From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where time is an abstract concept, which I
guess is just like everywhere else, but I mean it's different, like in another way,
I promise.
Anyhow, my name is Taylor, I'm here with Chelsea, we are your podcast hosts today talking
about maybe time as in like time is probably something that takes place in this story,
but it might not, I don't know.
Chelsea's doing the episode.
At the very least, time is happening.
Oh, good.
How do you do this?
Oh, god.
Fuck it.
It's so funny, were you right?
This does include time.
And assuming that it's my turn to talk, I'm not even going to introduce this one.
I'm sick of introducing it and I'm just going to jump right in.
Project Blue Book Case Files, April 24th, 1964 at 45pm, the southern outskirts of Socarro,
New Mexico.
I'm going to read directly from the statements that were taken from the eyewitnesses in
this point.
I thought I'd bring like a fresh perspective to it.
I'm going to do my best with it by doing that because it's just in point form.
Here we're going to read some eyewitness statements from this 545pamp, not on the actual
date of April 24th, but that's where the incident takes place and I hope you're still
following me.
Socarro police sergeant Lonnie Zamora, who is in his patrol car alone, is chasing a speeding
car due south of Socarro.
And here's a roar.
I feel like we've actually alluded to this one quite a few times.
I hope we have, because now is the moment you've been waiting for.
He hears a roar and he sees a flame in the sky to the southwest some distance away, possibly
a half mile or a mile away.
Zamora says he did not pay much attention to the flame that the sun was too west and
it didn't help this vision.
And he was wearing green sunglasses over prescription glasses.
In interviews with Air Force investigators for Project Blue Book, he goes to some links
to describe the long, narrow, funnel-shaped, bluish-orange flame.
He thought there might be some dust at the bottom and attributed it to a windy day.
The weather was clear, sunny sky, otherwise just a few clouds scattered over the area.
He describes the noise as a roar, not a blast, not like a jet.
It changes from high frequency to low frequency and then stops.
The roar blasted about 10 seconds and as he approached on a gravel road, he saw a flame
about as long as he heard the sound flame the same color as best he can recall.
The sound distinctly from high to low until it disappeared.
He explains that his car windows were down and Zamora notes no other possible witnesses
except possibly the car in front, which he estimates might have heard the noise, not
seen the flame because it would have been behind the brow of the hill from the viewpoint.
He's driving, he sees the thing in the distance, he was thinking this was a dynamite shack
that had blown up so he calls off the chase of the cedar and he drives towards the kerfuffle
going on.
I'm curious, was there a dynamite shack in that direction or is this just like on the
track?
There was actually a dynamite shack in that direction I guess.
Can you imagine just making it up?
I feel like he's been burned one too many times by a dynamite shack in the past.
I gotta be careful on this one.
So Zamora takes his car off road and he struggles to get his car up a steep hill.
He tries one or two times and he's successful on the third attempt and he notes no further
noise.
For the next 10 to 15 seconds he proceeded west looking for the shack whose precise location
he did not recall so it is precisely in the area of a dynamite shack.
I don't know why there's a shack in the middle of the desert holding dynamite but…
Do we know what a dynamite shack is?
Is it a place where they store dynamite or is it a place where they make dynamite?
I don't know.
I would assume it's stored but I don't know for sure.
I'm just picturing like a lonely shack in the middle of the desert.
I'm almost picturing that.
Like say TNT on it.
Dynamite?
Yeah.
So it was here that he notices the shiny object quote from Zamora to the south about
150 to 200 yards end quote and at first he took to be an overturned white car up on the
radiator or on the trunk so it's standing either straight up or on the front of it I
think is how a radiator would be on a car.
There's two people standing outside of what he thinks is his car wreck one of whom seemed
to notice him with some surprise and gave a start.
The shiny object was like aluminum it was whiteish against the maced background but
not chrome and shaped like the letter O. Having stopped for a couple of seconds Zamora approached
this car meaning to help thinking that it was an accident he speeds over there and Zamora
only caught a brief sighting of the two people in white coveralls beside the car.
He recalls nothing special about them he doesn't recall noting any particular shape possibly
any hats or head gear just outlines of people basically that he's seeing and the people
appeared normal in shape but possibly small adults or large kids.
Zamora is driving towards the scene radioing his dispatcher to say he would be out of his
car checking the car in the arroyo.
He stopped his car got out and attended to the radio microphone which he had dropped
then he started to approach the object.
According to Zamora he hardly turned around from the car when he heard a roar and it was
not exactly a blast so as soon as he's approaching this he hears another roar.
Very loud roar incredibly loud as close as he was to it wasn't like a jet knows what
a jet sounds like.
It starts in low frequency quickly then grows in frequency higher tone and in loudness from
loud to very loud so loud.
So we're on the same page when we're saying roar we're talking about like a plane or something
along those lines not that but also not a bear roar.
Yeah like a dynamite explode like a roar yeah not like a dinosaur roar we're gonna go with
dinosaur dinosaur is what I think of.
