James W. Stokes Car-Stop Encounter near Orogrande, New Mexico

On the night of November 2 and 3, 1957, drivers around Levelland, Texas, reported glowing objects that stalled their engines. The very next day, it seemed to happen again in daylight in New Mexico. The witness was James W. Stokes, who worked at Holloman Air Force Base. NICAP's file lists him as an electronics instrumentation technician in the Rocketsonde Branch. The press called him a high-altitude research engineer and a retired Navy man.

Monday, November 4, 1957, about 1:10 p.m. Stokes was driving from his home in Alamogordo to El Paso on US Highway 54. Roughly 8 to 10 miles south of Orogrande, his car radio faded. The car slowed as if the battery were failing, then the engine died. Ahead of him, six to a dozen other cars had stopped too, their drivers out and looking at the sky.

The object approached from the northeast over the Sacramento Mountains. Stokes described it as egg shaped, with a shiny surface like mother of pearl. Some accounts add a slight purplish tinge. He estimated it at about 500 feet long, moving at 1,500 to 2,000 miles per hour. It had no visible portholes, vapor trail, smoke or flame.

It dropped in a shallow dive to perhaps 1,500 to 2,500 feet. Then it "wheeled and made a pass at the highway, across the road not more than two miles ahead," and headed toward the Organ Mountains. Investigators later described a second pass on a wider, more southerly arc. Whether that was a second object or the same one returning, the sources disagree.

"As it passed at its closest point I could feel a kind of a heat wave but there was no sound," Stokes said. It lasted about three minutes. Afterwards, the battery was steaming.

By evening, Stokes's face looked sunburned. Jim Lorenzen of APRO spoke with him that same evening and saw the redness, calling it "possibly sunburn." By the next day it had cleared.

Reporters descended on Alamogordo. Stokes gave an interview on KALG radio. Newspapers reported he had been given radiation tests. The Air Force called that "untrue." Under questioning, the press said, his story stayed "basically unchanged."

Project Blue Book ruled it a hoax. The supporting witnesses could not be found. Officers said there was no record of Stokes holding an engineering degree. The Alamogordo Daily News reported he had told people he wanted to "get even with the Air Force." And the case looked like a copycat of Levelland.

Others were not convinced. Two motorists are named in reconstructions: Allan D. Baker of Holloman and a Mr. Duncan of Las Cruces, who reportedly took 35 mm film of the object. That film has never surfaced. Lorenzen noted that someone other than Stokes called an El Paso paper with an identical report. Writing to NICAP director Donald Keyhoe in February 1958, he said he was "inclined to think that your surmise concerning military silencing is correct."

Levelland was put down to ball lightning and wet electrical circuits in a storm. That reasoning fits poorly on a desert road at midday, and no natural explanation has been offered for Orogrande. Brad Sparks lists it as Case 1264 in his Blue Book Unknowns catalogue, and Kevin D. Randle covers it in his book Levelland. What ten stalled cars saw on Highway 54 remains an open question.