A police officer breaks off his pursuit of a speeding driver to investigate an explosion and witness a landed UFO with two of its occupants beside it.
A police officer breaks off his pursuit of a speeding driver to investigate an explosion and witness a landed UFO with two of its occupants beside it.
Ep 41 The Zamora Incident
Hello and welcome back to the UFO and Aliens Podcast. I’m your host Rick Black. Since started this podcast, I have been shocked by the number of stories that I’ve come across that don’t ring true. I didn’t start this podcast to rebut all UFO reports. I started it to find out the truth. What I’m shocked about is the number of people that are perpetrating hoaxes, then there are the people that I believe are confused about what they’re seeing, and then people outright lying. I’m naturally a sceptic, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s impossible for there to be beings from a different world visiting ours. As strange and difficult as it seems for a race to either travel vast distances or travel through wormholes or traverse parallel dimensions, I don’t rule it out. But it raises some questions. How are they actually getting here? Are they coming themselves or sending robots and drones? Are they, or have they sent probes? It would not surprise me in the slightest if they have. We’ve sent probes. Ours are still in our solar system though. If they are sending them to other star systems or even other galaxies, they have way more technology than we have. Have they made contact? Notice that I didn’t ask why they didn’t make contact? I don’t know that they haven’t. They haven’t made contact with me. Still waiting on the government to release files that admit they are in contact with extraterrestrials. I’m not going to hold my breath. The pentagon just said that UAPs or UFOs are not from other worlds. But, they are just unidentified. But they really didn’t say anything as usual.
I think we all kind of want there to be other intelligent life out there, but only if it’s friendly. Humans aren’t too friendly if you think of our past explorers. We have these explorers that find new places, and they’re usually already occupied. The explorers find them, then the rest of the people come sometimes to conquer and take over. Imagine if an alien race finds us and wants this place for their own. We really couldn’t do much about it. So, we want there to be intelligent life out there, but we need for it to be friendly.
Maybe the reason they haven’t made contact, or they haven’t made wide contact is because they know us. We’re constantly fighting with one another. If they come and land on the White house front lawn, are we going to welcome them with open arms? I wouldn’t think so and they also wouldn’t think so. So, they’ll just observe from a distance. Which is what I believe they’ve been doing.
But we have some stories where they got a little too close. One such story is actually one of the better documented UFO landing cases and the UFO left evidence. This happened in Socorro, New Mexico on April 24th, 1964. The whole event probably took no more than a couple of minutes, but we’re still talking about it 58 years later. Dr. J. Allen Hynek remarked on this case calling it “one of the classics of UFO literature.” If you haven’t listened to my podcast on Dr. Hynek, you really should go back and give it a listen. Spoiler alert! He started out debunking all of these UFO reports, swamp gas was my favorite. But after studying case after case, he became one of the strongest supporters of the UFO movement.
On the evening of April 24th, 1964 patrolman Lonnie Zamora, a five year veteran of the Socorro Police Department was involved in a high speed chase of a black Chevy going north on U.S. 85 when he heard an extremely loud noise that changed from very high frequency to very low frequency and then stopped. He then saw a flame in the south-western horizon and became concerned that perhaps a dynamite shack that was owned by Socorro’s mayor may have exploded. Zamora discontinued his pursuit, and turned off the road onto a rough gravel road leading to the direction that he could see the flame. He later described the flame as blue and orange, from top towards the bottom, being narrower at the top. Zamora had to travel slowly up a steep incline, but when he reached the top, he saw a shiny object between 150-200 yards from his position. His first impression was that it was an over-turned car, but upon further inspection, he realized it was an egg-shaped object that appeared to be made of aluminum foil or some similar type of shiny material.
Then he saw two figures standing beside the object. They appeared normal in shape but diminutive, either “small adults or large kids”. One of the figures turned and looked at the car and appeared started, sort of jumping as it saw him. The pair seemed to be wearing some type of white coveralls. Zamora had to maneuver his car around the incline to reach the location and lost sight of the two and the craft for a few moments. When he reached the spot, the craft took off into the sky, making a roar that was “not like a jet.” He was able to spy markings on the side of the craft, which looked like a stick arrow pointing up over a horizontal line enclosed in a semi-circle. Much later, UFO author Jacques Vallee would identify this symbol as the Arabic astrological sign for Venus. There was a time when it was thought that these UFOs were coming from Venus, so it’s interesting that Vallee would identify the markings as the sign for Venus.
As the odd colored flames came shooting out of the object, Zamora ran and hid behind his car. As Zamora was running to get behind his car he lost his prescription glasses, which may have caused him to misidentify the markings or insignia on the side of the UFO. The object lifted vertically to some height, and then took off horizontally “travelling very fast.” Zamora said the craft left behind a smoldering circle, the burnt plants were oddly cold to the touch. Why would he have touched the burnt plants? That’s weird.
