Travis Walton vs. Philip J. Klass

One of the best-known UFO abduction stories is that of Travis Walton. He claims that on Nov. 5, 1975, as he and six others were returning from a day's work cutting logs in Arizona's Sitgreaves National Forest, he was zapped by a beam of light from the UFO, and taken aboard the craft for five days. His story won $5,000 as the Best UFO Case for 1975 from the National Enquirer, has been the subject of several books, as well as the Hollywood movie Fire in the Sky (1993).

The best-known and most influential of all UFO skeptics was Philip J. Klass (1919-2005), longtime Senior Avionics editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine in Washington, DC, and one of the founding fellows of CSICOP. Klass wrote many letters and made many phone calls to people involved in the story, including Travis' family, the local Sheriff's office, polygraph examiners, etc. He found strong reasons to brand the entire story a hoax. His conclusions were written up in great detail in chapters 18-23 of his book UFOs The Public Deceived (Prometheus, 1983). Fortunately, there is a Kindle edition of this book for less than $10, and used paperback copies can also be purchased on-line. Still, the skeptic's case against the Walton abduction claim is not being widely read. For several years I have had a Travis Walton page on my Debunker.com website, containing some of the best anti-Walton arguments, but not nearly as much information as Klass provides.

Philip J. Klass (left), and Travis Walton

On a website promoting the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina as a UFO "hotspot," Sky Ships Over Cashiers, there is a page titled Debunker's $10,000 bribe to stop UFO truth. This claim is now making the rounds of UFO-related Forums. Someone shouts on the Outpost Forum on February 5, "BRIBE BOMBSHELL! STEVE PIERCE WHO WAS WITH TRAVIS WALTON WHEN HE WAS ABDUCTED CLAIMS THAT HE WAS OFFERED A $10,000 BRIBE FORM THE LATE DEBUNKER PHIL KLASS TO STATE THAT THE ENTIRE TRAVIS WALTON ALIEN ABDUCTION CLAIM WAS A HOAX!" 


Travis Walton himself quickly replied, "Yes, it is true. I even mentioned this in the1996 edition of my book. But all I knew then was that Deputy Click had taken Steve the message when Steve still lived in this area. I didn't know then that Klass had also flown to Texas and spent hours taking Steve out to dinner and trying get him to accept the bribe. And followed Steve to another state or two. Very curious, since in my first edition I had criticized Klass for being "an armchair investigator" who, unlike Dr J. Allen Hynek, the Lorenzens and Stanton Friedman, had never personally contacted anyone involved nor ever bothered to visit the site." If Walton thought that Klass was an "armchair investigator," then he obviously knew nothing about Klass, and had not read any of Klass' UFO books. Walton continues, "All this strongly supports the belief that Klass was a paid government disinformationist." 

Travis Walton gets 'zapped' by a UFO

This charge is, of course, absurd and unfounded, and left me amazed to see that Walton would stoop so low. I went back to Klass' 1983 account in UFOs The Public Deceived, and to my surprise found that same accusation there being discussed. In Bill Barry's 1978 book about Travis Walton, Ultimate Encounter, it says 

According to Mike Rogers, "Steve told me and Travis that he had been offered ten thousand dollars just to sign a denial. He said he was thinking about taking it." (p. 160)

However note that the accusation does not come from Pierce, but instead from Mike Rogers, Travis' best friend, and future brother-in-law. Barry does not directly accuse Klass of offering a bribe, but hints it is so.

Klass, however, notes that Rogers told Pierce "Then you'll spend the money alone, and you'll be bruised." Klass writes, "The latter suggests that Rogers was threatening Pierce with physical harm if he recanted." If you read A Profitable Nightmare of a Very Unreal Kind on my Travis Walton page, you would see that such a threat of violence should be taken seriously. Klass continues, "had Barry checked with me, I would have assured him that I never made such an offer to [Deputy] Click or to anyone seeking to 'buy off' a member of the Rogers crew." In the wake of the bribery accusation, Klass did locate and speak with Steve Pierce (but not until after the accusation had already been made!). Note that Klass did not travel to Texas or anywhere else to meet with Pierce, or take him out and entertain him - those are lies made up by the Walton crowd.

One of the most convincing arguments in favor of the Walton abduction has always been that the five woodcutters sitting in the back of the pickup truck, who did not know each other well and had only come together recently to work on Roger's contract with the Forest Service, all told compatible stories about the incident, and all passed a polygraph exam, more or less. They would have no incentive to go along with a hoax. Klass, however, insisted that they were all in collusion.

