Alien Lore No. 30: Sergeant Lonnie Zamora & The Strange Events At Socorro, NM

One of the most fascinating and best documented UFO cases is a pivotal event in UFO lore: The Socorro, New Mexico landing. Socorro is a small town located just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Air Force Project Blue Book, a notoriously skeptical agency, classified the encounter as "unexplained."



Lonnie Zamora was a sergeant in the Socorro Police Department. On April 24, 1964, he witnessed the Socorro landing in New Mexico. The investigation of the Socorro case was lead by Dr J. Allen Hynek with the FBI. The report on the case ended up in the Project Blue Book saying:

"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 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."

The Lonnie Zamora case is well-known and highly regarded by most of the UFOlogy community. The credibility of sergeant Zamora is untarnished, and the fact that there appeared to be some credible physical evidence led J. Allen Hynek remarked, "I personally am willing today to accept his testimony as genuine.." Let me point out that Hynek is not just your typical UFO nut. He was chairman of Astronomy at Northwestern University, and worked for the U.S. government as a researcher in Project Blue Book. Over the years, he moved from being highly skeptical to being convinced a genuine and potentially important phenomenon lay behind some of the unresolved UFO reports.



Zamora reported seeing two, small aliens beside a white, egg-shaped object minutes before it blasted off. Incredibly, earlier the same day, Gary T. Wilcox reported practically the same event on his farm near Tioga City, New York. He also said he saw two small beings near a metallic, egg-shaped object in a field surrounded by woods. This case was dismissed at the time because Wilcox claimed to have talked to the two aliens. He was, naturally, written off as a nut-job.

There is no way that Zamora or Wilcox could have known about the other's report (unless they knew each other, which does not seem likely). This is an extremely unlikely coincidence whether either or both reports were true, or confabulations.



Lonnie Zamora's encounter is one of the landmark ufo events in the history of the phenomena. To this day it remains a case in which all the facts involved support the witnesses claims. It is this kind of case that makes ufo lore endure.

While Socorro does not prove the existence of extraterrestrial life or E.B.E.s, some type of unusual craft with occupants did land, and take off again. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who interviewed Zamora on more than one occasion, believes every word that Zamora said. He played his cards pretty close to the vest however: "There is much more evidence to indicate that we are dealing with a most real phenomenon of undetermined origin."

If this vehicle was not extraterrestrial, where did it come from? Why did it land? Who were the occupants? To answer that question, you need to read the next chapter of alien lore, where we analyze just what they were building at Area 51 and who was piloting these craft. That, of course, is another long and often shaggy-dog story we will get to in the future.
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