Lorenzen and Zamora

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I remember that initial drive down towards Socorro, NM.

I have to admit that I was quite excited about going to school at NMIMT. One, the school was rated 5th in the nation at that time in history, and two it was home to the sighting that changed J. Allen Hynek’s, opinion of UFOs.

My first semester was uneventful, basically adjusting to living on one’s own. I had no one to answer to but myself. Then, came the spring semester and the state Science Fair.


Since I was a freshman, I could not evaluate the participants, but I could work as security.  As we sat there, in the gymnasium, “guarding” the installations of experiments, the talk turned to the April 1964 landing.

Another students said he knew exactly what had landed in Socorro, and it was a test of the lunar module. That did not ring true with what I knew of the landing so I decided to do two things:

A) Contact UFO investigators, Jim and Coral Lorenzen at APRO, the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization.

B) Contact and meet with Officer Lonnie Zamora.

I was successful at both.

The letter I received back from the Lorenzens was quite informative. It was 3 pages, handwritten by Coral It  included every piece of information which they had acquired during their investigation.



The time I spent with Mr. Zamora was quite informative. We went to the site, and in the ground, 11 years after the incident, were the landing indentations. The sand around them was glass-like in appearance.

This is quite telling, as they had survived the erosive properties of the desert. This alone indicated that it was highly unlikely a prank; nor did his story speak of a prank of any kind. This man was sincere, and at the time of the incident, scared.

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The New Mexico Years

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As my life began to end in my hometown, I was preparing to move to New Mexico to further my education at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. 

We sold our house, packed our belongings and moved to Peralta, NM, which is just south of Albuquerque. My dad’ sister and her husband lived on the property just across the street from what would become my home for the next 31 years.

Our first night in NM, waiting for our furniture to arrive, was spent at my aunt’s and uncle’s home. My uncle worked out at Sandia Base as a security guard. 

My uncle and I were shooting pool and drinking beer and discussing UFOs. He told me that on several occasions he had seen strange craft in the skies over the base. Most of them he said were probably ours under the cover of what he called “Black Projects”, but there were two that stood out in his mind that probably were not ours. 

The first one took place out in Coyote Canyon. He had just clocked in at the site, and something caught his eye just above the Manzano Mt range. His estimate of the size of this craft was about 2 football fields in length, and about 4 stories thick. It hung silently in the air, no sound nor movement for about 10 minutes, then, it abruptly disappeared straight up. He said that there was no reflection of sunlight; rather the craft had a matte finish to it.

The other was a sighting back in the late fifties or early sixties that he and my dad’s brother had at Sandia. My dad’s brother was an engineer for Sandia, and lived with my uncle for a few months. They were near one of the gates that lead back to the Manzano Mt range (nuclear weapons were stored there during the cold war), when a “bat winged” like object appeared to emerge from the side of the mountain range. It disappeared from view in seconds, and never made a sound.

Little did I know that this conversation would be the precursor to my life in New Mexico.

Uncle Mamp

As I mentioned in my last post, I come from a family whose ties, both musically and spiritually, are in the Roswell/Corona area. The uncle that I immediately took a “shine” to when we first met was my uncle Mamp.

Uncle Mamp moved from the area in the ‘20’s to San Antonio, TX. He would come back for the family gatherings/reunions as one of the Ol’ Timers. I remember him as being very youthful, not being “bent” by life.

Our first meeting was quite interesting. My family had just pulled into the small clearing at the base of the Pinos Wells Mountain. We had no sooner gotten out of the car than here was a tall gentleman, balding, holding a mandolin. He walked straight over to me and started a conversation with me (I was 10 years old). The conversation dealt with UFOs and their reality in our reality.

We walked off continuing this discussion. Mamp introduced himself to me, and said he had been waiting for me to arrive at the reunion; a kindred spirit is what he referred to me as being, and began to tell me about his experiences with UFOs. Keep in mind that this was the very first time I had met this man.

We ended up walking, picking up arrowheads, and discussing our views on the possibility of life on other planets. He told me that when I got older that this “talk” with him would mean more to me and make more sense. He got my mailing address and promised that he would keep in touch. Which he did, he mailed clippings from Texas newspapers, articles that he would find and my first UFO book “UFOs: Serious Business!” by Frank Edwards.

We must have covered a lot of ground on our walk, as when we headed back to the gathering everybody there was out scouring the area for me. It was a forested area and my folks were worried that I had wandered off and had gotten lost. Apparently no one noticed Mamp and I walking away from camp.

Mamp passed back in 1978. I still have some of our correspondences and that book. In that book is the small blurb on Roswell, which at that time was still being accepted as a balloon. On a small piece of paper, marking that page, Mamp had scribbled, “Not what happened.”

Damn-near Indestructible...

As I have mentioned before, my folks grew up around the Cedarvale, Roswell, Corona NM area. My dad’s family lived up in a small mountain in that region called Pinos Wells Mountain. There was a small village with that same name located in the land just before reaching that mountain. A friend of the family, who has been ranching, now owns that land. Much of the population has moved away.

