Speaker 1: The SoCoRo Sighting. On a quiet Friday afternoon in April
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, in the desert outskirts of a small
Speaker 1: New Mexico town, a police officer named Lonnie Zamora witnessed
Speaker 1: something he would never be able to explain. What he
Speaker 1: saw wasn't just a light in the sky or a
Speaker 1: fleeting glimpse of something strange in the distance. He came
Speaker 1: face to face with an object that landed on the ground.
Speaker 1: He saw it in broad daylight. He saw beings, he
Speaker 1: heard sounds, and then it was gone. This was not
Speaker 1: the kind of encounter that left room for much imagination.
Speaker 1: It wasn't fuzzy. It wasn't seen through binoculars or filtered
Speaker 1: through half sleep. It was direct, vivid, and grounded in
Speaker 1: the real world, so much so that it would become
Speaker 1: one of the most thoroughly investigated UFO sightings in American history.
Speaker 1: The Air Force's own Project Blue Book would mark it
Speaker 1: as unexplained. This is the story of SoCoRo. This is
Speaker 1: Brief Encounters. I'm Nick, and this is episode twenty eight.
Speaker 1: The SoCoRo Sighting. April twenty fourth, nineteen sixty four, five
Speaker 1: forty five pm. Lonnie Zamora was a patrol officer for
Speaker 1: the SoCoRo Police Department. At five forty five pm, he
Speaker 1: was pursuing a speeding car near the outskirts of town.
Speaker 1: The area was flat, dry and scattered with brush, a
Speaker 1: classic desert stretch with a few winding roads, open scrub land,
Speaker 1: and distant hills. As he was driving, Zamora suddenly heard
Speaker 1: a loud roar and saw a flame in the sky.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a typical explosion, and it wasn't coming from
Speaker 1: the direction of the car he had been following. The
Speaker 1: sound was strange, deep and mechanical, unlike anything he'd heard before.
Speaker 1: Zamora stopped the chase and turned his car toward the
Speaker 1: source of the noise. He drove up a small hill
Speaker 1: and came to a stop at the top. What he
Speaker 1: saw next changed the course of his life. In the
Speaker 1: arroyo below, less than two hundred feet away was a
Speaker 1: white egg shaped craft. It was resting on what appeared
Speaker 1: to be four landing legs. It was about the size
Speaker 1: of a small car, roughly fifteen to twenty feet long
Speaker 1: and maybe ten feet high. It had no windows, no
Speaker 1: visible seams, and a strange insignia painted on the side
Speaker 1: a red inverted V with a line or bar across
Speaker 1: the top. Next to the craft, Zamora saw two figures.
Speaker 1: They were small, dressed in white coveralls and standing near
Speaker 1: the object as if they were examining or repairing it.
Speaker 1: At first he thought they might be children or possibly
Speaker 1: technicians in protective suits, but the presence, combined with the
Speaker 1: strange craft, instantly put him on edge. He radioed the
Speaker 1: dispatcher to report a possible aircraft crash, then moved closer
Speaker 1: on foot to get a better look. As he approached,
Speaker 1: one of the beings turned and seemed to notice him.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, the figures disappeared behind the object, and within
Speaker 1: seconds the craft emitted a loud, high pitched sound. Then
Speaker 1: it lifted off the ground. Zamora described a sound as
Speaker 1: almost deafening. It wasn't a wind, and it wasn't like
Speaker 1: a jet. It was a shrill, rising roar that shook
Speaker 1: his chest. The craft began to rise slowly on a
Speaker 1: column of flame and dust. There were no visible engines,
Speaker 1: no rotors, no wings, and no propellers. The entire object
Speaker 1: lifted straight up into the air without tilting or shifting.
Speaker 1: Once it was about twenty to thirty feet off the ground.
Speaker 1: The flame and noise suddenly stopped. Then the object moved
Speaker 1: silently away, speeding off into the distance in a straight line.
Speaker 1: The entire encounter had lasted just two minutes, maybe free
Speaker 1: at most, but for Zamora it felt much longer. He
Speaker 1: was stunned. Whatever it was, it wasn't any aircraft he
Speaker 1: had ever seen, and as a police officer who had
Speaker 1: worked in the area for years, he knew every type
Speaker 1: of plane, helicopter, and weather balloon used in that region.
Speaker 1: This was different. It didn't match anything in the local inventory,
Speaker 1: and it had landed with legs and visible contact with
Speaker 1: the earth. Zamora called for backup, and other officers soon
Speaker 1: arrived at the scene. Among them was Sergeant Sam Chavez,
Speaker 1: who found Zamora visibly shaken but coherent. Zamora pointed out
Speaker 1: the location and they began inspecting the site. There in
Speaker 1: the dirt were impressions from the craft's landing, four clear
Speaker 1: depressions forming a rectangle spaced exactly as Zamora had described.
