October 3, 2025 • 62 mins
SEASON 9 BEGINS FRIDAY OCTOBER 31ST
This week's rerun takes us back to the forests of Arizona in November 1975, where a crew of loggers were finishing another hard day's work in the wilderness. It was meant to be routine - just another evening drive back to town through the darkening woods, a journey they'd made countless times before.
But when the crew returned that night, one of them was missing. Travis Walton had vanished without a trace, leaving those left behind to relay a story so bizarre that it would divide not just his community, but the entire country…
Travis, they said, had been abducted by an alien spaceship.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mclin smith here with Unexplained on an
end of season break. We'll be dipping back into the
archive each week until season nine begins on Friday, October thirty. First,
this week's episode takes us to the forests of Arizona
in November nineteen seventy five, where a crew of loggers
were finishing another hard day's work in the wilderness. It
(00:21):
was meant to be routine, just another evening drive back
to town through the darkening woods, a journey they'd made
countless times before. But when the crew returned home that night,
one of them was missing, leaving those left behind to
relay a story so bizarre that it would divide not
just their community, but the entire country. This is Unexplained,
(00:46):
Season four, episode twenty, The Homecoming. Navajo County Deputy Sheriff
Chuck Ellison was sitting down to eat dinner with his
(01:06):
wife when the telephone rang. The voice on the other
end was hard to read, both frantic and oddly hesitant
at the same time. Ellison asked the caller to calm
down and start again by telling him who he was.
It was Kenny Peterson, came the speedy reply, and they
(01:27):
needed the police right away. As Peterson went on to explain,
he and his forestry Service co workers had been clearing
a section of Arizona's Apache Sitgreave's forest earlier that night
when something inexplicable had occurred, and now one of their
crew was missing. But when Ellison pushed for more details,
(01:50):
Peterson paused for a moment before replying that perhaps it
would be better if they could explain it to him
in person. Ten minutes later, after apologizing to his wife
for having to leave so suddenly, Ellison pulled into the
parking lot of Wilbur's Market shopping center in Habor, a
small junction town about one hundred and fifty miles northeast
(02:13):
of Phoenix, Arizona, where he'd agreed to meet Kenny. It
didn't take long for the deputy to spot the man
and his colleagues Mike Rogers, John Guillette, Alan Dallas, Dwayne Smith,
and Steve Pearce all gathered together in an anxious huddle
by the entrance, still covered in dust and debris from
(02:34):
the day's shift. At least two of the group was
struggling to hold back tears. In no mood to mess around,
Ellison asked the men to explain exactly what was going on.
They all looked sheepishly toward each other, as if they
didn't quite know what they were going to say to him,
(02:55):
until finally Mike began to speak. The twenty eight year
old Mike was an independent contractor and the crew were
his responsibility, so too, ultimately was the man who was missing.
His name was Travis Walton, who also happened to be
Mike's best friend. Ordinarily they would never have left him
(03:18):
behind up there in the forest, but as Mike tried
to explain to Ellison, these were far from ordinary circumstances.
You're listening to unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Like
(03:41):
the rest of Mike Roger's crew, twenty two year old
Travis Walton lived in Snowflake, a farming town located about
thirty miles east of Habour with a population of just
over two and a half thousand. It was founded by
Mormon settlers in eighteen seventy eight and was comprised largely
of life orise houses and small local stores, all overshadowed
(04:04):
by the huge red bricked Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints that dominated the town square. Delinquency was
not looked on lightly by the community, nor was anyone
who deigned to be a little different. Back in nineteen
seventy one, Travis, who with his long hair was dismissed
(04:25):
by many as effeckless hippie, and a friend were convicted
of forging payroll checks from a local company. The pair
were given two years probation and forced to pay the
money back. In a town as small and god fearing
as Snowflake, such reputations were hard to shake. Those who
(04:46):
knew Travis, however, knew a different story. Some of his
school teachers even considered him one of the smartest pupils
that they'd ever taught. After dropping out of Northern Arizona
University a few years b previously, Travis had been picking
up work wherever he could find it. When Mike Rogers,
(05:07):
a forestry contractor with nine years experience, procured another of
his United States Forest Service contracts, Travis jumped at the
opportunity to join the team. The job was to clear
one thousand, two hundred and seventy seven acres of thick
scrub brush from a section of the Apache Sick Creeves
National Forest known as Turkey Springs, which was about ten
(05:31):
miles into the pine covered mountains just to the west
of Haber. That Wednesday, November fifth, started out just like
any other day, as one by one Rogers collected each
of his crew members in his battered crew Cab International
from their homes in Snowflake, then headed off on their
(05:52):
forty mile journey into the mountains. With it being November,
there was always a slight chill in the air first
thing in the morning, but it soon heated up when
the sun came out. Though the work was arduous, cutting
(06:13):
back all new growth less than six inches in diameter
and gathering it up into great slash piles, Travis never
tired of being up there on that mountain ridge, with
the fresh air in his lungs, wild horses galloping through
the trees all around them, and that ancient forest stretching
out below, older than the people whose name it took,
(06:37):
older even than God themself. Hours later, with darkness returning,
and so too that light chill in the air, the
men called it a day. Gathering their tools, they slung
them into the back of Night's truck before piling in themselves.
(06:58):
Travis and Kenny up front with Mike, while the others,
all smokers, sat in the back gleefully lighting up. Mike
switched on the engine, bathing the narrow forest road ahead
in the light of the headlamps, and eased out of
the clearing. They'd barely made it two hundred yards along
(07:18):
the rugged forest track when Alan broke in from the back. Hey,
what is that, he said, pointing toward a soft glowing
light coming from out of the trees to the right.
Have you guys never seen the moon? Mocked Kenny, only
as the others were quick to point out the moon
(07:40):
was already sitting high in the sky above on the
other side of the truck. The soft white glow grew
brighter as they continued on, slowly edging ever closer toward it,
Now no more than one hundred yards from its source.
The light bled out across the road before them, but frustratingly,
(08:02):
whatever it was, remained obscured by the trees until eventually
they reached a clearing and they were finally able to
see it. A large disc like structure roughly twenty feet
wide and eight feet high, hovering a good fifteen feet
above the ground. It was so close they could even
(08:24):
see the detail on its surface, how it was divided
into a series of thin panels with a thin, darker
band that seemed to circle all the way around it,
and how its glow appeared to be coming from inside.
Before Mike had even brought the truck to a stop,
the side door was opened and Travis was gone, hurrying
(08:47):
off toward it. The others yelled for him to come back,
but Travis just kept on going, edging closer and closer
toward it. Then came a strange noise that seemed to
emanate from the craft, high pitched at first, before steadily
shifting into something much lower, like a vast turbine engine.
(09:11):
When suddenly a blinding blue light shot out from the disk,
holding Travis in some kind of grip. With his body
now completely rigid, he was slowly lifted a good foot
into the air and suspended there for a moment before
being flung hard onto the ground, skidding shoulder first into
(09:32):
the stone and dirt, and there he lay completely still.
That was enough for Rogers, who, with four kids of
his own and the rest of his crew to worry about,
turned the key and tore out of the clearing as
fast as the truck could go, and then they were
racing through the trees, bouncing over the dirt track at
(09:55):
speed as Rogers did his best to keep the thing
on the road, with the rest of the crew's deeming
for him to keep going faster and faster, until it
was just one bend too many, with a huge pine
tree looming up before him, Rogers pulled hard on the
wheel and brought the truck slamming into a pile of
bulldoze dirt by the side of the road. The men
(10:18):
looked frantically about for any sign of the strange craft,
but saw nothing but the frigid dark and the bright
half moon above. And for a moment there was silence,
and then all hell broke loose. We've got to go back,
yelled Kenny. No way, said Steve, as tears streamed down
(10:40):
his face. We've got to get out of here. Kenny's right,
said Mike, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
Only then had it dawned on him that, without even thinking,
he'd abandoned his best friend alone out there with that thing,
whatever it was. We're going back, he said. Finally, you
(11:02):
can either come with me or you can wait for
me here. With no one willing to take their chances
in the forest alone, they headed back to look for Travis,
but by the time they got to where they'd last
seen him, he was gone. And that, as he finished
explaining to an utterly perplexed Deputy Ellison, was when they
(11:24):
decided to call the police. After hearing the men's story,
Deputy Ellison reluctantly relayed it back to Sheriff Marlin Gillespie
at the Navajo County Sheriff's office in Holbrook, another forty
mile drive north of Habor. Though Ellison was quick to
(11:48):
clarify that he didn't believe any of it, he had
little doubt the men had experienced something traumatic. Less than
an hour later, Sheriff Gillespie arrived with Deputy Kenneth Coplin
in tow and Mike's crew repeated their extraordinary story for
the second time that night, but Mike was getting impatient.
(12:10):
They needed to get back up there and search for Travis.
Kenny and Allan were keen to join, but by then
all John, Dwayne and Steve, who at seventeen was the
youngest of the group wanted to do was go home,
taking Mike's truck. They headed back to his house to
let his wife know what had happened, while the remaining
(12:33):
three joined the sheriff and his two deputies and headed
back toward Turkey Springs. It took a while to find
the exact spot again, but soon the men were out
in the cold air, flashlights in hand as they scoured
the ground for any sign of Travis. But the men
found nothing. No scarred or broken trees other than the
(12:57):
ones the team had cut down, no scuff marks in
the dirt, no sign of Travis's bootmarkings. Neither did they
find any pieces of clothing or any blood for that matter.