Back when he owned the property, my dad’s side of the family would hold family reunions at the base of Pinos Wells Mountain. We would gather, usually at the end of the summer, and have a great time. I got to meet cousins, uncles and aunts that I would probably never have known existed. We would camp out at the mountain under the stars. It was there that I got to hear of some of the first-hand experiences by other members of my family.

I remember vividly one such night, as I came up on the campfire, my dad was playing guitar along with his brothers. My uncle Mamp was on mandolin and one of my cousins was on fiddle. They were talking about some metal that they had seen “back in the day”. My dad was struck by how the metal was damn-near indestructible. You couldn’t burn it, bend it or tear it, but it looked just like the foil from a package of cigarettes.

Uncle Mamp came up with the idea of the metal probably not being from this planet, and all of my relatives agreed. Then they told me about a cousin who revolved between being sheriff and chief of police in a small NM town. Apparently, during a term when he was sheriff, he took a photograph of 5 or 6 UFOs in formation flying over the town. Everybody there said that they had seen the photo and it clearly showed the crafts. They also said that it was so clear that the Air Force came and took the photo and the negative. Unfortunately this cousin was not in attendance that year. I filed the information away and would ask this cousin when I saw him next.

It would be 20+ years before I saw him again. It was at a town reunion for Cedarvale, NM. He and his wife showed up and he sought me out to see if I followed in my father’s footsteps

musically.

As we were tuning up, I mentioned this photo. He got a strange

look on his face, then looked straight at me and said, “ Why Wade, that never happened. You know that those things don’t exist.” I said I didn’t know any such thing, and that every relative said that he had the photo, that they had physically seen it, and that the local Air Force base came and confiscated it.

His eyes darkened and he repeated, “Those things don’t exist.”

He passed away later that year from prostate cancer.

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Trains, Telescopes and UFOs

As time went on, I began to have more and more interest in the burgeoning UFO phenomenon.

Over the years I saw objects in both the daylight, evening and nighttime skies. My dad always told me, “We would be incredibly foolish if we believed we were the only life in this Universe. They’ve watched us for thousands if not millions of years, we’re only now noticing them.”

During my pre-adolescent and adolescent years I had several telescopes. I would watch the heavens, monitor the moon, and view the planets. I was fascinated with our solar system and always wished I had stronger and stronger telescopes. The feeling of “them” being close has always been with me, and has only gotten stronger the older I have gotten. I noticed, especially during the summer months, that I would go to bed at night, and when I would wake up in the mornings there would be small amounts of blood on my pillow. Not a lot, not enough to alarm me, but they were there none the less. These lasted until I was 18 years old. They abruptly stopped when I graduated high school and moved to New Mexico. The sightings however did not stop, if anything they increased.

My dad worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, so he was stationed at various points in the Southwest. During the summers we would spend them with him on the “bunk cars”. During the school year we (me, my sister and my mom) would live in La Junta, Colorado. During a trip at the beginning of the summer, my family and I were headed towards Clovis, NM. It was approximately 9 p.m. and we were winding down towards San Jon and there was a farm off to the right of the car. I looked out the back window and a bright object was coming down silently, the light from it lit the windmillnear a watering trough.

As it came down you could see what looked like landing superstructure. As far as I can remember, we just kept heading down the hiway towards our destination.

The memory of that light is as vivid today as it was over 40 years ago.

Connected To The Heavens

Being able to look back at my formative years lends itself to introspection. Many things occurred, some I remember and others are lost to time for now. I was always looking at the sky and stars, with a feeling of longing perhaps. Always feeling connected in some way to the heavens.

When I was 4-5 years old, my older sister and I were sitting on our parent’s bed. She was talking with my mother who was in another part of the house (our house was small). I was on the foot of the bed when I heard a noise behind me. I turned towards the sound where I found the closet opened. My eyes were drawn to an upper shelf, and I saw what I thought was a pair of large reflective eyes looking back at me. The terror that this struck in me I cannot begin to describe. At first I was literally frozen with fear, I could not move or speak. When my speech returned the scream that escaped my lungs was piercing. My mother ran back into the room to check on us and my sister grabbed me. I looked back into the closet and tried to describe to my family exactly what it was that I saw on that shelf. My sis walked over to the closet and after rummaging around on that shelf produced an 8mm movie camera and extra lens. After much consoling I accepted the explanation and calmed down. I can still recall that paralyzing fear. I can also still see the eyes and head of what I thought had been in that closet. Some things never go away, and for that I am grateful.

The Beginning

I was born in December of 1955. My parents had been married 20 years by the time my motherbecame pregnant with me. My sister was born in 1945, and 5 years later my mother suffered an ectopic pregnancy. The ectopic pregnancy had ruptured one ovarian tube, and the resulting infection had damaged the remaining one. My mother’s physician at the time explained to my parents that my sister would be their only child. The ectopic pregnancy occurred approximately 5 years before my conception.

