When one hears "the Phoenix Lights" almost everyone generally has one image in mind and one idea; 7 to 9 intensely bright balls of light forming a slight "V" shape in the night sky over Phoenix, Arizona on the evening of March 13, 1997. That night dozens of video-cam operators and thousands of Phoenix residents witnessed the appearing and disappearing of brilliant UFO(s) which hovered over the city just beyond the Estrella mountain range, a spectacle so astonishing that even the national news could not cover it up or blow it off as a flock of geese or mere space debris re-entry.

 

The Phoenix Lights

 

 

But did you know that video footage was shot earlier that same day, in roughly the same location, of equally bright, glowing objects over Phoenix? While the military attempted to scrub the UFO story in the days following the event with claims of flares being dropped by nearby Luke Air Force Base, Jeff Willes, a Phoenix resident and UFO hunter, knew better. He had videotaped the same intensely bright objects hovering and maneuvering over Phoenix earlier that same day -- these were definitely not flares! (Jeff says that night he did indeed see flares, so he saw the two different lights and doesn't believe they are the same thing. His video more than proves this fact).

Local FOX 10 affiliate put Jeff's footage and story on the air, interviewing Jeff and featuring the night-time Phoenix light footage as well. Remarkably, FOX 10 didn't try to make Jeff look like a nutball, or dismiss the UFO sightings, but presented a curious, journalistically sound exposé on the anomalous event. I guess it's a little hard to pan a story that so many thousands of other credible witnesses also experienced, but this was unusually friendly television coverage. Perhaps this time, because Jeff was simply not alone -- the whole city of Phoenix were guests to the many sightings -- and his footage provided excellent evidence that turned most of the debunking claims of the night-footage into vapor rather quickly. FOX even offered its viewing audience some of Jeff's other remarkable UFO footage, as he spends a lot of time outdoors shooting the skies, watching for UFOs. It has paid off and Jeff has the goods, as we will see.

On the 13th of March, Willes was taking his usual video survey of the Phoenix skies when suddenly strange spheres of intensely bright light appeared hovering motionless in the sky. Experienced in shooting UFO footage, Jeff framed the shot with the mountain range for visual reference and several necessary zooms and pans. The orbs of light seem to just dangle there, silently in the cloudy sky, slightly twinkling but by no means strobing, neither did they exhibit any standard FAA flashing lights. As the minutes passed, one of the objects began to slowly move off in another direction until it disappeared beyond the looming cloud bank. The movement was almost imperceptible. The remaining object, still glowing brilliantly then began to move in the same direction and Jeff tailed it steadily with his cam until it, too, moved out of sight, becoming just a tiny glimmer in the distant atmosphere. On Jeff's video, watching the full sequence in fast-forward mode really reveals the remarkable movement of these utterly anomalous objects in the sky, and it becomes abundantly clear they are below the low cloud cover. They very clearly cannot be jets or planes, balloons, ultra-lights, flares, helicopters, stars, planets or swamp gas.

 

The entire taped event lasts approximately 30 minutes. Later that evening, the startling appearance of the 7-9 shining UFOs in the night sky in distinct formation all but serves to verify that what Jeff Willes was shooting in the daylight came back to hover in the same spot, only this time with a few 'friends.' Jeff says those lights were directly over them, while the orbs he shot earlier in the daytime were captured from the mountains west of the city. Willes footage also seems to suggest that the Phoenix lights were not attached to one extremely large object, as some conjecture, but was composed of many individual, glowing UFOs (unless what Jeff captured were merely scout craft for the location for a much larger UFO?).

In the digitized images below, what Jeff videotaped is laid out in sequence, from initial appearance to final movement. The quality and clarity of the video itself is hundreds of times greater. The lights at first hover, motionless. The intensity of the lights appear to shift from very brilliant to dim, then, each moves off becoming undiscernible to the camera.

The following images were taken from a raw collection of Jeff's many UFO video shots which he provided Rense.com, and is a real shocker -- as it was for Jeff when he caught it, audibly saying on tape, "Oh my God!" as he steadies the video-camera as best he can for this surprising, once in a lifetime shot of a distinct, silver/reflective saucer with dome-top, on its side, moving across the sky, disappearing behind a rooftop almost as quickly as it appears. It lasts on screen for only a about 12 seconds before Jeff scrambles to the other side of the house to keep shooting it, but by then it has traveled off to become a mere white speck in the sky. Below the still frames shown you will find a link for downloading an MPEG video of the craft.