The late Karl Pflock was a pro-UFOlogist who was nonetheless skeptical of a number of major cases, including this one. One day Karl and I were discussing the Walton case, and he made what was, to me, a novel suggestion: the five woodcutters in the back of the truck knew nothing about any UFO hoax. Only three people were behind the hoax: Travis himself; Mike Rogers, who drove the truck; and a confederate in the woods, very likely Travis' brother Duane. Pflock wrote in the Jan. 15, 2000 issue of James Moseley's UFO gossip sheet Saucer Smear (Vol. 47 Nr. 1) , disagreeing with Klass:

I thought Walton and his best friend Mike Rogers could have rigged up something convincing enough to make the other five think they'd seen a hovering, hostile UFO. * Properly primed with flying saucer talk by Walton and Rogers, with clever theatrics by the duo during the sighting/zapping, with Rogers whisking the crew away after but a few seconds exposure, it wouldn't have taken a "Day the Earth Stood Still" saucer to fool them. After the fact, in the forest gloom, with Walton and the UFO mysteriously gone, their impressions easily could have been further molded by Rogers continuing his act and repeating his version of the saucer and what it had done to Walton.

Experienced investigators know eyewitness testimony frequently is unreliable, a point often made by Klass in criticizing the work of ufologists. They also know people are highly suggestible during and in the wake of dramatic unexpected events. Yet, in pooh-poohing my suggestion, Phil implicitly accepts the accuracy of the Walton witnesses' publicized descriptions of the UFO.

Phil also ignores some very important testimony he obtained from witness Steve Pierce during a June 20th, 1978, tape-recorded telephone interview (a dub of which he kindly supplied me in early 1998), testimony which to my knowledge he's never revealed in any of his writings about the case:

Klass: What did you see?

Pierce: Uh, well, I thought it was something a deer hunter, you know, rigged up. You know, 'cause it was deer season, you know, so he could see. You know? And, uh, and, but I couldn't see the bottom or a top or sides, all's I could see was the front of it, you know. You couldn't tell if it had a bottom to it or, you know, or a back to it or anything...

Hmmmmm... A "Plan Nine from Outer Space" saucer, perhaps?

* I hasten to add that, while I think a hoax is possible, I have not made up my mind about the case.    

 Klass writes that Pierce told him that, on the day of the "UFO abduction," Walton did no work at all, claiming to be ill. During the afternoon, Mike Rogers disappeared from the work site for about two hours (perhaps to prepare the UFO light show). They usually left the work site about 4:00, according to Pierce, but on that day they remained until about 6:00, thus they were uncharacteristically driving home in the dark. If they drove home in daylight, the UFO light show would not be visible.

Klass says that when he told Pierce that he believes Walton's story to be a hoax, Pierce replied, "Me too. If I could ever prove it was a hoax I'd damn sure do it." (Klass 1983, p. 221). Which suggests that Pflock's hypothesis is correct: the five woodcutters in the back of the truck were not perpetrators of a hoax, but its first five victims. It also shows the absurdity of supposing that Klass would offer such a bribe: even if Pierce did claim that the case was hoaxed, he would not be believed unless he had had proof of a hoax. Plus, he might get "bruised."

So, because of Travis Walton's slanderous new charges against Philip J. Klass, I have performed a major Document Drop of papers in my files on Travis Walton. Added to my page of historical UFO information is a 47-page PDF file of Klass' writings and related material concerning the Travis Walton UFO story. Among the contents of that file:

• "Walton Abduction Cover-Up revealed": NICAP reveals, using Klass' research, that APRO and the National Enquirer were complicit in covering up "inconvenient facts" about Walton's claims, and lying about it.
• A 17 page 1976 White Paper by PJK laying out the case for a hoax. 
• Point-by-point refutation by PJK of APRO's claims.
• Evidence of Mike Rogers misrepresenting facts about the case. Why  Mike Rogers engineered a UFO hoax to get out of an unprofitable Forest Service contract.

A second file contains contemporary news clippings, interviews, memos, and other "real-time" information about the construction of the Walton UFO hoax.

Happy Reading!

Rex Heflin, 1965: a Classic UFO Photo, now in 3-D!

