Ray Stanford's Socorro Photograph

For those interested in such things, Ray Stanford had claimed that he had a photograph of a Socorro-like UFO, he had taken after the Lonnie Zamora sighting. He was careful who saw the picture. I’m not sure his rationale for that, but there were very few who had seen it. We had to rely on their descriptions of the picture, if they were inclined to give us any information about it.

Ben Moss, who had worked with Stanford for years, thought the picture to be important. He had mentioned to me that it looked somewhat like an egg-shaped UFO with landing gear underneath it. With Stanford’s passing, and with Stanford’s wife’s permission, Ben searched through the mountains of material that Stanford had collected. He didn’t want to say anything about this, though he had located a print. He wanted to have the negative.

From what he emailed me, he thought he had the original negative, but, apparently, it was only a duplicate. It follows here:

The Ray Stanford photo of the Socorro like-object.

Close up of the object, whatever it might be.

Here is the important part of Ben’s email to me. “If you wanted to post the Socorro craft pictures I sent, please feel free to do so with any commentary you want to add, I'm sure the usual suspects will be commenting on them. I discovered that the picture of the dynamite shack that I thought had the images was the wrong one, it is in the original polaroid Ray took without the kid standing in front of it. I will scan that picture in January, but have no negative, yet I did find it at Ray’s house listed as 'original', and as I examined it there are several objects in the background sky, I just need to get a high DPI scan to confirm.”

Here’s where we are with this. A solid analysis has not been made but Ben plans to do that. We have an interesting story that connects to the Zamora sighting, we have photographic evidence, but those of us who have been around for a while, we know we need the original. Ben is attempting to find that doing the follow up investigation as time permits.

Without the original, and without a solid analysis, I can say nothing about the authenticity of the photograph. All I’m able to say is that we now know what it looks like. We need the analysis to determine the important of the picture. 

Should We Investigate Decades Old Cases?

 

Several years ago, I learned about Rich Reynolds when he suggested it was time for we geezers to get out of the way and allow the youngsters to solve the mystery of the UFO. I believe he thought we had failed, though I thought that we had supplied quite a few explanations including those answered as “unidentified.” Didn’t mean alien spacecraft, only that we didn’t know what it was and alien spacecraft was one possible answer.

Anyway, that started a communication between us which, I believe, we found more common ground than disagreement. We had good conversations during the run of Game of Thrones until the show runners wrecked the whole thing with an incredibly stupid final season, but I digress.

Lately, if I have read some of his comments correctly (and allow for the possibility that I missed a point or two), he thought that we geezers were wasting too much time going over the older cases. We needed to move into the modern era where answers other than alien lived. I think he was saying that there might be paranormal explanations, not to mention misidentified natural phenomena and certainly items of national security that needed to be protected because they were, well, items of national security.

The notion isn’t completely wrong, but then it is only recently that we have had access to files that were buried under various classifications and protected by the umbrella of national security. But I also noticed that as we found our way into some of those hidden files, we found things that were once accepted as truth that were, to be kind, mistakes.

Take the landing in Socorro, New Mexico, in April, 1964. Police officer Lonnie Zamora saw something that didn’t look like a conventional aircraft and that seemed to operate outside the norms for any sort of aircraft. I had said, for years, as had others, that this was an interesting case, but suffered from one flaw. It was single witness. It would be strengthened by additional witnesses.

While talking with Ben Moss and Tony Angiola, they mentioned that three people had called the police station in Socorro with sightings in the minutes before Zamora made his sighting and his report. I asked if that had been written down in the police log, three times, and didn’t get a satisfactory answer. I don’t know if we were just miscommunicating or if they thought the answer was simple and I should have known it.

Zamora provided his eyewitness account for this illustration.

I pulled up the Project Blue Book file on Socorro and in there I found a short report written by Captain Richard Holder on the night of the sighting. In that report, submitted to the Pentagon that night, just hours after he, along with an FBI agent, had interrogate Zamora, Holder mentioned those three telephone calls into the police station. In 1964, apparently no one thought it important to find those witnesses, which, in 1964, wouldn’t have been impossible. The flight path of the UFO was known and Socorro wasn’t all that large. Investigators would have had to knock on a lot of doors, but it could have been done. Think of the important data that could have been learned from those witnesses and think what it would have meant to the case.

Similarly, in 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed they had been abducted outside Pascagoula, Mississippi. For years, I, along with many others, suggested the case might be a hoax because there were no independent witnesses for that abduction. In fact, when I interviewed Calvin Parker several months ago, I made that case. He said that there were other witnesses and he, along with Philip Mantle and Dr. Irene Scott had found and interviewed several of them.

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker.

Well, I wasn’t overly impressed because witnesses coming forward decades after the event aren’t all that impressive. The argument can be made that they just wanted to climb on the band wagon and see their names in the papers or be interviewed for the various documentaries. We had witnesses who saw the abduction, but they hadn’t talked in 1973.

That turned out to be wrong. I have seen a document, written the day after the abduction, by Air Force personnel at Keesler Air Force Base, in which two other men were interviewed about the sighting and said they had seen it. Two witnesses, independent of one another, reporting the next day, they had seen something very strange as Hickson and Parker were abducted. And, one of the men was with two other people who also saw the same thing running the total to four.

