from Apache Junction. I told them that in a few minutes I would have a second video for all of us to see, because this lady had caught the event, too. The news programs broke the story with their 4:30 p.m. edition. From that time on, the phones never stopped ringing and the news people kept coming.

I started to collect all the videos I could find and interviewed other witnesses. The first videos I obtained were of lights that appeared to be over the city of Phoenix and it was those videos that made the news programs. It would be some days later before I could obtain the only video of five lights flying to the south taken at 56th Street and Carefree Highway. I have been involved in the collection of data, returning calls, and doing the interviews, which now number over seventy witnesses, of which I found 53 to be credible. The real investigating doesn't start until the last reports come in. One of the best investigation tools was a two-hour talk show I did with Bill Strauss on KTAR radio. Mr. Strauss is a very fair talk show host and allows the callers to tell their stories.

It was during that show that I realized that the people who saw the V formations flying overhead out-numbered the people who saw the lights near the Estrella Mountains by a very high ratio. The V formation lights looked like stars with the brightness of Sirius, whereas the lights over the Estrella Mountains appeared as super bright landing lights. This was very puzzling, because I had the video of the flying V formation where the lights are barely noticeable. So, why did 98% of the sightings pertain to the V formation? Four things are responsible for this:

1. People were outside looking to the northwest to see the Hale-Bopp Comet.

2. The best time to view Hale-Bopp was between 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. MST.

3. It was in motion flying toward them.

4. The altitude didn't matter as long as you were outside. You had to be at a higher elevation and have a clear view to the southwest to see the lights above and behind the Estrellas.
We will come back to the V formation again. Now we needed to find out why we had seven videos of the Estrella lights, but only a few witnesses.

At this point, all of the TV stations were running the same video clips. People were being confused and thought the videos showed the V formation, which they didn't, but instead showed the lights to be over the city of Phoenix and that is what I mistakenly thought, too.

I don't know how many times I looked at those tapes and couldn't find the common thread. I received a call from a family far to the west of Phoenix where they, too, had taped the lights the night of the 13th and many other times. I made the long drive out to 222nd Avenue and Jackrabbit Blvd to view the tape. The tape did not impress me but the people did. They said that the lights appear between 8:00 and 10:00 pm were always in the same place and would drift laterally. They also said that a lot of helicopter and fighter aircraft traffic was observed at times when these lights appeared. The highest activity was in the mid-part of the month and the most common days were Monday through Thursday. The other key item was that a large area of Bureau of Land Management land had been cordoned off in the direction of the lights. The woman's future son-in-law could see the land below the lights being illuminated like daylight. This was one of the keys, but I couldn't see how it would fit into the puzzle at that time.

The next key was the person who taped both the Estrella lights and the V formation. He had some airline pilots, "off the record," mark on the map the location and estimated elevation of the Estrella lights. Since I could not talk to them directly, I simply noted this on my map.

The final key to the solution was also the biggest mystery. Why did all videos of 3-13-97 at 10:00 p.m. have a different number of lights, different order of starting and decay, and shapes?

It was really dependent upon the observation point of the witness in the Phoenix area and, most important, how high their viewing point was. It turned out that the lights were not over Phoenix, but near the Estrella Mountains to the southwest. This determination was made after viewing all the video tapes and going to all but one of the sites and shooting 35mm film in daylight. Using the point marked by the pilot, I drew a line from each of the sites where the Estrella lights were taped. On the Rairden tape there are nine lights, but only eight lights on the Moon Valley footage. I re-ran the Moon Valley footage and just in the early part you see a light form briefly which then goes out, but did it really? No, something must have blocked it out, but it was still there in the Rairden footage. As the lights drifted downward, some lights were blocked out by the many small peaks making up the Estrella range.

In the videos that I acquired, there were two people who had been recording these Estrella lights for months. What I wanted to find was footage where a tripod was used and the zoom lens was left in one spot. To my surprise there were several clips that met these specifications. What I did next was to mark at the end of each segment the ground position on a monitor and the ending position of each light. When I ran the editor video deck in reverse, I could see each light rise in altitude and drift to the right or to the left. In all the video clips the results were the same. Just before each light went out, there was an increase in the descent of each light.

So what did this prove? Going back to the first newscasts, they ended by saying the Army National Guard said that just before 10:00 p.m. on March 13, 1997, they shot off target flares for training. We had dismissed this at first because the witnesses felt certain these lights were in front of South Mountain and over the city. This caused the early confusion of the V formation with these lights. The flares are very bright even at a distance of 50 miles and will overload a camcorder chip. They also have a parachute attached to them. As the flare is positioned and ignites, the heat from the flare heats the air above, which is trapped in its parachute, causing it to slow down its descent. Toward its final phase, before extinguishing, the heat output decreases and the flare will start to fall faster. It will also have a lateral motion due to its delivery system, either hindered by the prevailing winds or accelerated. All the videos that I tested for that night or other nights showed this feature. Even the control tower people at Sky Harbor Airport said they saw smoke emanating from the flares. Let's quickly review the evidence for the case for flares behind the Estrellas:
1. These events have been going on for some time, three months or more.