The first of Rex Heflin's UFO photos

In Santa Ana, California on August 3, 1965, highway worker Rex Heflin got three photos of a supposed UFO out the window of his van, using his Polaroid instant camera. This series of photos has long been touted as a “classic” by NICAP and many prominent UFOlogists. This object supposedly flew right over the Marine Corps El Toro Air Station, plus the Santa Ana freeway (Interstate 5) in broad daylight, but no one else saw it. (Sheaffer 1998, p. 91-93). In these photos, distant objects are hazy because of the Los Angeles smog, while the UFO is not, probably because it is tiny, and very close to the camera. For many years the original prints could not be investigated, because Heflin claims that they were confiscated by an investigator who came to his house, flashing an ID supposedly from NORAD. At least Heflin did not claim that the Men In Black came for his prints, or that the dog ate them. He blamed NORAD. So all we had left were copies made from the originals. The Air Force's Project Bluebook listed the Heflin photos as a "hoax."  However, "In 1993, Heflin’s Polaroid originals surfaced unexpectedly under mysterious circumstances." Heflin died in 2005.  

 

 

Dr. William K. Hartmann replicated Heflin's photos for the Condon report (case 52), using a suspended lens cap.

  

Skeptics have argued that Heflin’s UFO appears to be a tiny model, just a few inches in size, hanging from something like a fishing pole propped up over the cab of his van. 

Enkidu created this stereo pair from Rex Heflin's UFO photos

 

However only in 2006 did a still-anonymous person, using the alias Enkidu, make an extremely important finding. In a discussion thread on the conspiracy-oriented website AboveTop Secret, Enkidu argues that Heflin unintentionally created a 3-D photo of his UFO. Assuming that the UFO was attached in some way to the truck, by moving the camera a few inches between the exposures, Heflin has produced a near-perfect stereo pair, as can be seen in stereo viewers. The photos above are reversed by Enkidu to allow easier viewing of the 3-D effect without a stereo viewer by simply crossing one’s eyes. And when you do that, the UFO is seen to be tiny. It’s clearly farther away than the truck’s mirror, but much closer than the roadside vegetation, or the distant trees. Responding to criticism, Enkidu writes, “Yes, it's possible that the UFO moved between the time the first photo was taken and the second. But it would have to move exactly horizontal to the way the camera moved, because there's no apparent difference in the size of the top part of the ship. It could only tilt forward. It didn't go up or down, and it didn't get nearer or closer. The odds of that happening are pretty slim.” Great work, Enkidu! (I think I have figured out who Enkidu is - we've corresponded before. But don't worry, Enkidu, I won't "out" you!)

Enkidu also created this Red-Blue stereo image for viewing using Red-Blue 3-D glasses

The RB-47 Encounter of 1957 - UFOlogy's Best Evidence?

In the early morning hours of July 17, 1957, a U.S. Air Force crew aboard an RB-47, a plane loaded with the most sophisticated state-of-the-art surveillance and electronic countermeasures gear,  reportedly encountered and was followed across several southern states by one or more UFOs, seen visually as well as on radar. Some UFOlogists consider this the best UFO evidence of all time. It was investigated as Case 5 of the University of Colorado's Air-Force-sponsored Condon Report, which cited the absence of an official report supposed to have been written on the incident, and concluded "Evaluation of the experience must, therefore, rest entirely on the recollection of crew members ten years after the event. These descriptions are not adequate to allow identification of the phenomenon encountered."

A U.S. Air Force RB-47, carrying then-state-of-the-art electronic surveillance and countermeasures gear.

 

The UFO Casebook says, "An Air Force RB-47, equipped with electronic countermeasures (ECM) gear and manned by six officers, was followed by an unidentified object for a distance of well over 700 miles, and for a time period of 1.5 hr., as it flew from Mississippi, through Louisiana and Texas and into Oklahoma.
      "The object was, at various times, seen visually by the cockpit crew as an intensely luminous light, followed by ground-radar and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47.
     "Of special interest in this case are several instances of simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of those physically distinct "channels," and rapidity of maneuvers beyond the prior experience of the aircrew."

There is a brand new in-depth investigation of this case by Tim Printy, just published in his WebZine SunLite, January/February, 2012. It is one of the most complex cases in all UFOlogy. I cannot possibly give more than a brief summary here; Printy's analysis runs over thirty pages, and is enormously significant in the history of this major case, and thus in the ongoing debate over the reality of UFOs.