It was almost as if no one had ever been
there at all. All that was clear was that Travis
(13:18):
was gone. Sheriff Gillespie eyed Mike and his men with suspicion.
Clearly Travis hadn't been abducted by a UFO, so what
then exactly had taken place? And if he was still
alive out here as the men claimed he might be,
it was an awfully cold night to only be wearing
(13:40):
plaid and denhim. Ellison notified more deputies and members of
a local volunteer organization to join in the search, but
by midnight there was still no sign of the missing man.
Growing increasingly desperate, Rogers suggested it was time they notified
(14:01):
Travis's mother. At fifty seven years old, Mary Kellett had
raised Travis and his five siblings on her own after
making a living running a boarding house in Phoenix. By
nineteen seventy five, she divided her time between her home
(14:23):
in Snowflake and a cabin in Bare Springs, a stretch
of woodland a good ten miles to the southeast of Habor.
It was funny, she thought, as she watched Deputy Copland's
car pulling up outside the cabin. Just earlier in the day,
she'd been overcome with the strange conviction that something terrible
(14:45):
had happened to her son, Travis. When Mike stepped out
of the vehicle, whom she knew well as a good
friend of Travis's, her worst fears were confirmed. Once inside.
Coplin was as clearly distraught. Rogers explained to Mary about
what they'd seen that evening and how Travis had disappeared.
(15:09):
It was odd, thought Coplan, how calm Mary seemed to
be in the face of such unusual and disturbing news,
almost as if it wasn't news to her at all.
About an hour later, Coplin made his goodbyes and headed
back to Sheriff Gillespie to report his findings. In the meantime,
(15:30):
Rogers drove Mary in her car to her daughter Allison's
home in Taylor, a town just south of Snowflake. Alison,
who lived with her husband Grant Neph, was especially close
to Travis and was understandably devastated to hear the news.
Skeptical of the story, however, she demanded to hear again
(15:51):
from Mike exactly what had happened, but he could only
tell her what he knew. A few hours later, unable
to work eight any longer, Mary called her son Dwayne
at his home in Phoenix to give him the worrying news.
Though Dwayne was Mary's second oldest son, she'd always considered
(16:11):
him the most mature, and it was often to him
that she first turned in times of stress. Minutes later,
Dwayne jumped into his car and started out on the
two hundred mile journey to Snowflake to meet up with
the others. At eight a m. The morning after Travis's disappearance,
(16:38):
a number of search teams assembled in Turkey, Springs to
assist the Navaju County and Silver Creek Sheriff's officers in
their continued search for the missing man. Among them were
a group of US Forest Service personnel drafted in for
their knowledge of the local area. Mike Rogers, Kenny Peterson,
(16:59):
and Allan Dallas were back too to help with the search.
That morning, the thirty or so search team, starting from
the point that Travis was last seen, began the laborious
task of scarring the forest of any sign of him,
a search that would eventually encompass a region of roughly
a mile squared. As the forestry workers scoured the area
(17:23):
for any sign of unusually broken trees or foot markings,
it was hard to ignore just how dry the whole
area was, with some of the dead brush piles being
almost a year old and the floor carpeted in dry
pine needles, though no one gave it much credence. If
some kind of craft had indeed lifted off from around there,
(17:45):
the whole place would have gone up in flames. Elsewhere,
Sheriff Gillespie and Deputy Ellison were looking for something a
little different, trying to square the obvious distress shown by
Mine and his crew the previous night. With the ridiculous
cock and bull story they had given them, Gillespie and
(18:06):
Ellison had got to thinking could it be whether it
was premeditated or the result of a tragic accident That
the men knew only too well where Travis was after all,
because they had buried his body. As the two police
kept one eye on the men for any sign of
(18:26):
suspicious activity, their other was kept firmly on the ground,
looking for any sign of recently disturbed earth or fresh
piles of dirt and of course blood. Later that afternoon,
Mary and Dwane also joined the search, with Mary seeming
once again far too calm for Deputy Copland's liking. By
(18:52):
the afternoon, however, the search teams were yet to find anything.
With little else to go on share, Gillespie suggested contacting
the nearest firewatch tower. Perhaps they had seen something that night.
At the very least, it would end all the ridiculous
talk about UFOs. Sadly, however, the guard stationed at the
(19:16):
tower only a few miles to the west, had gone
off duty at five PM. The search continued the next day,
this time with the help of search dogs from Arizona
State Prison. But still no evidence of Travis's whereabouts or
any sign that any unidentified flying object had been in
(19:38):
the vicinity was found. On Saturday morning, Gillespie was back
in his office in Holbrook when a kerfuffle was heard
in the reception running through. He was startled to find
Dwayne and Mike Rogers, demanding to know why no one
(20:00):
was up on the ridge looking for Travis. The pair
had gone out to join the third day of the search,
only to find nobody there. Having begun to suspect that
some kind of hoax was being played out, Gillespie was
somewhat taken aback by the evident concern and passion in
Dwayne and Mike's demand. Within an hour, the search was reinstated,
(20:25):
with horses, jeeps, and a rescue helicopter brought in for
good measure, having flown in helicopters during his time in
the military. That afternoon, Dwayne joined the helicopter crew in
the air, peering down at the gaps in between the
trees for any sign of his brother. He couldn't decide
(20:45):
whether to be worried or relieved when by the end
of the day they'd once again failed to find anything.
Back in Snowflake, a Volkswagen van pulled into the town
square to join the throng of news vans and other
unfamiliar vehicles that had been steadily descending on the town.
(21:07):
By then, news of Travis's disappearance and the unusual explanation
behind it had spread far and wide, with many journalists
and UFO enthusiasts keen to investigate the wild story for themselves.
One such enthusiast was Fred Sylvanus from Phoenix, who for
the past twenty years had conducted field research for the
(21:30):
Arizona Regional UFO Project. That afternoon, Fred was put in
touch with Mike and Dwaine, who agreed to join him
in his van for an interview. Mike began with an
account of the craft they'd seen, how pretty it had been,
like a fancy new car, he said, and how he'd
(21:50):
been almost mesmerized by just how beautiful a thing it
was to look at. Then Twain chimed in with something unexpected.
He had also seen one almost identical to what Mike
described in broad Daylight twelve years before. Not only that
(22:10):
he and Travis had discussed UFOs at great length and
what they would do if they ever got close to one,
which was what asked Fred they would try to establish
contact with it. Of course, came Dwaine's reply. It was
an alarming admission to Sylvanus, since he was previously under
(22:30):
the impression that none of the men involved had any
prior interest in UFOs. In his experienced opinion, evidence of
such interest was often a red flag where stories of
apparent sightings and abductions were concerned. And then came another
troubling revelation, this time from Mike. As it turned out
(22:55):
he and his crew were wildly behind schedule on their contract.
Having already received one extension, the crew were struggling to
meet their second deadline. As Mike left slip to Sylvanus,
perhaps with all that had been going on, the Forestry
Service might be willing to offer them a second extension.
(23:17):
There was just one final question, said Sylvanus, before wrapping up.
Where did the pair think that Travis was now? Wherever
he is? Said Dwayne, It is not on this earth.
Many in the town had been uttering it among themselves,
(23:40):
but it was Snowflake town Marshall Sanford Flake who said
it the loudest that all this talk of UFOs and
Travis Walton being abducted was complete rubbish. Some put this
down to an ongoing grudge with Travis due to a
disagreement from a previous year, but either way, Flake was
determined to put an end to the nonsense. Having deduced
(24:04):
that Travis had orchestrated the whole thing in collaboration with
his brother Dwayne, using some kind of balloon to fool
his colleagues, Flake became convinced that he was merely hiding
out at his mother's cabin in bear Lake. In the
days since Travis's disappearance, Marshall Flake made a number of
unannounced visits to Mary Kellett's cabin, hoping to catch the
(24:28):
family out, one time even bringing a documentary crew with
him from the United Kingdom, but Mary could only tell
him what she had told everyone else, that she had
no idea where her son was. Such rumours were becoming
a struggle for the rest of Mike's crew, too, who
couldn't step outside their homes without being harassed by reporters
(24:51):
or neighbors telling them to give up the hoax and
tell the truth about what happened. On Monday morning, with
Travis now having been missing for five days, Mike Rogers,
Kenny Peterson John Gullette, Steve Pearce, Alan Dallas, and Dwayne
Smith received an ominous request to assemble at Sheriff Gillespie's
(25:14):
office in Holbrook. The men arrived on the assumption that
they would be giving another statement about the events of
the previous Wednesday. What they found was something a little different.
Greeting them alongside Gillespie was Arizona Department of Public Safety
employee Cy Gilson. Gilson also happened to be an expert
(25:38):
in polygraph testing, and he was there to give them
a lie detector test. Steve Pearce went white at the
sheer mention of the device. It was just as his
mother had been telling him. It didn't matter if he
had anything to do with Travis's disappearance. This was how
the law really worked. They were going to try and
(26:00):
pin something on him, and one way or another, if
Steve wasn't careful, he would not be leaving that station
anytime soon. Alan Dallas also grew suddenly nervous, a reaction
not lost on Sheriff Gillespie. As the Sheriff then explained
to them, since they had no evidence to back up
(26:23):
any of their claims, he'd been forced to take drastic action.
If they couldn't find Travis, at the very least, he
could dismiss their ridiculous story, and if they were telling
the truth, none of them had anything to worry about anyway.
Having been observing the men closely since they arrived, Gilson
(26:44):
was quick to pick out Steve, the youngest and clearly
most anxious of the group, as a possible weak link.
