Alien Abduction: Is Travis Walton's Story the Most Compelling Evidence We Have?

As this is my first time writing for Decoding the Unknown, I feel that it is only fair to you, the reader, that I lay all my cards on the table from the beginning.

I am, if at all possible, even more of a sceptic than Simon.

I don’t believe in ghosts and, even if I saw one, which is particularly unlikely as I am completely blind, I would be definitely more likely to consult a doctor than a medium. I also believe that the latter should all be rounded up and prosecuted for whatever crime includes extorting money from the gullible or emotionally vulnerable.

I am similarly sceptical when it comes to alien encounters. Call me naïve if you wish but I feel that if an advanced race of super beings were attempting to contact us, they would probably have the intelligence to go directly to one of the world’s major governments rather than landing by some poor, unsuspecting sod who nobody is ever going to believe out in the middle of nowhere.

All that being said, when I came across the story of Travis Walton, I initially dismissed it out of hand as just another rambling story from a crazy person. However, when I looked into it in more detail, I began to get the feeling that something strange had definitely happened. Whether or not that strange thing is simply that one man managed to convince a group of his friends and colleagues to engage in an elaborate prank and stick with that prank for 46 years in spite of the incredible damage it did to their reputations remains to be seen.

Anyway, enough preamble. Put on your tinfoil hats, sit back, and relax and I will tell you the peculiar story of the Travis Walton alien abduction.

Introduction

By all accounts, Travis Walton was a typical “lads lad” during his early life. Popular with almost everybody, supremely self-confident, and just generally fun to be around. According to one man who claimed to have known him fairly well: “Everybody’s got that one friend who is up for anything. A practical joker who is just as happy to be the recipient of a practical joke, purely for the fun of it. For us, that friend was Travis.”

One example of Travis’s near suicidal levels of impulsiveness occurred when he and some friends were driving around their hometown of Snowflake in Arizona. As the story goes, they were just driving around town with no particular destination in mind when they were forced to stop due to the fact that there was a bear in the middle of the road. Before anybody could stop him, Travis had leapt from the car and proceeded to charge the animal whilst shouting and screaming.

Apparently, the bear wanted no part of this crazy mad man, and immediately fled the scene leaving Travis unharmed and with an incredible story to tell.

It is worth taking note of this story as, when we look back on Travis’s main story with a view to deciding on its authenticity, the lengths that he was prepared to go to have a good story to tell may just aid us in our final verdict.

The Incident

Whilst carrying out research for this article, I have both read and listened to many different accounts. Some from journalists who reported on the case, some from people who claim to have witnessed it first hand, and some from Travis himself. To the best of my knowledge, the following contains the most accurate — or at least the most frequently reported by those involved — version of the story.

On Wednesday, the 5th of November 1975, Travis Walton, and the rest of his logging crew — Boss Mike Rogers, Allen Dalis, John Goulette, Dwayne Smith, Kenneth Peterson, and Steve Pierce — spent a comparatively normal day felling trees in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

According to Travis, nothing of any particular note happened that day, save from when Alan, a team member who seems to have had a grudge against all of the others at one time or another, attempted to hit him with a falling tree. Apart from that, the day proceeded as normal until about 6 o’clock when the crew packed up and left the site in Mike’s old pick-up truck. As they drove back towards town, Travis and the others became aware of an unusual light shining through the gaps in the trees. Travis claims that he initially believed it to be the light from the setting sun before remembering that the sun had gone down some 30 minutes ago.

As the truck reached a gap in the trees, Mike slammed on the brakes and the entire crew stared dumbfounded at the most incredible site any of them had ever seen.

The following description comes from travis-walton.com which contains a detailed description of the entire event purportedly written by Travis himself. However, having heard him speak in several interviews and having read many of his direct quotes, I believe that it is highly likely he may have employed the services of a professional writer to assist with this retelling. The style is almost poetic in some places and just does not seem to fit the image and style that has built up around him over the last 46 years. Nevertheless, here it is:

I estimated the object to have an overall diameter of fifteen or twenty feet; it was eight or ten feet thick. The flattened disc had a shape like that of two gigantic pie-pans placed lip to lip, with a small round bowl turned upside down on the top. Barely visible at our angle of sight, the white dome peaked over the upper outline of the ship. We could see darker stripes of a dull silver sheen that divided the glowing areas into panel-like sections.