Printy begins by making what is, to me, a crucial observation: "It does seem rather odd that the UFO would decide to use an S-band radar signal to track or test an Air Force RB-47.  It is this clue that seems to have been glossed over/down played by those presenting this case as the best evidence."  In other words, the UFO seems to have been sending out (but only in this case) S-band radar signals with exactly the same characteristics as those used by the U.S. Air Force at that time. How strange is that if the UFO is sending out exactly the same kind of radar signals we do? So isn't it likely, then, that the source of the signals was not an extraterrestrial craft, but instead a misidentified terrestrial one?

The path of the RB-47 during its supposed "UFO encounter."

Printy notes how the late atmospheric physicist and Ufologist Dr. James E. McDonald interviewed the RB-47 crew and wrote a paper on this case. "McDonald’s stamp of approval had immediately made this case a “classic.”" The famous UFO skeptic, the late Philip J. Klass, "took on the case in 1971 and wrote a rather extensive study on the incident. Klass suggested that it was equipment malfunction, a bright fireball, an airliner, and reception of ground radar signals that made the event appear mysterious to the air crew." This analysis can be found in Chapters 19 and 20 of Klass' 1974 book UFOs Explained.

In the 1990s, UFOlogist  Brad Sparks, who styles himself as "the “RB-47 expert” in his email address, re-evaluated the case. Sparks concluded that Klass had erred, most especially in asserting that the RB-47 had, because of an equipment malfunction, erroneously picked up signals from the radar station at Kessler Air Force base in Biloxi, Mississippi, which was a training facility for radar operators and repairmen. That radar, said Sparks, was not operating at the time of the incident! Sparks wrote, "Since it was a nine-month course it was apparently run during the normal academic term from September to June approximately. In other words, there would not have been a class in session to operate the CPS-6B even in the daytime, let alone nighttime, in the midst of summer vacation, on July 17, when the RB-47 incident took place." 

Sparks simply assumed that, since this was not during the "academic year," the training radar would have been turned off! But Printy looked into the matter very closely of whether or not the Kessler radar was operational at the time in question. He found (as he, a retired Navy submariner, already surely knew), that military training schedules bear no resemblance at all to those of colleges! In fact, Printy found that the Kessler facility had been operating at maximum training capacity in July, 1957, and that some classes were indeed scheduled between midnight and 6AM.

Overall, Printy found that while Klass' analysis contains some errors, his overall conclusions still stand. If you have any interest in the RB-47 c ontroversy, or if you want to read one of the very finest research papers ever published about any UFO case, then I encourage you to read Printy's paper, and come to your own conclusion about this important and controversial UFO case.

 

 

Join the Boycott to Protest the CIA Coverup of President Obama's Trips to Mars

You just couldn't make this up:

For the past few years I have been reporting from time to time on the absurd claims of a group of UFOlogists calling their study Exopolitics, "political implications of the extra-terrestrial presence." Alfred Lambremont Webre claims to have been the founder of Exopolitics, although in reality Michael Salla can probably claim that dubious honor. Webre has the website exopolitics.com, while Salla has exopolitics.org .

Michael Salla's "Exopolitics" banner

  

Lately Webre's claims have gotten so bizarre (the war between the Andromeda Council and the Reptilians, Americans being teleported to a secret base on Mars to meet with aliens) that even others in exopolitics became alarmed, and began distancing themselves from him. (This recalls the old joke about the tenor who was so stupid that even the other tenors noticed it.) As Salla recently wrote, "Webre is a marginal and controversial figure in the network of exopolitics researchers and activists that has formed around the world. Webre's writing and behavior is seen as too bizarre and controversial for most credible exopolitics researchers to use." Nonetheless, Webre's far-out articles on the Examiner were being read by as many as 400,000 people each month. Until recently, that is, when Examiner.com gave him the boot.

Webre's colleague Jon Kelly, "a world-famous expert in the application of voice-based disclosure technology for revealing UFO secrets" (WTF?), writes

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal Judge and founder of Exopolitics Alfred Lambremont Webre is calling for consumers to occupy an immediate boycott of pay-per-impression advertising funded news website Examiner.com.... Examiner.com’s corporate publication ban against the Seattle Exopolitics Examiner is an Illuminati agenda-inspired media hit targeting the columnist who revealed President Barack Obama’s participation in the CIA’s secret Mars visitation program."