If they had indeed concocted the whole thing up together,
it was Steve, he reasoned, that was most likely to
break alone. In the interview room, Gilson took a moment
(27:08):
to calibrate the equipment, then asked for Steve to be
sent in. After nervously taking a seat, Gilson proceeded to
connect Steve to the machine, pulling the wires tightly across
his chest, before asking him to sit up and try
his best to relax. And then, after switching on the machine,
(27:30):
Gilson began Did you cause Travis any serious physical harm
last Wednesday afternoon? Asked Gilson, as the graft paper spulled
out endlessly under the needles, No, said Steve, quickly, looking
anxiously toward the fragile arms of the machine as they
(27:50):
flickered lightly across the page. Gilson nodded to himself, then
jotted something down in his notebook. I'm not lying, said
Steve with quiet determination, Ignoring him. Gilson continued, do you
know if Travis Walton was physically injured by some other
(28:11):
member of your work crew last Wednesday? No, said Steve emphatically.
And then do you know if Travis Walton's body is
buried or hidden somewhere in the Turkey Springs area? No,
came Steve's emphatic reply. Again. Then, finally, did you tell
(28:32):
the truth about actually seeing a UFO last Wednesday when
Travis Walton disappeared? Steve looked Gilson in the eye, and then,
after only a moment's pause, yes, he said. One after
the other, Mike's crew came and gave their answers to
(28:54):
the same set of questions, taking about twenty minutes at
a time as they went over and over again, all
giving the exact same answers as Steve, and not once
deviating from their story. No, they didn't harm Travis, nor
know of anyone who did. And yes, they did see
(29:14):
a UFO that night. At ten pm that evening, the
men were sent home, after which Gilson presented Gillespie with
the results, the sheriff could only gorpe in amazement. According
to Gilson, not one of the men, with the exception
(29:34):
of Alan Dallas, whose results were deemed void, could be
determined to have lied about their experience, or, as Gilson
understood it, going by the results, the chances that all
five had cheated the test was something in the region
of one in seventy eight thousand. As Gillespie reported to
(29:56):
the press soon after, there's no doubt they're telling the
truth right down the line. I feel sure that all
six of them saw a UFO. It was close to
midnight on Monday when the phone rang in Allison and
(30:16):
Grant Nef's home in Taylor. Having just gone to bed.
Grant roused himself awake and stumbled to the receiver, nef residence.
Who's this, he muttered wearily. Then a scared and faint
voice crackled up from the other end of the line.
(30:38):
It's Travis. I'm in a phone booth at the Hebre
gas station. I need help. Please come and get me.
Grant stood for a moment, trying to think. It certainly
didn't sound like Travis, and since the family had been
fielding crank calls ever since his disappearance, it seemed reasonable
(30:59):
to assume that this was just another one. Don't call
here again, Grant said, But just as he was about
to hang up, the voice came back, more desperate this time. Wait, Grant,
it's me Please, I'm hurt and I need your help.
(31:20):
Please come and get me. Not long after Grant nef
hung up the phone. In the early hours of Tuesday morning,
just over thirty miles away in the Navajo County Sheriff's
office in Holbrook, Sheriff Marlin Gillespie was enjoying a rare
(31:43):
moment of peace with the search for Travis Walton called
off for the day and all his deputies gone home.
The well liked larman took a moment to reflect on
the events of the previous week. First and foremost, a
young man was missing, and no matter what anybody else said,
though he couldn't rule anything out, it was his duty
(32:06):
to take the family at their word that they knew
nothing about any of it, and if so, that was
a family desperately worried about the fate of a brother
and a son. Of the rest of it, he couldn't
make head nor tail he certainly wasn't ready to accept
that Travis might genuinely have been attacked and possibly even
(32:29):
abducted by a UFO. And yet, as his own man,
sy Gilson had attested, Travis's co workers, in all statistical
likelihood were telling the truth about what they'd seen. And
hadn't he too seen the odd unexplained object or light
in the sky from time to time driving those quiet
(32:50):
forest roads alone at night. Just then the phone rang
startled Gillespie grabbed the receiver. The local phone company had
traced a call placed close to midnight to Allison and
Grant Nef's property from outside a gas station in Haber,
(33:10):
the town closest to where Travis had gone missing. It
must be him, thought Gillespie. And yet, if it was Travis,
why hadn't he called the police instead. It was barely
thirty minutes later when Deputy Chuck Ellison and Lieutenant A. M. Romo,
(33:30):
on Gillespie's orders, pulled up to the Haber gas station,
with the place completely deserted. Ellison and Romo made their
way over in the dark to the three phone booths
at the front of the store and began dusting for
Prince in the end, However, there were just too many
to be able to tell whether Travis had been there
(33:52):
or not. Meanwhile, at the junction of Highway seventy seven
and two seven seven, the road out to Phoenix from Snowflake,
Deputy Glenn Flake, roused from bed by an excited Gillespie,
sat in his patrol vehicle keeping a firm eye on
the road ahead. By two a m. However, he'd seen
(34:13):
no sign of any vehicles belonging to the Walton family.
A short time later, Flake pulled up to Travis's mother,
Mary Kellett's home. Seeing lights on inside, he stepped out
of his car and quietly headed toward the front door
when he noticed Travis's brother Dwayne siphoning petrol from a
(34:34):
vehicle on the driveway. Surprised to see the deputy, Dwayne
explained that he'd been late getting back from the Sheriff's
office earlier in the day, so had missed the chance
to get more gas for his car in preparation for
his return to Phoenix that morning. Since Dwayne said nothing
about Travis, Flake thought it reasonable to assume that perhaps
(34:56):
it wasn't him after all, that had called the nef
property earlier that night. And with that he said his
goodbyes and returned home to bed. It was around lunchtime
the next day the reports began filtering through that Travis
(35:18):
was back and being treated in a hospital in twoson, Arizona,
angered not to have been kept in the loop. A
deeply frustrated Gillespie is finally called by Dwayne late on
Tuesday to inform him that Travis isn't in Tucson after all,
but at home with him in Glendale, just outside of Phoenix.
(35:40):
Dwayne was still talking when Gillespie slammed down the phone,
grabbed his hat from the peg, and piled into his
patrol car. In the past five days, Gillespie's office had
spent over ten thousand dollars looking for Travis, damaging several
expensive vehicles in the process. One of the departments horses
(36:00):
had also been put down after sustaining a devastating injury
during the search. Coupled with the countless hours Gillespie had
put in fielding one call after another from news outlets
all over the world regarding Travis's bizarre disappearance, it was
fair to say, at the very least the sheriff deserved
some answers it was late in the evening by the
(36:25):
time Gillespie arrived at Dwayne's house. At first sight of
the sheriff, Dwayne did his best to apologize for not
alerting him sooner, while insisting that he only had Travis's
best interests at heart. Unmoved, Gillespie demanded to see Travis immediately.
Dwayne hesitated for a moment before showing the sheriff through
(36:48):
to the living room. Gillespie was in the process of
detailing exactly just what lengths his department had gone to
to help Dwayne and his family when the sight of
an exhaust looking Travis stretched out on the sofa stopped
him in his tracks. It wasn't that he seemed physically different,
although he'd never seen Travis with five days of beard
(37:11):
growth before, but something about his demeanor had changed. Then
Gillespie realized what it was. It was shock. The sheriff
quietly took a seat next to the young man and
began by asking him to describe everything he could remember
(37:31):
about the last few days. Travis glanced nervously toward Dwayne,
who nodded for him to begin. As Travis went on
to recount, he remembered being up on the ridge in
the forest, seeing the object glowing in the trees, and
(37:54):
then having the overwhelming urge to get close to it.
He just turned back to see Mike and the others
begging for him to return to the truck, when he
was engulfed in a blinding white blue light. In an instant,
he felt as though he'd been hit on the back
of the head by a baseball bat and that his
(38:14):
whole body was being electrocuted. The next thing he knew,
he felt as though he was waking up from a
deep sleep, but in excruciating pain, as if his whole
body had been burned inside and out. Finally opening his eyes,
he found himself lying down on some kind of table
(38:35):
with a large rectangular light above him. Gathering his thoughts.
Though he didn't recognize the place, he assumed he was
in a hospital of some sort, thinking that he must
have sustained an injury on the job and his friends
had brought him in. Looking down his body, he could
see that his shirt and jacket had been pushed up
(38:56):
toward his shoulders, leaving his chest and belly exposed over
which seemed to be some kind of device scanning his
body slowly with his eyes beginning to focus, he was
able to make out three blurry figures stood around him,
dressed in bright orange and wearing white surgical masks, which
(39:17):
he assumed to be doctors, only realizing with horror moments
later when he locked eyes with one of them that
these weren't like any doctors he'd seen before. Panicking, he
leapt from the table, knocking the scanning device to the floor.
As two of the figures approached, Travis stumbled back into
(39:38):
some kind of instrument tray, Then, grabbing whatever came to hand,
he prepared to defend himself. It was only then that
he observed the figures properly for the first time. They
were each about five feet tall, uncannily familiar with their
two arms, legs, and five digits on each hand, but
(40:01):
that was where the familiarity ended. Their bodies seemed unusually
light weight, while their skin was bright white, without a
crease or wrinkle anywhere to be seen. Their eyes were
big brown discs about an inch and a half in diameter,
and their hands had no fingernails. As Travis went on
(40:25):
to explain, he was just about to attack them when
they ran from the room, leaving him all alone. Seeing
his chance, he bolted out into the corridor and ducked
into some kind of control room that was completely empty
except for a chair in the middle of it covered
in levers and buttons. But as he made his way
(40:47):
toward it, the walls began to disappear, revealing a giant,
three hundred sixty degree panoramic map of the stars that
wrapped all around him as if he were standing alone
in the VARs of space. Moments later, Travis was joined
(41:10):
in the room by what he assumed at first was
another human man of large muscular build wearing a blue
outfit and a bubble helmet over his head. Only when
Travis saw the intense color of his electric blue eyes
did he realize he wasn't human at all. Travis pleaded
(41:30):
for his help, nonetheless, in response, the being led him
through an airlock into what looked like some kind of
aircraft hanger. Stepping out onto a ramp, Travis realized he
was exiting some kind of craft that was similar to
what they'd seen in the woods, but considerably larger in size.
