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The Phoenix Lights Sighting -- Did I See the Same UFO on an Earlier Date?

25 March 2016
Pam Rotella

As usual, I have no time for projects like a new article, but I was looking for information on voting irregularities in Arizona and came across stories about the 19th anniversary of "Phoenix Lights" (the series of UFO sightings).

I've had a story to tell about the Phoenix Lights, but it wasn't in Arizona, and it wasn't on the same day as the Arizona incident. I told this story to several people through the years, but never in an article format where anybody can find it online and read it. With people marking the anniversary online, I think it's a good time to type it up to add to the public discussion.

When I first heard about Phoenix Lights, it was long after my own sighting had occurred -- maybe months, maybe years. Yet those other witness accounts reminded me of a sighting I'd had around the same time, also in the southwest, and so I sat down and figured out how my sighting fit into the timeline. My sighting was just before the Phoenix Lights. Maybe the previous week, maybe a few days prior, but most likely the previous weekend.

Basically I was in a suburb of Las Vegas, Nevada, either in Boulder City or somewhere between Boulder City and Las Vegas. I was on a highway -- the "main drag" that goes from Boulder City to Las Vegas -- going toward Las Vegas after dark, and I wasn't in a downtown area. It was more of a rural desert area.

At that time in my life, I was still working in Los Angeles, California and occasionally going to Las Vegas, Nevada for a much-needed weekend break from the stress of the job and the L.A. metro area. It wasn't uncommon for me to find a smaller hotel in Boulder City and then drive to Las Vegas for sightseeing, which in Las Vegas is 24 hours a day.

While on the highway, driving at a low rate of speed, suddenly six lights came on directly overhead. This was without warning and without noise. I looked up, and saw what looked like gymnasium lights from my childhood, and very bright. They were in a V-shape that was large enough to be 6 helicopters flying in formation, which at the time I assumed they were. The reddish sky was visible in between the lights, giving me the initial impression that the lights weren't attached to the same craft. They were also very low to the ground, and although I'm not very good at estimating heights, my best guess is somewhere between 20 and 30 feet from the ground to the lights. They also weren't entirely stationary. They were traveling in a forward motion, toward the city like my car, but very slowly.

Because of what was happening in my life at the time, I was both angry and terrified when I first saw the lights. I was being stalked by a woman who was wealthy enough and mean enough to use any means possible to terrorize me. In fact I'd just started to write her husband to tell him about it earlier that year -- after she took her toddler son on a stalking expedition and followed me to the house of a carpenter who was replacing the broken door on my boat. I was obviously concerned for the safety of the carpenter, but unfortunately rumors in town also alleged that the carpenter was a former IRA member, and I felt that I had to warn the stalker's husband before she started terrorizing the carpenter, who could be a danger to every member of her family if the IRA rumors were actually true and he decided to fight back.

I've had other male stalkers through the years, including one who's very dangerous and apparently an accomplice to a serial killer now. The stalker I'm talking about here is an even longer story, and more bizarre -- her husband was a celebrity who apparently liked me and flirted with me occasionally in my younger, thinner years, when I lived in Southern California in the 90s. But he didn't like me well enough to show any concern for my safety or well-being when his wife started terrorizing me then or now. This has gone on for better than 20 years now, with violent incidents like my sister being shot in the head in 2001 after leaving an address that was on my driver's license (a license that was swiped to buy beer at one of his concerts the year prior), and also a recent chemical attack that left me with tens of thousands in medical bills. Some people get hung up on the stalking thing, like it's less likely than seeing a UFO, but they're on the side of perpetrators and not victims, and obviously have no personal knowledge of this situation, meaning their opinions on the matter are worth zero. For purposes of the Phoenix Lights story, the stalker situation was simple -- I was constantly on edge, and anything out of the ordinary was taken by me as a potentially life-threatening situation.

And so I knew that while unlikely, there was a possibility that those helicopters worked for the stalker. I immediately drove ahead to the next side street and took a left, then turned around and watched the lights from the stop sign there. Thankfully, the lights continued directly over the main road going straight ahead, past my position and toward the city of Las Vegas. Again, I'm not good at estimating speeds from the side of the road, but it was going very slowly -- I'd guess about 20-25 m.p.h. I don't remember when I stopped watching, but knowing evasive behavior that I frequently used to escape the stalker at the time, I probably drove to what I'd consider to be a safer spot to wait it out.

When I finally heard about the Phoenix Lights sightings, I remembered that incident, and started Googling information on different UFOs. That's when I came across a few pages on the "Big Black Delta," a triangular-shaped craft with lights on the bottom that were in the same formation that I saw that night. Yet the special thing about the Big Black Delta was the screen on the bottom of its wings -- supposedly the aircraft had a camera that took a real-time shot of the sky above, and projected that picture onto a screen at the bottom of the plane, making people below think that they were seeing the sky in between its lights. At the time of the sighting, I didn't know that such technology existed, and so I wasn't looking for the edges of any screen as I was looking up. All I saw were the lights and the "sky" in between (which was reddish from light pollution but not very bright).

To me, the "Big Black Delta" describes what I saw perfectly, and I've assumed that's what I saw that night in Boulder City ever since. I also suspect it's a possibility for the Phoenix Lights (same craft, different location, different day), although I'll leave it to witnesses in Arizona to decide whether it fits their memories or not.

One thing that former Congressman Dennis Kucinich brought up during the '08 elections about his own UFO sighting is that all "UFO" means is "unidentified." It doesn't mean that the object is driven by space aliens or that it comes from a different galaxy. In the case of the Big Black Delta, online reports said that the aircraft hadn't been officially acknowledged and may have been experimental and "secret" at the time.

I have had other UFO "sightings." One was in the California desert, along the interstate between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, just over some mountains set back from the north side of the highway. It occurred on a sunny, clear day. Basically an aircraft that looked like a stealth bomber was suspended in air with a metallic-colored parachute above it, which appeared to be attached to the plane with thick metal cables. Although I no longer remember the year of this one, for some reason I'm under the impression that it was in 1996. And it wasn't much of a sighting, but again it was "unidentified." I've since wondered if whatever propulsion gas coming out of the back of the bomber was being caught by the parachute, and that's what was suspending it, although the thing appeared to be motionless and I'd expect some movement from a crude technology like that. I've described this sighting to other people, and some think that what I saw was a hologram and not an actual aircraft. Obviously there's no way for me to know for sure what was happening in the sky that day.

Another "sighting" is much more complex, starting with my mother's obsession one day to travel to Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin, then my seeing what appeared to be a disc shadow pass in front of us on the road in the area,and then crop circles near that same marsh on a later date. This started a number of events that led me to a sick girl who needed some information that I had, and eventually I saw what some would call a "gray." That story is very long and I'm also concerned for the privacy of the humans involved and the "gray," but I was impressed with the compassion of whoever put that into motion, alien or human. Maybe someday I'll be able to walk readers through the story.

For now, I'll report the old "Big Black Delta" sighting to MUFON and leave the rest of it for another time. I am interested in whether any witnesses of the Phoenix Lights incident think that it's similar enough to be the same aircraft.





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