Okay lion dinosaurs are.
Well we don't know for sure if dinosaurs word but sure.
I feel like I do I've seen your head stick.
Okay the same time as the roar he sees more flame this is reminiscent to me of the initial
setting flame under the object what he thought was a correct object was starting to go straight
up slowly up and it rose straight up I feel like that's Dr. Seuss Esk there the flame
was light blue and at the bottom was sort of orange color from this angle he saw the
side of the object not and as first noted.
It was difficult to describe the flame for Zamora he thought from the roar that it might
blow up and that the flame might have come from the underside of the object at the middle
possibly a four feet area very rough guessed from Zamora.
I thought it would be fun to read these because they are such in point form I thought I would
challenge myself to read this all legibly to you.
He cannot describe the flame further except it was blue and orange as he I feel like he
was reaching there to add any more detail no smoke except dust in the immediate area
much as dust a lot.
Keeping the object in view he ran behind his car bumping his leg on the rear fender and
dropping his glasses he continued running northwards away from the object which was still near
the ground he now gives a more detailed description of the object oh good.
Well it was oval in shape smooth no windows or doors noted red lettering of some type
the insignia was about two and a half feet high and about two feet wide I guess and it
was in the middle of the object.
The object still was like an aluminum white he also noted that the object was still on
the ground when the roar started and Zamora describes how the object took off.
After he fell by the car and his glasses fell off he kept running to the north with the
car between him and the object.
He backed back a couple of times and noted the object to rise to about the level of his
car about 20 to 25 feet what that can't be right.
Well is he not up on like a hill?
Oh right yes he is on a hill.
I'm assuming the ground isn't flat yeah.
Okay I was just thinking that he right I forgot that detail thank you.
They had such tall cars in this place.
I know I was like what the car is not 20 to 25 feet yes he went up a hill.
It took he guesses about six seconds when the object started to rise and I glanced back
I ran I guess about half way to where I ducked down about 50 feet from where the car is
just over the edge of the hill there we go.
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.
I was still running and I jumped just over the hill.
I stopped because I did not hear the roar.
I was scared of the roar and I had planned to continue running down the hill.
I turned around toward the object and at the same time put my head toward the ground and
covering my face with my arms.
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 a straight line and at the same height
possibly 10 to 15 feet from the ground.
It cleared the dynamite shack by about 3 feet.
Oh he found the dynamite shack.
That seems convenient that it landed by the dynamite shack.
It is so convenient that Zamora knew where the dynamite shack was exactly.
The shack was about 8 feet high and the object was traveling very fast it seemed to rise
up and take off immediately across the country.
Zamora went back to his car and contacted the sheriff's office by radio.
Quote I picked up my glasses I left the sunglasses on the ground, got into the car and radioed
to Nep Lopez radio operator to look out the window to see if you could see an object.
He asked what is it?
I answered it looks like a balloon.
I don't know if he saw it.
If Nep looked out the window which faces north he couldn't have seen it.
I did not tell him at the moment which window to look out of.
He watched the object fly away swiftly but silently and without flame.
As I was calling Nep I could 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 6 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.
Zamora inspected the area and was soon joined by a colleague Sergeant Chavez who did not
see the object.
Zamora gave directions to Nep Lopez on the radio and to Sergeant M.S. Chavez to get there.
He went down to where the object had been and he noted that the brush was burning in
several places.
At that time I heard Sergeant Chavez, New Mexico State Police at Socarro, calling me
on the radio for my location and I returned to my car, told him he was looking at me.
Then Sergeant 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 sergeant to see what I saw and that was the burning brush.
Then Sergeant Chavez and I went to the spot and Sergeant Chavez pointed out the track.
Zamora says that he had noticed that the object had what looked like legs.
When I first saw the object, when I thought it might be a car, I saw what appeared to
be four legs of some type from the object to the ground.
At the time I didn't pay much attention to what it was, I thought it was an accident.
I saw the two persons.
I didn't pay any attention to the four legs.
The four legs were at the bottom of the object, slanting outwards to the ground.
The object might have been about three and a half feet from the ground at the time.
I just glanced at it.
Zamora tries to account for the disappearance of the two people.
I think it's interesting that in retrospect and he thinks about what he was actually
seeing, he remembers these details.
When he first thought it was just a car accident looking like a car that was like straight
up and down.
Yeah, that's kind of like the whole thing about from memory is it can change as it goes.
It can, yes.
This does seem to be a fairly recent statement of account from him, from him actually waiting
to see it from what I saw.
So he goes on quote from Zamora.
I can't tell how long I saw the object the second time, the close time when he was like
on the hill, possibly 20 seconds just to guess from the time I got out of the car.
Glanced at the object, ran from the object, jumped over the edge of the hill, then got
back in the car and the radio was object disappeared.
As my mic fell as I got out of my car at the scenery, I heard about two or three loud
thumps like someone possibly hammering or shutting a door or doors hard.