From there, no longer feeling any pain, he was led
(41:54):
through another series of doors and corridors, until finally he
came to a bright white room occupied by three other
figures similar to the man who led him there. The
beings then lifted him onto a table and placed some
kind of respiratory device over his face. The next thing
he knew, he was lying on the pavement in the
(42:16):
freezing dark, staring up at the stars in the night sky.
Looking frantically about. He realized with relief that he was
back in Arizona, somewhere on the highway just outside of Haber.
Dehydrated and disorientated, he stumbled to the Haber gas station,
from where he made the call to his sister's home.
(42:45):
It was all true, insisted Dwayne, as he then explained
to the sheriff. He'd been out at his mother's home
in Snowflake when they got the call from Grant, their
brother in law, informing them that Travis was alive. Having
raced off with Grant to pick him up from the
gas station, they found him huddled down inside one of
the phone booths, still wearing the clothes he'd gone missing
(43:08):
in despite it being well below freezing. According to Dwayne,
Travis was so traumatized when they arrived that he tried
to run away, not realizing who Dwayne was at first.
When they finally got him in the car, the clearly
disorientated Travis was convinced he'd only be missing for a
few hours. When Dwayne then told him to feel the
(43:30):
beard on his usually clean shaven face, Travis was shocked
to find it had been more like five days. Sheriff
Gillespie ran a hand through his hair. Could it be,
he asked, that he really was hit on the head
by a baseball bat. Perhaps one of his coworkers had
done it and then drugged him afterwards. Perhaps he really
(43:54):
had woken up in a hospital after all, but the
effect of the hit on the head and the drugs
had left him confused and discombobulated. But the brothers were
having none of it. For a start, there was no
injury to his head, nor to any other part of
his body for that matter. According to Dwayne, this was
(44:15):
one of the first things he checked when Travis got home,
shortly before helping him into a hot bath to warm
him up. He also claimed to have weighed his brother beforehand,
finding that he'd lost at least ten pounds in the
days since he disappeared. That first day since Travis's apparent
(44:40):
return had been an eventful one for Dwayne and his brother,
as they went on to explain to Sheriff Gillespie. It
was back during the search for Travis that Dwayne had
been approached by William Spaulding from the euphology Group Ground
Saucer Watch, an organization first founded in ninety In fifty
seven that sought to provide a legitimate outlet for people
(45:04):
to report sightings of unusual aerial phenomena without the fear
of ridicule. Having dealt with a number of similar cases before,
Sporting advised Dwayne to contact him should Travis be found alive.
In return, GSW would provide a free medical examination and
shelter from the inevitable media storm that would follow in
(45:27):
the hope of gaining proof that he had been abducted
by an unknown sentient species, if indeed that was the case.
As it transpired, according to Dwayne, Travis was already back
at his mother's house in Snowflake the night Deputy Flake
saw Dwayne in the driveway siphoning gas for his car.
(45:48):
Realizing that he wouldn't be able to keep Travis's apparent
return a secret for long, Dwayne informed the press that
he was being taken to a hospital in Tucson to
recuperate from his exhausted ordeal that morning, the pair then
traveled to Phoenix, whereby they immediately contacted Spaulding, who gave
(46:08):
them an address for a doctor Lester Stewart, who would
be conducting the medical exam when they arrived there soon after, however,
the brothers were surprised to find doctor Stewart's office located
in a fairly run down westward Hoe hotel. They only
became more concerned when they saw the sign on doctor
(46:29):
Stewart's door, which read hypnotherapist. After thirty minutes or so
of Travis detailing what he could about his missing five days,
it became clear that not only was Stuart ill equipped
to carry out a full medical exam on him, but
that he wasn't a medical doctor at all. Returning home frustrated,
(46:52):
Dwayne was then contacted by Coral and Jim Lawrenson from
another UFO organization called the Area Phenomena Research group. Much
like ground Sourcer Watch, at pro prided themselves on their
rational scientific approach to the UFO phenomena, with a large
staff of consulting PhD scientists among them, most notably doctor
(47:16):
James Harder, a civil and hydraulics engineering professor from the
University of California, Berkeley. Famed UFO researcher j Allen Heineck
described at PRO as one of the best to civilian
organizations of its day. Still desperate to prove what had
happened to him, Travis agreed to then let APRO conduct
(47:39):
the medical exam. That afternoon, doctor Howard Kendall, predominantly a
pediatrician and general practitioner, doctor Joseph Saltz, arrived at Dwayne's
house to assess the apparent abductee. Kendall and Salts were
(48:02):
shown into a bedroom where Travis was waiting for them,
lying down on the bed in his shirt and jeans.
Doctor Kendall's report would later state that from the moment
they saw him, it was clear that Travis was suffering
from extreme stress and anxiety. Kendall and Salts observed that
his vital signs were all normal, with no overt signs
(48:26):
of weight loss, though his mouth was unusually dry, suggesting
a high level of dehydration. Examining his body for any
signs of bruising or damage. Curiously, doctor Kendall discovered a
two millimeter wide red spot in the crease of Travis's
right elbow, much like a needle puncture wound. Travis suggested
(48:48):
that it might have been a thorn wound picked up
at some point while he was working out in the forest.
After the preliminary examination, Dwayne then handed doctor Kendall a
jar that he claim aimed contained Travis's urine, which William
Spaulding had advised him to collect. The sample was later
found to be normal, displaying no evidence of drug use
(49:11):
or anything else untoward, with the exception that it contained
no trace of acetone. Had Travis not eaten in the
last few days, ordinarily, acetone, which is created when fat
stores are broken down in the body, would be present.
If Travis had indeed lost ten pounds, an absence of
acetone would have been deeply unusual. Intriguingly, the doctors also
(49:36):
noted that the combination of Travis's unmarked body and the
fact that it was relatively odorless despite apparently not having
used any soap since his return, seemed to suggest that
wherever Travis had been for the past five days, it
wasn't outside in the woods. Sheriff Gillespie having listened to
(49:57):
it all with quiet patients, thanked the brothers for bringing
him up to speed, then stood up to leave. Sensing
the sheriff wasn't entirely convinced by the story, Travis made
a request. Since his coworkers had taken a polygraph test,
it only made sense that he should be able to
take one too. Perhaps then people might believe him. We'll
(50:21):
be in touch, said the sheriff, before thanking the young
men again for their time and heading out. The following day, Wednesday,
November twelfth, Travis and Dwayne were moved into the Sheraton
Hotel in Scottsdale, courtesy of The National Inquirer. By the
(50:46):
nineteen seventies, The Inquirer, a notorious and controversial tabloid that
had previously promoted fascist causes, was enjoying a resurgence as
the nation's go to paper for all things celebrity and bizarre,
with a particular interest in apparent altercations with UFOs. Having
managed to get hold of Coral and Jim Lawrenson before
(51:08):
Travis's medical examination, the paper struck a deal with both
Travis and Apro to cover all costs in their efforts
to prove he was telling the truth. In return, Travis
gave them exclusive rights to his story. Later that afternoon,
doctor James Harder of the University California, Berkeley arrived at
(51:30):
the hotel to conduct a regressive hypnosis session with Travis,
in which, while apparently under hypnosis, Travis repeated the exact
same story he told everyone else about his experience on
board a UFO. Afterwards, Travis is informed by Sheriff Gillespie
that a polygraph test has been arranged for him in
(51:51):
two days time, to be conducted by cy Gilson, the
same individual who tested his coworkers. The test is agreed
on the one condition that remained a secret from the press. However,
the test is abruptly canceled at the last minute by
Dwayne when he receives a call from a reporter an
(52:11):
hour before the test is due to be taken, wanting
to know where it's taking place. The next morning, a
new story breaks in the Phoenix Gazette with the headline
UFO case is linked to drugs by expert. The expert
turned out to be none other than doctor Lester Stewart,
the hypnotherapist that Dwayne and Travis had blown off after
(52:35):
spending only a few minutes with him at his office
in the westward Hoe Hotel. Only the way Steward told it,
it had been more like two hours, in which he
had ample time to assess the patient. It was his
conclusion that Travis had made the entire thing up, going
on to speculate that his cosmic visions had been nothing
(52:57):
but the hallucinatory effects of LSD. William Spaulding was also
quoted in the article stating that in fact, it had
been Dwayne and Travis that specifically asked him to set
them up with a hypnotherapist. Spaulding, having only days before
been so convinced of Travis's story he was willing to
(53:18):
offer them financial support to prove it. Was now convinced
more than ever that it was all just a hoax.
Though we can never know for sure whose version of
events is the truth, it has been pointed out that
it would have been physically impossible for the Walton brothers
to have spent even one hour with doctor Stewart and
got back to Dwayne's home in time to receive the
(53:41):
later phone call from Coral and Jim Lawrenson that doctor
Stewart was found not to even have a license to
practice medicine in the United States also cast further doubt
on his credibility. The sudden attack, as some have suggested,
appeared to have been made out of spite more than
anything else, in retaliation for Travis's rejection of Spauting's help.
