Lonnie Zamora

PersonWitness

Lonnie Zamora

PersonWitness

Lonnie Zamora was a Socorro, New Mexico, police officer whose April 1964 report of a landed egg-shaped object became one of Project Blue Book's best-known unknowns.

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30-Day Activity3 mentions

Oct 9Nov 7

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Opinion6Sighting report2

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Socorro Police Department85%

Probed Analysis

Lonnie Zamora was a police officer in Socorro, New Mexico, whose report on the evening of April 24, 1964, became the Socorro landing case, one of the most cited unexplained files of the Air Force's Project Blue Book. He spent his working life in the small town and passed away there in November 2009 at the age of 76.

Before joining the police, Zamora worked at New Mexico Tech, the science and mining college in Socorro; the skeptic Robert Sheaffer later wrote that he had been employed in its machine shop and that there had been friction between him and some students. By Zamora's account, he broke off a chase of a speeding car south of town after hearing a roar and seeing a flame, and found a shiny object in an arroyo with two small figures in white beside it before it rose and flew off. Officers who reached the site within minutes, including State Police Sgt. Sam Chavez, saw scorched brush and impressions in the ground, and the local Defensor Chieftain photographed the marks the next morning.

The case brought federal investigators to his door. Army Capt. Richard Holder, an up-range commander at White Sands Missile Range who lived in Socorro, reported it to the range, and the astronomer J. Allen Hynek, Blue Book's scientific consultant, walked the site with Zamora on April 29; the Chieftain reported that Hynek found his account solid and not a hoax. That August, Hynek called the landing "one of the classic cases." Blue Book's director, Maj. Hector Quintanilla, described Zamora as "a serious police officer, a pillar of his church," and the Air Force carried the sighting as unknown.

Skeptics have proposed several explanations. Philip J. Klass, who interviewed him in 1966, argued that the episode was a tourism hoax arranged by town leaders, probably with Zamora's collusion. In 2009 the researcher Anthony Bragalia publicized a 1968 note from New Mexico Tech president Stirling Colgate to Linus Pauling saying he had "good indication of student who engineered hoax"; Sheaffer wrote that a student prank would make Zamora its victim rather than a participant, and no student has been publicly identified. Other proposals include a lunar-lander test and a mirage.

Zamora stayed with the police for several more years and then worked for the city in other posts, including as manager of the landfill, until he retired. He was remembered as friendly and well liked but unwilling to talk about UFOs, and he gave no interviews in his last years. His name still headlines the case in 2026 posts calling it one of the most credible on record, and an FBI file published in the Pentagon's May 2026 UFO records release repeats the report that the object left four indentations in the ground. Six decades on, the case's standing rests largely on the patrolman who reported it, a man Air Force investigators described as reliable and who never sought the attention it brought him.

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Time Range

/u/hologram137

5d ago

socialr/

I'm reading Vallee's "Forbidden Science" journals. I finished the 1st, which not only provides so much insight and context into the beginning of Ufology and the government's study of it starting in the early 40s, but is also a great work of literature, poetic. It begins with an 18-year-old Jacques in France in 1957 to 1969 in SF, Ca.; and contains a lot of inside information you can't find anywhere else. I just started the 2nd volume, from 1970-1979, California Hermetica. And there are so man...

/u/playertariat

Oct 28

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This is part of a series of technical recreations of historic UFO encounters using Unreal Engine. According to the witness, officer Lonnie Zamora, a small egg shaped craft landed in a valley as he was pursuing a speeding driver. He broke off the chase and drove over the hill to spot two small beings huddled around the craft, which had a strange symbol on it. One spotted him and jumped. He drove closer and as he did they reentered the craft and a blue/orange flame shot out from beneath and the...

/u/biggggmonkey

Oct 23

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I was watching this interview with Bob Lazar. Skip to 30:00, and found it matched pretty closely with the Lonnie Zamora case. Lazar describes a "little bluish glow discharge" as the object lifted off the ground and a slight hiss sound. After 5-10 feet off the ground, the noise stopped and the glow went away. It reminded me of the Lonnie Zamora case in 1964. skip to 20:43, this video by LEMMiNO describes the event very well. Zamora saw a craft take off in a similar way. Rather than a hiss, he...

Disclosure Party

@disclosureorg · Jun 7

social𝕏

RT @HighlyStrange: 🚨 One of the most credible UFO cases ever: In 1964, Police Officer Lonnie Zamora witnessed an egg-shaped craft on the gr…

/u/Head_Consequence7903

Jun 6

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1st View. Some people have already seen the film at a preview screening They can't give out information due to contractual obligations, but they are revealing many details, and everything we suspected is true; they haven't left out anything related to REAL ufology. All the theories of UFO researchers are included. -Contacts will feel completely represented. They may even cry. -The Greys introduce ideas to abductees and access their memories. -Real cases such as Roswell, Lonnie Zamora, Kecksbu...

/u/A_Spiritual_Artist

Jun 1

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There are some good cases - Lonnie Zamora, Cash Landrum, Bentwaters, Rendlesham, ... - and many potentially legitimate accounts by non-famous people. But at the same time, there is an AWFUL lot of dubious science and claims out there. For example, it's really hard for me to believe that something which necessarily has to a) be relatively rare and/or sneaky so as to avoid being trivially obvious by now b) is the product of intelligences and/or alien species far more powerful than us, would c)...

Dr. Dan

@UAPDr · May 8

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🚨Is this really just a coincidence? The alleged San Agustin UFO crash site sits in the same western New Mexico corridor as Lonnie Zamora’s Socorro landing case and the Very Large Array from Contact? As @AmericanALCHMY and @chrisramsay52 say… “Ah… maybe it’s nothing.” https://t.co/SHZkdkBpug [Quoted] American Cosmic described a place so sensitive you had to be blindfolded to reach it. But not anymore. The alleged “Gifting Field” has now been found, walked, and filmed in daylight. Old Horse Sp...

Preview of 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_438

ReportAnalyzed

govMay 8, 2026

65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_438

FBI40 pagesMay 8, 2026RELEASE-01-FILE-014-65-HS1-834228961-62-HQ-83894-SERIAL-438

The released record says the object left four indentations in the ground. File: 65 HS1-834228961 62-HQ-83894 Serial 438. 65 HS1-834228961 62-HQ-83894 Serial 438 combines an official, downloadable document, 9 extracted claims, 1 evidence record, and 2 timeline entries across 40 source pages, and file-level provenance that can be compared with related release records.

War.gov PURSUEunclassifiedOpen Original

Interstellar

@InterstellarUAP · Apr 7

social𝕏

🚨 The 1964 Lonnie Zamora UFO Incident occurred on April 24, 1964 near Socorro, New Mexico 👽🛸 Police officer sees a shiny object. Hears a roar. Spots “Two cowboys hanging from a clothesline” beside it. Then it lifts off slowly, shoots into the sky with a blue-orange flame, and vanishes. Ground left with four pod marks. Bushes burning… but ice-cold to the touch. Project Blue Book’s conclusion after checking EVERYTHING up to the White House? “Unidentified, pending additional data.” Best-docum...