I hate saying this because it really upsets a lot of people, but because this is something I witnessed directly, I will respond.

I grew up in Arizona (Phoenix) and my friends and I would routinely drive out to the desert to hangout and party away from the adults. I was 17 at the time of the Phoenix Lights and I witnessed both accounts.

The lights were very obviously flares from Luke Airforce Base. It was obvious in the city and outside the city. Nothing passed over the city at all, and I watched both times as the lights appeared and then disappeared behind the mountain range. I've seen some freak stuff out in the desert (brush fires on the other side of the mountains, electrical transformers lighting up the sky, police search helicopters, satellites, etc.) but this was not one of them. We all knew where Like Airforce Base was located (two of my friends were just enlisted, and I have toured the base twice.) The flares were dropped, one by one, and they floated down slowly. It was cool to watch! NOTHING PASSED OVER THE CITY. Can you imagine a city of over a million people, with one of the largest airports (ranked #10 in the country for air traffic, with over 30 million passengers a year in 1997) and there was absolutely no disturbance in flight patterns? The thing about Phoenix is, the weather almost never changes, and you can expect clear skies with less than 60 days of cloud cover. Take a look around google streetview and have fun spotting the clouds! Another thing to note about Phoenix is the dust / smog. When there are clouds at night, the sky is lit by a dim purple / brown color from the lights in the city below. Anything at that altitude or lower will reflect the lights from the city and the haze.

So, now that I have thoroughly insulted anyone that believes in the Phoenix Lights, I hope my conclusion here will help assuage your anger. I am a believer, and I do think there is something worth investigating in these reports... just not the Phoenix Lights. I cannot, in good conscience, agree that anything was there. What's even more troubling for me to accept is that the kind of "mass hysteria" that led people to make reports about something I know they did NOT see! Hundreds of people came out talking about the "craft" gliding over the city, and since I witnessed both occasions personally, from start to finish, I can only feel sadness that the human mind is so apt to misunderstanding and hallucination. That people agreed with each other about this event, and others who were not there, carried on with their story as if it were fact, is deeply troubling! How am I (a believer) supposed to feel about the other events I read about and study? How am I supposed to be a truth-seeker, without the kind of skeptic's burden that this event has given me?

Typically, when I speak my mind about the Phoenix Lights, inevitably someone will suggest that I just didn't see what these people saw. That I was watching some other lights, or something else. That somehow I am mistaken, and just happened to miss a spacecraft 1/4 of a mile in size moving over my city (btw, I was at a slight elevation and could see down into the city as well as above many of the buildings.) That I am a fool for not believing the politician (Symington) or the 700 witnesses. To anyone that would say that to me, I understand your thinking, but I must respond by saying this; why believe them and not me? What makes their accounts more believable than mine? It is simply because they agree with your hypothesis?

Lastly, again, I must say... I am a believer but a skeptic. I am one of you, and I am one of them, but I must speak the truth regardless of how it impacts the UFO community. Thanks for being courteous and kind, and listening to my story.