(54:11):
The following week, doctor James Harder released his own assessment
to Travis on behalf of apro coming to the conclusion that,
one way or another, whether the events had occurred or
not as Travis said they had, Harder had little doubt that,
at the very least, Travis believed he was telling the truth.
(54:32):
Harder's assessment was made partially from the medical evidence, but
also on account of another apparent abduction case that had
supposedly occurred three months previously. The case involving US Air
Force Sergeant Charles Moody had never previously been reported, and
yet Moody's description of the beings that he allegedly encountered
(54:55):
bore a striking similarity to those described by Travis, also
being five foot tall, with large bald heads, large eyes,
and unusually lightweight bodies. The National Enquirer would eventually publish
the story, for which Travis was paid two thousand, five
hundred U S. Dollars equivalent to twelve thousand dollars today,
(55:18):
with each of his co workers receiving just over four
hundred dollars. Over time, the national interest in Travis's story
began to die down, until eventually the news outlets stopped calling,
and the colorful array of out of towners and UFO
buffs headed back to wherever they had come from. By
(55:39):
the new year, Sheriff Gillespie, still none the wiser, with
no one to prosecute or charge for Travis's bizarre disappearance,
closed the case two months later. In February nineteen seventy six, Travis, Dwayne,
and their mother Mary would all be given polygraph tests
set up by the Aerial Phenomena Research Group, which concluded
(56:03):
that all three were telling the truth with regards to
their own experiences during those extraordinary days in November nineteen
seventy five. In the months and years that followed, the
people of Snowflake remained divided, with some convinced it was
a hoax and others not entirely sure. Being a Mormon settlement,
(56:26):
many took umbradge to the heresy at the heart of
Travis's story that the creatures he'd encountered were very much
not in what they considered to be God's image. Though
they accepted that God had created other worlds and populated
them with people, that those people might look a little
different was a stretch too far for their beliefs. As
(56:48):
for the rest of the crew, the event appeared to
affect them in different ways. Kenny Peterson would eventually leave
the town, making his way to Mexico, where he married
settled down for a time before returning to Snowflake. Though
Mike Rogers was stripped of the Turkey Springs contract, he
was eventually paid in full for the unfinished job and
(57:11):
continued to work successfully as a contractor. Dwayne Smith and
Allan Dallas later underwent hypnotic regression, and both maintained their
original version of events pertaining to the night that Travis disappeared.
Despite all the many strange looks and subsequent mickey taking
that came with being part of the story, John Gouleette
(57:34):
had no regrets, saying later only that he was glad
to have experienced it. All seven men involved have never
altered their story once to this day, with Steve Pearce,
who was suffering from financial hardship at the time, even
said to have turned down a ten thousand dollar offer
to retract his story. Travis Walton would eventually settle down
(58:00):
and marry Mike Rodgers's sister Dana, with the pair taking
up residents above a local store on Snowflake's main Street.
In nineteen seventy eight, he published a full account of
his story in the book The Walton Experience that was
later adapted into the nineteen ninety three film Fire in
(58:20):
the Sky. He continues to lecture about his apparent abduction
to day. In the summer of nineteen seventy six, a
report was produced by journalist and prominent UFO skeptic Philip
Klass that purported to provide a detailed forensic analysis of
(58:44):
Travis Walton's story, demonstrating that it had been entirely fabricated.
Class's claim hinged largely on new and highly controversial information
that he'd unearthed during his investigation. As it turned out,
the polygraph test that Travis eventually took in February nineteen
seventy six was not the first polygraph test he'd taken
(59:08):
on the subject of his apparent abduction. In fact, he'd
sat for one as early as November sixteenth, less than
a week after his return. Organized by the Aerial Phenomena
Research Group and witnessed by a representative for the National Inquirer,
the test was conducted by John McCarthy, the director of
(59:28):
the Arizona Polygraph Laboratory, who determined on balance that Travis
was not telling the truth. Both the National Inquirer and
APRO agreed not to publish the result. It was a
few nights later. The Deputy Glen Flake was sat in
the Navajo County Sheriff's office in Holbrook, fielding one call
(59:52):
after another from news outlets across the world, desperate to
know more about the forestry workers and the UFO. With
the phones finally having calmed down, Flake was taking a
moment of downtime when a burst of static from out
of the station radio was followed by a flurry of
excited voices discussing a strange light that was currently hovering
(01:00:16):
near the mountains just to the east. Flake listened in
as the voices two deputies stationed at Pinetop, a town
just fifty miles to the south, detailed the light and
how it seemed to just be sitting there in the
sky and slowly changing from red to white to blue.
(01:00:37):
Seconds later, a third voice broke in in excitement, another deputy,
this time from Saint john Sheriff's station, about forty miles
to the east. They could see it too, Whatever it was,
he said, it was no aeroplane. Deputy Flake grabbed his coat,
stepped out into the freezing cold night, and turned his
(01:01:00):
eyes to the east. Well, I'll be damned, he said,
as they're clearly discernible in the sky. Just above the
forest sat a small bright light changing slowly from red
to white to blue. Thank you as ever for listening, unexplained.
(01:01:26):
As an av Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
also produced by me Richard McLain Smith, unexplained. The book
and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
(01:01:48):
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
of your own you'd like to share. You can find
out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reaches online
through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook
(01:02:10):
at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast h
Hello, it's Richard mclin smith here with Unexplained on an
end of season break. We'll be dipping back into the
archive each week until season nine begins on Friday, October thirty. First,
this week's episode takes us to the forests of Arizona
in November nineteen seventy five, where a crew of loggers
were finishing another hard day's work in the wilderness. It
(00:21):
was meant to be routine, just another evening drive back
to town through the darkening woods, a journey they'd made
countless times before. But when the crew returned home that night,
one of them was missing, leaving those left behind to
relay a story so bizarre that it would divide not
just their community, but the entire country. This is Unexplained,
(00:46):
Season four, episode twenty, The Homecoming. Navajo County Deputy Sheriff
Chuck Ellison was sitting down to eat dinner with his
(01:06):
wife when the telephone rang. The voice on the other
end was hard to read, both frantic and oddly hesitant
at the same time. Ellison asked the caller to calm
down and start again by telling him who he was.
It was Kenny Peterson, came the speedy reply, and they
(01:27):
needed the police right away. As Peterson went on to explain,
he and his forestry Service co workers had been clearing
a section of Arizona's Apache Sitgreave's forest earlier that night
when something inexplicable had occurred, and now one of their
crew was missing. But when Ellison pushed for more details,
(01:50):
Peterson paused for a moment before replying that perhaps it
would be better if they could explain it to him
in person. Ten minutes later, after apologizing to his wife
for having to leave so suddenly, Ellison pulled into the
parking lot of Wilbur's Market shopping center in Habor, a
small junction town about one hundred and fifty miles northeast
(02:13):
of Phoenix, Arizona, where he'd agreed to meet Kenny. It
didn't take long for the deputy to spot the man
and his colleagues Mike Rogers, John Guillette, Alan Dallas, Dwayne Smith,
and Steve Pearce all gathered together in an anxious huddle
by the entrance, still covered in dust and debris from
(02:34):
the day's shift. At least two of the group was
struggling to hold back tears. In no mood to mess around,
Ellison asked the men to explain exactly what was going on.
They all looked sheepishly toward each other, as if they
didn't quite know what they were going to say to him,
(02:55):
until finally Mike began to speak. The twenty eight year
old Mike was an independent contractor and the crew were
his responsibility, so too, ultimately was the man who was missing.
His name was Travis Walton, who also happened to be
Mike's best friend. Ordinarily they would never have left him
(03:18):
behind up there in the forest, but as Mike tried
to explain to Ellison, these were far from ordinary circumstances.
You're listening to unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Like
(03:41):
the rest of Mike Roger's crew, twenty two year old
Travis Walton lived in Snowflake, a farming town located about
thirty miles east of Habour with a population of just
over two and a half thousand. It was founded by
Mormon settlers in eighteen seventy eight and was comprised largely
of life orise houses and small local stores, all overshadowed
(04:04):
by the huge red bricked Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints that dominated the town square. Delinquency was
not looked on lightly by the community, nor was anyone
who deigned to be a little different. Back in nineteen
seventy one, Travis, who with his long hair was dismissed
(04:25):
by many as effeckless hippie, and a friend were convicted
of forging payroll checks from a local company. The pair
were given two years probation and forced to pay the
money back. In a town as small and god fearing
as Snowflake, such reputations were hard to shake. Those who
(04:46):
knew Travis, however, knew a different story. Some of his
school teachers even considered him one of the smartest pupils
that they'd ever taught. After dropping out of Northern Arizona
University a few years b previously, Travis had been picking
up work wherever he could find it. When Mike Rogers,
(05:07):
a forestry contractor with nine years experience, procured another of
his United States Forest Service contracts, Travis jumped at the
opportunity to join the team. The job was to clear
one thousand, two hundred and seventy seven acres of thick
scrub brush from a section of the Apache Sick Creeves
National Forest known as Turkey Springs, which was about ten
(05:31):
miles into the pine covered mountains just to the west
of Haber. That Wednesday, November fifth, started out just like
any other day, as one by one Rogers collected each
of his crew members in his battered crew Cab International
from their homes in Snowflake, then headed off on their
(05:52):
forty mile journey into the mountains. With it being November,
there was always a slight chill in the air first
thing in the morning, but it soon heated up when
the sun came out. Though the work was arduous, cutting
(06:13):
back all new growth less than six inches in diameter
and gathering it up into great slash piles, Travis never
tired of being up there on that mountain ridge, with
the fresh air in his lungs, wild horses galloping through
the trees all around them, and that ancient forest stretching
out below, older than the people whose name it took,
(06:37):
older even than God themself. Hours later, with darkness returning,
and so too that light chill in the air, the
men called it a day. Gathering their tools, they slung
them into the back of Night's truck before piling in themselves.