These thumps were possibly a second or less apart.
This was just before the roar.
Persons were not seen when I drove to the scene area, just before Sergeant Chavez got
to the scene.
I got my pen and drew a picture of the insignia on the object.
Within hours word of Zamora's encounter had reached the news, many people had heard the
radio traffic including a few reporters.
In days, reporters from the Associated Press and the United Press International were in
Sikoro.
Members of civilian UFO study group ARPO were on the scene within two days as were officers
representing the US Air Force's project Blue Book.
Nightcap investigators appeared the following Tuesday.
The first nightcap investigator was Ray Stanford who would later write a detailed book account
on his investigation which I think he has more than one.
That's the whole Lonnie Zamora story.
From his eyes, I took his actual eyewitness account there of what happened.
Do you have any questions about the actual account?
There is nobody else, like it's only him, correct?
He's the only one that actually has this up close experience but there are multiple other
witnesses that I'm going to talk about a little bit.
Okay, well that's good.
I guess I do have two other questions from there.
Did they ever follow up on like why did you think it was a dynamite shack exploding?
I don't know that they follow up on it but the only reason I would imagine that it would
be was because he heard a roar and he saw the flames so I think if you know there's
a dynamite shack in the area which he obviously would have if he ended up next to the dynamite
shack he obviously would have.
I'm more so just curious if this is like from previous experience.
If he's like oh yeah this is kind of in that thing because like in my mind flames are not
something that you would associate with dynamite shacks.
I'm just wondering though like if you knew there is a dynamite shack somewhere and you
happen to be driving by where you know it is and you see something similar maybe it's
just I mean the first thought he had when he saw like an object that he later recalled
having legs was a car accident.
I just find that weird because you don't have to say what you thought it was you just need
to see there's flames and I had to go inspect it as a police officer does that not make sense?
In my mind it kind of almost says I had either an idea that this was going to happen or I've
had experience with dynamite shacks exploding in the pan.
You're very right but he could just be-
There's a whole other part of the story that is left out of this fans universe.
He could just be saying his thought giving as detailed as an account as he can even though
it's not necessary for him to be giving that account but you're right he didn't need to
be in there yet it is.
I feel like if I gave an account of something I would give my entire threat process at the
same time going through it as well.
Can you imagine being the one taking that down and you're like yeah and I saw these flames
and I just assumed it was the dynamite shack.
I feel like you have to ask a question at that point.
That's a good storyteller though because he's telling why he got up he-
That's a bad investigator that didn't say why.
Yeah.
I'm sorry I got stuck on that part I kind of the rest of the story kind of is at the
back of my mind as you can quite hear the whole thing.
It seems like an odd thing it's kind of like one most of the time we get to those stories
and we say why didn't you ask about the penis if you're calling it a man.
This is kind of like that in my mind there's a dynamite shack that completely went unquestionably.
Maybe he was just waiting for it to like explode one day.
I don't know obviously it was on his mind like it finally blew that's what that thought
process says to me.
Wait did he think it was that kind of blue book?
Yeah.
Blue book.
Maybe just logically in his head I mean not everybody thinks about things logically the
same.
Yeah and I just need to be known that that's a bad investigator who did not fall on that.
Did you have another question?
I'm sorry I was just too consumed with that I can't even remember my text.
That was it okay.
I think there was another one but I just like-
I know I thought you said you were in the one.
That's fine.
It seems like being like one of the most well documented eye witness accounts of a UFO not
only because it was witnessed by a law enforcement officer another one came and saw other evidence
which would be the sergeant that Zamora called in to come and look as well just shortly after
it happened and he saw whatever it was that was on fire and he saw the indents in the
sand.
I don't know what it was but it's a desert I assume it's sand.
The indents of like the four legs that were on the craft.
There were other witnesses and several primary witnesses emerged to report stages and aspects
of the event which included the craft's approach, din, conspicuous flame and physical evidence
left behind immediately afterward.
It was however Lonnie Zamora a new Mexico State Police officer who was on duty at the
time who came closest to the object and provided the most prolonged and comprehensive account
like I just said poorly compared to that some physical trace evidence was left behind which
was burned vegetation and soil ground landing impressions metal scrappings on a broken rock
in one of the impressions and was subsequently observed and analyzed by investigators for
the military law enforcement and civilian UFO groups.
I'm just curious could any of that have been associated with say a dynamite shack in the
area.
Maybe from my understanding it was very close by.
Because I don't know how they load dynamite from a shack or what metal scrapings might
come of that I don't know.
Why it's even kept in a shack in the middle of the area.
Yeah.
You would think it would be unstable in the heat like that.
I don't know anything about dynamite.
I don't have a dynamite shack.
This again a complete part of the story that was unquestioned by the investigator.
That's true.
I want to know more about that dynamite shack.
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.
So Stanford the dude who investigated this and wrote a book right pretty sure.
