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From the High Desert book cover

From the High Desert

A Cultural History of Art Bell

Thumbnail for March 11, 1999: Phoenix Lights 2nd Anniversary - Peter Davenport

March 11, 1999: Phoenix Lights 2nd Anniversary - Peter Davenport

Mar 11, 1999
1h 55m
0:00 / 0:00
Art Bell welcomes Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, alongside MUFON investigator Robert Fairfax to discuss a landmark case near Mount St. Helens. Fourteen forestry workers witnessed a small disc-shaped craft descend toward a herd of elk, lift one adult animal off the ground, and rise until it vanished into the sky. Davenport and Fairfax detail their in-person interviews with three of the witnesses, describing them as sober, reluctant to seek publicity, and entirely credible.

The conversation shifts to breaking reports from the Chicago area, where a teenager and her mother independently observed a massive, silent triangular craft over Lamont, Illinois. Minutes later, a similar object was reported near Sandusky, Ohio. Davenport also shares audio from a former LAPD officer's wife describing a luminous split object seen below cloud cover near Los Angeles.

On the second anniversary of the Phoenix Lights, Art and Davenport revisit audio from that historic night and discuss the government's continued silence on UFO phenomena. Davenport expresses alarm at the increasing frequency and boldness of sightings nationwide, calling the official denial the biggest lie on the planet.

Key Moments

  1. A UFO abducts a full-grown elk: Peter Davenport and MUFON's Robert Fairfax describe the February 25, 1999 incident near Mount St. Helens where 14 forestry workers watched a small disc-shaped craft pick a 500-pound elk off the ground and rise away with it.

  2. Elk frozen and rotating beneath the craft: Fairfax describes how once the craft seized the elk, witnesses could no longer see the animal kick or struggle - it appeared frozen, slowly rotating, and gradually disappearing up into the hull as if the craft itself enlarged to accommodate it.

  3. Davenport says the government is lying: Davenport directly accuses the U.S. government of knowingly detecting UFOs while lying to the American people, calling the cover-up 'the biggest lie on the planet today' given the $300 billion defense budget.

  4. Bell's first mass-mind experiment preceded the Phoenix Lights: Bell recalls that exactly two years earlier, he conducted his first mass-mind experiment asking millions of listeners to concentrate on craft showing themselves over a major U.S. city - and two weeks later the Phoenix Lights occurred.

  5. The Phoenix object spanned one to three miles: Davenport reiterates that the object that hovered south of Camelback Mountain that night was estimated between one and three miles wide, stationary for four to five minutes, witnessed across a metro area of two million people.