(06:58):
Travis and Kenny up front with Mike, while the others,
all smokers, sat in the back gleefully lighting up. Mike
switched on the engine, bathing the narrow forest road ahead
in the light of the headlamps, and eased out of
the clearing. They'd barely made it two hundred yards along
(07:18):
the rugged forest track when Alan broke in from the back. Hey,
what is that, he said, pointing toward a soft glowing
light coming from out of the trees to the right.
Have you guys never seen the moon? Mocked Kenny, only
as the others were quick to point out the moon
(07:40):
was already sitting high in the sky above on the
other side of the truck. The soft white glow grew
brighter as they continued on, slowly edging ever closer toward it,
Now no more than one hundred yards from its source.
The light bled out across the road before them, but frustratingly,
(08:02):
whatever it was, remained obscured by the trees until eventually
they reached a clearing and they were finally able to
see it. A large disc like structure roughly twenty feet
wide and eight feet high, hovering a good fifteen feet
above the ground. It was so close they could even
(08:24):
see the detail on its surface, how it was divided
into a series of thin panels with a thin, darker
band that seemed to circle all the way around it,
and how its glow appeared to be coming from inside.
Before Mike had even brought the truck to a stop,
the side door was opened and Travis was gone, hurrying
(08:47):
off toward it. The others yelled for him to come back,
but Travis just kept on going, edging closer and closer
toward it. Then came a strange noise that seemed to
emanate from the craft, high pitched at first, before steadily
shifting into something much lower, like a vast turbine engine.
(09:11):
When suddenly a blinding blue light shot out from the disk,
holding Travis in some kind of grip. With his body
now completely rigid, he was slowly lifted a good foot
into the air and suspended there for a moment before
being flung hard onto the ground, skidding shoulder first into
(09:32):
the stone and dirt, and there he lay completely still.
That was enough for Rogers, who, with four kids of
his own and the rest of his crew to worry about,
turned the key and tore out of the clearing as
fast as the truck could go, and then they were
racing through the trees, bouncing over the dirt track at
(09:55):
speed as Rogers did his best to keep the thing
on the road, with the rest of the crew's deeming
for him to keep going faster and faster, until it
was just one bend too many, with a huge pine
tree looming up before him, Rogers pulled hard on the
wheel and brought the truck slamming into a pile of
bulldoze dirt by the side of the road. The men
(10:18):
looked frantically about for any sign of the strange craft,
but saw nothing but the frigid dark and the bright
half moon above. And for a moment there was silence,
and then all hell broke loose. We've got to go back,
yelled Kenny. No way, said Steve, as tears streamed down
(10:40):
his face. We've got to get out of here. Kenny's right,
said Mike, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
Only then had it dawned on him that, without even thinking,
he'd abandoned his best friend alone out there with that thing,
whatever it was. We're going back, he said. Finally, you
(11:02):
can either come with me or you can wait for
me here. With no one willing to take their chances
in the forest alone, they headed back to look for Travis,
but by the time they got to where they'd last
seen him, he was gone. And that, as he finished
explaining to an utterly perplexed Deputy Ellison, was when they
(11:24):
decided to call the police. After hearing the men's story,
Deputy Ellison reluctantly relayed it back to Sheriff Marlin Gillespie
at the Navajo County Sheriff's office in Holbrook, another forty
mile drive north of Habor. Though Ellison was quick to
(11:48):
clarify that he didn't believe any of it, he had
little doubt the men had experienced something traumatic. Less than
an hour later, Sheriff Gillespie arrived with Deputy Kenneth Coplin
in tow and Mike's crew repeated their extraordinary story for
the second time that night, but Mike was getting impatient.
(12:10):
They needed to get back up there and search for Travis.
Kenny and Allan were keen to join, but by then
all John, Dwayne and Steve, who at seventeen was the
youngest of the group wanted to do was go home,
taking Mike's truck. They headed back to his house to
let his wife know what had happened, while the remaining
(12:33):
three joined the sheriff and his two deputies and headed
back toward Turkey Springs. It took a while to find
the exact spot again, but soon the men were out
in the cold air, flashlights in hand as they scoured
the ground for any sign of Travis. But the men
found nothing. No scarred or broken trees other than the
(12:57):
ones the team had cut down, no scuff marks in
the dirt, no sign of Travis's bootmarkings. Neither did they
find any pieces of clothing or any blood for that matter.
It was almost as if no one had ever been
there at all. All that was clear was that Travis
(13:18):
was gone. Sheriff Gillespie eyed Mike and his men with suspicion.
Clearly Travis hadn't been abducted by a UFO, so what
then exactly had taken place? And if he was still
alive out here as the men claimed he might be,
it was an awfully cold night to only be wearing
(13:40):
plaid and denhim. Ellison notified more deputies and members of
a local volunteer organization to join in the search, but
by midnight there was still no sign of the missing man.
Growing increasingly desperate, Rogers suggested it was time they notified
(14:01):
Travis's mother. At fifty seven years old, Mary Kellett had
raised Travis and his five siblings on her own after
making a living running a boarding house in Phoenix. By
nineteen seventy five, she divided her time between her home
(14:23):
in Snowflake and a cabin in Bare Springs, a stretch
of woodland a good ten miles to the southeast of Habor.
It was funny, she thought, as she watched Deputy Copland's
car pulling up outside the cabin. Just earlier in the day,
she'd been overcome with the strange conviction that something terrible
(14:45):
had happened to her son, Travis. When Mike stepped out
of the vehicle, whom she knew well as a good
friend of Travis's, her worst fears were confirmed. Once inside.
Coplin was as clearly distraught. Rogers explained to Mary about
what they'd seen that evening and how Travis had disappeared.
(15:09):
It was odd, thought Coplan, how calm Mary seemed to
be in the face of such unusual and disturbing news,
almost as if it wasn't news to her at all.
About an hour later, Coplin made his goodbyes and headed
back to Sheriff Gillespie to report his findings. In the meantime,
(15:30):
Rogers drove Mary in her car to her daughter Allison's
home in Taylor, a town just south of Snowflake. Alison,
who lived with her husband Grant Neph, was especially close
to Travis and was understandably devastated to hear the news.
Skeptical of the story, however, she demanded to hear again
(15:51):
from Mike exactly what had happened, but he could only
tell her what he knew. A few hours later, unable
to work eight any longer, Mary called her son Dwayne
at his home in Phoenix to give him the worrying news.
Though Dwayne was Mary's second oldest son, she'd always considered
(16:11):
him the most mature, and it was often to him
that she first turned in times of stress. Minutes later,
Dwayne jumped into his car and started out on the
two hundred mile journey to Snowflake to meet up with
the others. At eight a m. The morning after Travis's disappearance,
(16:38):
a number of search teams assembled in Turkey, Springs to
assist the Navaju County and Silver Creek Sheriff's officers in
their continued search for the missing man. Among them were
a group of US Forest Service personnel drafted in for
their knowledge of the local area. Mike Rogers, Kenny Peterson,
(16:59):
and Allan Dallas were back too to help with the search.
That morning, the thirty or so search team, starting from
the point that Travis was last seen, began the laborious
task of scarring the forest of any sign of him,
a search that would eventually encompass a region of roughly
a mile squared. As the forestry workers scoured the area
(17:23):
for any sign of unusually broken trees or foot markings,
it was hard to ignore just how dry the whole
area was, with some of the dead brush piles being
almost a year old and the floor carpeted in dry
pine needles, though no one gave it much credence. If
some kind of craft had indeed lifted off from around there,
(17:45):
the whole place would have gone up in flames. Elsewhere,
Sheriff Gillespie and Deputy Ellison were looking for something a
little different, trying to square the obvious distress shown by
Mine and his crew the previous night. With the ridiculous
cock and bull story they had given them, Gillespie and
(18:06):
Ellison had got to thinking could it be whether it
was premeditated or the result of a tragic accident That
the men knew only too well where Travis was after all,
because they had buried his body. As the two police
kept one eye on the men for any sign of
(18:26):
suspicious activity, their other was kept firmly on the ground,
looking for any sign of recently disturbed earth or fresh
piles of dirt and of course blood. Later that afternoon,
Mary and Dwane also joined the search, with Mary seeming
once again far too calm for Deputy Copland's liking. By
(18:52):
the afternoon, however, the search teams were yet to find anything.
With little else to go on share, Gillespie suggested contacting
the nearest firewatch tower. Perhaps they had seen something that night.
At the very least, it would end all the ridiculous
talk about UFOs. Sadly, however, the guard stationed at the
(19:16):
tower only a few miles to the west, had gone
off duty at five PM. The search continued the next day,
this time with the help of search dogs from Arizona
State Prison. But still no evidence of Travis's whereabouts or
any sign that any unidentified flying object had been in
(19:38):
the vicinity was found. On Saturday morning, Gillespie was back
in his office in Holbrook when a kerfuffle was heard
in the reception running through. He was startled to find
Dwayne and Mike Rogers, demanding to know why no one
(20:00):
was up on the ridge looking for Travis. The pair
had gone out to join the third day of the search,
only to find nobody there. Having begun to suspect that
some kind of hoax was being played out, Gillespie was
somewhat taken aback by the evident concern and passion in
Dwayne and Mike's demand. Within an hour, the search was reinstated,
(20:25):
with horses, jeeps, and a rescue helicopter brought in for
good measure, having flown in helicopters during his time in
the military. That afternoon, Dwayne joined the helicopter crew in
the air, peering down at the gaps in between the
trees for any sign of his brother. He couldn't decide
(20:45):
whether to be worried or relieved when by the end
of the day they'd once again failed to find anything.