He wrote of a number of corroborating witnesses in his books including two tourists named
Paul Kice and Larry Kratzer who were approaching Sakaro in the car from the southwest less
than a mile from the landing site.
I wonder if this is the speed in cars Zamora was trying to catch.
They apparently witnessed either the landing or take off and reported seeing the flame
and brownish dust being kicked up.
Their story was reported in the Debuki, Iowa Telegraph, herald a few days after their return
of which I will not be reading here.
Do your own research.
Do you find it strange most UFO encounters have like an otherworldly yield to them like
it's something our aircraft couldn't do but this one kind of just has like.
Yeah it feels like it could just be high military tech that has not been defiled.
I don't even know that it would be high military tech if it's starting Russian stuff on fire.
No that's true but like military tech just doesn't generally start fires like that.
Yeah it seems like even less technically savvy.
I don't think it's less technically savvy I think they're testing something that didn't
work the way they are anticipating maybe.
Yeah okay I can get behind that.
Yeah that's the field that I'm getting from it so far even though I'm a big fan of this
case.
There's no Travis Walton though I will tell you that much.
So another witness was a family of five where tourists from Colorado headed north also saw
the oval shaped object as it approached the car at a very low altitude going east to west
just south of town.
It passed directly over their car only a few feet above it and after the encounter the
tourists stopped for gas and the car.
Their identity was never discovered but the story was learned from the service station
operator Opal Grinder who reported the incident at the time and later sounded affidavit in
1967.
According to Grinder the husband told him your aircraft sure fly low around here and
that the object almost took the roof of their car off.
The man thought it was in trouble since it came down west of the highway instead of the
nearby airport to the south.
He saw the police car headed up the hill towards it and he thought to render assistance.
According to Stanford another witness called an Albuquerque television station around 5.30
pm to report an oval object at low altitude traveling slowly south towards the car.
This report was also brought up by KSRC's Sakaro Radio Newsman Walter Schrode when
he interviewed Zamora on the radio the next day.
Zamora said he hadn't heard of the report.
Schrode thought that this was likely the same object that Zamora encountered only 20 minutes
later and helped core operators report.
Several other stories appeared in New Mexico newspapers and succeeding days of other sightings
of oval shaped objects including another landing case with burn soil near La Madera in northern
New Mexico also similar to the Sakaro incident.
The FBI report on the La Madera case further noted the witness reporting a blue white flame
associated with the object for rectangular, I don't know what for rectangular means maybe
landing gears, V shaped landing marks and several circle marks about 4 inches in diameter.
Stanford also noted there was a large number of oral witnesses to the object's loud roar
during takeoff and landing.
One member of the Sakaro Sheriff's office told him that hundreds of persons on the south
side of town had heard it.
Stanford said he personally spoke to two women who heard the roar just before 6 pm and they
said there were two distinct roars maybe emitted or so apart.
I just have to add that that's weird that that one is corroborated probably the most
and that's probably the least attached to a UFO sighting of the things that have happened
that he is saying happened which really makes me believe that it's something more terrestrial
made.
Yeah I mean I would love to just have regular noises happen around me and me consistently
say that it's a UFO.
You would think for myself that would happen way more than it actually does.
I don't know that I've ever, well sometimes, I'm like hey is that a UFO but it's joking
in most cases I wouldn't just attribute a loud roar to a UFO I don't think.
You could hear that just regular in regular life unless you see a dinosaur roar.
Yeah it really depends what we're talking about for roars and maybe just a very distinct
roar because you're not going to hear a dinosaur roar in everyday life unless you're watching
Jurassic Park as we talk about earlier.
Oh no that one I for sure would be like someone's watching Jurassic Park or there's a T-Rex
in the backyard.
It's probably the first one.
But he did say it also.
Or the local dynamite shack.
See again they did not follow that line of questioning so we cannot conform nor deny
that part but he also did say it was distinctly different from a plane so I don't know how
to explain that one.
It's just like that's not something I don't think we've ever actually brought up the sound
of a UFO before this one.
Most people will say that there isn't a sound.
Yeah exactly.
It's a Tesla's if it's my head that's what a UFO sounds like.
Yeah well in my mind it's the sound of what is that wax paper on a comb in that one of
the senses.
It's the same thing as a Tesla.
Yeah.
That's the same sound.
That's worth that.
That was my true.
That's where Tesla got it.
Elon Musk is incredibly uncreative so he just stole it.
Yeah he had the.
And sorry by he I mean people he paid to do what it is.
He was like I kind of want it to sound like this the wax paper over the comb and then
they did it.
Elon Musk.
Is that the right name?
Sure why not.
Tesla Tesla.
Yeah Elon Musk.
In addition to the above witnesses Stanford said there were three other persons who called
the police dispatcher immediately following the incident.
I do love the guy that called the news like that's like seeing something hearing a big
roar and being like I'm going to call global news.
Yeah which actually does happen.