Shortly after Zamora was joined by Sgt. M.S. Chavez of the New Mexico State Police, and they both checked the area where the craft had rested, finding indentations there. The indentations were still there when Hynek arrived. And he said “I visited the site several days later and verified the landing marks and charred plants. Chavez had, he told me in a long interview, verified the marks and the burned greasewood plants, which had still been smoldering at the time he first met Zamora at the site.” And while Dr. Hynek was unable to convince the air force to make an in-depth investigation into the Socorro event, he personally continued to look into the affair for over a year. Hynek later wrote “My original investigations, directed toward breaking apart Zamora’s account by seeking mutual contradictions in it and also to establish Zamora as an unreliable witness, were fruitless, I was impressed by the high regard in which Zamora was held by his colleagues, and I am personally willing today to accept his testimony as genuine, particularly since it does fit a global pattern.“
It’s not clear at what point it was, but at one point he radioed dispatch officer Nep Lopez to report a possible motor vehicle accident. He told Lopez that he would be “checking the car down in the arroyo”. Right after that he radioed again and asked Lopez to look out the window to see if he could see an object. When Lopez asked Zamora to describe it, Zamora said “it looks like a balloon” and requested New Mexico State Police Sergeant Chavez meet him at his location. When Chavez arrived, he asked Zamora what the trouble was. Zamora led him to examine some burning brush. When other police officers arrived they noted patches of smoldering grass and brush.
Now, that’s the story. I tend to lean toward believing people like police officers and pilots. They make good witnesses because of their attention to detail. Well, we have some input from some UFO debunkers. Dr. Donald Menzel, whose name appears on the infamous MJ-12 list, state that the speeding motorist who Zamora had been chasing was a decoy who led the patrolman to the remote area, then used a walkie-talkie to signal co-conspirators, who released a phony flying saucer attached to a balloon. The MJ-12 or Majestic 12 was supposedly an secret organization that investigated for the government. It was formed by an executive order by President Truman in 1947. So Menzel was claiming that this whole thing was a hoax perpetrated on Zamora. But Hynek put the kibosh on that theory when he pointed out that the craft left travelling west, while there was a strong wind coming from the south that day.
Phillip Klass, another notorious debunker, dismissed the entire incident because the landing mark indentations didn’t correspond to the symmetrical landing legs of a NASA spacecraft. Let that sink in for a minute…. Who told Klass that NASA was designing spacecraft for extraterrestrials? I would like to think that the fact that they didn’t correspond to NASA spacecraft would rule out that it was a NASA spacecraft. That comment is ludicrous. Klass must have thought so as well because later he suggested that the entire incident was a hoax, conspired between Officer Zamora and Socorro’s mayor (whose property the craft landed on) for the purpose that they would try and make the landing site a tourist attraction. There may be something to that. In 1966, just two years after the incident, the president of the Socorro County’s Chamber of Commerce, Paul Ridings, proposed developing the site of Zamora’s claimed UFO encounter to make it more accessible to tourists. Consequently stone walkways and stops were built into the arroyo from the mesa top, with a rock walkway circling the supposed landing site that included some wooden benches. However, these were built approximately a quarter mile from the actual site of Zamora’s alleged sighting due to local rumors that the original site was contaminated by radioactivity. So, the ufologists would say that the contamination from radiation would be evidence that this event is true and the debunkers would claim that the fact that they made the site accessible to tourists proves that it’s a hoax. What you see depends on what angle you look at the evidence.
Another UFO skeptic Stewart Campbell has suggested that what Zamora observed was “almost certainly” a mirage of the star Canopus. It has also been suggested that Zamora witnessed the testing of a lunar landing device by personnel from the White Sands Missile Range, or a prank perpetrated by students from the nearby New Mexico Tech. Then president of New Mexico Tech Stirling Colgate supported the idea that students from the school were responsible for the hoax, and said that the object observed by Zamora was “a candle in a balloon….not sophisticated.” Robert Sheaffer wrote, “The assumption that the incident was a student hoax instead of one perpetrated by publicity-seeking town leaders changes Zamora from an “active participant” to “victim of the hoax”, which frankly seems more plausible.”
But, there were other sightings. Two days after the Socorro sighting, the Orlando Gallego family of La Medera, New Mexico reported almost exactly the same type of sighting that was reported by Zamora. While the family declared they had not heard of the Socorro event, and it might be argued that they could be lying, there is no denying the fact that the police and later UFO researchers found exactly the same type of charred vegetation and four landing indentations as what had been found in Socorro. I wish I was able to find out if the measurements of the landing gear marks matched. How deep they were, how wide they were and how far apart they were. Did the Gallego family know about the Socorro sighting? They said they didn’t.