Back in Snowflake, a Volkswagen van pulled into the town
square to join the throng of news vans and other
unfamiliar vehicles that had been steadily descending on the town.
(21:07):
By then, news of Travis's disappearance and the unusual explanation
behind it had spread far and wide, with many journalists
and UFO enthusiasts keen to investigate the wild story for themselves.
One such enthusiast was Fred Sylvanus from Phoenix, who for
the past twenty years had conducted field research for the
(21:30):
Arizona Regional UFO Project. That afternoon, Fred was put in
touch with Mike and Dwaine, who agreed to join him
in his van for an interview. Mike began with an
account of the craft they'd seen, how pretty it had been,
like a fancy new car, he said, and how he'd
(21:50):
been almost mesmerized by just how beautiful a thing it
was to look at. Then Twain chimed in with something unexpected.
He had also seen one almost identical to what Mike
described in broad Daylight twelve years before. Not only that
(22:10):
he and Travis had discussed UFOs at great length and
what they would do if they ever got close to one,
which was what asked Fred they would try to establish
contact with it. Of course, came Dwaine's reply. It was
an alarming admission to Sylvanus, since he was previously under
(22:30):
the impression that none of the men involved had any
prior interest in UFOs. In his experienced opinion, evidence of
such interest was often a red flag where stories of
apparent sightings and abductions were concerned. And then came another
troubling revelation, this time from Mike. As it turned out
(22:55):
he and his crew were wildly behind schedule on their contract.
Having already received one extension, the crew were struggling to
meet their second deadline. As Mike left slip to Sylvanus,
perhaps with all that had been going on, the Forestry
Service might be willing to offer them a second extension.
(23:17):
There was just one final question, said Sylvanus, before wrapping up.
Where did the pair think that Travis was now? Wherever
he is? Said Dwayne, It is not on this earth.
Many in the town had been uttering it among themselves,
(23:40):
but it was Snowflake town Marshall Sanford Flake who said
it the loudest that all this talk of UFOs and
Travis Walton being abducted was complete rubbish. Some put this
down to an ongoing grudge with Travis due to a
disagreement from a previous year, but either way, Flake was
determined to put an end to the nonsense. Having deduced
(24:04):
that Travis had orchestrated the whole thing in collaboration with
his brother Dwayne, using some kind of balloon to fool
his colleagues, Flake became convinced that he was merely hiding
out at his mother's cabin in bear Lake. In the
days since Travis's disappearance, Marshall Flake made a number of
unannounced visits to Mary Kellett's cabin, hoping to catch the
(24:28):
family out, one time even bringing a documentary crew with
him from the United Kingdom, but Mary could only tell
him what she had told everyone else, that she had
no idea where her son was. Such rumours were becoming
a struggle for the rest of Mike's crew, too, who
couldn't step outside their homes without being harassed by reporters
(24:51):
or neighbors telling them to give up the hoax and
tell the truth about what happened. On Monday morning, with
Travis now having been missing for five days, Mike Rogers,
Kenny Peterson John Gullette, Steve Pearce, Alan Dallas, and Dwayne
Smith received an ominous request to assemble at Sheriff Gillespie's
(25:14):
office in Holbrook. The men arrived on the assumption that
they would be giving another statement about the events of
the previous Wednesday. What they found was something a little different.
Greeting them alongside Gillespie was Arizona Department of Public Safety
employee Cy Gilson. Gilson also happened to be an expert
(25:38):
in polygraph testing, and he was there to give them
a lie detector test. Steve Pearce went white at the
sheer mention of the device. It was just as his
mother had been telling him. It didn't matter if he
had anything to do with Travis's disappearance. This was how
the law really worked. They were going to try and
(26:00):
pin something on him, and one way or another, if
Steve wasn't careful, he would not be leaving that station
anytime soon. Alan Dallas also grew suddenly nervous, a reaction
not lost on Sheriff Gillespie. As the Sheriff then explained
to them, since they had no evidence to back up
(26:23):
any of their claims, he'd been forced to take drastic action.
If they couldn't find Travis, at the very least, he
could dismiss their ridiculous story, and if they were telling
the truth, none of them had anything to worry about anyway.
Having been observing the men closely since they arrived, Gilson
(26:44):
was quick to pick out Steve, the youngest and clearly
most anxious of the group, as a possible weak link.
If they had indeed concocted the whole thing up together,
it was Steve, he reasoned, that was most likely to
break alone. In the interview room, Gilson took a moment
(27:08):
to calibrate the equipment, then asked for Steve to be
sent in. After nervously taking a seat, Gilson proceeded to
connect Steve to the machine, pulling the wires tightly across
his chest, before asking him to sit up and try
his best to relax. And then, after switching on the machine,
(27:30):
Gilson began Did you cause Travis any serious physical harm
last Wednesday afternoon? Asked Gilson, as the graft paper spulled
out endlessly under the needles, No, said Steve, quickly, looking
anxiously toward the fragile arms of the machine as they
(27:50):
flickered lightly across the page. Gilson nodded to himself, then
jotted something down in his notebook. I'm not lying, said
Steve with quiet determination, Ignoring him. Gilson continued, do you
know if Travis Walton was physically injured by some other
(28:11):
member of your work crew last Wednesday? No, said Steve emphatically.
And then do you know if Travis Walton's body is
buried or hidden somewhere in the Turkey Springs area? No,
came Steve's emphatic reply. Again. Then, finally, did you tell
(28:32):
the truth about actually seeing a UFO last Wednesday when
Travis Walton disappeared? Steve looked Gilson in the eye, and then,
after only a moment's pause, yes, he said. One after
the other, Mike's crew came and gave their answers to
(28:54):
the same set of questions, taking about twenty minutes at
a time as they went over and over again, all
giving the exact same answers as Steve, and not once
deviating from their story. No, they didn't harm Travis, nor
know of anyone who did. And yes, they did see
(29:14):
a UFO that night. At ten pm that evening, the
men were sent home, after which Gilson presented Gillespie with
the results, the sheriff could only gorpe in amazement. According
to Gilson, not one of the men, with the exception
(29:34):
of Alan Dallas, whose results were deemed void, could be
determined to have lied about their experience, or, as Gilson
understood it, going by the results, the chances that all
five had cheated the test was something in the region
of one in seventy eight thousand. As Gillespie reported to
(29:56):
the press soon after, there's no doubt they're telling the
truth right down the line. I feel sure that all
six of them saw a UFO. It was close to
midnight on Monday when the phone rang in Allison and
(30:16):
Grant Nef's home in Taylor. Having just gone to bed.
Grant roused himself awake and stumbled to the receiver, nef residence.
Who's this, he muttered wearily. Then a scared and faint
voice crackled up from the other end of the line.
(30:38):
It's Travis. I'm in a phone booth at the Hebre
gas station. I need help. Please come and get me.
Grant stood for a moment, trying to think. It certainly
didn't sound like Travis, and since the family had been
fielding crank calls ever since his disappearance, it seemed reasonable
(30:59):
to assume that this was just another one. Don't call
here again, Grant said, But just as he was about
to hang up, the voice came back, more desperate this time. Wait, Grant,
it's me Please, I'm hurt and I need your help.
(31:20):
Please come and get me. Not long after Grant nef
hung up the phone. In the early hours of Tuesday morning,
just over thirty miles away in the Navajo County Sheriff's
office in Holbrook, Sheriff Marlin Gillespie was enjoying a rare
(31:43):
moment of peace with the search for Travis Walton called
off for the day and all his deputies gone home.
The well liked larman took a moment to reflect on
the events of the previous week. First and foremost, a
young man was missing, and no matter what anybody else said,
though he couldn't rule anything out, it was his duty
(32:06):
to take the family at their word that they knew
nothing about any of it, and if so, that was
a family desperately worried about the fate of a brother
and a son. Of the rest of it, he couldn't
make head nor tail he certainly wasn't ready to accept
that Travis might genuinely have been attacked and possibly even
(32:29):
abducted by a UFO. And yet, as his own man,
sy Gilson had attested, Travis's co workers, in all statistical
likelihood were telling the truth about what they'd seen. And
hadn't he too seen the odd unexplained object or light
in the sky from time to time driving those quiet
(32:50):
forest roads alone at night. Just then the phone rang
startled Gillespie grabbed the receiver. The local phone company had
traced a call placed close to midnight to Allison and
Grant Nef's property from outside a gas station in Haber,
(33:10):
the town closest to where Travis had gone missing. It
must be him, thought Gillespie. And yet, if it was Travis,
why hadn't he called the police instead. It was barely
thirty minutes later when Deputy Chuck Ellison and Lieutenant A. M. Romo,
(33:30):
on Gillespie's orders, pulled up to the Haber gas station,
with the place completely deserted. Ellison and Romo made their
way over in the dark to the three phone booths
at the front of the store and began dusting for
Prince in the end, However, there were just too many
to be able to tell whether Travis had been there
(33:52):
or not. Meanwhile, at the junction of Highway seventy seven
and two seven seven, the road out to Phoenix from Snowflake,
Deputy Glenn Flake, roused from bed by an excited Gillespie,
sat in his patrol vehicle keeping a firm eye on
the road ahead. By two a m. However, he'd seen
(34:13):
no sign of any vehicles belonging to the Walton family.
