The Phoenix Lights of 1997: Witnessed by Thousands, Censored by Uncle Sam
A prominent physician photographed what she saw, documented what hundreds of others experienced, analyzed the data and concluded: "We are not alone."
Dr. Lynne Kitei, MD wondered what was behind three shining orbs arrayed in a triangle just outside her bedroom window one night in 1995. The family doctor grabbed her 35mm SLR camera and ran out on the porch. True to America’s tradition of great Western sharpshooters: What she aimed at, she hit.
Dr. Kitei’s photographs recorded what she sighted, as would additional photos and videotape made during UAP sightings two years later. She and her husband, also a physician, witnessed and chronicled a V-formation of lights over Phoenix on January 23, 1997 and then the spectacular statewide sightings of March 13, 1997.
Seven years later, she went public with her interests in the phenomenon. Her work helped preserve the testimony of hundreds of people who witnessed the phenomenon as it appeared over their city.
Here’s the story in the good doctor’s own words, from a 2017 interview with Mirelle Inglefield in Phoenix Magazine:
Both my husband (who is also a physician for over 40 years) and I are healthy skeptics. But we were also witnesses to extraordinary and advanced technology. Not only did I capture 35mm photos of oval orbs in a pyramid array just yards from our home in 1995, I also filmed a mile-wide formation of equidistant lights head-on [which then turned] into a V -shape in January 1997 – two months before the March 13 mass UFO events.
(This sighting was also witnessed by a group of air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor. As they described, “six points of equidistant lights appeared at 1,000 feet over Class B restricted airspace, turned as a unit against the wind, elevated in synchrony and then moved slowly behind South Mountain.” The same massive “object” was again reported in the same restricted airspace during the March 13 events.)
Even though I witnessed and photographed the anomalies up close and personal, I knew nothing about the topic and actually shied away from it. But when thousands of other Arizonans saw what I had been documenting and then I discovered that these phenomena have been gracing our skies globally since human records began, I needed to educate myself to what was going on. After seven years of compiling the most credible reports and data, I ended up with a 750-page journal that confirmed that we have been and are being visited by something not of our world.
It wasn’t an easy task to keep silent with all the credible info I was finding, but at the time the topic was too controversial and those who did come forward were ostracized and discredited. Ultimately, after much soul searching, I knew I couldn’t stick what I had compiled in a drawer. The data is just too important not to share. And since there is so much misinformation surrounding our extra-ordinary 1997 anomalous events, not only was it vital for me to set the record straight, but as a physician, I wanted to let others know that they are not crazy or alone.
“Pa, What Are Those Lights?“
Thousands in Arizona and Nevada reported sighting a massive, silent V-shaped object (or boomerang-shaped or triangle-shaped) pass slowly and silently overhead on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Later the same evening, witnesses reported a formation of stationary, orange-red lights over the mountains to the southwest of Phoenix metropolitan area.
As accident investigators and ufologists know, witness descriptions of the same event may vary. Perhaps the capabilities of the phenomenon include the ability to hide or disguise its true nature. Most people are well-intentioned, however, and describe what they experienced as they best remember.
Many eyewitnesses reported the lights were part of one large object, a solid V-shaped craft that “blocked out the stars” as it passed slowly over head. A number reported the object was more-shaped like an enormous carpenter’s square. Some also reported they were certain that the lights they saw were separate objects, or served as “thrusters” or rockets that propelled the enormous object or objects.
Many if not most witnesses estimated the lights or object that passed over Phoenix at more than one hundred yards across. Other witnesses estimated the object they saw was more than a mile across. Some estimated its size as more than three miles across, based on the distance between familiar points on the terrain underneath.
Private pilot and action film star Kurt Russell witnessed the lights as he approached Phoenix International Airport with his son. They reported what they saw on landing to the tower and FAA. IndieWire writer Michael Nordine asks: “Is there anything Kurt Russell can’t do?” in his excellent report.
A True Renaissance Woman
An accomplished physician with a booming practice in family medicine, a pioneering clinician specializing in medical education at the Arizona Heart Institute, and a former Hollywood and stage actor, Dr. Kitei is the very model of a modern woman of the Renaissance.
Based on reports to the US Air Force, Arizona police agencies, the UFO Reporting Network (UFORN), and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Dr. Kitei estimated about 20,000 people witnessed the phenomenon March 13, 1997.
Dr. Kitei’s own documentation includes 35-millimeter photographs and video footage of the phenomena she captured over three separate events. To her images, she has collected the photographs and videotapes taken from across the Phoenix metropolitan region, along with thousands of eyewitness reports from March 13, 1997.
To preserve the stories of witnesses, Dr. Kitei established the Phoenix Lights Network (PLN). Its website serves as a place to report and document individual eyewitness accounts, including those from pilots, police officers, and other witnesses. The PLN has chronicled more than 700 individual reports.
Dr. Kitei also continues the great American tradition of the Citizen-Scientist. Like Benjamin Franklin, who really did fly a kite during a thunderstorm to study electricity, Dr. Kitei bravely went against the taboo regarding interest in UFOs to learn and share what she found about the Phoenix Lights. She has written The Phoenix Lights: A Skeptic’s Discovery That We Are Not Alone and produced a film documentary, The Phoenix Lights.
As a medical doctor, practicing her art in modern Arizona, Kr. Kitei has seen and treated most all manner of illness and injury. She knows what she knows and she can tell when she sees something she doesn’t know. Over the coming years and decades, she thoroughly investigated what she and her family witnessed, analyzed eyewitness reports, and collected news articles and photographs chronicling the Phoenix Lights. Her conclusion: “We are not alone.”
However, at the time of the Phoenix Lights of 1997, Dr. Kitei had to keep her interest in the subject of UFOs and the Phoenix Lights to herself. The reason: the longstanding federal campaign — stretching from Roswell through Project Sign to Project Grudge to Project Blue Book to whatever name it goes by in the present day — to publicly ridicule those who discussed “flying saucers.”
Officially Droll
To help hammer disinformation home to the citizenry of what was not yet officially termed “The Homeland,” Arizona’s then-Governor Fife Symington called a press conference in 1997 to “defuse the situation” and prevent public panic over unidentified objects flying over his state’s capital city.
As they were about to discuss the Phoenix Lights and answer reporters’ questions, a figure costumed as a bug-eyed alien in a silvery space suit crashed the press conference, accompanied by a brace of Arizona state troopers. Gov. Symington unmasked the visitor, revealing his human chief of staff.
Governor Symington, who also served as an officer in the US Air Force Reserves, would corroborate the Phoenix Lights, stating publicly a decade later that he himself had witnessed the unidentified object pass overhead.
In an interview with journalist and author Leslie Kean , Gov. Symington stated his sighting March 13, 1997 was of something “otherworldly” that “defied logic.”
“It was absolutely breathtaking,” Gov. Symington told Ms. Kean. “I mean when I saw it, I said this is definitely a UFO. It was a geometric form with extremely bright lights on the leading edge. I have never seen anything like this in my life.”
“I’m a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery... In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly.”