The Socorro Incident revisited

This incident is considered one of the most famous in ufology. The Socorro Incident, also known as the Lonnie Zamora incident was a UFO close encounter which occurred on Friday, April 24, 1964, at about 5:50 p.m., on the southern outskirts of Socorro, New Mexico.
Zamora said he saw an egg-shaped UFO, with two occupants "the size of 10-year olds".


Skeptics have suggested ridiculous hoax theories. One theory is that high-school students played an elaborate prank. Famous skeptic Philip Klass said Zamora witnessed ball lightning. Another popular theory was that Zamore had just seen a 'dust devil' whirlwind.


Reports by authorities, including the Air Force, were fairly riddled with errors. Zamora wasn't the only witness, but the report claimed he was. Although there was definite physical evidence left behind, the report said no trace evidence was left.

Ray Sanford has been investigating the case for decades. He was a guest on C2C the other night. Sanford claims to have new evidence on the case, including an actual photo of the craft. It's a pretty good interview. Jacques Vallee appears on the first hour of the show.


Zamora said the craft had a red upside-down 'V' symbol.
An image created of the craft, based on Zamora's description:


As if the encounter itself isn't bizarre enough, there is a dispute on what symbol Lonnie Zamora sketched.
It's been reported that Zamora sketched a different symbol at the request of Air Force investigators who wanted the "alchemical" symbol on the craft to be kept from the public.
The symbol dispute explained.

Some ufologists have suggested that because the craft was small and used primitive jet propulsion, (by E.T. standards) it was a two-person landing pod, and came from a larger ship.

Here is the Coast-To-Coast show. The Sanford interview begins at the 1:20:00 mark.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Interesting. About the symbol. Militaries use it, in one form or another. Way out on a branch…

My own personal take is it denotes "rads" on board. But thats probably classified.

Link

This was and still is in my opinion a very high profile encounter for the time, even for now. I remember this as its been awhile since I have heard it. Was Mr.Zamora a police officer or retired Officer at the time? I believe he saw what he saw.

Changing the symbol a bit is a typical way professional investigators weed out hoaxs from other real sightings. They change the reported symbol and when all the crazies call in saying they saw the exact same thing they ask them to describe the symbol. When you say it looked the same they smile and thank you for your report knowing your a crank.

Zamora is a highly credible witness. I like this case too. Impressions of the indentations on the ground were plaster cast I believe.

Thanks for the link!

a reply to: data5091


Yes, he was a police officer.
He was a New Mexico State Trooper.

a reply to: ColeYounger

As an old gent aware of UFOs even at that time, I've always taken that case with a grain of salt, as they say. More or less as a case of mistaken identity. It was in the early days of the US space work and could well have been one of those machines. It was too conventional in the total event. In fact, it exactly fits parameters of what we were working on: two figures in white suits and a powerful rocket-like exhaust "flying" around the desert. And as a general rule, alien UFOs don't rocket off into space.

a reply to: Aliensun


Many people share your view. Some even say the Hughes Corp had an experimental "flying egg" type craft in the area.
But Zamora said he got a good look at the occupants, and they were very small. I believe he stated emphatically that they weren't "adult men". The case has some strange facets, for sure.

Wasn't there some trace radiation found on his car?

Non-terrestrials who would be 10K to 1M years more advanced than we would not use full-sized atmospheric craft to do any exploration.

Virtual, nanotech, remote viewed, holographic tech and stuff more advanced than we could know. To suggest they'd come here and use "just past Earth 21st century aircraft in the atmosphere" is like saying if we went back in time to check out the Vikings we'd use advanced wooden ships. It's laughable.

If Lonnie saw a craft it was one of ours.

a reply to: Maverick7

Good point. This is why Stan Friedman makes fun of SETI. He asked "Why would an advanced civilization, possibly
a billion years ahead of us, transmit radio waves to 'answer' us?"

To suggest they'd come here and use "just past Earth 21st century aircraft in the atmosphere"

What if their civilization was only a couple hundred years ahead of us? Just kidding.

sorry I don't have a source, but I heard a rumor years ago that the town of Socorro staged the whole thing for publicity, and Zamora (a public employee) complied.


" (Philip) Klass switched gears and suggested the Zamora sighting was part of a scheme Zamora had invented with Socorro's then mayor, Holm Bursum, Jr., to attract tourism, claiming Bursum owned the land where Zamora's encounter occurred."