We've talked about have we talked about the horn sound.
I can't remember.
We might have many on it.
We've talked about a lot of stuff now.
I think we've talked about it in a mini.
Like a car horn.
No like a trumpet horn and they'll or the humming.
Come up briefly I believe.
Yeah I think the hums come up too but never a roar.
Yeah never a roar.
In October 2009 Stanford first publicly revealed Sergeant Shavins.
The first policeman to provide backup for somewhere had privately confided to fellow
police officers that he too had seen the object rapidly departing to the west over the mountains
as he approached the site.
In various interviews Zamora somewhat confirmed the possibility saying Chavez was at the scene
within about two minutes after he radioed him for backup.
That is excellent service from his superior.
The object was still about a couple of moments up there when he had arrived and if Chavez
had just paid attention he would have seen it flying off towards the mountains.
However in public statement Chavez maintained that he arrived too late to see the object.
When Chavez first arrived at Zamora's position where the object had departed he also noted
that burnt bushes still smoldering and Zamora appeared to be in the state of shock.
Multiple policemen arrived soon after to help investigate including Ted Jordan and James
Lucky.
All noted fresh burning at the site.
He and Chavez were quoted in the Socarro newspaper saying that clumps of grass and burned grease
wood bushes were still hot when they arrived.
Chavez was also quoted saying that the dry grass was still smoldering as were the grease
wood plants.
Zamora was likewise quoted about the green bush burned bare by exhaust heat.
Okay that's a relatable statement I feel like at this point down to earth a matter
of fact and that it was still smoking several minutes after the craft's departure.
The FBI report written by the agent on the scene within two hours similarly reported
that all first responders noted four irregularly shaped smoldering areas.
Chavez was again quoted in an Air Force report written two days later about smoking brush.
Chavez then went to the area where the craft or thing was supposedly sited and found four
fresh indentations in the ground and several charred and 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.
Chavez was further reported securing the area and scouring the ground looking for the presence
of other human activity.
He could find no other tire tracks besides Zamoras and was adamant that there was no
other track activity footprints or other marks in the area.
In addition Chavez was also quoted in the report saying that the indentations appeared
to be new.
He stated that the marks were definitely fresh and the dirt showed evidence of dew or moisture.
Similarly several policemen later told Stanford that whatever had produced the rectangular
wedge shaped landing traces appeared to have penetrated into the moist subsoil as the bottoms
of the traces were moist for several hours suggesting that the traces were freshly made.
Hynek also commented on the freshness of the soil impressions in a letter to astronomer
Donald Menzel, quote, 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 top soil had
been freshly pushed aside, end quote.
The FBI investigator also observed that the rectangular marks seem 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 also observed with the-
I just want to make sure there was no burn mark in the middle of these like four marks
right?
It doesn't seem like there was.
No there was just fire everywhere but there's no burn mark on the ground which is kind of
a lot.
Yeah some of the details seem kind of weird about it like it looks burned but cold to
the touch when they're there like super soon.
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.
Those are the other witnesses and witnesses of what was going on, witnesses that cooperated
what Lonnie Zamora saw as well as witnesses that saw the aftermath directly after what
Lonnie Zamora had witnessed.
Next I go into the fact that it was immediately investigated by the US Army, the US Air Force
and the FBI and received considerable coverage in the mass media.
It blew up for Zamora, I know when I was just talking he had already been giving statements
and talking to the media like the next day.
So the evening of the encounter Army Captain Richard T. Holder then the senior officer
at White Sands as the higher ranking officer had gone home for the weekend and FBI agent
author Burns Jr. together interviewed Zamora.
I don't know why we have to know that he had gone home for the weekend.
We need to know why they dropped the ball on the dynamite shack.
I don't think that it will ever come up.
Reasons remain unclear.
The FBI asked that their presence at the scene be kept quiet.
Zamora speculated that the object was some kind of newly developed craft being tested
at White Sands missile range or the nearby Hollamann Air Force Base.
Holder shot down this idea and was later quoted in a Sakaro newspaper saying that there was
in military custody no object that would compare to the object described which is a super weird
thing to say.
There was no known firing mission in progress at the time of the occurrence and would produce
the conditions reported.
I think with that statement right there I'm convinced that it was the Air Force.
What do you think he would be like?
Yeah, we were testing top secret stuff.
And if they were wouldn't it be like, uh, no, we don't own anything that would do that.
If they were testing top secret stuff they would have got Dodie on it.
He was never mind.
He's not born yet or at least he's very young.
Dodie would have been like it for sure was a UFO.
Here's some documents.
I'll even get it to show up again.
Oh yeah, trust me.
After interviewing Zamora, Holder and several military police officers went to the scene
using flashlights.
They cordoned off the site, took measurements and took samples of the sand and the scorched
bushes.
The claim of Fuse Sand being recovered from the landing site was for some time unsubstantiated.
Even Heineck said he had not heard such rumors during the investigation.
