Updated 4/10/20

On April 6th, paranormal radio show Coast-to-Coast AM published correspondence received from a listener that appears to corroborate a video shared by Tom DeLonge—pop punk rock star and interim CEO of To the Stars…Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA)—just over a week ago.

The listener, identified as Lori, wrote:

On Tuesday night (March 31st, 2020) my friend Aimee had an incredible UFO sighting of multiple objects. She saw seven large orange objects hovering over the ocean in Encinitas, CA. She called me at 8:30 pm and I went down to the beach stairs near me to get a better look.
As soon as I got there one huge orange object appeared on the horizon and just stayed there for about [four and a half] minutes. It was flickering and twinkling and then turned more red and when that happened, it appeared to have split into two objects, one on top of the other with some space in between. We watched until it faded out.
Then it happened two more times for a total of three separate episodes of it appearing. We learned later people have seen them from as [far] north as Sacramento to as far south as Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico (the last two images were posted on NextDoor).

A collage of the submitted images. (Coast-to-Coast AM) — A collage of the submitted images. *(Coast-to-Coast AM)*

On April 1st, DeLonge shared a video to Instagram of an orange light he said he’d filmed the night before in Encinitas.

View this post on Instagram

So last night I get a text from somebody that there was a UAP right off of the beach where I live. I ran to my balcony and saw it split into two pieces and raise vertically. I grabbed Marie, jumped in my truck and went straight down to the beach. We were the only ones on the beach last night as this light disappeared, reappeared, broke into three pieces and stacked vertically with one little red dot flying around the top and then disappeared for the rest of the evening. This video doesn’t show much, but we were up quite late watching the light dance about a half a mile to a mile off of the beach. It was huge, and it was fiery orange. Of course I called up Lue Elizondo as I was there, and he was telling me all of these things I was supposed to do with location, geographic details, weather, altitude and distance etc. Of course, I was completely worthless when it came to those details. But yes, big deal last night in Encinitas, CA. Lue checked immediately, there were no flights in the area except one that I had my eyes on the entire time. No military, no boats, and a bunch of hovering lights that were stacking on top of each other... wild. Who knows...

A post shared by Official Tom DeLonge (@tomdelonge) on Apr 1, 2020 at 7:54am PDT

“So last night I get a text from somebody that there was a [UFO] right off of the beach where I live. I ran to my balcony and saw it split into two pieces and raise vertically. I grabbed [my girlfriend] Marie, jumped in my truck and went straight down to the beach,” said DeLonge in the caption accompanying the video.

"We were the only ones on the beach last night as this light disappeared, reappeared, broke into three pieces and stacked vertically with one little red dot flying around the top and then disappeared for the rest of the evening," he continued. "This video doesn’t show much, but we were up quite late watching the light dance about a half a mile to a mile off of the beach. It was huge, and it was fiery orange."

DeLonge said he called Luis Elizondo—a former Department of Defense (DoD) intelligence officer who claims to have been program head for the Pentagon’s Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), and who currently serves as the Director of Global Security and Special Programs for TTSA—and Elizondo "was telling me all of these things I was supposed to do with location, geographic details, weather, altitude and distance, etc. Of course, I was completely worthless when it came to those details."

According to DeLonge, Elizondo "checked immediately, there were no flights in the area except one that I had my eyes on the entire time. No military, no boats, [just a] bunch of hovering lights that were stacking on top of each other."

The light captured by DeLonge is very similar to those in the photographs sent to Coast-to-Coast AM, and the testimony regarding his conversation with Elizondo would seem to rule out any of the most common explanations for the lights, such as military flares.

However, contrary to Elizondo’s analysis, air traffic control at San Diego International Airport—less than 25 miles south of Encinitas—was notified that military flares would be dropped in the area that evening. According to the audio log from March 31st, between 8 and 8:30 pm, air traffic controllers at the airport were notified by an aircraft identified as “Raider 28” that they would be doing a "battlefield illumination drop" in the area and that there would be "heavy flares out here, so if you get called about it, it's us.” That log is available here, and the relevant audio begins at about 18:35 into the recording.

Some UFO enthusiasts are now comparing this phenomenon to the famed mass sighting incident known as the Phoenix Lights.

The Phoenix Lights were a mass UFO sighting that occurred on Thursday, March 13th, 1997, and stretched from Phoenix, Arizona to Sonora, Mexico. Witnesses reported a triangular formation of lights that passed over the state, and a series of stationary lights in the Phoenix area. The events were witnessed by thousands of people between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. that evening.

The event was explained away as a military training exercise, but eyewitnesses argued that what they saw was inconsistent with the appearance and behavior of flares.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.