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: Maverick7
Non-terrestrials who would be 10K to 1M years more advanced than we would not use full-sized atmospheric craft to do any exploration. Virtual, nanotech, remote viewed, holographic tech and stuff more advanced than we could know.

The lack of logic in many UFO reports is one of ufology's more interesting aspects. Why would UFO aliens use such large craft to visit us? Why would they come in person? Why would they mutilate cattle, or abduct people when they can learn pretty much anything they want about cows or us by accessing the Internet (or prior to the Internet, going to the library). Why do anything in public when they should be easily able to conceal their activities?

So, once again, we are led to wonder if what we think is logical according to our understanding of reality doesn't necessarily hold true in a broader version of reality that we're not smart enough to figure out. Personal perception becomes a huge factor.

Sure, a lot of UFO sightings can be possible sightings of odd military craft. But once you make that claim, then it's up to you to produce the specific experimental craft that was probably sighted. After 50 years, has anybody come up with a likely candidate for that egg-shaped experimental craft?

a reply to: ColeYounger

There's a rather nice gentleman called Rich Reynolds who's been mildly obsessed with Socorro for years. Here's one example of dozens from Rich's UFO Conjecture(s) blog.

There's some old audio of a local garage/store owner who described meeting a secondary witness to the encounter. According to the store owner, a customer came in and mentioned a low-flying aircraft that had buzzed his family on the road. This was simultaneous to Zamorra's encounter.

There's historical audio here with an interview with Zamorra himself. It's less than five minutes long. Mp3 file (right click etc)

As ever, there are no certainties or we wouldn't be calling the incident 'unknown.' Blue Book investigated and trusted Zamorra's character and local townsfolk seemed to regard him as steady but not too clever. There's always been a broad consensus that something physical was there and that it took off.

This has allowed *everyone* to throw their hat in. It's been aliens, CIA, illusions mixed with ground traces, surly students hoaxing balloons, refracted Venus over the limb of Orion's moons and so on.

That insignia draws people in and creates hope that someone will find one in a catalogue of 60s landers and prototypes. Rich Reynolds and friends have combed 1000s of private and military aerospace companies looking for it. The problem I see here is that we'd really need to see photographs and schemata of the craft AND the insignia to be sure. Otherwise, we've got variations of an insignia that may not be accurate and a craft that doesn't particularly sound like anything deployed in the US at the time. If we say that the insignia was accurate, we have to accept the description of an egg-shaped craft and 'little people.' If we don't accept the insignia, can we accept the other details?

Let me waffle a moment. Why are people so against aliens (if they exist) being like humans?
Forget the mathematics,inventiveness(physical and technical) in producing a inter stellar craft. The real problem, apart from the level of civilization to produce the materials, is the building of such a craft. IE. you HAVE to be manually dexterous to manufacture complex machinery. In other words some form of fingers. Now you can argue on how or where or in what shape those finger are but a being has to be dexterous to build a complex machine. Please don't go off on a tangent and say "well ants can build a complex city structure". You know what I mean.
Now with the Zammorra symbol, the link the OP put for the symbol explained, I've never read anything so condescending before "humans invented these symbols so therefore there human" what a load of BS. Seriously think on this one. If a 5 year old child (or a 5 year old alien child) were doodling in the sand and drew a triangle. It would still be a triangle whether is was on Earth or on Alpha Centauri and to assume that any other intelligence would NOT know about symbols is verging on the totally ridiculous.
Symbols are nothing but geometrical shapes and for any intelligence to build any complex machinery the HAVE to know geometry.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
The lack of logic in many UFO reports is one of ufology's more interesting aspects. Why would UFO aliens use such large craft to visit us? Why would they come in person? Why would they mutilate cattle, or abduct people when they can learn pretty much anything they want about cows or us by accessing the Internet (or prior to the Internet, going to the library). Why do anything in public when they should be easily able to conceal their activities?

Personally I have to laugh when I hear this common debunk 'logic'. It assumes that we can anticipate how a completely alien civilization would conduct their investigations of the universe. That we know what would interest them and how they would go about satisfying those interests.

Nothing personal of course, many people use this 'logic' as done ahead of you in the thread. It just doesn't seem...well...logical to me.

originally posted by: Kandinsky

Nice links! Didn't think there was audio of Zamora around! Would love to see a long interview with him...

This is one of those cases considered one of the most puzzling UFO cases, with a reliable witness and solid trace evidence, when I read about it as a kid some time in the mid to late 1970s. However it was not too long after that Roswell 'revelations' began to overshadow it.