This whole incident was a big deal in Socorro. There is a painting by Patrick M. Richard of Zamora in his full uniform at the sight in the desert and a mural of Zamora next to his cruiser by Erika Burleigh. This incident has been recorded in many newspapers and magazine articles as well as written about in many books.
Zamora became so tired of the subject that he actually avoided both ufologists and the Air Force, taking a job managing a gas station. He died on November 2nd, 2009, in Socorro from a heart attack. He was 76 years old.
If you take Zamora’s reports as fact, then look at each skeptics claims one at a time, they don’t hold up.
First, take the claim by Dr. Menzel that it was a phony UFO suspended by a balloon, that doesn’t explain the loud roaring sounds that Zamora reported, it doesn’t explain the diminutive people in white coveralls and it doesn’t explain the burning brush or marks on the ground. It was a weak attempt at debunking.
I already talked about the ridiculous claims of Phillip Klass that the marks didn’t match NASA landing craft. That claim actually contradicts another claim that it was NASA practicing landing its craft from White Sands. If Klass hadn’t mentioned that, I would say that was one of the most plausible explanations. So its ironic that a debunker made the case of it being an actual UFO event stronger.
UFO skeptic Steward Campbell saying it was almost certainly a mirage of the star Canopus. Canopus is the second brightest star in the night sky, but this incident occurred at about 5:45 p.m. I can’t see ANY stars that early, can you? And if I could, it most definitely wouldn’t look like an egg shaped, aluminum craft sitting on the ground with two small humanoids in white coveralls. Another weak debunking. Am I missing something?
The story that Zamora was victim of a hoax perpetrated by New Mexico Tech students and it was a candle in a balloon makes no sense if you take Zamora at his word. I can’t even picture what that would look like. Did he mean it was a paper balloon with a candle under it, like a paper lantern? Zamora would have to have been drinking a lot of tequila for that to look like an egg shaped craft zooming off. And don’t forget the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. It doesn’t explain the little men, unless they were NMT students and it doesn’t explain the burning shrub unless the students set that on fire too. In which case would they light a fire in front of a Police officer? I don’t think so.
I mentioned earlier that J. Allen Hynek investigated this case. That was when he was with project bluebook. Later he founded the Center for UFO Studies, or CUFOS. The CUFOS library is actually in a basement in Kalamazoo Michigan where Mark O’Connell keeps all of Hynek’s files. According to Ben Hansen of UFO witness, New Mexico is a hot spot of UFO activity. That is where the Dulce Base is. I covered that in episode 3. And egg-shaped UFOs have been reported flying in and out of the mountain there.
Ben Hansen went to Kalamazoo to investigate UFOs in New Mexico and came across the tapes from Zamora. One was from Lonnie Zamora describing what he saw. In Bens opinion, he was describing a UFO differently that other UFO reports, if he was fabricating this, you would think that he would make up a UFO story that was similar to other UFO stories. But that’s not what he did here and on top of that, Mark O’Connell comments that he immediately called for back-up, if he was making all of this up, he wouldn’t call for back-up. O’Connell also mentions that this was one of Hynek’s favorite cases if not his absolute favorite and he got into a conflict with the Airforce about it. I didn’t find this information out in any of the articles that I read on this incident, but on UFO Witness Mark O’Connell gives the official Bluebook conclusion. According to project bluebook, and Hynek was adamantly opposed to this conclusion by the way, the most likely explanation for this incident is that it was an experimental prototype NASA lunar lander. O’Connell make a good point, he says that we all remember that when the lunar lander took off, it left it’s landing gear behind. When this egg-shaped craft took off, it didn’t leave anything behind. The other point is that when the lunar lander took off, it went in one direction….straight up. When the UFO left it went straight up and then went horizontally across the landscape until it disappeared behind the mountains.
When project bluebook investigators arrived on the scene in Socorro, the placed rocks in a circle around the impressions of the space crafts four landing pads. Over time, the impressions have filled in, but the rocks are still there showing exactly where the craft was 58 years ago.
So you can go there today and see exactly where this UFO landed.
Like I’ve said before, I’m naturally a skeptic but I can’t find anything that makes me believe that this didn’t happen. The only thing that could possibly make this not true is if Zamora himself was making up the story. I just don’t believe that. This man was so respected in this town that after he passed away, they painted a mural of him out of respect for this upstanding man. You don’t do that for someone that you don’t have a lot of respect for.
So, what do you think? I like this one, I believe it. I don’t know who or what it was, but I believe it happened.
Remember, Believe none of what you hear and half of what you read.
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