2. The color is bright amber.

3. Smoke was seen by some.

4. The on to off time of each light is very consistent.

5. The general time lines and dates are repeated (for that night they occurred at 8:30, 9:25, and 10:00 pm)

6. Mostly week nights.7. The Gila Bend Gunnery Range hours match the time line.

8. All drop vertically and move in a lateral direction consistent with flares.

9. All video tapes that have the complete cycle, that is, from start to finish, show this.

10. Two videos, shot at close range, seem to show smoke flowing around them.

11. On one of the tapes, the person asks if they are flares.

12. The Army National Guard said they shot-off these flares.

13. Six news programs announced that the military said they were flares and two reports were from military pilots who located them at the Gila Bend Gunnery Range behind the Estrella Mountains.
Due to the multitude of events that night and the confusion of these lights with the V formation, I didn't concentrate on this event. In fact, if these nine flares hadn't been fired off that night, the real big story—the one that needs to be solved—would not have made the TV news. The reason is that there is only one video, so far, that has been brought forward, and even though it was shot with a Sony Hi 8, the lights can barely be seen. I had to stretch the light scale in Adobe Premier for it to be used on the first Strange Universe show.

Flares, then, appear to be the answer for the lights near the Estrella Mountains. Journal readers may have seen these videos on the national TV news coverage. However, they cannot be the answer for the V formation.

What was this V formation seen by so many across the state of Arizona the evening of the 13th? If you use the 42 second video clip to make a judgment, you will see the last light on the western side move to the rear and maintain its alignment. If you drew lines through the points to make a five-point V, the sides appear to be slightly bowed to the outside. You hear no sound but only the person taking the video and his comments. The night was hazy at that location so no stars appear in this video clip.

Luke AFB floated four stories about the V formation:
1. It was a flight of Blue Angels coming from Nellis AFB in Nevada. (Linda M. Howe said that a formation of five was also seen over Las Vegas heading southwest. The Blue Angels were not due for another day.)

2. It was a squadron of A 10s on a night training mission heading back to Tucson.

3. None of ours!

4. A private plane with a skilled pilot flying between restricted air corridors with a string of lights a mile long. I like that one myself — yeah, right!
The question is why did Luke AFB change their stories? The Army National Guard didn't.

Even though the V formation may or may not prove to be a real UFO after a thorough investigation, the other so-called "sightings of the decade" may well fade into history.

As Paul Harvey says, "Now you know the rest of the story." In the meantime, the real investigation is still going on ...

Please see the map which shows the directions in which the witnesses were observing the flares beyond the Estrella Mountains. Thomas R. Taylor, State Director for Arizona, supports this investigation and preliminary report.

* Special Thanks To Clifford Clift, MUFON International Director, and especially to Richard Motzer for his excellent field work and report.

4 Steps to Becoming a MUFON Field Investigator

The Phoenix Lights:
Flares or Huge Craft? Mike Fortson, Frances Emma Barwood & Dr Bruce Maccabee Set The Record Straight on The Joiner Report

Bruce Maccabee, Frances Barwood & Mike Fortson On The Joiner Report
By Frank Warren
The UFO Chronicles
© 3-15-10

     This month marks the 13th anniversary of what has erroneously been labeled The Phoenix Lights. The name in part stuck because the media feels the need to use “visual aids” at any opportunity; henceforth the lights that were captured on video at around 10:00 pm were melded together with eyewitness accounts of a large craft(s) seen in the eight o’clock hour.

Unfortunately, while the video images were gaining traction, and became a media frenzy, the official reports (MUFON), which determined that the 10:00 pm videos were in fact flares—got thrown by the way-side.

It was MUFON investigator, Richard Motzer who not only was the recipient of the flare videos early on, it was he that initially discovered the discrepancy between the witnesses to the 10:00 pm flare shots and the accounts in the eight o’clock hour. Point of fact is there were thousands of witnesses to the huge craft in the eight o’clock hour and only a handful at 10:00 pm (who happened to capture the lights [flares] on video).

This precipitated an investigation by Motzer, which would entail going to the locations of the videographers and triangulating all the pertinent videos. Stills were shot during the day at each relevant location and he determined that the lights were above and beyond the “Estrellas,” in the airspace of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range—not over South Mountain as initially thought. He then ascertained the time and days of military exercises, which included flare drops and discovered that the days and times corresponded to previous video and or witness accounts of “orange lights” in that vicinity. His report was completed by mid May of ’97, just two months after the events of March 13th. This clearly explained why people on the valley floor didn’t see the flares, as it was impossible, unless you were at a higher elevation, like the videographers.

Not long after that report was made, the Air Force came clean and made an official statement admitting that the visiting Maryland Air National Guard (MANG) did eject their remaining flares before returning to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Regrettably, this has been a bone of contention and source of confusion ever since!

In part, because the media often interviewed eight o’clock witnesses, while showing the 10:00 pm flare videos the former was adamant that “flares” is not what they witnessed—and this of course is correct. Separating, and being cognizant of the two (and other) events is in fact the actual problem.

As time went by there would be other investigations and scientific analyses confirming Motzer’s conclusions. One of the most in-depth analyses done, was performed by Dr. Bruce Maccabee; recently retired as an optical physicist from the Naval Surface Warfare Center and long time respected Ufologist.

Dr. Maccabee, along with direct eyewitness Mike Fortson and former Phoenix city council member, Frances Emma Barwood will join me, Frank Warren when I guest host for this Friday’s Joiner Report.

Together, we will sort out the events of March 13th 1997, which includes one of the most significant events in UFO history as well as the distraction caused by the flare footage.

Show time: Friday, March 19, 9-11 p.m. CST
Paranormal Radio Network

LIVE SIGHTING REPORTS BY MUFON

Mutual UFO Network Logo