As usual at this time each year, the case is revisited by many researchers, writers and interested people.

In addition, the National Geographic Channel is airing an episode of its new show "Mysterious Science" about the Phoenix lights incident.

Also, respected researcher, journalist and editor Randall Fitzgerald recently wrote an extensive article (available online) with the headline "Were the 1997 Arizona Lights a psychological warfare experiment?" Fitzgerald covers some interesting new information and theories.

As part of this discussion, I thought it might be interesting to include a chapter on the Phoenix lights case from my first novel, "Mission Into Light" (published in 2001).

I would add that on March 13, 1997, I was living in an area of metro Phoenix's "Valley of the Sun" that was in the line of the flight path of this object or objects. However, I must not have been looking up at the evening sky at the right time and did not observe the anomalous sight reported by so many others in Phoenix and west-central Arizona.

CHAPTER 20: UFO OVER PHOENIX

That evening, things were going as usual, pretty much. At Kaneohe Bay, Amy got back from work and had dinner with Mike while they watched TV.

In San Diego, the Joint Recon Study Group members had closed up the office for the night and headed to their homes, families, and friends.

Some went for an evening jog around their neighborhood. Some worked out at home or at a gym. Major Valdez was at her daughter's school play. Jim Etienne hit a few golf balls at a driving range near his apartment.

But in west central Arizona, something unusual was happening.

Driving south on a road near Prescott, retired police officer William "Buck" Baird saw something in the night sky. It was typical dry and clear night in Arizona's central mountains. The evening was dark and quiet. Plenty of stars out tonight.

Buck spotted a large object slowly drifting straight over his pickup truck.

The shape seemed like a triangle, or maybe a boomerang. Large, bright, yellowish lights were spaced underneath the front angles of the object and were clearly visible.

Buck pulled his pickup truck off to the side of the road and turned off the motor. He wanted to listen for an engine sound from the object. But the night was quiet. All he heard were crickets and a hoot owl as the object continued to move south in the general direction of the road at what seemed like a leisurely pace.

Fifteen minutes later, in the Prescott area, fourteen citizens spotted the object and called local police and the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department.

Twenty-one people at a backyard party in Wickenburg also spotted the object a half-hour later. Two of the people there had video cameras with them and started rolling videotape with nervous narratives of the object. It was still moving gently and silently south-southeast.

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