The next morning, a Sunday, Holder took a telephone call from a colonel at the joint
chiefs of staff.
As a young captain, Holder was surprised and nervous to speak to such an important high
raking officer.
At the colonel's command, Holder gave a report of his investigation over a secure scrambled
line.
Years later, Holder would wonder about such important US military officials, why in the
world were they so interested.
So, astronomer J. L. and Heineck, he was an astronomer?
Physicist slash astronomer, yeah.
Blue Books consultant arrived in Socarro on Tuesday, April 28th.
He met with Zamora and Shabbos and interviewed them about the encounter.
Heineck and Air Force Major Hector Quintanilla initially thought the sighting might be explained
as a test of lunar excursion module.
So, after some investigation, Heineck determined that this could be definitely ruled out as
an explanation for what Zamora saw.
In a memorandum, Heineck wrote that Zamora and Shabbos were very anti AF Air Force.
Now we know that as as fuck.
The Air Force was suggesting that the affair was a hoax, but Zamora was pretty sore at
being regarded as a romance-er, and it took over half an hour for Heineck to thaw him
out and hear the account from the only eyewitness.
Heineck also wrote that the AF is in a spot over Socarro.
They were also 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.
Heineck agreed with many others that this explanation won't go down as plausible.
Heineck further wrote, I think this case may be the Rosetta Stone.
There's never been a strong case with so unimpeachable eyewitness.
I don't understand why it would be a Rosetta Stone, because the Rosetta Stone is like how
you translate between languages.
They didn't have a way to translate to Egyptian, but they found the Rosetta Stone, which was
Egyptian to Greek.
I think that they are looking for a different word other than Rosetta Stone.
Maybe like maybe the Antikytherin device, which is like they found the computer in the
water, or maybe they found the smoking gun, maybe smoking gun.
You know what, it's actually hard to find one where you could say it's like one good
witness made the entire case.
Also noting his growing frustration with Blue Book, Heineck wrote the AF doesn't know what
science is.
I hope I read that dramatic enough.
It was one of the cases that helped persuade astronomer J.L. in Heineck, one of the primary
investigators for the Air Force that some UFO reports represented an intriguing mystery.
After extensive investigation, Project Blue Book was unable to come up with a conventional
explanation for the Zamora encounter and listed the cases unknown.
I mean that's fair, because we're speculating that it's just like technology of the military
that hasn't been disclosed at that point.
Yeah.
Which would be unknown.
Yeah, that's seeming likely to me, but let's see what else they have to say about this.
So the next thing we're going to look at is the fused sand that was mentioned very briefly,
because they said that it didn't really come up or nobody else had heard about it.
So in 1968, physicist and UFO researcher James E. McDonald located Mary G. Mays, who asserted
that when she was a University of New Mexico doctoral student in radiation biology, she
has been asked to analyze plant material from the Sicarocyte.
Afterwards, she was to turn in all records and samples and heard no more about it.
In an interview by McDonald, Mays reported that she and two others had worked on studying
physical evidence from the Sicarocyte, but she could not remember the names of the others.
According to Mays, she had examined the site the day after the event and had gathered plant
samples for analysis.
Mays later determined that the plants, which had allegedly been burnt by the UFO's flames,
were unusually completely dried out.
Mays also found no evidence of radiation.
I just want to make sure she studied both the burnt ones and normal plants that weren't
burnt, correct?
Yeeeeeeesss.
I mean, it doesn't specifically say that.
I also feel like it's kind of weird for a radiologist to make a comment on how dried
out it is.
The same as because, oh yeah, here's the fused sand.
I was like, that hasn't come out yet, but it's coming out soon.
She also found no evidence of radiation, but found two organic substances she was unable
to identify.
Mays also reported to McDonald 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 25-30 inches at its widest.
Though it gradually tapered down to about 1 inch wide, it seemed about a quarter of
an inch thick.
Mays thought the glassy areas looked as if a hot jet hit it.
Mays said she investigated to determine the other people who investigated the site, but
McDonald's files gave no indication she ever contacted him about the object.
Now I'm just gonna bring it up quickly here.
I can't recall if it had to do with the fused sand or there was also mention of on a rock.
There was a little bit of metal that they found.
Yeah, there were shavings found.
Yeah, my notes have left this out miraculously, but they do send this off for testing.
The original scientist that gets a hold of it and analyzes it does say that it's not
anything that could be found here on earth.
They then take the sample for further analysis because it came back as unknown.
They actually send it off to NASA and it's never seen again.
When it was followed up on to see where this sample had gone, they reply the other guy
is fired, he wasn't doing his job properly and they don't know where the samples went.
Just something to mention in there that that happened alongside of this and I don't know
if I missed it because it wasn't the fused sand and it was in fact the metal samples.
I find those comments very weird from the scientists who was analyzing the radiation.
That's what she was hired for, correct?
That there was no radiation, but the plants were very dried out.
Maybe.
