I Saw a UFO (And Forgot To Tell You About It)

This post began its life as a subsection of a longer piece I put together about the strange things that are happening in our skies. Since it was sort of a long digression, and felt like it could stand alone, I decided to separate it out here.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have had an interest in the topic of UFOs for most of my life. I find the public revelation that the US Military has been aware of and at times engaging with UFOs for years absolutely fascinating, and so I write about those developments as they happen.

But other than one strange, pretty inconclusive experience I described here, I had never seen a UFO myself.

That is, until last month.

One January 14th, 2023, I had to pick up my wife and two of my boys from the airport as they returned from a trip to the East Coast. At 9:41PM, as were driving North on the AZ-51 near the Thunderbird road exit, I happened to look up in the middle of our conversation and saw a bunch of strange, orange lights just sitting there.

That section of the highway has streetlights, so I didn’t catch them at first. But there was something about the parallax view of these lights, the way they hovered in place, that made them feel strange. At first, I saw six, five of which were in a pentagonal formation, one of which was nearby, but not equidistant like the others were. I stopped what I was saying mid-sentence and announced that I was looking at something weird in the sky. My son was able to grab this photo from the backseat, showing the five lights in the pentagon:

I also pulled out my own phone and began trying to film. By that time, the 6th light had already disappeared.

I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max, and I started with the 3x zoom, which I pointed in the general direction of the lights while still trying to keep my eyes on the road. I should have pulled over — I was driving — but I was so flustered by what I was seeing that it didn’t even occur to me until after the fact. After a few seconds, worried that I wasn’t even getting it on video, I fumbled with my phone to reduce the zoom and point it again at the same spot. This is the video I managed to grab:

As I filmed, some of the lights began to pull away and vanish. First the fifth, then the fourth. The final three remained in an equilateral triangle formation until we passed the area where they were.

Had I been alone, I almost certainly would have turned around and gone back. But I stupidly didn’t. I was concerned about my wife and baby, who were exhausted from traveling all day. And I was still just sort of stunned by what I had seen. I’ve been thinking about this for a month, and I still can’t come up with an explanation that makes sense for what it was. And I wasn’t alone. Others in Arizona caught similar things that night:

Pricilla Stone @quantum_wytch

Anyone else have any friends in Phoenix reach out to them about this? #ufotwitter #uaptwitter

Space Force Granny @grannyparcel

Any comment on what these lights in Phoenix are. Photo taken 1/12/2023. Near Thunderbird and 18th street looking toward the northeast sky. UFO

This from a woman in Cottonwood, a couple hours north of Phoenix, same night:

Jade @JadeCactus

This is the UFO video from 1/14/2023 at 9:35pm in Cottonwood, AZ, recorded 6 minutes before the other one was seen in Phoenix, 2 hours south. Bright orange orbs, was windy and rainy.

This from an area to the East of me, a couple weeks later:

Sleve McDichael ➐ @phicksUSMC

Hey #ufotwitter. Not sure if you’ve seen this sighting yet from TikTok user maxkeller96 but it is pretty compelling. Reactions seem genuine and it shows instantaneous acceleration. It’s one that’s too good to be true. tiktok.com/t/ZTRseASLn/

I also received a message from a friend a few days ago. He writes:

Just talked with a truck driver who goes from Phoenix to CA quite a bit. He’s seen at least 5 UFOs, though now he thinks some might be spy balloons. Didn’t sound like a crank. In fact, he’s got me believing there’s definitely something up there. Chinese or Andromedans, I don’t know, but it’s something.

All these other observations aside, what I witnessed has really stuck with me.

I’ve been thinking about what I saw since it happened. I don’t know what to make of it.

I understand that subjective interpretations of events like this are heavily susceptible to personal bias.

But I have to be honest: nothing conventional I can think of explains it away.

There was heavy cloudcover that night, so whatever it was was flying beneath it. My wife took this video coming in on the plane, and you can see that the clouds were fairly low:

By morning, we had full-on fog, which is pretty unusual here in the desert. Suffice to say, these things were not flying high at all. If I had to guess based on my experience of flying drones, I’d say they were under a thousand feet off the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were half that. (And because I have some experience with drones, no, I don’t think that’s what this was.)

They were not, as far as I can tell, Chinese lanterns. Not only are those typically illegal here because of the fire risk in the natural desert (and we’ve had a lot of bad wildfires in the past few years), they just didn’t move like something drifting in the wind. They stayed in one spot, until a couple of the lights peeled away.

I also don’t think they were military flares, which tend to fall in a sort of diagonal pattern, don’t hold formation at the same altitude, and tend to wink out sequentially:

Honestly, I can’t come up with anything that makes sense out of this. And for what it’s worth, something about the way I felt when I was looking at them was just…well, it felt like something was off. Surreal. The entire experience felt weird, and my wife, who tends to roll her eyes at me a lot, perceived that as well.

There was nothing about the experience that was spectacular. I didn’t see anything move at sudden, breakneck speed. Nothing tried to beam me up. But it was a very odd thing indeed, and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.

What do you think?