Think about that. We have two men saying they were abducted by alien creatures, and part of that event was witnessed by outside sources. There was a record of what they had seen, the very next day, but in all the controversy, some of it introduced by the skeptical community, caused that information to be overlooked by so many.

And finally, as I was working on the book about the Levelland sightings in November, 1957, I found some interesting documentation that I don’t believe had been reported. According to the Air Force, the Hockley County Sheriff, Weir Clem, said he had seen a streak of red in the distance. However, in news reports published before the Air Force investigator arrived, Clem said that he had seen a brightly glowing red, “football-shaped” or an oval-shaped object rather than just a streak of red.

Don Burleson, about twenty years ago, interviewed the man who maintained the sheriff’s car. Burleson was told that the sheriff had brought his car in, the next day, and asked that it be checked out. The only reason that the sheriff would have done that was if his car had been stalled by the close approach of the UFO. The sheriff wanted to be sure there was no mechanical reason for the engine to stall.

That is an interesting bit of information, suggesting that the Air Force had suggested that Clem be less than candid when talking to the press about the sighting. Don Berliner, in 1975, interviewed Clem, who again said that he had seen the brightly glowing red, football-shaped UFO.

Sheriff Weir Clem and two of his deputies.

That, by itself, is an interesting revelation but there is one other fact. As I was researching the case, I learned that Clem, with a deputy, had gone out to look for the UFO. Following them was a car from the Texas Department of Public Safety, that is, the state police. And following those two cars was a third occupied by Air Force officers from Reese Air Force Base located about twenty minutes from Levelland.

In other words, there is documentation suggesting that Air Force officers were close enough to see the object rather than a streak of light, and if Clem’ car was stalled by the close approach of the UFO, then the Air Force car was stalled by the close approach of the UFO as well.

Think about the importance of that revelation and what it would mean to the Air Force investigation if that information had been available to us at the time of the sighting. It would be impossible for the Air Force to claim that ball lightning was the culprit.

Here’s the other side of that coin. Why is there no reference in the Air Force file to Air Force officers making a sighting on the night of the event? Clearly, the Air Force would have known about them, but, according to the Air Force, there were only three witnesses to an actual craft. Norman Barth, the Air Force investigator only interviewed six witnesses during his short, seven-hour investigation and, three of those witnesses said they had only saw something in the distance. There is no mention of the Air Force officers being involved because if the Air Force admitted that, then the entire tone of the investigation would have changed.

The point here is that while I understand what Rich is suggesting, I believe that these older cases deserve another look based on what we have found in the Project Blue Book files and other records that have made their way into the public arena. Although I have been unable to identify those Air Force officers, think what their comments and descriptions would have meant to understanding what UFOs were and are, especially in a robust case like that from Levelland.

So, while I understand what Rich is saying, I also believe that we need to study the older cases because there are some extraordinary testimonies hidden in them. Properly documented, properly investigated and properly understood, we just might advance UFO research to a point where we are talking about the home worlds of the aliens rather than denying that they exist.

Expedition Unknown in Socorro

 

The other day I stumbled into an episode of Expedition Unknown that was investigating the Socorro UFO landing of April 1964. I would have ignored it, except it seemed to suggest that the UFO was, in fact, terrestrially based, meaning it was a misidentification of something made on Earth. The investigators were impressed with the idea that the UFO was a lunar landing being tested at the White Sands Missile Ranch at the time and they produced a document showing those tests.

The problem was that the times didn’t match. The sighting, by Police Officer Lonnie Zamora, was about 6 p.m. on a Friday night. The document suggested the testing much earlier in the day. You can see that for yourself here:

 

On Friday, April 24, the date of the sighting, the testing of the surveyor was between 7:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m., which means the testing was finished about six hours before Zamora saw a craft. I will also point out that the testing was over the White Sands Missile Range which is south of Socorro. There is no evidence that the testing was delayed or that the surveyor strayed off the range. To suggest a delay or the off-range trouble is pure speculation.

For the tests on April 27, these are irrelevant. All it demonstrates is that there were scheduled tests on the range and there were no corresponding UFO sightings.

There were mentions of the landing gear impressions that Zamora found. These were documented by the military that night. Captain Richard Holder requested assistance from the military police to first guard the site and later to make measurements about the landing traces. That documentation appears in the Project Blue Book file. The illustration shows an asymmetrical landing gear, which, I believe is the result of the terrain, meaning that the uneven surface gives the impression of asymmetry. If it had been a flat surface, then the landing gear would have been symmetrical.

The surveyor landing gear is asymmetrical. On its longest dimension, it is just over 31 feet. The landing impressions, on the longest dimension is just under 15 feet. The overall pattern does not match that of the surveyor.

Site survey conducted on the night of the sighting. From the Blue Book files.

Here is the problem. There are various models of the surveyor and there is no indication which was being tested in New Mexico. There might be a surveyor that has landing gear that more closely matches that of the markings found by Zamora.