And there was fused sand.
That just seems like weird comments from her.
That's not her specialty.
Why are you commenting on that?
You wouldn't be looking at that.
I wouldn't be looking for fused sand if I was literally there because I wouldn't know
what to look for.
If they say like, hey, check this place out with a Geiger counter.
Are you going to say I didn't find anything but there's some fused sand over there?
That just seems odd.
Unless that's a part of her job.
I don't know.
But do radiologists do that?
That's kind of what I assumed.
I don't know.
Let's do a...
Maybe they do look for fused sand as well as radiation.
Does it indicate radiation maybe?
No, it wouldn't.
It would just...
That would not.
No, that would indicate like a hot temperature.
Yeah.
Which I don't know.
I don't know if Dynamite could do that.
And I don't think a radiologist is going to know either.
Nor anybody who investigated this because they didn't look into the damn Dynamite check.
It honestly seems like Lonnie is the only one that thinks that it was a Dynamite check.
Oh wait, or did someone else say it was?
Came up again.
It did come up again.
I can't remember who said it though.
I can't remember either.
We can't rewind this.
Listen.
I can read, but I don't feel like moving my finger a little bit to go back.
Okay.
Object speed and acceleration.
According to Stanford's reconstruction of the event from on-site interviews with Samora,
the time was probably no more than 20 seconds from when the object went to silent operation.
Rapidly accelerated towards the...
Is that at the base of the nearby mountains?
Maybe that's a mill.
And then rose rapidly a distance of about 2 miles.
Assuming constant acceleration, these numbers can be used to estimate the object's acceleration,
average speed, and final speed.
I hope someone who's not, this is not their area of expertise was doing this.
Maybe the radiologist.
She seems to do things to do not...
She does like to offer up advice.
Yeah.
Assuming constant acceleration, the acceleration would be given by 2D2T, where the D is the
distance of 2 miles.
Oh my God, I have to read those to you guys.
I mean, I don't.
I put it in here.
For about 3200 meters, the final speed would be 2D2T.
This works out to a final speed of 720 miles per hour, an average speed of 360 miles per
hour and an acceleration of 16 meters per second squared.
Or about 1.7 times Earth gravity of 9.8 meters per second.
They had me at 720 miles per hour, that seems like a high number.
I don't know about the other ones, maybe they're high, but 720 miles for sure, that's high.
These high values rule out many conventional explanations, such as a helicopter or balloon,
a high performance jet aircraft, or rocket propulsion could conceivably produce the acceleration
in near supersonic speed, but neither forms of propulsion are silent.
The Air Force report on the incident also said, but it wasn't silent, it roared.
It roared when it was taking off.
There was a point where it should have been making noise and it wasn't.
They're also just going off of like to come up with a precise speed.
They have to like assume that he was very precise in his measurement of this entire
thing taking place.
No, no, in this recreation, they just say that they've recreated it based on what he
said, so I don't know how they're calculating that at all.
So yeah, I mean, that gives them a rough estimate of 720 miles per hour.
That's the one I'm going by because it's the only one that I know.
But you think they give like a range, not just like this exact speed, because he probably,
I don't think he says like exactly that amount of time.
No, he doesn't specifically, he didn't know.
It could have been this, but he didn't know.
No missing time, by the way, a high performance jet aircraft or rocket propulsion could conceivably
produce the acceleration or nearest supersonic speed, but neither forms of propulsion are
silent.
The Air Force report on the incident also said that they analyzed the soil and found
no evidence of chemical propellants, as might be expected from a jet or most rocket engines.
Further, no contemporary craft was capable of vertical takeoff and such high speeds.
Really?
The oval object described by Zamora also lacked any wings or other external structures
that might have provided lift.
What year was this again?
Like 64 somewhere in there?
Isn't that how like spacecraft took off?
They did, but they went straight up.
That's it.
This one goes up and then moves horizontally.
Oh yeah, okay.
I was missing that.
Okay, are you ready for it?
The last point.
Hooked, claims, and rebuttals.
Okay.
Some debunkers suggested the affair was a hoax.
Earthward astronomer Donald Menzel first suggested that Zamora had been the victim of a complex
prank engineered by high school students who planned the whole business to get Zamora.
Oh, I like that.
Heineck suggested this to some Saccoro citizens who discounted the idea.
Years later, Menzel argued that Zamora had misidentified a dust devil.
Wow.
Zahad doesn't think much of Zamora.
Why is the way he's saying dynamite check?
Misidentified dynamite check.
No, it never comes up again.
First and prominent UFO skeptic, Philip J. Klass first suggested that the Zamora sighting
was due to misidentified ball lightning.
I love the ball lightning when they throw that around.
When this debunking was itself debunked, notably by atmospheric physicist Dr. James E. McDonald,
Klass switched gears and suggested that Zamora, we got to do an episode on Klass, suggested
the Zamora sighting was part of a scheme Zamora had invented with Saccaros then mayor, home,
Bersume, Jr. to attract tourism, claiming Bersume owned the land where Zamora's encounter
occurred.