Pieces on Examiner.com are presented to make you think you're reading a news story. One time a colleague and I were discussing one of Webre's absurd columns in Examiner.com claiming that NASA was promoting (not debunking)  fears of an "extinction level event" from Comet Elenin, and he asked me "What kind of newspaper is publishing crazy stuff like this?"  I replied "I don't think it's actually a newspaper, it's more like this guy's blog." Well, in his feud with Examiner.com, Webre spelled out Examiner.com's business model:

During 2009 many of the writers were receiving $0.01 per page view. Examiner.com later offered a variety of pay scale options to their writers. Examiner.com now bases compensation on variables such as subscriptions, page view traffic and session length.... Examiner.com derives the bulk of its revenue from consumer (reader) click-throughs.  Every time you as a reader click through to read an article on Examiner.com, the company is paid a royalty by its advertisers.

Let's see, one cent per page at 400,000 pages per month gets you $4,000 a month, although Webre suggests  that was only in a good month. So the formula for success as a UFO writer seems to be: make up the most outrageous claims you can think of and put it on Examiner.com, then sit back and collect the coins dropping into the hopper. And here am I, stupidly wasting my time and effort writing a skeptical Blog! Webre does not say exactly what happened to get him kicked off Examiner.com. It cannot be that they are concerned about their journalistic credibility, for they have none. Webre does say, "Examiner.com has been criticized for its lack of verification and fact-checking of stories published on the site, including accusations of plagiarism."

Webre's request is simple: "Please let your friends and networks know you are boycotting Examiner.com because it is promoting the CIA’s Obama on Mars cover-up, and its direct assault on the Truth movement and Truth movement journalists like Alfred Lambremont Webre." How would that be for a Facebook status?

 

New : Historical UFO Documents (Klass, Hynek, others)

On my website http://www.debunker.com, I have recently began scanning and posting PDF files of some of the more significant correspondence and other historical documents in my private collection. (That's one reason I haven't posted much here recently). These papers involve such well-known UFOlogists and UFO witnesses as Philip J. Klass, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. James E. McDonald, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Thornton Page, Dr. David Jacobs, Lonnie Zamora, Capt. Lawrence Coyne, etc. I first began corresponding with Philip J. Klass in 1968, and we stayed in touch until his death in 2005. Klass' papers were then donated to the American Philosophical Society, where they can be requested by researchers willing to travel to Philadelphia to see them, or to pay the associated fees to have copies sent. My intention is to post all of the most significant UFO related papers, especially Klass' "White Papers," on my website.

Philip J. Klass

At present, here are some of the more interesting and significant papers:

• My paper recounting a talk that the famed UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek gave at Northwestern in 1969 as "freshman orientation." 
• While I was at Northwestern in 1970, Dr. J. Allen Hynek allowed me to read a chapter of the book he was working on, The UFO Experience. Here are my comments to him about it, Hynek's reply, Klass' comment on it, and the note Hynek inserted in his book to answer my critique.
• Klass' highly-controversial "White Papers" about atmospheric physicist and UFO proponent Dr. James E. McDonald (1968). Many pro-UFOlogists have accused Klass of unfairly 'hounding' the poor Dr. McDonald (most notably, Anne Druffel in her book Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science), implying that Klass had a role in driving McDonald to his tragic suicide in 1971. For the first time, Klass' own papers on the subject are now available to researchers.
• Klass' letter to "Plasmarians"  complaining about the pro-ETI 'stacked deck' of the forthcoming AAAS-sponsored UFO Symposium in Boston (Nov. 18, 1969). Note that Klass includes Carl Sagan among the pro-ETI panelists. This is not a mistake.  In testimony to the 1968 hearings before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Carl Sagan said: "I might mention that, on this symposium, there are no individuals who strongly disbelieve in the extraterrestrial origin of UFO's and therefore there is a certain view, not necessarily one I strongly agree with -- but there is a certain view this committee is not hearing today, along those lines."
• Klass' talk to the Maryland Seminar on Science and Technology, UFOs, "N-Rays" and Pathological Science (Dec. 18, 1969). Discusses Blondlot, Hynek, Socorro, James E. McDonald, Heflin, Father Gill, Trent.  
• The Socorro UFO Case, and its "Multiplying Multiple Tourist Witnesses" (Aug. 29, 1976). Examines inconsistencies in the claim that one or more unnamed tourists also witnessed the UFO allegedly seen by Officer Lonnie Zamora in Socorro on April 24, 1964. 
• Capt. Lawrence Coyne's Views on UFOs and his own experience before he and his crew won the "National Enquirer" best case award of $5,000 (Dec. 31, 1976). There's nothing like fame and money to cement a UFO witness' story.
• PJK critiques of Hynek's perceived inconsistencies (1975-83). Hynek's ever-changing "UFO Invariant."