In a point that isn’t all that important, they suggest they might have found a corporate logo that matches that seen symbol by Zamora. They said, during the program, that Zamora had drawn the symbol from memory, implying a passage of time. But, according to Zamora, he made the drawing within minutes of the UFO taking off and that drawing is available in the Blue Book file. It does not resemble the corporate logo very closely, though the investigators in the show were impressed by it.

In the Blue Book file, there is another corporate logo that more closely matches that which Zamora saw. It is not an exact match and it does stretch credulity to claim it does, but it is closer than the one shown on the program.

Finally, they displayed an illustration, drawn by Dave Thomas, that shows an OH-13 helicopter used to suspend the surveyor under it. This contraption might be what Zamora saw, except that he never mentioned a hovering helicopter.

On the show the two investigators pointed out that there was a two-man crew in the helicopter and Zamora had reported seeing two beings on the ground. I can think of no scenario in which both pilots would leave the helicopter with the blades turning and the engine running. One would remain behind, which is another reason to reject this theory.

At the end of the segment, it seemed that all agreed, that is the two investigators and Dave Thomas, that the Socorro sighting have been solved. The surveyor straying off the Missile Range, held aloft by a helicopter, was what Zamora saw. Well, of course, I wasn’t convinced, which set off this investigation.

As noted, the landing gear impressions don’t match, the range times for testing the surveyor don’t match, the theory that the object was a surveyor carried by a helicopter doesn’t come close to the description offered by Zamora, and the corporate logo isn’t a match. In other words, there were too many unanswered questions.

My first step was to look all this up on Dave Thomas’ website which can be found here:

www.nmsr.org/socorro.htm

It’s clear from that website that the solution for the case isn’t quite as solid as presented. According to Thomas:

Of course, this new evidence is far from conclusive (emphasis added). A lot has happened since 1964, and it's difficult to reconstruct events from that long ago, especially events with strong implications. Was it a college prank? A hoax? A balloon? An alien craft from another world? Perhaps we'll never really know. Gildenberg is confident that William of Occam, of Occam's Razor fame, would think kindly of the Surveyor explanation, especially over some of the other contenders.

I reached out to Dave Thomas for his impressions, rather than just relying on that had been broadcast and what was found on his website. He responded, telling me:

I would describe the WSMR Surveyor log Duke Gildenberg found as at least tantalizing evidence.

It's my understanding that there might have been more than two people involved, two to stand in for astronauts controlling Surveyor rocket jets, and one or maybe two pilots for the helicopter itself, which was required because of Earth's 6x gravity.

It would have been a strange looking device, indeed. Of course, it's not 100 percent Surveyor or the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). There are former Tech students swearing by the playing with dynamite explanation, and then there are locals like Ron and Dorothy Landoll, who heard a fresh description of the craft from a police colleague of Zamora's, and later realized its similarity to the LEM when it was publicized in 1965. When I interviewed Stirling Colgate about his report of a student-led hoax, he unfortunately couldn't recall anything about that incident, and has passed away since.

While we don't know for sure what Zamora saw, I think he honestly did see something strange that day. I don't think it was extraterrestrials, however, that would require much stronger evidence to get me onboard.

Please note the language used here. There are qualifications in it, and in a discussion such as this, we all use qualifications. Nothing is written in the absolute, rather there is a suggestion that an extraterrestrial explanation is not the likely solution and given that we have only witness observation and landing traces, that is understandable. To be fair, to reach the extraterrestrial should require more concrete evidence. However, none of the other solutions offered, and over the years there have been several, have been proven.

I will note here, that Thomas interviewed Stirling Colgate, who, in other communications, didn’t seem to support the idea of a student hoax, which had also been offered as the solution. I draw attention to that here, only because Thomas mentioned it without any prompting from me.

In the end, we’re left with a sighting that is unexplained. I have covered parts of this in the past, and it is reported in great detail in Encounter in the Desert, which is about the Zamora sighting.

For those who wish more information, just type Socorro into the search engine for a listing of articles. For those who wish a little help, see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/07/socorro-new-mexico-and-lonnie-zamora.html

This contains a list of other relevant articles as well as being a good synopsis of the investigation.

Canadian Texas vs. Temple Oklahoma - A Minor Correction

Just yesterday (Saturday, March 12) I noticed a problem. I have been doing many radio shows/podcasts talking about my book, Levelland. I sometimes mention that the first of the UFO sightings in the area, that is, the panhandle of Texas, took place at 3:30 a.m., near Canadian. To my horror, I realized that I had confused some of the information about that sighting with another one that took, not all that far away, in Temple, Oklahoma. Time to straighten this out.

According to the information provided to Project Blue Book in the days that followed, the observer whose name was redacted by the Air Force, rounded a curve. He then drove over a slight knoll so that his headlights played across an object sitting in a field near the road. As he approached there was a flash of light over the car and his headlights went out.

He then stopped about a hundred feet beyond the submarine-shaped craft. He estimated the UFO as being as long as two or three cars and about eight feet high with a conning tower at about the midway point on the object. There was a white flag attached to its top and a humanoid figure that wasn’t described, standing by it.

