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The Socorro Incident

Socorro, New Mexico, is in the same part of the state, generally speaking, as Roswell, though west of it. This is home to one of the most important UFO sightings, which involved the observation of aliens and an alien craft on the ground by a police officer while on duty.

I have great respect for the late astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who served as the scientific consultant to various UFO investigations, including Project Blue Book. Hynek maintained a healthy scientific skepticism about the whole UFO phenomena.

However, this case made him reassess the hardened skepticism he came into his consultancy with. The Socorro incident shook up Hynek’s perception of the UFO situation to the point that it forced him to conclude that he had no reasonable explanation for it.

Compared to the overly complicated Roswell incident, the Socorro incident is an investigator’s dream come true. It only involves one key eyewitness, police officer Lonnie Zamora, and several backup witnesses, as well as the remnants of obvious physical trace evidence.

On Friday, April 24, 1964, Zamora was chasing a speeder driving due south of Socorro at about 5:45 p.m. During the pursuit he “heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky in the southwest some distance away—possibly 1/2 mile or a mile.”¹ Thinking a local dynamite shack might have exploded, Zamora broke off the chase and went to investigate.

During interviews with Project Blue Book investigators, Zamora described the weather as being “clear, sunny sky otherwise—just a few clouds scattered over area.”² In other words, it was a typical day in the sun-drenched state of New Mexico; therefore, visibility was excellent.

Fig. 13.1. Artist rendering of the Socorro incident

During his Project Blue Book interview, Zamora went at some length to describe his initial observations. The report reads:

Flame was bluish and sort of orange too. I could not tell size of flame . . . sort of motionless flame, slowly descending. Was still driving car and could not pay too much attention to the flame. It was a narrow type of flame. It was like a “stream down”—a funnel type—narrower at top than at bottom. Flame possibly 3 degrees or so in width—not wide.³

He also described the explosion he heard as being a roar, similar to yet different from a jet’s. He added that it “changed from high frequency to low frequency and then stopped. Roar lasted possibly 10 seconds.”⁴

Zamora drove to the gravel road turnoff that led to the dynamite shack he suspected had caused the explosion and flames. The road angled steeply uphill, and Zamora had to make several attempts to get his patrol car to navigate it. During his first two attempts, the roar was continuing. When he finally managed to get the car up the hill, it had stopped.

According to the Project Blue Book report:

After I got to the top, traveled slowly on the gravel road westward. Noted nothing for a while . . . for possibly 10 or 15 seconds, went slow, looking around for the shack—did not recall exactly where the dynamite shack was.

Suddenly I noted a shiny type object to south about 150 to 200 yards. It was off the road. At first glance, I stopped. It looked, at first, like a car turned upside down. Thought some kids might have turned over. Saw two people in white coveralls very close to the object. One of these persons seemed to turn and look straight at my [Zamora’s] car and seemed startled—seemed to jump quickly.⁵

From Zamora’s account, we can ascertain that his mind did not, at first, register what his eyes were reporting to him. It was no car overturned by reckless teens who were standing by it, but as he drove toward the object he kept filtering what he was seeing through the lens of that concept. The investigator entered Zamora’s account into his report:

Object was like aluminum—it was whitish against the mesa background, but not chrome. Seemed like O in shape and I at first glance took it to be overturned white car. Car appeared to be up on radiator or on trunk, this first glance.

The only time I saw these two persons was when I had stopped, for possibly two seconds or so, to glance at the object. I don’t recall noting any particular shape or possibly any hats, or headgear. These persons appeared normal in shape—but possibly they were small adults or large kids.⁶

At this point, Zamora radioed to the sheriff ’s office: “Socorro 2 to Socorro, possible 10-44 [accident], I’ll be 10-6 [busy] out of the car, checking the car down in the arroyo.”⁷

He stopped his cruiser while talking on the radio and started to get out; then his mike fell down, and he reached to put it back up. Next, the patrolman shoved the mike in its slot, got out of his car, and started to go down to where the object (which he still thought was a car) was sitting.

At this instant, he heard the roar start up again, “very loud roar—at that close was real loud.”⁸ At the same time as the roar began, he saw a flame shooting out from the underside of the object. Next, the craft started to lift off the ground going straight up—slowly up.

