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FILE 030 · VOL IV · They Are Not Visiting
The Governor Laughed at the Phoenix Lights. Then He Admitted He Saw Them.
The fastest way to bury a truth is to make it funny.
Based on: The Phoenix Lights
Intake record
| Recovered from | Storage unit, Scottsdale, Arizona; one rubber alien mask in a garment bag |
|---|---|
| Contents | Mask, press credentials (1997), a journal kept from 1997 to the present |
| Finder | Estate attorney |
| Status | The journal's final entry is dated the night the lights returned. |
Recovered file
On the evening of March 13, 1997, thousands of people across Arizona looked up and saw something enormous move silently across the sky. Many described it as a vast V or boomerang shape, a mile wide or more, blotting out the stars as it passed, with lights along its edges. Calls flooded police switchboards from Henderson, Nevada, to Tucson. People pulled their cars over on the freeway to watch. It became known as the Phoenix Lights. [1]
The military said a second set of lights seen later that night were flares dropped during a training exercise. Many witnesses said that the flares, if that is what they were, were not the thing they had seen first. [1]
In June, as public pressure built, the governor of Arizona, Fife Symington, called a press conference to announce that he had gotten to the bottom of it. Then a member of his staff walked out onto the stage in a rubber alien costume, with handcuffs on, led by security. The room roared. The clip ran on every network. The Phoenix Lights became a joke. [2]
Ten years later, after he had left office, Symington told a reporter that he had seen the lights himself that night. He said it was something he had never seen before, and that it was otherworldly. He said he had made the joke to calm people down. [2]
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 030 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
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