Article/Document:

USA Today on UFOs in Arizona

Richard Price, USA Today, 6-19-97

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Summary: Something happened in-the skies over Arizona the night of March 13. No one is sure what it was but thousands saw it dozens videotaped it and people all over the state are haunted by it still.

Something happened in-the skies over Arizona the night of March 13. No one is sure what it was but thousands saw it dozens videotaped it and people all over the state are haunted by it still.

"I'll never be the same," Bill Greiner, 51, a cement truck driver, says. He was hauling a load down a mountain north of Phoenix when he saw two brilliantly lit orbs, shaped like spinning tops. "Before this, if anybody'd told me they saw a UFO, I would've said, 'Yeah, and I believe in the tooth fairy.'

"Now I've got a whole new view. I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I've seen something that don't belong here."

So what did Greiner and every- body else see? That question has rat- tied around this state for three months. Officials at Luke Air Force Base in nearby Glendale are bombarded with calls for an investiga- tion, even though the US. government is officially out of the UFO business.

The subject surfaces constantly on talk shows. And the army of people demanding answers has grown to the point that a Phoenix city council- woman has launched an inquiry.

It could have been a hoax. It could have been an illusion. It could have been almost anything. But the events of March 13 may add up to the most contentious and confounding UFO report since the so-called UFO age was launched 50 years ago by the legendary crash of a "spaceship" outside Roswell, N.M.

The sightings come at a time when interest in UFOs borders on a national obsession, saturating the movie industry, television and literature. A Poll this month by CNN and Time magazirie- found that 22% of adult Americans believe intelligent beings from other planets have been in con- tact with human beings.

A Gallup poll last September found that 72% of Americans think there is life on other planets. And 71% said they think the U.S. government knows more about UFOs than it's telling.

"The fact is that more people are seriously interested in UFOs now than they ever have," Don Ecker, research director and news editor at UFO Magazine, says. "Convincing the govern- ment may be an exercise in futiity, but it's not hard to find believers on the streets."

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