Phoenix Lights
The account
Thousands of people saw a giant V-shaped object silently cross the Arizona sky.
What investigators found
The lights seen later that night were attributed to flares dropped by military aircraft during an exercise. The V formation seen earlier is still debated.
The story
On the night of March 13, 1997, thousands of people in the state of Arizona, in the United States, looked up and saw a V-shaped formation of lights silently crossing the region. Many described a dark, gigantic object, larger than several football fields, that blotted out the stars.
Later that same night, a row of orange lights hovered over Phoenix and was filmed by many people. Arizona's governor at the time, Fife Symington, even made a joke of the case at a press conference. Years later, out of office, he said he himself had seen something he could not explain.
The Air Force attributed the lights hovering over the city to flares dropped by military aircraft during an exercise, and videos analyzed later show that they disappeared behind the mountains. The V formation seen earlier, however, never received an official explanation accepted by everyone.