Empty Pantry

Ray. Stanford. Socorro Saucer in a Pentagon Pantry. Blueapple Books
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Most readers will probably be aware of the 1964 Socorro landing case in which Lonnie Zamora, a policeman from New Mexico, claimed to have witnessed the brief touchdown of an egg-shaped UFO and the activities of two small humanoids. Contained in this book are detailed accounts of the sighting and subsequent investigations. We learn that Zamora was "extremely frightened and excited" by the sighting; indeed his first radio message was "incoherent". Nevertheless in the seconds available to him he managed to observe sufficient precise detail to place him in the Superman category.

Stanford's dramatic and inconsistent writings present "new facts" that simply do not stand up to cross-examination. Twelve extra witnesses become two names without addresses. Evidence of "highly radioactive" soil at the landing site turns out to be a rumour that photographs taken in the area shortly after the sighting were found to be fogged. (The author does not seem to be aware of other more obvious ways of fogging a film) On one page we are told that certain landing marks were "...made by wedge-shaped units being forced by a great weight, down into the well soil of the ravine." A few pages later it is ventured that "… the [other) group of soil indentations were shoe-prints of the two small humanoids ..." seen by Zamora. Several people had visited the site and walked over it by this time.

Of the first marks we are told "They did not appear to have been made by an object striking the earth with great force, but by an object of considerable weight settling to earth at slow speed and not moving after touching the ground. " Also "… the impressions , as described by all who saw them when fresh, were of a type that could not have bean dug in to the soil. They were obviously pressed in from above." A lot of words are wasted on this point because a visual inspection of the marks simply could not lead to such a definite conclusion.

Looking for mysteries, Stanford finds them at ever:f opportunity, usually in the form of government or military cover-up operations. When Zamora completely changed his description of the insignia he saw on the side of the UFO, it was immediately assumed that the military had suppressed the truth by persuading him to describe a different symbol. At one stage Zamora supplied an investigator with details of the UFO's approach path, (details he did not know, according to his earlier testimony) and Stanford suggests quickly that he must have acquired this new knowledge from a secret source. The idea that Zamora's imagination got the better of him does not seem to have been considered.

I do not think it is possible to formulate a single simple theory to counter the contents of this book, but the fundamental weakness of Stanford's investigation lies in his overwhelming desire to believe in complex UFO-officialdom conspiracies. Very plausible, but mundane interpretations of data are not discussed and information is presented with unrealistic precision. A reconstruction of the UFO sighting is, for example, timed to the nearest second! Unrecorded conversations, some over the phone made twelve years ago are now transcribed to the last 'uh', comma, and tonal inflection. As a result we are asked to believe that Dr Henry Frankel, a high ranking NASA metallurgist, uttered the naively absurd statement : "I am virtually certain that the alloy involved here [found at the landing site] is not manufactured anywhere on Earth."

Ray Stanford's unscientific and painfully naive investigation of the Socorro case has resulted in a largely fictional end-product. It is not without significance that Dr J Allen Hynek has endorsed this book with a glowing reference. -- David Simpson. Magonia New Series 4, Autumn 1976.