The dim yellowish light given off by the surface had the lustre of hot metal, fresh from a blast furnace.

As the rest of the crew sat in stunned silence just staring at the craft, Travis says that he was seized by an overwhelming urge to get closer and take a proper look. To that end, in spite of Mike’s half whispered protestations, Travis opened the passenger door, leapt out, and began to slowly approach the UFO. As he did so, he was struck by just how smooth the disc appeared to be: “There were no visible antennae or protrusions of any kind. Nothing that resembled a hatch, ports, or window-like structures could be seen.”

It was at this point that doubts began to surface in his mind as to whether or not what he was doing was wise, stopping briefly to look back at the rest of the crew in the truck, he decided that, if all else failed, he could at least run away. His decision made, he stepped fully into the circle of light cast by the disc and, almost immediately, began to hear a strange noise as if this incredible machine was somehow powering up. Unfortunately for him, before he could run back to the truck, something happened.

That something took the form of a jet of light, later described by the others as: “a tremendously bright, blue-green ray” shot from the craft striking Travis in the head and chest. He was immediately thrown about 10 feet backwards before hitting the ground and losing consciousness.

Disappearance, the Search, and Police Response

Understandably, upon seeing their colleague attacked in this way, the rest of the crew were somewhat rattled. Mike Rogers explained what happened next in an interview with Kevin Randall for the ‘A Different Perspective’ podcast:

Travis hit the ground flat on his back and did not move. I particularly remember Allen Dalis screaming at me to, you know, get the hell out of there! I waited… you know… about three or four seconds. I just did not feel like we could leave at the moment, but everybody was yelling at me, and it was very frightening, so I very quickly became panicky. I hit the gas and took off down that road real fast.

A quarter of a mile down the road, Mike came to his senses and stopped the truck.

Foremost in his mind was the fact that they had abandoned Travis.

They had no idea what had happened, no idea if he had been injured, no idea if he was even still alive.

Mike got out of the truck and was eventually joined by the remaining crew members. At this point, a somewhat lively discussion began as to what they should do next. Although Mike insisted that they should go back and help Travis, the rest of the crew was less than keen on this idea.

One of the crew members, Mike, believes that it was Allen who suggested that they should locate a nearby hunting party that they had become aware of during the day, and at least they would then have some guns amongst them. Myself, I’m not entirely sure why they believed this would be helpful. Although Mike stated categorically that nobody in his group was armed, he seems to have failed to take into account the plethora of heavy-duty petrol chainsaws that they were all packing.

Aside from this, if the story is to be believed, the craft, whatever it was, had already proven to have far more advanced weapons technology than anything available anywhere on the Earth. A couple of extra shotguns is unlikely to have made any difference.

Nevertheless, this idea was briefly accepted, and they set off in search of the hunters. According to Mike, after they had travelled no more than about half a mile, he decided that the idea was ridiculous, turned the truck around and slowly headed back in the direction of the site of the incident.

Mike is not entirely sure as to how long they had been gone but he says that “it can have been no more than 15 minutes”. The first things that they noticed upon arriving back at the clearing was the distinct absence of both flying saucer and of Travis. After conducting as thorough a search as possible given the fact that they only had one flashlight between them, Mike admits, somewhat defensively, that he actually broke down and cried.

He told Randall that:

A lot of people since then, when they hear this, assume that I was crying because I was scared. It was not that. It was more relief that we did not find him. When we pulled up in that clearing, I was expecting to find a charred body. We did not find that and so it was a big relief to me.

The relief of not finding Travis dead was short lived. The crew’s concerns then turned, almost immediately, to exactly what they should do next.

Although it was clear to all of them that they would have to alert the authorities, they suspected, rightly as it turned out, that the police might be slightly sceptical if they told them that their friend had been abducted by a UFO.

