My UFO Experience in Tucson, AZ and Syracuse, NY

It was late September in 1998, more than a year after the Phoenix Lights appeared to the wonderment of the Arizonans who witnessed them. At that time I’d been employed by the Tucson Airport Authority as a custodian for five years, working the graveyard shift (from 10pm to 6:30am).

I and my fellow employee were assigned to steam extract carpet at the lobby of the Control Tower. We had the truck loaded up with equipment and the truck-mount extractor hitched up. We pulled up to the security gate where my coworker scanned his ID badge and input his access code and in seconds the gate slid back and allowed us passage outside of the AOA.

He drove the truck through and as we waited for the gate to close behind us, I noticed something in the dark skies. It was a very faint outline, circular in shape and had a dull, faintly glowing orange hue to it – looking like a dying ember.

As we drove towards the Control Tower, my friend pointed and grunted loudly (he is deaf and mute). I nodded vigorously, indicating that I saw it too. He brought the truck to a slow stop as we saw this thing that I assumed was a weather balloon begin to glow all the brighter.

The thing hung in the sky in absolute silence (we had the windows rolled down as it was a pleasantly balmy Tucson night). Then it began to throb as it took on a bright orange-amber sheen. I then noticed it had ribbings going across its surface horizontally. To our amazement, another appeared, then another. In what seemed like half a minute, five of these orbs appeared, all with the same glow, color, and ribbings; all throbbing – not in unison, but with their own rhythm.

“I should take a picture of this,” I thought. “Or even a video!” But I only sat sedately in the truck, not making any move to pull my phone out of my pocket. Looking back on the event, it seemed strange that neither of us reacted with alarm or even excitement. A calm, passive demeanor washed over the both of us as we saw these five orbs glow, throb and remain suspended and silent in the night sky.

Visually they appeared to be about the size of a half dollar, and it was difficult to judge how far away they looked, but I would guess somewhere between three hundred to four hundred feet distance, and about one hundred feet or so in the air.

Slowly, gradually, one by one they began to fade, all the while throbbing in and out in their independent rhythm. One by one they winked out, until only one remained, and then it too vanished.

My coworker and I gawked at each other, eyes wide and shining with wonder. We resumed our drive to the Control Tower, and when I stepped into the Lobby, I picked up the wall-mounted phone that connected directly to the Air Traffick Controller’s cab. I asked if he picked up any incoming objects in the western skies – perhaps five in number.

“Negative,” he said, “why do you ask?”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’m looking at the screen right now,” he said, a slight tone of irritation in his voice. “All clear – why do you ask?” he said more persistently.

“My buddy and I just thought we saw something,” I said diffidently and thanked him.

About three weeks later, that same coworker and I had finished up another carpet cleaning assignment and parked our truck at the fueling station for a fill up of the truck and the truck-mount extractor.

While he attended to that, I walked south of the fueling station, away from the lights, about twenty feet or so, just enough to gain a pleasant view of the starry skies that were gradually giving way to the approaching dawn.

I looked to the southern horizon, towards the Santa Rita mountains, and just above them I saw an orange-amber pinpoint of piercing light. Then I noticed more than a dozen others winking into view. I motioned wildly to my friend to get his attention, and as he approached I pointed emphatically at what I was seeing.

While these objects were more than three dozen miles away, because of the flat terrain, we could easily see them – their brightness for that distance was remarkable! Think of pointing a live fiber-optic cable at your face.

These were blinking in and out of view, just as before, and like the last time, they slowly blinked out in the darkness until we were left with the near silent morning breeze. This time however, the sedate and calm condition wasn’t nearly as pronounced.

There was one other time I saw something unexplainable but that happened more than twenty years prior. I was in my mid-teens at that time, living in Upstate New York.

I and my friend were outside on the street, in front of his house shortly after dinner time. The streetlights had just come on as we tossed a frisbee back and forth. At one point, my friend made a powerful throw that shot the frisbee high up in the air. I began running backwards, my eye fixed on the disc and waited for its descent. As it started downward, my eye caught something else. The frisbee fell behind me unnoticed.

“What’s up?” my friend called out (an ironic question in retrospect!).

“Look!” I said as I pointed skyward.

He slowly walked towards me as he gazed into the darkening sky.

“What the…?” he murmured as we both stood spell bound by what we saw.

Tiny points of light, high up and silent in the air, more than two dozen, all flying about – some with a straight trajectory, and others wiggling and squiggling above the clouds.

Then at one point, every one of those luminescent objects fell into a straight line, from east to west and proceeded in a south to north direction until they drifted out of sight.

My friend and I gazed wide-eyed and asked each other what we thought those were. We had no answers, but in that year (1975) anyone we shared the incident with only chuckled or scoffed, doubting our story.

Then we saw the film Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and there the character played by Richard Dreyfuss while on Devil’s Tower saw UFO’s dancing across the skies in a whimsical way – until they locked in formation and proceeded across the heavens.

My friend and I shot each other a look and nodded. When we repeated to his parents that this is what we saw, they still didn’t believe us!

I have no doubts that these things are real – but the lingering question in my mind is: what are they really?

James Fire; Tucson, AZ. November, 2025.