In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, an Indiana suburbanite played by Richard Dreyfuss sees some kind of spacecraft and becomes so obsessed that he quits his job to investigate.
It turns out that doesn't happen only in the movies.
A Paradise Valley physician who witnessed the "Phoenix Lights" from her mountainside home on the night of March 13, 1997, has put her career on hold, devoted the past three years to research into the sighting and just finished a 330-page book that contends conventional explanations don't wash.
Her work included interviews with witnesses of the unusual lights, UFO experts, optical experts, military experts, former astronauts and professors in astrophysics and computer science. She's also studied reports of UFO sightings from around the world similar to the one here.
She agreed to an interview if only her professional name, Dr. Lynne, were used. She was known that way appearing as a health consultant for two Phoenix TV stations. Her husband of 28 years is also a physician.
She started out as a skeptic, looking for logical answers and using her medical training to analyze information methodically. Although she doesn't know what lit the Arizona sky that night, she's ruled out ordinary answers.
Lynne is stepping forward now - two TV interviews will also air soon - largely because she believes the hundreds of witnesses of the Phoenix Lights have been marginalized.
"They've been ignored or dismissed as unreliable," she said. "They deserve to know that what they saw was real and unexplained. I don't know what it was, but I know that it was, and I have evidence to prove it."
The lights that evening were spotted along a 300-mile corridor from the Nevada line through Prescott Valley and Phoenix to the northern edge of Tucson. Many witnesses saw a huge "V" formation flying silently over the state. Later in the night, a series of bright lights appeared on the city's southern horizon.
Those two events "constitute one of the most dramatic UFO sightings in the past 50 years," said Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle.
Others, however, had less out-of-this-world explanations. The "V" formation may have been a squadron of military planes, and the balls of light could have been high-intensity flares dropped in a training exercise.
Lynne says those contentions are not supported by eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence or optical tests.
"I've tried to examine the evidence scientifically and remain open to any rational answers, but the evidence doesn't compute," she said.
Her belief that the lights were not routine is reinforced by three other sightings of bright, amber orbs from her home. The images on her photos and videotape don't look the same as pictures of flares or aircraft lights.
Lynne hardly fits the stereotype of a UFO fanatic. She's highly educated, articulate and successful. She has no apparent motive for her investigation other than to satisfy her intellectual curiosity. She says she's not interested in trying to convince anyone of anything.
Although I don't find her evidence as conclusive as she does, I'm impressed by her work. Even though I'm still inclined to think the lights came from this world, she gives good reason to doubt past explanations.
I don't believe ET and his pals were in the sky that night. But I'd feel better if we had a firmer fix on what was.
[Source originally published: February 12 2000]
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[Original headline: 'Phoenix Lights': Obsessive search for answers ]