The witness started to back up, thought better of it and started forward again. As he drove away, his headlights came on again. He didn’t see the craft depart and reported no other effects of his close approach.

The Project Blue Book file on the sighting contains a bare bones report and little else. The conclusion is that the source is unreliable, which is almost the universal conclusion when a witness, or witnesses, claim to have seen some sort of being or creature associated with the craft. Apparently, the report of a creature was sufficient reason for project officers to decide that no further investigation was required.

There is one thing that is surprising about the sighting. The “Project Record Card” in the Blue Book file mentioned that it was a “military and civilian” sighting. On the Air Intelligence Information Report, which was collected on November 4, 1957, there is the name of the military source. According to that document, T/SGT Alfred A. Calvin, who was assigned to the 386^th Fighter-Bomber Squadron, at Cannon Air Force Base, near Clovis, New Mexico, was the military witness.

All that is known about the second source is he was a civilian, who, in 1957, was 41, and whose name has been redacted from the form. The civilian was from Enid, Oklahoma, and was a Civil Service employee at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. There is no indication in the file that any Air Force investigator interviewed the civilian source. Given the fact, based on the assignments of the witnesses, they were independent of one another, so that an interview with the civilian should have been conducted. It might have yielded some important information and would certainly have improved the credibility of the T/SGT Calvin.

According to the Project Blue Book files, the case is labeled as Temple, Oklahoma, and is dated as March 23, 1966. That file said:

Observer [W. E. Eddie Laxson] was driving his car along the highway at approximately 0505 [a.m.], 23 March 1966, when he noticed an object parked on the road in front of him. He stopped the car and got out so as to get a better view of the object. The object was so parked that it blocked out a portion of the road curve sign. There were no sharp edges noted by the observer. The object had the appearance of a conventional aircraft (C-124) without wings or motors. There was a plexiglas [sic] bubble on top, similar to a B-26 canopy. As observer approached, he noticed a man wearing a baseball cap enter the object by steps from the bottom. After the man entered the object, it began to rise from the pavement and headed on a southeasterly direction at approximately 720 mph. The object had forward and aft lights that were very bright. As the object rose from the ground, a high speed drill type of sound was heard, plus a sound like that of welding rod when an arc is struck. Object was 75’ long, nearly 8’ from top to bottom and about 12’ wide. There were some type of supports up the bottom of the object.

After the object disappeared the witness got back into his car and drove approximately fifteen miles down the highway. At this time the original witness stopped and talked with another individual who had also stopped along the roadway to watch some lights over Red River which is approximately five or six miles to the southeast.

COMMENTS

Various organizations were contacted around the Temple [Oklahoma] area for a possible experimental or conventional aircraft. The observer stated that he thought the object was some type of Army or Air Force research aircraft. All attempts at such an explanation proved fruitless, since there were no aircraft in the area at the time of the sighting. Although there are numerous helicopters and other experimental in the area, none could be put in the area of Temple at approximately 0500, 23 March 1966. Because of this factor the case is listed as unidentified by the Air Force.

The second witness, who was not interviewed by the Air Force and who, according to the Blue Book files did not fill out their report form, was C. W. Anderson. Anderson confirmed for the newspaper that he had seen the craft as well. He told the reporter, “I know that people will say that Laxson is durned crazy. But that’s what I saw.”

Anderson said that he thought the object had been following him down the road. He had watched it in his rearview mirror for several miles. The problem for the Air Force was that Anderson did not see the pilot or crewman.

The drawing of the object made by Laxson, resembled, grossly, that Lonnie Zamora had made of the craft he saw in Socorro, New Mexico in 1964, which means it was sort of egg-shaped. It was certainly longer and was lying on its side. Like Zamora, Laxson said that he saw symbols on the object, but unlike Zamora, he recognized them. He told the report that, “On the side I made out… ‘TLA’ with the last two figures ’38.’”

Temple, Oklahoma object.

In what might be described as a fit of honesty, the Air Force admitted they had no solution for the case. The description of the “alien” was more human than humanoid and he seemed to be dressed in conventional clothes right to the “mechanics” hat. Investigation revealed a second witness and that might have influenced the Air Force, especially since the men had never met prior to the sighting. In the end, they labeled the case as “Unidentified.”

Here's the point, I thought the being, entity, creature, sighted at Canadian, had been human-like and wearing a baseball cap. That is the description for the Temple UFO sighting. Notice that there was no description offered of the creature offered for the Canadian sighting, just a rejection of the information even with two independent witnesses involved.

And to be sure that we’re all on the same page here, let me note that the Canadian EM Effect was the headlights going out but not the engine stalling. Of course, in the Temple case, there was no apparent EM Effect.

I think this straightens out the confusion. There was a creature in both sightings, but it was only in Temple, Oklahoma, that the entity was described. Of course, the other difference in is that the Canadian case was written off as unreliable but oddly, Temple was considered unidentified.

For those interested in such things, I did contact the newspaper in Canadian and received a very nice response. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any article about that particular UFO sighting. I was hoping that a report would provide the name of the civilian witness. 