In the end, it was Kenneth Peterson who drew the short straw and ended up making the initial phone call to the police. Although I was unable to discover exactly what he said, it must’ve been fairly compelling as, according to Mike, they were joined by a deputy in less than 10 minutes.

At this point, the crew tried to explain to the members of the Constabulary exactly what had happened. Mike recalls that initially, they were all particularly reluctant to actually use the words “flying saucer” or “UFO” but, as soon as one of them did, the attitude of the first responders immediately changed. It became clear to each and every member of the crew that the police were of the opinion that one of them had done something to Travis and that they had concocted this ridiculous story in order to cover their own arses.

This was exactly what Mike had initially feared.

Fortunately for the men, there was just one problem.

The police had absolutely no evidence to back up their suspicions. An exceptionally thorough search of the area, in which the police were aided by Mike and the guys, would not only end with a complete lack of Travis but also a complete lack of any evidence that could point towards foul play. In spite of this lack of evidence, Mike was approached by the sheriff’s office during the fourth day of searching and told that he and the rest of the crew were required to take a polygraph test.

Now, in many places outside of the United States, the polygraph test is treated with the scornful scepticism that it deserves. It has no place within the judicial system and has been relegated to low budget, trashy television shows such as the former Jeremy Kyle Show. Nevertheless, the fact that six out of seven of the men questioned passed the test — with one presenting results that were inconclusive — often forms a large part of the argument presented by those who believe in the story.

To be fair to these individuals, even experts who are rightly sceptical about this technology have stated that it is quite unlikely that six out of seven people would display the same result. Unlikely, not impossible. This left the police, who apparently placed a lot of faith in the results of these tests, in somewhat of a predicament.

With their intensifying search continuing to turn up a noticeable lack of Travis either living or dead, and their main theory at least temporarily scuppered, they really had no leads to pursue.

On Board the Ship

Reader’s note. I have put together the following account both from information shared on travis-walton.com and various interviews that the man himself has given over the years.

The problem with this part of the story is of course that there is only one alleged witness.

Unless of course you are prepared to count the proposed aliens as witnesses and, even if you are, they seem to have very little interest in sharing their version of events and, at time of writing, have not come forward to provide any interviews or testimony. Should this change at any point; I’ll be happy to speak with Simon about doing an update on the story.

Whilst carrying out research for this article, I tracked down Travis Walton through social media and sent him a message asking him if he would be interested in speaking with me.

Although the platform that I used to contact him shows me that he has read the message, he has so far chosen not to respond. Even after I sweeten the deal by offering him some of Simon’s money. So, unfortunately, we will have to make do with what is publicly available.

I also believe it is worth mentioning that Mike Rogers especially has recently gone to some lengths to repeatedly reiterate that none of the team actually saw anything after Travis was struck by the beam of light.

Travis claims that after he was hit by the aforementioned beam of light, everything went dark for a time. When he eventually came around, he remembers both being confused and being in a lot of pain. Upon remembering what had happened, Travis initially believed that he had been taken to a hospital by the rest of the team following the attack, and that the vaguely humanoid shapes surrounding him were medical professionals. It was not until his vision fully returned that he realised this was not the case.

In one interview, Travis describes the individuals surrounding him as: “Nothing like I had ever seen before.” He describes them as basically humanoid but a lot shorter than your average human with larger heads, larger eyes, and no hair at all.

Upon realising that he was not in fact in a hospital, Travis began to panic. He tore off the various pieces of equipment that covered his body and, in spite of attempts by his alleged captors to restrain him, he jumped down from what he believed to be some sort of examination table. As he backed into a corner, the creatures began to approach him and so he grabbed an unspecified item from a nearby table and began brandishing it wildly in an attempt to keep them back. This appeared to work and, according to Travis, they all raised their hands in a placatory gesture before leaving the room.