He noted that “the flame was light blue and at bottom was sort of orange color.”⁹ From his new angle, he saw the side of the object, not the end, as was his first angle. He thought that it might blow up because the roar was so loud. “No smoke, except dust in immediate area.”¹⁰

At this point, the full reality of the situation hit Zamora, and he knew he had not been observing an overturned car. He turned away from it and scrambled, losing his prescription sunglasses and bumping into the back fender of his car as he tried to run from the UFO. According to the Project Blue Book report:

I glanced back couple of times. Noted object to rise to about level of car, about 20 to 25 feet guess—took I guess about six seconds when object started to rise and I glanced back. I ran I guess about halfway to where I ducked down—about fifty feet from the car is where I ducked down, just over edge of hill. I guess I had run about 25 feet when I glanced back and saw the object level with the car and it appeared about directly over the place where it rose from.¹¹

Clearly, Zamora was scared as he realized the gravity and strangeness of the situation. However, he struggled to keep his professional composure even as he acted on his self-preservation instincts.

Being that there was no roar, I looked up, and I saw the object going away from me. It did not come any closer to me. It appeared to go in straight line and at same height—possibly 10 to 15 feet from ground, and it cleared the dynamite shack by about three feet. Shack about eight feet high.¹²

The shaken officer ran back to his patrol car, keeping an eye on the object as he did. He picked up his glasses and got into the car. It was at this point that he decided to radio to Nep Lopez, the station radio operator; once connected, he asked Lopez to “look out of the window, to see if you could see an object.”¹³ However, Zamora failed to give the radio operator enough information to carry out the task. He stated:

As I was calling Nep, I could still see the object. The object seemed to lift up slowly, and to “get small” in the distance very fast. It seemed to just clear the Box Canyon or Six Mile Canyon Mountain. It disappeared as it went over the mountain. It had no flame whatsoever as it was traveling over the ground, and no smoke or noise.¹⁴

After this sequence, Zamora made a sharp, professional decision. Despite the trauma and case of nerves the incident had generated, he drove down to inspect the landing site.

Noted the brush was burning in several places. At that time I heard Sgt. Chavez (New Mexico State Police at Socorro) calling me on radio for my location, and I returned to my car.

. . . Then Sgt. Chavez came up, asked me what the trouble was, because I was sweating and he told me I was white, very pale. I asked the Sgt. to see what I saw, and that was the burning brush. Then Sgt. Chavez and I went to the spot, and Sgt. Chavez pointed out the tracks.¹⁵

The landing gear of the UFO had left imprints in the ground that both officers observed. That narrative sums up the crux of the case; however, more would come to light during ensuing investigations.

Several independent witnesses reported either an “egg”-shaped craft or a bluish flame at roughly the same time and in the same area—some of them within minutes of Zamora’s encounter, before word of it had spread.

Two tourists, Paul Kies and Larry Kratzer, who were approaching Socorro in their car from the southwest, less than a mile from the landing site, said they had witnessed either the landing or takeoff and reported seeing the flame. They reported it when they went back home to Iowa, and their story appeared in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald a few days after their return.

Several other stories appeared in New Mexico newspapers in succeeding days. They included reports of sightings of oval-shaped objects, including another landing case with burned soil near La Madera, in northern New Mexico.

Citing points that were similar to those in the Socorro incident, the FBI report on the La Madera case noted the witness reporting a blue-white flame associated with the object; four rectangular, V-shaped landing marks; and several circular marks about four inches in diameter.

(Skeptics who claim there is no hard evidence to support the alien spacecraft theory are wrong. Apparently, they have not examined the rather large collection of such evidence compiled since the Roswell debris was examined by Marcel.)

In addition, there were a large number of witnesses who reported hearing the loud roar during takeoff and landing. One member of the Socorro sheriff ’s office told Ray Stanford, author of Socorro “Saucer” in a Pentagon Pantry, that “hundreds of persons” on the south side of town had heard it.¹⁶

Multiple policemen arrived shortly after Chavez to help investigate the scene, including Ted Jordan and James Luckie. All noted fresh burning at the site. Luckie and Chavez were quoted in the Socorro newspaper, saying that clumps of grass and burned greasewood bushes were “still hot” when they arrived.

Chavez said that dry grass was still “smoldering” as were the greasewood plants. Jordan later filled out a sworn statement, saying, “When I arrived, greasewood branches were still smoking.”¹⁷

The FBI field report, written by the agent on the scene within two hours, similarly stated that all first responders noted “four irregularly shaped smoldering areas.”¹⁸

Chavez was again quoted in an air force report written two days later about the smoking brush. According to the report, “[Chavez] went to the area where the craft was supposedly sighted and found four fresh indentations in the ground and several charred or burned bushes. Smoke appeared to come from the bush and he assumed it was burning, however no coals were visible and the charred portions of the bush were cold to the touch.”¹⁹

(It sounds more like some kind of radiation effect, perhaps microwaves?)

Similarly, several policemen later told Stanford that wedge-shaped landing traces appeared to have penetrated into the moist subsoil, suggesting that the traces were freshly made.