Coast to Coast: UAPs and a Couple of Current Reports

First, I’d like to provide a little more insight into the government’s and by that, I mean the DNI’s that is the Director of National Intelligence, UAP high school level report. It was a superficial job and I have heard some defending it saying that there were only two people assigned to it on a parttime basis. I believe Congress required the report and I’d think that the DNI would have been able to provide more support for the investigation if he had wanted to do so. True, we haven’t seen the alleged classified version, but there is no real hint that they did anything other than look at the Navy’s and Air Force’s reports of 144 incidents. I’ll say again that I would have thought that a review of what has gone before, if only looking at the Project Blue Book files and the Condon Committee report would have provided some necessary insight. That is almost always the first step at the beginning of an academic research project.

Had this been left to me, I believe a review of the Blue Book index would have provided a few clues. Yes, the index contains only the bare bones of the reports, but then, it does provide information that would narrow the search. You could sort, manually, for physical evidence, radar, photographic or just look for those labeled as unidentified.

There are some very interesting cases listed as unidentified, such as the landing in Socorro witnessed by Lonnie Zamora, that would have provided a case with multiple chains of evidence that included landing impressions and burn marks. There are hints of additional witnesses who called the police before Zamora made his discovery.

But of even more importance, at least to those of us paying attention, is the way the Air Force investigated the sighting, proving that they were not overly interested in gathering evidence as opposed to suppressing it. I made that obvious in Encounter in the Desert, which is an in depth examination of the Socorro landing.

Even ignoring those sources of information because the cases are so old, there are many newer cases that provide some interesting insights.

On May 27, 2021, a man in White Hall, Illinois, said that he had looked out a window late at night and watched several lights move across the sky. He then saw a bright orange object with six or seven lights to the northeast. As he watched, the UFO suddenly shot up into the sky. He thought, originally, that it was cigar-shaped, but it looked more saucer shaped as it climbed out. He heard no sound.

Not really an impressive case with just a single witness. However, the next day he drove out into the field where the UFO had landed. There he found a circle in the wheat looking as if it had been pushed over without breaking the stems rather than crushed. Yes, there are photographs and so that everyone can see what the landing traces looked like. You can find the photographs here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/orange-craft-with-6-or-7-lights-takes-off-leaves-ground-trace/

And I thank William Puckett at his UFOSNW website for that information.

Please note that this took place on May 27, which means that it happened while the DNI was investigating UFOs. I suppose the answer will be that the DNI was interested in those sightings made by military personnel and had some photographic and sensor evidence of the UFO. And I suppose they will complain that the landing took place a little less than a month before the report was due. Of course, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to revise a book or posting because I suddenly had new information. That kind of goes with the territory. That case was not just a single witness, but there were also those landing traces.

On May 15 of this year, three people watched several bright balls of light heading northeast and then saw a large disk on the horizon. Through binoculars, the witness saw the disk had a row of windows on the side and that it didn’t appear to be rotating. There were multiple witnesses who used an optic device, that is, the binoculars, to study the object. The sighting lasted about four minutes and I mention this only because it happened in Randle, Washington, and they spelled Randle correctly.

Again, neither are spectacular, but they do provide a bit of favor as to what is going on today. Not as important as what the military is sighting, but important information might have been recovered had they bothered to take a look. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris and Trinity.

In what I think of as a special edition of A Different Perspective, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris, authors of Trinity: The Best Kept Secret. The program was an hour long, as usual, but we didn’t get to half the questions or comments on my list. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45140594

Paola Harris

We did get into the background of the story and those of you who visit here, know the tale. Two young boys see something crash, see the occupants of the craft, and then witness the lousy attempts at retrieval by the Army. It is clear that both Vallee and Harris accept the tale as authentic, with Vallee going into detail at how well youngsters can recall an event without embellishment. Of course, this overlooks the fact that the interviews were conducted, not with children at the time of the event, but with men decades later. It is clear that there are areas of contamination.

Much of the detail seemed to be reminiscent of the Roswell crash including the claim that lightning might have brought down the craft, about the Army recovery, and finally the descriptions of the aliens as looking like Jerusalem Crickets. This was the description provided by Frankie Rowe based on her experiences in the Roswell case. To me it was one more proof that the tale told isn’t so much about an observation by the boys but a borrowing of details from the widespread literature from Roswell.

I did ask Vallee about his use of the Aurora, Texas, UFO crash of 1897 as part of the history of UFO sightings. I mentioned that I had been to Aurora before all those others arrived, that I had interviewed some of the long-time residents who still lived there, and that two, count them, two, histories of Wise County had no mention of the crash. I have written about all that on this blog.

We did get to the Socorro UFO landing. I asked about his support of one symbol over the other, that Zamora himself had drawn, but again, the conversation diverted to other matters. Trivia? Sure, but it suggests something about the scholarship in the book.

There were many other matters as well. In the end, however, it was clear that there were only two witnesses who said anything about the crash who could be thought of as eyewitnesses. The third witness interviewed for the book, Sabrina Padillo, hadn’t even been born in 1945 to see the crash, but did inspect the alleged crash site in 1960.