Alone and terrified, his only thought at that point was that he must find a way to escape from wherever they had taken him. Leaving the room through the same door as the alleged aliens, he began searching for a way out. After what seemed like an eternity but, by his own admission was probably only a couple of minutes, he found himself in a peculiar room that resembled a planetarium, with star clusters and planets mapped out on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

After messing around with a few buttons that seemed to re-orient the display, he was joined in this room by a space-suited and helmeted figure that he believed at the time to be a human. Understandably, Travis began firing questions at this individual, but he received no response. The suited figure simply took him gently but firmly by the arm and escorted him from the room.

Upon exiting the craft, Travis became aware that it was one of several such vehicles contained within what he presumed to be the hangar bay of a much larger spaceship. Again, he attempted to engage his guide in conversation and again, his questions were met with only silence. After being led down a short corridor, Travis found himself in a similar room to the one in which he had first awakened.

This room also contained a number of the same “aliens” that he had previously seen. With the assistance of his guide, these creatures proceeded to lift him onto an examination table before placing what appeared to be an oxygen mask but without the supply hose over his face. Once again, Travis lost consciousness and when he awoke sometime later, he was lying by the side of the road watching as the strange, saucer like craft disappeared into the distance.

Aftermath

Once he regained consciousness for the second time that day, Travis began to run along the road that he had been left by until he found somewhere that he recognised. That somewhere happened to be a gas station and that gas station had a telephone. He immediately used that telephone to contact his brother who initially believed that it was a prank call, and it took Travis several minutes to persuade him that yes, he was who he said he was, and that he needed to be collected.

At this point, Travis was allegedly labouring under the delusion that he had only been gone for a few hours. It was not until his brother collected him that he discovered he had actually been missing for nearly 5 days.

As you can well imagine, many people were interested in speaking with him, including members of the press and, perhaps more importantly, members of the police. Travis elected to spend some time recovering at his brother’s house but, once the police became aware of his return, the information leaked to the press, and he was inundated with phone calls and visits from reporters.

In the end, Travis agreed to give an exclusive interview to the National Enquirer who, in return, offered to put him up in a hotel away from it all and to foot the bill for not only a lie detector test but a number of other medical tests in an attempt to ascertain exactly what had happened to him.

In order to carry out this lie detector test, the National Enquirer employed the services of Jack McCarthy, supposedly one of the most respected experts in the field at the time. The following is McCarthy’s account of what happened.

I got a call at my home asking me to come to the Sheraton hotel and not to tell anybody where I was going period. Naturally, I told my wife, picked up my portable equipment and left for the hotel. When I completed my examinations, after reading my charts, I rendered the opinion to the reporters from the National Enquirer that the charts were deceptive and that, in my opinion, he was trying to perpetrate a UFO hoax.

Well, the lid blew off the room! I thought his brother Dwayne was going to throw me off the balcony. He was raging like a bull saying there no way that his brother would lie.

The charts were very clear, obviously deceptive. Prior to the examination, the reporters from the National Enquirer asked me if I would have any objections to pictures being taken of my charts, the equipment and myself following the examination. I said no, no problem.

Well, after I rendered my opinion, the pictures were completely forgotten. They had no more interest in pictures. But what they did do, they went into an adjoining room and drew up a little form for me to sign to the effect that I would not reveal where I had been that day.

I would say nothing about the examination and so forth and so on.

The National Enquirer would later pay for a second lie detector test that Travis would pass. The newspaper would go on to award the group the “UFO Encounter of the Year Award”. This particular award came complete with approximately $5000 in prize money.

The Sceptics

Although many people among the UFO hunting community have accepted the word of Travis Walton as gospel, there are many others who believe the tale to be even more fictitious than those contained within the Bible. “Allegedly”

None of these critics were perhaps more outspoken than Phillip Klass, the late full-time UFO investigator from CSICOP, now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In a book that he wrote that allegedly disproves several alleged alien abduction stories, he raises several interesting points. Firstly, although the police were able to verify that a phone call had been made from the telephone at the gas station at round about the same time Travis claims to have called his brother, none of the fingerprints that were found on the receiver belonged to Travis.