Hynek also commented on the freshness of the soil impressions in a letter to fellow astronomer Donald Menzel: “I have the word of nine witnesses who saw the marks within hours of the incident who tell me the center of the marks were moist as though the topsoil had been freshly pushed aside.”²⁰

The FBI investigator had also observed that the rectangular marks “seemed to have been made by an object going into the earth at an angle from a center line pushing some earth to the far side.”²¹ Also observed were “three circular marks in the earth which were small, approximately four inches in diameter and penetrated in the sandy earth approximately one-eighth of an inch.”²²

The evening of the encounter, army Captain Richard T. Holder and FBI agent Arthur Byrnes Jr. together interviewed Zamora. However, for reasons that remain unclear, at the time the FBI asked that their presence at the scene be kept quiet.²³

Holder took a telephone call from a colonel at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a young captain and was surprised and unnerved to be speaking to such an important, high-ranking officer. At the colonel’s command, Holder gave a report of his investigation over a secure, scrambled line.

Long after the event, Holder would wonder about such important U. S. military officials; “Why in the world were they so interested?”

Hynek quickly went to Socorro, arriving on Tuesday, April 28, in an official capacity to investigate the case. He met with Zamora and Chavez and interviewed them about the encounter. He and air force Major Hector Quintanilla, director of Project Blue Book, initially thought the sighting might be explained as a test of a lunar excursion module.

However, after some investigation, Hynek determined that this definitely could be ruled out as an explanation for what Zamora saw.²⁴

In a memorandum, Hynek wrote that “Zamora & Chavez were very anti-AF [air force].”²⁵ The air force was suggesting that the event was a hoax, but Zamora was “pretty sore at being regarded as a romancer,”²⁶ and it took more than half an hour for Hynek to “thaw him out”²⁷ so he could hear the account from the only eyewitnesses.

Hynek also wrote that “the AF is in a spot over Socorro”²⁸: they were suggesting that the encounter could be attributed to Zamora having seen an unidentified military craft, though no craft could be matched to Zamora’s report. Hynek agreed with many others that this explanation “won’t go down” as plausible.

He also wrote, “I think this case may be the Rosetta Stone. There’s never been a strong case with so unimpeachable a witness.”²⁹ Also noting his growing frustration with Project Blue Book, Hynek wrote, “The AF doesn’t know what science is.”³⁰

In 1968, physicist and UFO researcher James E. McDonald located Mary G. Mayes, who asserted that when she was a University of Arizona doctoral student in radiation biology, she had been asked “to analyze plant material from the Socorro site. Afterwards, she was to turn in all records and samples, and heard no more about it.”³¹

When interviewed by McDonald, Mayes reported that she and two others had worked on studying physical evidence from the Socorro site, but she could not remember the names of the others. According to Mayes, she had examined the site the day after the event and had gathered plant samples for analysis.

Mayes later determined that the plants, which had allegedly been burned by the UFO’s flames, were unusually “completely dried out.”³² Mayes also found no evidence of radiation but found “two organic substances” she was unable to identify.

Mayes also reported to McDonald about an area of apparently “fused sand” where the sand had taken on a glassy appearance, near where the object had allegedly landed and then departed.

The area of glassy sand was roughly triangular, measuring about twenty-five to thirty inches (760 millimeters) at its widest, though it gradually tapered down to about one inch wide; it seemed about a quarter of an inch thick. Mayes thought the glassy areas looked as if a “hot jet hit it.”

The evidence in this case is beyond strong; it is overwhelming. It takes more than skepticism to doubt it. You have to have an absolute belief that UFOs do not exist, so that you don’t want to be presented with evidence to the contrary. As the old saying goes, “My mind is made up, so don’t trouble me with the facts.”

In a secret report prepared for the CIA, Quintanilla offered further details regarding the Zamora case.

There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object which left quite an impression on him. There is also no question about Zamora’s reliability. He is a serious police officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw and frankly, so are we. This is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic.³³

CONCLUSION

I agree with the above assessment. If Project Blue Book, not known to be lenient in either UFO investigations or their conclusions of them, considered this an unsolved, open case, who can argue with them? In my estimation, Zamora saw an extraterrestrial craft at the Socorro site, and along with the craft, he observed several small humanoid aliens, which he mistook for teenagers.

Final Note: Any skeptic or debunker who screams “hoax” or “misidentification” (in the usual hysterical tone) needs to stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and consider the following: no serious government investigator ever once impugned Zamora’s integrity or character. Furthermore, he grew so tired of being badgered by the air force (and UFOlogists and skeptics) that he eventually dodged interviews, resigned from the police force, and took a job at a gas station.

To imagine that the individuals who have these kinds of intense UFO experiences invent them for publicity or personal gain is to exhibit little factual awareness of the social reality. They all suffer various traumas during and after the experience, both psychologically and socially.