Rather than go on, I’ll just point out that Vallee and Paola said that there was no documentation, the physical evidence that was talked about didn’t exist in today’s world, other than a couple of pieces that, when analyzed didn’t demonstrate an extraterrestrial origin. In other words, it was metal that could have been manufactured on Earth but that didn’t rule out an extraterrestrial origin, according to the analysis.

I will mention a fourth name, Bill Brophy, who talked about his father having flown over the crash site in 1945 (Exon and Roswell springs to mine here). According to Brophy, his father saw the two boys on the scene, the burned area and possibility the crashed object. But, again, the information was second hand and I have been working with those in Alamogordo in an attempt to verify both Brophy’s story and try to find any of those others assigned to the base at the time. Given it was 1945, and you can presume that nearly everyone assigned there would have been at least 20 in August 1945. It means the likelihood of finding anyone still alive is remote.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Kathleen Marden, who has an updated or expanded version of her book, Captured!. It deals with the Barney and Betty Hill abduction and we’ll see where it goes. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt: Part Two (Socorro, Abductions, and Tony's Theory)

 

This was the second half of the interview with Don Schmitt. It began, however, with a quick monolog from me about Tony Bragalia’s recent posting about the government admitting that they had been analyzing UFO crash debris and a suggestion that it relates to the Roswell crash. You can read about it here:

https://www.ufoexplorations.com/?fbclid=IwAR2MHkazL25EHR2KQrWgbFESwzm2NY8KvYLgWSng2Lw8_PxmxIYgrcfdOVc

John Greenewald, of Black Vault fame, provided an analysis of the article that reached a somewhat different conclusion. You can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dZwqTvJu_s&feature=youtu.be

Don and I touched briefly on this. To give away the ending, we are both somewhat skeptical about Tony’s conclusions. John is more than a little skeptical, but if you read Tony’s article and watch John’s video, I think you’ll be in a position to make up your own mind.

Don Schmitt

I asked Don for some of the best UFO cases. We talked about the Socorro UFO landing and how the case has been strengthened over the years. Not only were there other witnesses who called the police, but there were other sightings around the area within hours of Zamora’s. These include another landing in La Madera, New Mexico, which is north of Socorro around the Santa Fe area, but other sightings including one by a military NCO. You can read the whole tale of my investigation in Encounter in the Desert. We also discussed Philip Klass’ explanation. You can also find more information about all this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-part-one.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/07/socorro-new-mexico-and-lonnie-zamora.html

Of course, we did talk about abductions and a couple of other cases that are interesting. Don suggested there were only a handful of cases that seem interesting including Villa-Boas in Brazil, Betty and Barney Hill ad Travis Walton. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43394396

For those interested, we both agreed that the earliest cases are probably the best, simply because they were not influenced by cases that came before them and by the abduction researchers who often promoted their own agendas. Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I developed the theories surrounding abduction in The Abduction Enigma, which was published more than twenty years ago.

Don did mention a case he had investigated that involved a family and a lifetime of strife that resulted in all sorts of terrestrial problems. Although I had hoped to be able to supply a link to that information, there isn’t much that has been published about the case. I’ll try to get additional information.

Next week, David Marler is up, to discuss his investigation and findings about triangular UFOs. If you have questions, append them here.

A New Annoyance to Include Roswell and Socorro

 

Yes, I’m annoyed again, which, given the situation in the United States today shouldn’t be a surprise because I suspect everyone is annoyed about something or other. What set me off was another of the special edition “magazines.” This one dealt with the paranormal and, of course, UFOs were lumped in with the paranormal, which is something of a misnomer and a minor annoyance all by itself.

Of course, there was a section on Roswell that was about 300 words long. They seemed to believe the Project Mogul explanation but did note that many of us don’t accept it. I would say that this analysis is more or less neutral, but then, how do you explain a major UFO event in so few words?

The Roswell UFO Museum in downtown Roswell (where else?)

But the real problem was the short section that was devoted to the Socorro UFO landing and Lonnie Zamora. At the end, they noted that explanations had been offered including a hoax by high school students or that the mayor and Zamora had engaged in a different hoax with different motives.

Ignoring, for the moment, those explanations, I will note that Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla, the chief of Project Blue Book at the time, labeled the Socorro sighting as “Unidentified.” He wrote that he had searched long and hard for an explanation, that he had the proper clearances that would have allowed him to seen any top secret projects under development at either White Sands or Holloman Air Force Base and he could tap into sources unavailable to civilian researchers. He wouldn’t have had to probe very deeply, or known very much about those secret projects, if they fit the descriptions, timing, and location to offer a plausible solution. He came up with nothing.

Now, I look at these two explanations. Philip Klass concocted the explanation that the mayor owned the land where the UFO touched down, and it was the mayor’s plan to build some sort of monument or tourist attraction there. It was to create a situation in which his nearly worthless land would become a valuable property as a tourist attraction with possibly a small motel and other such conveniences. All speculation on Klass’ part.

The major problem with the theory is that the mayor didn’t own the land and the idea for the tourist attraction didn’t occur to anyone until a year after the landing. Then the idea originated in the city council and not the mayor. And, of course, no tourist attraction was ever built.