I have long forgotten a lot of details to be honest and this case probably needs a much more thorough and detailed reboot to it than the information we have collated in this thread at present. Something definitely happened, something serious enough to get Bluebook and Hynek involved. But as to what happened and who was involved is something I have never quite worked out. I still think it's a case were there is not enough proof it was an outright hoax. But the evidence available (which is much better than your average UFO case) is still not conclusive of it being anything unearthly.

The story of the 'possible hoax' is that Lonnie Zamora was a police officer who had a reputation for"hounding" a bunch of local students during 1964. These students and the Socorro police did not have a particularly good relationship back then because of social friction and the students decided to 'hoax' the local police.





The above letter is circumstantial evidence insinuating a hoax. I know there were other stories linking it to NASA lunar lander exercises and the like as well. But the times and place didn't seem to ever tie it down either. Or did they?

I could be wrong with all these musings as I'm relying on memory and we know how flaky that can be when it comes to UFO stories .

I do enjoy delving into these 'retro' UFO cases. But I haven't really the time to go deeply enough into the case for a few days. Hopefully other people might keep it going in the meantime.

If not it's given me an idea for a new thread. But that will take some time to put together.........

originally posted by: noeltrotsky
Personally I have to laugh when I hear this common debunk 'logic'. It assumes that we can anticipate how a completely alien civilization would conduct their investigations of the universe. That we know what would interest them and how they would go about satisfying those interests.

I suppose it's possible that aliens might not have the same kind of "logic of economy" that most other living things we know of have. If you have essentially unlimited power at your command, then you can get in a big flying saucer with a bunch of other aliens and fly to Earth for a one-time trip to abduct and study Betty and Barney Hill for some unknown reason. Why bother with just sending some tiny little probe the size of a mosquito?

But it's comparing what they do with what even we can think of as a better way that offers some clues as to what they're up to, and what they are. I'm frequently brought back to the idea that it's a matter of perception. Or limited perception. They're not who we think they are (aliens, demons, etc.), and they're not really doing what we think they're doing.

originally posted by: ColeYounger
Skeptics have suggested ridiculous hoax theories. One theory is that high-school students played an elaborate prank.

I see nothing ridiculous about the prank explanation. I don't consider that proven but it seems well within the capabilities of students to do this, and the following is some evidence in support of that idea.

originally posted by: mirageman

The above letter is circumstantial evidence insinuating a hoax.

It's not absolute proof of the prank idea, but it is very interesting evidence which does provide some support for the idea.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: Maverick7
Non-terrestrials who would be 10K to 1M years more advanced than we would not use full-sized atmospheric craft to do any exploration. Virtual, nanotech, remote viewed, holographic tech and stuff more advanced than we could know.

The lack of logic in many UFO reports is one of ufology's more interesting aspects. Why would UFO aliens use such large craft to visit us? Why would they come in person? Why would they mutilate cattle, or abduct people when they can learn pretty much anything they want about cows or us by accessing the Internet (or prior to the Internet, going to the library). Why do anything in public when they should be easily able to conceal their activities?

So, once again, we are led to wonder if what we think is logical according to our understanding of reality doesn't necessarily hold true in a broader version of reality that we're not smart enough to figure out. Personal perception becomes a huge factor.

Sure, a lot of UFO sightings can be possible sightings of odd military craft. But once you make that claim, then it's up to you to produce the specific experimental craft that was probably sighted. After 50 years, has anybody come up with a likely candidate for that egg-shaped experimental craft?

One of the reasons this is happening is that to an outside observer, or reader, there's no difference able to be discerned from:
1. A hoax
2. Misidentification
3. Hallucination
4. A real physical event of an uncommon terrestrial origin.
5. A visual deception
6. Conflating one or more events which are not actually related

Since we can't distinguish between these we tend to say 'UFOs act in mysterious ways'. If we could untangle and correctly categorize all of these it wouldn't be so mysterious.

One of the big confusing elements is the way we perceptually fill. If we see a light in one place and it goes out, and another light appears half-way across the horizon, there's a tendency to think it was the same object moving at incredible speed. An example of this is viewers near A-51 seeing the head-on view of a Janet flight which looked like a UFO getting bigger.

And...until people stop hoaxing there's no way to even start sorting these.

Can we logically infer what 'non-terrestrials' might do? Sure, we may be partly right, and in the case of things like 'finances' we can be almost totally right - no matter what you are you use economical methods or you fail in the long term. So big, expensive ships and full-size visitors flying around in chemical rockets? It defies the explanation of anything but 'it's us!'.