My mother was 38-39 years of age when I was conceived. The symptoms of pregnancy were never pronounced in the beginning, so she remained unaware of my existence for several months. When my family found out that I was coming, it took them by surprise, but they were extremely happy with the news.

My birth was uneventful, and my early childhood was a happy one. I’ve always had very vivid dreams even as a child. Dreams of war were a common theme. I remember one dream that I couldn’t describe until my late teens. I was in a foxhole, there were starburst shells (mortars) going off, and the smell of blood was intense. I was approximately 4 years of age. A second dream that I had at this time was where I would be sitting outside on our back porch and up in the sky was a gleaming “City”. There were “angels” coming in and out of the city in small “bubbles”. I use the term angels, as that is what a Sunday school teacher had explained to me they were, angels. Both of these dreams were recurring in theme, but it was as if they were a continuing story.

My earliest memory is at about 18 months to 2 years of age. My sister, a family friend, and myself were at the park in my hometown. There was a playground at the park, and all three of us were on a push merry-go-round. The family friend was holding onto me during the ride. Some how he lost his grip and I flew out of the ride landing face first on asphalt. Miraculously I was basically unhurt. Very minor scratches to my face and that was it. I healed rapidly. I remember rapidly flying through the air and striking onto the asphalt/gravel covering of the playground.

The last physical insult was the measles. My temperature rose to 104-107 degrees Fahrenheit, and my mother could only get it to break to 102 degrees. The family doctor came over and feared that if they could not get the fever to break there would be permanent damage to my nervous system. They were making plans to hospitalize me when the fever broke and never returned. My family was relieved.

As a side note, when the IQ scalar test was given in first grade, my score was 181. I never knew the result of my IQ test. My mother believed that the IQ result was just a number, and if you did not know how to apply it, it meant nothing. Until my sister told me the results I had had no idea of what I had scored.

It was normal for me, as a small child, to explore our property. In our back yard I would watch the birds, butterflies, clouds, all held intense interest for me. I loved to catch grasshoppers. I would chase them all over our backyard. Catch them, put grass and leaves in a Mason jar, puncture the lid with holes and put them in the jar. The bigger the grasshopper, the better. Then, one morning when I was about 5 or 6 years old, I woke up and was terrified of them. To this day I have a pathological fear of grasshoppers. If I am any where near one, I keep it in my sight and give it a wide berth. If I cannot escape it, I will find the nearest object I can use as a weapon and kill it. I cannot even pick up the remains of the ones I have killed. It is truly terrifying to me.

It was shortly after the measles that I developed a skin condition. Flaky, scaly, but yet not eczema or psoriasis. Our family doctor tried every known lotion, unguent and cream but nothing would suppress this skin abnormality. This disorder vanished after I turned 18.

During my youth, pre-teen years if you will, I had strange episodes. I personally did not perceive any missing time, but my family experienced it for me. As a 10-11 year old, I was allowed to walk to a friend’s house to play. My mother walked it with me the first time and timed the walk. It was about 15 minutes and she allowed another 10 minutes to adjust for potential delays. There were multiple times when I would show up at home, and part of my family would be out looking for me. I would be over 2 hours late. When pressured for an excuse for my tardiness, I did not have one. I had left my friend’s home, started walking to my house, and ended up at home. I had no recollection of any delay. So I got grounded. This happened many, many, many times.

I remember one time ending up behind a stand of juniper trees that were at the north edge of our house. I “came to” behind the hedges, just as my legs collapsed, like I had been blocked to the back of my knees, or picked up and dropped. I ended up on my ass, behind juniper trees and very confused as to how I had gotten there. I never came up with an explanation, just never questioned any of these experiences.

In the summer of 1967 I was standing at the corner of my street facing north. The sky was that leaden gray color that you mentally attach to the approach of a summer thunderstorm. Across the street was our Junior High School. I would be attending there when school resumed in the fall. I looked up over the buildings, and there was a flock of pigeons wheeling across the sky, moving west. All except one “pigeon”, which seemed further away than the others. It just hovered in place, more northerly than the flock. As the flock began to settle onto the buildings, the lone object turned sideways. It stood as a circular, lenticular shape against that sky, and then it shot straight up into the clouds. It was gone in a flash. I raced back home, and ran into the living room where my mother was ironing and listening to the local radio station, KBZZ. The dj on the radio was talking on the phone to a woman in the northern part of my hometown. She had called into the station to report a disc like object that had been flying near her horses. The horses, according to this woman, had panicked and were trying desperately to get out of the corral. At this point the dj began to deride the woman, claiming that she was “drunk” and should quit prank calling the radio. I looked at my mother and told her about the disc that I had just seen over the Junior High, she looked at me and jokingly told me I was crazy. That was that. End of discussion. The “Skippy” the horse incident would occur in just a few months. The coincidence between my sighting and that of “Skippy” did not go unnoticed by me.

Pace.