The second theory fails because there is no way that high school students could have devised such an elaborate hoax. They would have needed to create some sort of object that could land and take off. Zamora saw two beings near the craft or object, but he didn’t see them flee the area, which students would have had to do, unless they took off in that craft. They ran to the rear of the craft, it lifted off with a roar, and they were never seen again. Did they ride off in that UFO? To begin with, just how did they get it out there without being seen by someone? Wouldn’t it have involved more than the two people Zamora saw? Wouldn’t there have been some evidence of these others found on the site? The logistics simply do not work out.

The UFO Landing Site, photo by the Air Force.

This is not to mention that Sergeant Sam Chavez, who responded almost immediately, who arrived while the object might still have been visible high in the sky, saw nothing. And there were those people in Socorro who called the police to mention what they had seen and heard the thing in the air before Zamora made his report.

High school students just couldn’t have pulled it off without a lot of help, it would have involved more than the two beings that Zamora saw and probably vehicles to move the participants around the site.

The point here is that we have this rather slick magazine that provides nothing in the way of evidence, giving an explanation, or explanations, for sightings without actually doing much in the way of real research. Sure, I get they couldn’t have taken up pages, but when the Air Force investigator doesn’t have an explanation that works, it would seem that the magazine would be aware of that. You would think that they would be a little less biased in their presentations.

Anyway, I’m tired of having to make the same explanations over and other. As I say, Project Mogul Flight No. 4, was cancelled and did not fly, so it is not responsible for the Roswell crash. The cluster of balloons launched later in the day would not have made it up toward the Brazel ranch to leave the recognizable debris of weather balloons and rawin targets. How do I know this? Because Charles Moore, who is the author of this nonsense, had to change the launch time of Flight No. 4 claiming it was three hours earlier than the time the launch that was canceled. He had to do this because the winds aloft data did not support the path of the balloons later in the morning drifting to the Brazel ranch.

And we’ve dealt with the tired explanations of the Socorro landing. It is clear, from the information that has been developed by various researchers including Ray Stanford, Ben Moss and Tony Angiola (not to mention my own work on the case), that there was no plan for a tourist attraction and high school students didn’t pull off a prank.

I wish those who create these things would put a little more research into the articles. It doesn’t really do any good if they fill the pages with the first thing they find on the Internet. It just seems that very few, whose job it is to do proper journalism, take the time to do it. Kind of explains where we are today.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - David Halperin

I had the opportunity to talk with David Halperin about his new book, Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO. It is a somewhat skeptical treatise on the subject of UFOs, bringing it, you might

David Halperin

say, down to Earth. It is a new way of looking at UFOs, suggesting the subject is deserving of serious research, but that the emphasis has been all wrong. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/23845786

The discussion was somewhat wide ranging. I had been going to ask him about the Socorro UFO landing which he mentions in his book, but he brought it up first. Contrary to what we all might have expected, he has no explanation for what Police Officer Lonnie Zamora witnessed in April 1964. Given that the case doesn’t boil down to just Zamora’s observations but has physical evidence in the form of landing traces, there is no good explanation other than Zamora hoaxed the whole thing. The problem is, of course, that others reported the UFO in the sky prior to Zamora seeing the landing, and there is no evidence that Zamora hoaxed anything. I explored the case in depth in Encounter in the Desert.

We talked, briefly, about UFO abductions and the Barney and Betty Hill case. As most know, I’m a bit skeptical about these alleged longitudinal studies which require a huge logistical supply line that would span interstellar space. On the other hand, if there are alien abductions, then it would seem that the Hill abduction, which was more of a target of opportunity than a planned abduction, is a more likely scenario.

David also mentioned a sighting that I had investigated in which I found a solution but noticed the discrepancy between the statements of the two witnesses. This was the sighting from Mount Vernon, Iowa, that took place decades ago. You can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/sighting-report-november-17-1975.html

Finally, we got around to Project Mogul, which David brought up in his book. I had thought he was going to defend the idea but actually is bothered by some of the evidence suggesting that Mogul is not the answer. He liked the symmetry of the answer, but feared that it simply didn’t work. For those interested in an analysis of Mogul and some of the counter arguments, you can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/04/truth-about-mogul.html

In the coming weeks, I’ll be talking with Curt Collins about the Cash-Landrum sighting and Jan Harzan, the executive director of MUFON. If you have questions for either guest, post it in the comments section and I’ll get it asked during the interview.   

Chasing References - Socorro Edition

As many of you know, especially those who visit here regularly, I sometimes chase footnotes because it provides, well, a different perspective on some UFO reports. Finding the footnotes to chase isn’t all that easy and it is usually the result of researching another aspect of the UFO field. Sometimes, however, it can be a single reference in a book or article that triggers a question or two.

Such is the case of an article in the September 2019 issue of The MUFON Journal. Yes, I touched on this in the report on my interview with Don Burleson, and I don’t mean to target him here, but there is a point that needs to be made. As noted, you can hear our discussion in the last half of the October 9 interview.