Secondly, in a taped interview with reporters conducted during Travis’s alleged absence, his brother said that they were both highly interested in UFOs, had seen several themselves and had recently had a long discussion on exactly what they would do if either of them were ever abducted. This final quote, taken from an article on “skeptoid.com” sums up the whole situation rather nicely:

The few bits and pieces of physical, testable evidence that Travis’ story would have produced, if true, were never present. To summarize, there is, and never has been, any proof that anything ever happened. The far more plausible explanation, that of a youthful moneymaking or attention-getting scheme by a couple of UFO enthusiasts, has worked out well. To critically analyze a far-out, incredible story like an extra-terrestrial abduction, the first request we make is to show us any evidence.

And, at this first hurdle, the Travis Walton story has failed completely.

Thoughts and Opinions

As I said at the beginning, I initially believed that this story was just a media attention grab by a crazy person. And, whilst I still do believe that to some degree, there are a few things about this case that interest me. Firstly, the remaining four members of the original team who are neither dead nor Travis, have not changed their original story in spite of the huge amounts of scepticism cast their way.

At least one of them lost contact with family members who simply refused to believe their version of events. Also, although only one of the surviving team members is still on speaking terms with Travis, none of the others have attempted to expose the whole thing as a hoax. Secondly, having listened to many, many, many hours of interviews from most of the people involved, I have reached the following conclusion.

Although I have a very hard time believing any of the story, I find it particularly difficult to believe anything that Travis has said. The way he talks, the way he recounts the story, just comes across to me as a rehearsed performance and, although some of this can undoubtedly be explained by the fact that he has recounted said story thousands of times over the last 50 years or so, I do not feel that it explains everything. Conversely, although I find Mike’s version of events to be far more human and, although I don’t necessarily believe it myself, I have no trouble believing that he believes it.

Incidentally, whatever the truth might be, all seven men were of the agreement that it cannot be found in the movie adaptation of the story, the 1995 film “Fire in the Sky”. The movie was described by Travis as: “Suffering from the regrettable yet inevitable exaggerations brought on by adapting a story for Hollywood.” A stinging rebuke from a man who wishes everybody to believe that he spent five days on board a flying saucer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Travis Walton?

Travis Walton is a man known for his alleged alien abduction story. He was part of a logging crew in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and claimed to have been abducted by aliens in 1975.

What happened to Travis Walton on November 5, 1975?

Travis Walton claimed that he was struck by a beam of light from a UFO and was subsequently abducted by aliens for five days.

What did the logging crew do after Travis was struck by the beam of light?

After Travis was struck by the beam of light, the logging crew initially fled the scene but later returned to search for him. They eventually reported the incident to the police.

What was the police response to the logging crew’s story?

The police were initially skeptical and suspected foul play. They conducted a thorough search and required the crew to take polygraph tests, which six out of seven members passed.

What did Travis Walton claim to have experienced while on board the UFO?

Travis Walton claimed to have been examined by alien beings, escaped from a room, and eventually been returned to the roadside where he was found.

How did the media and public react to Travis Walton’s story?

The media and public had mixed reactions. Some accepted his story as genuine, while others, like Phillip Klass, were highly skeptical and believed it to be a hoax.

What was the outcome of the lie detector tests taken by Travis Walton?

Travis Walton initially failed a lie detector test conducted by Jack McCarthy but later passed a second test arranged by the National Enquirer.

How did the logging crew members handle the skepticism and criticism?

The remaining crew members have largely stuck to their original story despite skepticism. Some lost contact with family members who refused to believe them, but none have exposed the story as a hoax.

What is the author’s opinion on Travis Walton’s story?

The author is skeptical but acknowledges that there are intriguing aspects to the case, such as the consistency of the crew’s story and the lack of evidence pointing to a hoax.

How did the movie adaptation of Travis Walton’s story differ from the actual events?

Travis Walton described the movie ‘Fire in the Sky’ as suffering from ‘regrettable yet inevitable exaggerations’ brought on by adapting the story for Hollywood.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Alien Abduction: Is Travis Walton’s Story the Most Compelling Evidence We Have?
• Hero image source by anogh / openverse, cc0.