UFO Landing Frenzy in 1964

After the alleged Socorro, NM UFO landing (see previous blog entry, "The UFO Landing Heard Around the World"), NICAP became inundated with highly unusual UFO reports whose details extended far beyond mere lights in the sky, many of them in reference to UFO landings all over the country. The organization was being impacted by this UFO "flap" just as the staff struggled to publish its long-awaited report for Congress, entitled "The UFO Evidence."

In the two-page Special Report issued June 8, 1964, shown here (click to open), NICAP offers members a brief glance into the kinds of "things" their investigators were involved with. Indeed, while UFO landing reports were not commonplace in NICAP's experience dating from the fifties, nor were they unusual. What was unusual this time, at least in the USA, were scattered instances of small beings sometimes seen near the objects, and in at least one case (Gary Wilcox) a seemingly reliable witness reports conducting a conversation with small, apparently alien, entities during daylight in his farm field!

Note that all of this occurred several years before the considerably different and generally frightening "UFO abduction" incidents entered the arena of mystery in the USA. The famous Barney and Betty Hill "abduction," for example, would have taken place years before the 1964 landing cases -- yet another enigmatic potboiler which, when at last revealing itself to the world years later, brought with it an ongoing parade of similar events rarely, if ever, seen by investigators before.

Contact Me???

Should you wish to CONTACT ME, my e-mail address appears in the profile information, and I'll also list it here. As you know, spam has become an insurmountable blight on Internet communication, and "spam-bots" cheerfully roam the Web, looking for people who reveal e-mail addresses. Therefore, to foil them -- I mean, I'm sure the time will soon approach when even this won't work -- I'm forced to break my address up into portions. So, to contact me:

(Type the word) rob
(Type the underline character once)
(Type the word) wildwinds
(Type the @ character)
(Type the words) yahoo.com

NICAP Link Added

So far, I've sprinkled references to NICAP.org all over these blog entries, so it's great to finally put a link up in the link list. The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena closed around 1979-80 after a long run since 1956. During the powerful NICAP era, the "best and the brightest" of UFO witnesses and cases were documented, resulting in some of the most compelling incidents on record, especially those involving military and commercial airline reports.

Thanks particularly to UFO investigator, writer and former NICAP associate Francis L. Ridge, NICAP's history lives on through a fully authorized, official web site initiated in 1997. At nicap.org you'll find not only a collection of the best UFO evidence in the world, there's also a great on-site search engine to assist in locating the facts, not the fallacies, of UFO investigations. The site is supported by the Fund for UFO Research. If you check out the section offering materials for sale, you'll discover some worthwhile items. The NICAP link is very important to this blog and I'm happy to add it above.

Socorro: The UFO Landing Heard Around the World

To exemplify the definition of the term, "when all hell broke loose," we need only remember April 24, 1964, the day when patrolman Lonnie Zamora allegedly had a somewhat close encounter with a landed UFO in Socorro, New Mexico. A roughly egg-shaped object with strange markings on the side, small beings on the ground who scurried back inside, a terrific roar and flame as the thing ascended quickly and shot out of sight, apparently just missing a dynamite shack, and landing marks on the ground where vegetation continued to burn 24 hours after the event -- this incident had it all. National news headlines could barely hold the volatility of this incredible report as details exploded and shot like missiles to news agencies all over the world.

The Socorro event was hardly an isolated incident, however, as NICAP and other organizations, began receiving sighting -- and encounter -- reports nonstop. In response, as May, 1964 arrived, NICAP issued to members an alert about the Socorro case, and also dispatched postcards intended to capitalize on media attention. NICAP, we must realize, was very much a lobbying organization, in addition to serving as a profoundly effective UFO investigative entity, and when UFO publicity was high on the public mind there was no better time to "strike while the iron is hot" to increase public, and especially, Congressional attention.

Also mentioned is NICAP'S The UFO Evidence, an amazing 1964 report on the verge of publication, under assistant director Richard Hall's brilliant editorial supervision, which would be sent to every member of Congress in 1964. Filled abundantly with important military, government, airline pilot and other UFO reports to confound conventional scientific explanations, this NICAP document remains one of the top publications ever released about the UFO enigma.

For more on the Socorro incident, consult the nicap.org website and other reliable sources. Note, too, that Wendy Connors' Faded Discs (see link above) project offers digital recordings containing audio recordings of principal players in major UFO cases such as the Socorro incident.

Faded Discs & Virtually Strange

While this blog has a long journey ahead, I'm pleased to put up its first two links today, and fine sources they are.

Faded Discs is an historical project initiated by respected UFO researcher Wendy A. Connors years ago. Her goal was to literally rescue, clean up and convert to digital format old UFO-related recordings, otherwise doomed because of the deteriorating and unreliable media (reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, for example) upon which they were stored. Confronted with thousands of recordings (long forgotten radio and TV shows, case reports, witness interviews, military UFO accounts and so much more), Wendy has accumulated a collection of documentary gold, intended eventually for The National Archives, and she also offers much of it publicly in return for donations to purchase equipment and to keep this essential historical project afloat. Having heard, contributed "oldies" myself, and reviewed her work (my reviews may be read via the UFO UpDates archive of the Virtually Strange Network -- but more on that link shortly), I can say categorically that if Wendy hadn't begun this project, an immense amount of irreplaceable history and evidence for UFO existence would be lost forever. Thanks for your long dedication out there in New Mexico,Wendy, you're one of a kind.

Canada is indeed fortunate to call Errol Bruce-Knapp its own. For many years he has hosted his "Strange Days...Indeed" weekly radio program, part of the Virtually Strange Network, now available via pod-cast, and it's my pleasure to include above a link to his bustling website. If you want to stay current, I mean literally day-to-day current, you absolutely must check out the "UFO UpDates" section, where an ever-expanding list of written contributions from respected UFO researchers, scientists, intellectuals, media representatives and just plain folk continuously takes the "pulse" of the international UFO subject's status. Errol is a great talk host and mediator, very congenial and every bit the gentleman. Click the Virtually Strange Network link at the top of this page and explore the truth.