The statement in question, the one that caught my attention, and frankly the attention of some others, said:

April 24, 1964, when Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora saw an egg-shaped, whitish object down in a gully and observed a red symbol on its surface. As investigator Ray Stanford discovered, authorities soon published an altered version of the symbol in order to guard against copycat reports, but area military pilots would have been given a classified briefing to warn them to be on the lookout for any airborne craft bearing the insignia the way Zamora had really seen it, an inverted V with three horizonal lines through its middle. Clearly the Socorro object and the Holloman object were somehow related, though I [Don Burleson] infer from various details that the Holloman object was probably larger.

The problem here is that there are errors in the thinking and speculation that is presented almost as if it is fact. The first real problem is the claim that the correct symbol is the inverted V with the three lines through it. This is the information supplied by Ben Moss, Tony Angiola and Ray Stanford. The trouble here is that

Zamora's sketch of the symbol made moments
after the object took off.

Zamora drew the correct symbol, that is an arc over an arrow with a line under it on two occasions. As the object departed, he drew the symbol on a scrap of paper and that scrap can be found in the Project Blue Book files. He signed that illustration.

On the evening of April 24, Zamora was interviewed by Captain Richard Holder of the Army and Arthur Byrnes of the FBI.  They suggested that Zamora not reveal the symbol to others to eliminate copycats, but he did draw it for them and he signed that image as well. This was what I think of as the umbrella symbol.

Zamora's drawing of the craft and the symbol
signed by him.

During the initial investigation, other military officers were involved during the investigation and they too, filed reports. In those documents, the umbrella symbol is identified as the true symbol.

Interestingly, Ray Stanford who was on the scene within days sent a letter to Richard Hall of NICAP in May 1964, a week or two after he had been to Socorro. In that letter he not only identified the true symbol as the umbrella symbol, but wrote that the inverted V with the three lines through it was the fake. Ten years later, when Stanford published his book, he had switched the symbols, now claiming that the inverted V was the true symbol.

Zamora had an illustration made of the craft that he had seen. The Socorro mayor thought it might be a good idea. The artist was Rick Baca. Under Zamora’s direction, the umbrella symbol was placed on that drawing.

The "Umbrella" symbol and the
inverted V with the lines through it,
as well as a couple of other variations.

Both Ben Moss and Tony Angiola believed that there had been a “secret” Socorro file that was separate from that found in the official files. All these official files entered the public domain when the Blue Book files were declassified in 1976. These unofficial “secret” files were obtained from Rob Mercer. The Socorro file was 200 pages that duplicated most of what was in the official file. In that unofficial file were two cards that held the inverted V. It is clear from the context that these cards were based on newspaper articles that were released in 1964. Ben Moss and Tony Angiola believed that this was the true symbol because it was in that file.

Carmon Marano, who was the last officer assigned to Blue Book, who had the responsibility of closing down the office after Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla had moved on to a new assignment, said that the information obtained by Rob Mercer was a document put together by those in the Blue Book office to show to reporters and others who were there to do research. You can listen to my interview with Rob Mercer here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-rob-mercer.html

In other words, it wasn’t an “official” document and it wasn’t a classified file about the Socorro landing. It was a briefing document for those without security clearances or who were civilians who had been granted access to the Project Blue Book files.

Rick Baca's drawing of the Zamora craft with the
"Umbrella" symbol added under Zamora's guidance.

What this means is that a suggestion that military pilots had been given a classified briefing containing the inverted V symbol, is in error because that is not the correct symbol. I can think of no reason that such a briefing would even take place. The pilots didn’t need to know what the symbol looked like. If they encountered an alien craft and saw a symbol, they could report that. If it doesn’t match that seen by Zamora, well, it just didn’t match. We can assume here that the military pilots wouldn’t be inventing a tale of seeing an object when they did not.

However, if you’ve told them what to look for, then you have contaminated the operation. You’ve told the pilots what they should see, and that means that they might just see what you told them to see. In other words, the classified briefing has defeated the purpose set out for it.

If you read the wording in The MUFON Journal paragraph carefully, you’ll notice the qualifiers. It said, “…area military pilots would have been given a classified briefing…” I asked Don Burleson for the source of this information. What I learned, from him, is that this was speculation based on what he believed would have happened. The real point is that no such briefing was given. It was pure speculation.

Here’s the problem with this. Someone else, writing a book about UFOs or an article about the Socorro sighting, might quote this particular paragraph, giving

the source as The MUFON Journal article. But there is no ultimate source for the information. The discussion of the symbol is flat out wrong and the classified briefing never happened. We follow it to this point and we can go no farther.

Although I don’t discuss the “classified briefing,” in Encounter in the Desert, my recent book on Socorro, I do discuss, at length, the whole sad tale of the true symbol seen by Lonnie Zamora. Much of that has also been discussed on the blog. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-zone-broadcast-network-ben-mosstony.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Lonnie+Zamora+symbol

In the future, as others research this case, I hope that they’ll find this as well. They’ll then know that there is a problem with that information. Maybe they’ll think twice about including it, or, if the do, they’ll qualify so that their readers will understand what has happened.