Speaker 1: The brush underneath the craft was scorched, small rocks were
Speaker 1: blackened and cracked. The soil itself was baked. There were
Speaker 1: no footprints, no tire marks, no signs of hoax equipment
Speaker 1: or prank materials. What they found matched Zamora's account in detail.
Speaker 1: Within hours, the FBI and the Air Force were notified.
Speaker 1: Agents from White Sand's missile range and Kirtland Air Force
Speaker 1: Base were brought in, Project blue books sent investigators. Over
Speaker 1: the next few days, military and civilian experts combed the site.
Speaker 1: Soil samples were taken, photos were snapped, measurements were logged.
Speaker 1: The case quickly moved from local curiosity to national level incident.
Speaker 1: One detail that stood out was Zamora himself. Investigators noted
Speaker 1: that he was a reliable witness. He didn't see seek attention,
Speaker 1: he didn't exaggerate, his story never changed. He wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in money or fame. In fact, he was embarrassed by
Speaker 1: the entire situation and wanted it to go away, but
Speaker 1: he never recanted. One of the most intriguing details of
Speaker 1: the Soucoro sighting was the symbol Zamora described on the
Speaker 1: side of the craft, a red inverted V with a
Speaker 1: horizontal bar. This was not a military insignia. It didn't
Speaker 1: resemble any known aerospace or testing logo. Investigators took note
Speaker 1: of it, but couldn't match it to any existing organization.
Speaker 1: Years later, that symbol would show up in a handful
Speaker 1: of other reported sightings. In one case, a witness in
Speaker 1: France described a very similar emblem on a cigar shaped craft.
Speaker 1: In another, a drawing of the SoCoRo symbol appeared in
Speaker 1: a letter from a child who claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: a landing in Argentina. Whether these were coincident, mental, or
Speaker 1: influenced by Zamora's account is impossible to say, but it
Speaker 1: added to the mystery. Despite intense investigation, no conventional explanation
Speaker 1: ever emerged. The Air Force considered and rejected several possibilities,
Speaker 1: a lunar lander test. No such test was scheduled or
Speaker 1: authorized near Sikoro at that time, a hoax too elaborate,
Speaker 1: with no evidence of human involvement, a weather balloon. The
Speaker 1: physical traces left behind made that impossible. Project Blue Book
Speaker 1: ultimately labeled the SoCoRo incident unexplained. Zamora's citing became a
Speaker 1: benchmark for UFO researchers. It had all the right elements,
Speaker 1: a credible witness, physical evidence, multiple investigators, a four government response,
Speaker 1: and no clear answer. It was considered a classic close
Speaker 1: encounter of the second kind fighting that includes physical evidence
Speaker 1: but no direct contact with beings. Still, not everyone agreed.
Speaker 1: Some skeptics argued that the craft might have been a
Speaker 1: secret military prototype, But if that were true, why land
Speaker 1: it in plain sight? Why allow a civilian officer to
Speaker 1: witness it so clearly and then never offer a cover
Speaker 1: story or plausible explanation. Others suggested it could have been
Speaker 1: a misidentified helicopter, but Zamora was familiar with helicopters, and
Speaker 1: they don't land on legs or rise straight up on
Speaker 1: silent propulsion after lifting off with flame and thunder. There
Speaker 1: were also psychological theories stress sunlight illusions, but Zamora had
Speaker 1: no history of hallucinations, he was in good health, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't alone. Sergeant Chavez and others saw the landing marks,
Speaker 1: the scorched earth, the heat damage. Something landed there. That
Speaker 1: much was certain. It's easy to reduce a story like
Speaker 1: this to the bullet points, date, time, craft symbols. But
Speaker 1: what makes the SoCoRo incident stand out isn't just the data.
Speaker 1: It's the man. Lonnie Zemora didn't want this attention. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a believer a conspiracy theorist or a fame seeker.
Speaker 1: After the incident, he became withdrawn. He stopped giving interviews,
Speaker 1: he avoided the press, and when asked in later years
Speaker 1: if he thought what he saw was extraterrestrial, he always
Speaker 1: answered the same way, I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I just know what I saw. That honesty gave his
Speaker 1: story weight. He didn't speculate, he didn't theorize, he didn't
Speaker 1: turn his experience into a platform. He simply reported it,
Speaker 1: helped with the investigation, and went back to work. He
Speaker 1: remained in SoCoRo for years after eventually retiring from the
Speaker 1: police department, but he never changed his account, not once.
Speaker 1: The Socorro sit in is one of the few UFO
Speaker 1: cases where everything lined up, a credible witness and still
Speaker 1: no answers. For all our technological advancement, for all the theories
Speaker 1: we've explored, we still don't know what Lonnie Zamora saw
Speaker 1: that day. But we know he saw it, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's enough to keep looking. Next time, on Brief Encounters,
Speaker 1: we head to New Hampshire in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, where a couple driving home late at night
Speaker 1: found themselves at the center of one of the most
Speaker 1: famous abduction cases in history. That's episode twenty nine, the
Speaker 1: Betty and Barney Hill abduction,