Heollo. I've spent the better part of fifteen years researching unexplained aerial encounters, and I keep coming back to one case. One case that, in my opinion, represents the most solid, best-documented close encounter we've ever had. And the thing is, the evidence in this case is rock solid. It happened on April 24th, 1964, just outside a little town called Socorro, New Mexico. And the witness wasn't some guy who'd had a few too many beers. He was a police officer. A five-year veteran of the Socorro Police Department named Danny Romero. Now, I never got to meet Danny. He passed away back in 2009. But I've read every document, every interview transcript, every official report. I've walked that desert myself. And I'm telling you, something happened out there that afternoon. Something that scared a decorated lawman half to death and left physical evidence on the ground that investigators from the FBI and the United States Air Force couldn't explain. The FBI described Danny Romero as, and I'm paraphrasing here, a sober, industrious, and conscientious officer who wasn't given to fantasy. This wasn't a man prone to making things up. He had roots in that community. He'd worked at the local university's machine shop before joining the force. People knew him. People trusted him. And what he saw that day changed his life forever.
So here's what happened. It was a Friday afternoon, around five forty-five in the evening. The sun was getting low but there was still plenty of daylight left. Danny was driving his patrol car, a white 1964 Pontiac, heading south on Park Street near the courthouse when he spotted a black Chevrolet about three blocks ahead of him, just flying down the road. Speeder. Young kid behind the wheel, looked like a teenager heading toward the rodeo grounds. Danny hit the gas and started the pursuit. Just another routine traffic stop, right? He's maybe a few blocks behind this kid when suddenly he hears this sound. This loud, rumbling roar. And he looks to the southwest and sees a flame in the sky. Bluish, sort of orange too, he said. A narrow flame that got a little wider toward the bottom. It was descending, maybe half a mile away, maybe a mile. Now, Danny knew there was a small shack out that way where they stored dynamite. His first thought was that thing must have exploded. So he breaks off the chase. Forget the speeder. If that dynamite shack blew up, people could be hurt. He turns off onto a gravel road that heads up into the hills toward where he saw the flame come down.
The terrain out there is rough. Hilly. Full of arroyos, those dry creek beds that cut through the desert. Danny's trying to get his Pontiac up this gravel road and the wheels keep losing traction. He has to back up and try again two, three times. The whole time he can still hear that roaring sound. He described it later as a roar, not a blast. And the pitch kept changing, going from high frequency to low frequency. This went on for maybe ten seconds before it finally stopped. Once he finally gets up over the hill, both the flame and the sound are gone. He's looking around, trying to spot that dynamite shack, when he sees something to the south. About 150 to 200 yards away. At first, he thinks it's an overturned car. You know how when a car flips, it can end up on its roof or its trunk? That's what it looked like to him. A white vehicle, turned over in the arroyo. But as he's looking at this thing, he realizes it's not a car at all. The shape is wrong. It's smooth. Oval. Like the letter O, he said. Whitish, like aluminum, but not chrome. It was just sitting there on the desert floor, maybe the size of a sedan, resting on what looked like legs.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]