There will be more papers to follow, that I will post as time permits

White House replies to the "Disclosure Petition" - No ETs!

When the Obama administration launched its "We the People" petition program, they probably never expected to get a petition like this. Signers were promised that the administration would give a formal response to any petition gathering 5,000 signatures within 30 days. One of the very first petitions to qualify for a response was the so-called disclosure petition, whose title says "we petition the obama administration to: formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure."

The petition was written by Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group, who also proclaimed July 8 to be World Disclosure Day. It states,

We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon.

This goes well beyond a request for simple "disclosure," to release all documents. It presupposes that the U.S. government is involved in ongoing contact with extraterrestrials, and demands that the Obama administration acknowledge that fact. However, the petition quickly gathered enough signatures to qualify, creating a dilemma for the White House. All they can do is deny that they are meeting with extraterrestrials on a daily basis, and the denial further inflames the conspiracy flames. For a government agency to address UFO claims in any way is an automatic no-win situation. If you say they're not a real mystery, and you get a controversy over that. On the other hand, if you say that they are mysterious and challenging, you stir up an even bigger controversy, and many people suspect (quite correctly) that you have been nibbling peyote or something. Read Lee Speigel's Huffington Post article on the petition dilemma.

On Nov. 7, the White House finally issued its response to the Disclosure Petition, which reads, in part:

Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.

As far as I can tell, this response is 100% correct and accurate. However, as you might imagine, this is not going down well in certain places. PRG states simply, "The response was unacceptable." They promise to have more to say about it soon.

The White House's threshold for a petition response has since been raised to 25,000, but the change is not retroactive. However, Bassett was urging his followers to raise the signature count over 25,000 anyway, as a demonstration of their strength. The final signature count was 12,078.

The Phoenix Lights Return

On March 13, 1997 the Phoenix Lights became a sensational UFO story, when bright, slowly-falling lights were seen in the sky across the Phoenix metropolitan area, and across much of southern Arizona. They were determined quite definitively to be flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft,  in a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona. This was actually the second UFO incident reported that evening across Arizona. The first incident, involving a V-shape of lights, may have been aircraft lights, but is in any case not relevant to this discussion. Some UFO promoters deliberately confuse the two, showing the video of the second incident (dramatic but easily explained) while describing the first (less certain identitfication, but no good photos or videos).

On the evening of Friday, Oct. 28, four bright lights in the sky were reported and photographed at a high school football game in Scottsdale, Arizona (Phoenix metropolitan area). The lights were shown by broadcaster Mark Mancuso on Accuweather. The video used to be at
http://www.accuweather.com/video/1805489410/ufo-sightings-in-scottsdale-ariz.asp , however that video has apparently been pulled (probably because it made Accuweather a laughingstock, and the broadcaster is now in the woodshed). However, as Ian Ridpath notes in a comment below, you can still find that video on the Accuweather website if you search for it another way: http://www.accuweather.com/video.asp?search=scottsdale

You can also see the "UFOs" in another video below:



It's not hard to see the similarity to the parachuting flares of the Phoenix lights. There was a lot of speculation that these might be flares attached to sky divers, but can we do better than just speculate?

Sometimes a little investigation goes a long way. SkyFOX helicopter pilot Rick Crabbs (Fox Channel 10 in Phoenix)said, "I was at the location where those skydivers were coming in ... Friday night, so that's exactly what happened -- there were some skydivers," he said. "And they did have pyrotechnics on their ankles. There were four of them, and if you look at the video, you can see four different lights."


The skydivers were at an event called the "Halloween Balloon Spooktacular" at the Salt River Fields. Looking at the schedule of activities for that event, we find:
•9:00pm Arizona Skyhawks performance with sky divers in lighted suits and pyrotechnics  

The Arizona Skyhawks are indeed a professional skydiving team that sometimes uses pyrotechnics.



But for some "journalists," wild speculation is more gratifying than a little bit of actual research.