In fact, Bersume didn't even own the property as Klass claimed.
Klass nevertheless claimed that Bersume hoped Zamora's fabricated UFO story would lure a
tourist to Saccaro and Bersume could then develop the UFO landing site into a tourist
attraction.
Both Bersume and Zamora consistently denied these accusations as ridiculous and landing
site was never developed even after Zamora's sighting gained national publicity.
UFO skeptic Stuart Campbell dismissed the hoax allegations of Klass.
He has suggested that Zamora's sighting was almost certainly a mirage of cannabis.
As of 2009, the landing site reportedly remains much as it was in 1964.
Those are the debunking things.
I hear the high school one, I think more than anything.
Zamora ends up- I just like to make sure it is like a movie coming right around like the
oh what's the name animal house movie coming out because that's like what late 60s early
70s?
Yeah, it would be.
I feel like somebody was watching that and said these kids probably did that too.
Yeah, Zamora became so tired of the subject that he eventually avoided both ufologists
and the Air Force taking a job managing a gasoline station.
He dies November 2nd 2009 in Saccaro from a heart attack.
He was 76 years old.
The event and his body of evidence is sometimes deemed one of the best documented yet most
perplexing UFO reports.
Quote from J.L. and Heineck.
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's 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.
What in his background made us believe that he was capable of identifying things in the
air?
Just that he was a police officer?
Yeah, maybe he just had a hobby of it.
Okay, because he for sure thought it was a exploded dynamite shack.
Yeah, I don't know.
If you see flames like to me, if you see flames in the air near where you know there's a dynamite
shack, maybe that's what you think it is, just not knowing anything else.
That might be my first thought, but I'm just gonna finish this out and then we can talk
about it.
Okay.
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.
The end.
I can't say that, you know, if I was driving past like a TNT plant or something like that
and I saw a fire flying through the air, I'd be like that TNT plant at it again for the
first time.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe he's never seen it at TNT shack blow up.
He doesn't know what it's like.
That's true, but at the same time, nobody ever seems to look into it at all, despite the
fact that people even go out to the site where this happened.
No, it doesn't seem to be that anybody even looked at it to be like, did it actually blow
up?
No, or maybe it has something to do with everything that is going on here.
Is the dynamite okay?
Is it not okay?
Maybe the dynamite's gone.
Maybe it exploded years ago.
Maybe they were packing dynamite into its casing or something like that and had an incident.
I don't know.
Yeah, or maybe the mothman took it over because we all know that they like TNT plants.
So maybe it was a mothman.
Because they never looked into the dynamite shack.
We're going to have to say that's just as plausible as anything else.
Probably is.
They do have red eyes and sometimes they look like flames.
But I'm just going to chalk this one up once again to the investigators not having the
keen insight or direction that we would have in an investigation.
And they missed the boat on being able to properly identify what was going on here because
of it.
It did seem to center solely on that idea at first, didn't it?
Yeah, and then they just move on.
Okay, whatever.
That can fuck right off.
Let's talk about just this picture of itself.
That's it.
Yeah.
Even though it was close by.
And he thought it was involved.
Anyhow, that's my thoughts on it.
I've really been stuck with that.
I could see why.
My thoughts are, I don't know.
This Belani Zamora one is, I mean, even in Blue Book, it's marked as a mystery.
But to me, it has just two regular earth elements in it.
Or it to be supernatural in nature.
And by supernatural, I mean unearthly.
I don't know if we can even classify that as unearthly though.
Like that's the weird part.
Yeah, the thing's flying fast, not that fast.
It's making noises, which is unordinary.
We don't see any occupants of it, and I don't, it just doesn't seem that weird.
I love how before it, it's taking off and it's making banging sound.
No, like, hard doors closing twice.
For the FBI and the Air Force to have been on the scene so quickly also, that makes me
think that it was probably something to do with them.
Or it had to have been, or even if it was, it couldn't have been high school students
with anything flying.
It couldn't have been.
Yeah, but also if the FBI were involved, they were investigated.
So they probably would have said something and it would have been redacted or classified.
It's true, high school students wouldn't have been able to get away with that.
But at the same time, even if it was, they're close to an Air Force base, which would also
explain why they came.
But I just love that it was setting the shrubbery on fire.
And that would actually, it would be pretty hilarious in a tragic kind of way if there's
like an entire subcategory that we could do of UFO fires started.
I wonder if there is.
But that is a topic for another episode.
Could it be a short one?
It would be a very short one.
There are none.
We'll see you next week.
UFOs starting fires.
UFO glides above California wildfire.
Okay, that's not quite what we're thinking.
Claiming UFO over Canada.
UFO on fire, something out of this world.
But yeah, that speculation is probably best for us to do off this podcast.
In any event, I have been Taylor.
Here we're Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening.
See you next week.
Bye.
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