The Phoenix lights - aliens, hoax or mistaken identity?

Classified Phoenix Lights Footage Surfaces
region phx | central phoenix

PHOENIX, AZ - Leaked classified footage of the PHOENIX LIGHTS surfaced online this week. Phoenix investigative journalist, David Collins, claims to have obtained unreleased footage from the famous UFO sighting that took place March 13th, 1997 in the skies over Arizona.

Thousands of people across the state reported seeing a V-shape formation of lights flying low and silently over Phoenix airspace. The phenomenon became known as the “Phoenix Lights” and sparked books, documentaries and even called for a government investigation by Senator John McCain. In the months following the 1997 sighting, U.S. Air Force officials claimed a squadron of A-10 Warthogs had dropped flares over the Phoenix basin; however local eyewitness accounts dispute the facts.

Now 17 years after the controversial sighting, UFO enthusiasts and Phoenix area residents are looking to internet for answers. Collins, a freelance journalist from KWBV News Phoenix, reportedly obtained the footage during an unrelated investigation; however Air Force officials have made no comment and the footage has not been verified by the military.

Collins has stated he will post more images and videos via his Twitter feed: @David_P_Collins

 

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So Collins himself the Collins the journalist, registered on Sciforums for first time in his life and posted the Collins journalism UFO leaked video???

 

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Yes. You can follow the whole story here: http://kwbvnews.com/2014/12/02/new-footage-of-phoenix-lights-shows-military-involvement/

 

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So you are a real journalist? This is great! Are you going to release the source of that pathetic fake video? Did you get it from a 12-year old with some video editing software? Are you going to do any "investigation" of how that pathetic fake video was made? Does the media even care about reporting facts or will it report anything that will draw viewers/traffic? (Success! Congratulations, I clicked your link!).

[edit]
Some of that was a little general due to my incredulity, but I did intend them to be serious questions. But let me be a little more specific and maybe you can answer: You work for a TV station, which has on its staff several people who do photo/video editing for a living. Did you ask any of them to render an opinion on it before posting it? What did they say?

[edit2]
Oh, wait [few more clicks and a google/linkedin/whois search], I should have known: fake website meant to look like a real TV news site, fake reporter.

Crackpot spam reported.

 

Crackpot, perhaps - none the less, this is the correct sub-forum for such things

 

[Edit: softened the tone]
Generally, a crackpot is more than just the "crazy idiot" dictionary definition. It requires dishonesty to maintain, which is not allowed.

If it helps, though, let's add "troll" to my description.

And I thought SF had an anti-spam policy too?

 

We do - I will admit I did not take/have the time to go to Mr. Collins website (at work) - Bells - since you have seen it, I leave it to your purview on how this should be handled.

 

Another property of spammers, of course, is that they aren't here for participation in the forum, they are just here to spam. They might post a second time if no one realizes it is just spam (to keep the spcam going), but once busted there is nothing left to say. So this guy's unlikely to be back.

 

One of the things that interests me in this case is the unequivocal statements of those who said they saw a massive V-shape. Centrally, are they lying? Time is not likely to distort the memory - if memory it be - of a massive, greater-than-football-field shape traversing the sky overhead. There are several of them; the problem is that there is no video of that supposed thing in a traverse of 1:45. And, if they're lying, then we can probably dispense with the legal relevance of eyewitness testimony, because there would seem to be nothing at all in people lying about even the most significant of events.

 

*strokes imaginary beard*

Eeeenteresting...

 

It might have a nefarious reason for it's existence, not just a "movie prop extension". It could be used to identify just how many gullible people are out there, it could be used to identify how harsh some people can be in relationship to "woo-woo" content... the motives are unclear. (However if you are going to fake a wordpress blog history, it's a good idea to consider the time paradox that you can only go as far back as wordpress was formed (which is around 2003, not 1997).

Unless of course the intention is to add time travel to the material of bogus claims.

If you want satire, you're better off sticking with theonion.com after all without some truths known about why it's just going to be speculation and rumour.. (any scientologist's responsible?)

 

Tough to fake history when the WHOIS lookup tells you the date the domain was registered...

 

the memory is a fascinating thing, though, and can be fooled into remembering things that it didn't see, even only a few moments after the supposed event.
In the uk, back in 2008, it was reported that c.30-40% of people asked claimed to have seen either video of the London bus explosion on 7/7 or a reconstruction of it. There was no footage of the explosion, nor any reconstruction.
A recent experiment showed how simple it was to be convinced we had seen something that we didn't, and all it takes is one confident person claiming to have seen it. We don't want to look as though we missed it, so we agree, and quite soon we start to embellish upon it ourselves, and we form false memories about it.
For the life of me I can't recall the programme I was watching, but it was recent, where the experimenters had 2 people watching CCTV footage of a reenacted burglary... One of the 2 people was a stooge and was there to be confident about what they claimed to see (knowing that they would make stuff up).
After the footage was played, the interviewer asked them questions, such as what was the burglar holding in his other hand, and the confident one said something like "That's where he had his gun!" And the other person, looking a bit puzzled to begin with, then agreed. Could they tell what type of gun it was? And some would give details without the stooge needing to be confident about anything. Yet there was never a gun in the footage.

So memory is a funny thing, which is why it is becoming less significant in trying to fathom our understanding of phenomena.

 

Yes but: I saw a giant UFO? That is deception, not confusion, if false.

 

Only if they are aware that they are lying (I see deception as a deliberate act, i.e. with intent).
Don't confuse stupidity for dishonesty.

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And vice versa.

 

I don't but there's a world of difference between simple error and claiming a ship larger than two football fields flew overhead. If they're lying, it is an enormous lie.

 

But the same argument can also be made for the existence of the aliens, yet you side with the currently known and currently acceptable most likely explanation as to military air vehicles and combination of a air phenomena. Which in all due respect could very well be what has happened. However, you do not seem leave space there for other explanations, that what they saw could be spacecraft of unknown alien technology either by aliens or by military testing such spacecraft. Why are you not letting other possibilities to be acknowledged?