A short time later, Flake pulled up to Travis's mother,
Mary Kellett's home. Seeing lights on inside, he stepped out
of his car and quietly headed toward the front door
when he noticed Travis's brother Dwayne siphoning petrol from a
(34:34):
vehicle on the driveway. Surprised to see the deputy, Dwayne
explained that he'd been late getting back from the Sheriff's
office earlier in the day, so had missed the chance
to get more gas for his car in preparation for
his return to Phoenix that morning. Since Dwayne said nothing
about Travis, Flake thought it reasonable to assume that perhaps
(34:56):
it wasn't him after all, that had called the nef
property earlier that night. And with that he said his
goodbyes and returned home to bed. It was around lunchtime
the next day the reports began filtering through that Travis
(35:18):
was back and being treated in a hospital in twoson, Arizona,
angered not to have been kept in the loop. A
deeply frustrated Gillespie is finally called by Dwayne late on
Tuesday to inform him that Travis isn't in Tucson after all,
but at home with him in Glendale, just outside of Phoenix.
(35:40):
Dwayne was still talking when Gillespie slammed down the phone,
grabbed his hat from the peg, and piled into his
patrol car. In the past five days, Gillespie's office had
spent over ten thousand dollars looking for Travis, damaging several
expensive vehicles in the process. One of the departments horses
(36:00):
had also been put down after sustaining a devastating injury
during the search. Coupled with the countless hours Gillespie had
put in fielding one call after another from news outlets
all over the world regarding Travis's bizarre disappearance, it was
fair to say, at the very least the sheriff deserved
some answers it was late in the evening by the
(36:25):
time Gillespie arrived at Dwayne's house. At first sight of
the sheriff, Dwayne did his best to apologize for not
alerting him sooner, while insisting that he only had Travis's
best interests at heart. Unmoved, Gillespie demanded to see Travis immediately.
Dwayne hesitated for a moment before showing the sheriff through
(36:48):
to the living room. Gillespie was in the process of
detailing exactly just what lengths his department had gone to
to help Dwayne and his family when the sight of
an exhaust looking Travis stretched out on the sofa stopped
him in his tracks. It wasn't that he seemed physically different,
although he'd never seen Travis with five days of beard
(37:11):
growth before, but something about his demeanor had changed. Then
Gillespie realized what it was. It was shock. The sheriff
quietly took a seat next to the young man and
began by asking him to describe everything he could remember
(37:31):
about the last few days. Travis glanced nervously toward Dwayne,
who nodded for him to begin. As Travis went on
to recount, he remembered being up on the ridge in
the forest, seeing the object glowing in the trees, and
(37:54):
then having the overwhelming urge to get close to it.
He just turned back to see Mike and the others
begging for him to return to the truck, when he
was engulfed in a blinding white blue light. In an instant,
he felt as though he'd been hit on the back
of the head by a baseball bat and that his
(38:14):
whole body was being electrocuted. The next thing he knew,
he felt as though he was waking up from a
deep sleep, but in excruciating pain, as if his whole
body had been burned inside and out. Finally opening his eyes,
he found himself lying down on some kind of table
(38:35):
with a large rectangular light above him. Gathering his thoughts.
Though he didn't recognize the place, he assumed he was
in a hospital of some sort, thinking that he must
have sustained an injury on the job and his friends
had brought him in. Looking down his body, he could
see that his shirt and jacket had been pushed up
(38:56):
toward his shoulders, leaving his chest and belly exposed over
which seemed to be some kind of device scanning his
body slowly with his eyes beginning to focus, he was
able to make out three blurry figures stood around him,
dressed in bright orange and wearing white surgical masks, which
(39:17):
he assumed to be doctors, only realizing with horror moments
later when he locked eyes with one of them that
these weren't like any doctors he'd seen before. Panicking, he
leapt from the table, knocking the scanning device to the floor.
As two of the figures approached, Travis stumbled back into
(39:38):
some kind of instrument tray, Then, grabbing whatever came to hand,
he prepared to defend himself. It was only then that
he observed the figures properly for the first time. They
were each about five feet tall, uncannily familiar with their
two arms, legs, and five digits on each hand, but
(40:01):
that was where the familiarity ended. Their bodies seemed unusually
light weight, while their skin was bright white, without a
crease or wrinkle anywhere to be seen. Their eyes were
big brown discs about an inch and a half in diameter,
and their hands had no fingernails. As Travis went on
(40:25):
to explain, he was just about to attack them when
they ran from the room, leaving him all alone. Seeing
his chance, he bolted out into the corridor and ducked
into some kind of control room that was completely empty
except for a chair in the middle of it covered
in levers and buttons. But as he made his way
(40:47):
toward it, the walls began to disappear, revealing a giant,
three hundred sixty degree panoramic map of the stars that
wrapped all around him as if he were standing alone
in the VARs of space. Moments later, Travis was joined
(41:10):
in the room by what he assumed at first was
another human man of large muscular build wearing a blue
outfit and a bubble helmet over his head. Only when
Travis saw the intense color of his electric blue eyes
did he realize he wasn't human at all. Travis pleaded
(41:30):
for his help, nonetheless, in response, the being led him
through an airlock into what looked like some kind of
aircraft hanger. Stepping out onto a ramp, Travis realized he
was exiting some kind of craft that was similar to
what they'd seen in the woods, but considerably larger in size.
From there, no longer feeling any pain, he was led
(41:54):
through another series of doors and corridors, until finally he
came to a bright white room occupied by three other
figures similar to the man who led him there. The
beings then lifted him onto a table and placed some
kind of respiratory device over his face. The next thing
he knew, he was lying on the pavement in the
(42:16):
freezing dark, staring up at the stars in the night sky.
Looking frantically about. He realized with relief that he was
back in Arizona, somewhere on the highway just outside of Haber.
Dehydrated and disorientated, he stumbled to the Haber gas station,
from where he made the call to his sister's home.
(42:45):
It was all true, insisted Dwayne, as he then explained
to the sheriff. He'd been out at his mother's home
in Snowflake when they got the call from Grant, their
brother in law, informing them that Travis was alive. Having
raced off with Grant to pick him up from the
gas station, they found him huddled down inside one of
the phone booths, still wearing the clothes he'd gone missing
(43:08):
in despite it being well below freezing. According to Dwayne,
Travis was so traumatized when they arrived that he tried
to run away, not realizing who Dwayne was at first.
When they finally got him in the car, the clearly
disorientated Travis was convinced he'd only be missing for a
few hours. When Dwayne then told him to feel the
(43:30):
beard on his usually clean shaven face, Travis was shocked
to find it had been more like five days. Sheriff
Gillespie ran a hand through his hair. Could it be,
he asked, that he really was hit on the head
by a baseball bat. Perhaps one of his coworkers had
done it and then drugged him afterwards. Perhaps he really
(43:54):
had woken up in a hospital after all, but the
effect of the hit on the head and the drugs
had left him confused and discombobulated. But the brothers were
having none of it. For a start, there was no
injury to his head, nor to any other part of
his body for that matter. According to Dwayne, this was
(44:15):
one of the first things he checked when Travis got home,
shortly before helping him into a hot bath to warm
him up. He also claimed to have weighed his brother beforehand,
finding that he'd lost at least ten pounds in the
days since he disappeared. That first day since Travis's apparent
(44:40):
return had been an eventful one for Dwayne and his brother,
as they went on to explain to Sheriff Gillespie. It
was back during the search for Travis that Dwayne had
been approached by William Spaulding from the euphology Group Ground
Saucer Watch, an organization first founded in ninety In fifty
seven that sought to provide a legitimate outlet for people
(45:04):
to report sightings of unusual aerial phenomena without the fear
of ridicule. Having dealt with a number of similar cases before,
Sporting advised Dwayne to contact him should Travis be found alive.
In return, GSW would provide a free medical examination and
shelter from the inevitable media storm that would follow in
(45:27):
the hope of gaining proof that he had been abducted
by an unknown sentient species, if indeed that was the case.
As it transpired, according to Dwayne, Travis was already back
at his mother's house in Snowflake the night Deputy Flake
saw Dwayne in the driveway siphoning gas for his car.
(45:48):
Realizing that he wouldn't be able to keep Travis's apparent
return a secret for long, Dwayne informed the press that
he was being taken to a hospital in Tucson to
recuperate from his exhausted ordeal that morning, the pair then
traveled to Phoenix, whereby they immediately contacted Spaulding, who gave
(46:08):
them an address for a doctor Lester Stewart, who would
be conducting the medical exam when they arrived there soon after, however,
the brothers were surprised to find doctor Stewart's office located
in a fairly run down westward Hoe hotel. They only
became more concerned when they saw the sign on doctor
(46:29):
Stewart's door, which read hypnotherapist. After thirty minutes or so
of Travis detailing what he could about his missing five days,
it became clear that not only was Stuart ill equipped
to carry out a full medical exam on him, but
that he wasn't a medical doctor at all. Returning home frustrated,
(46:52):
Dwayne was then contacted by Coral and Jim Lawrenson from
another UFO organization called the Area Phenomena Research group. Much
like ground Sourcer Watch, at pro prided themselves on their
rational scientific approach to the UFO phenomena, with a large
staff of consulting PhD scientists among them, most notably doctor
(47:16):
James Harder, a civil and hydraulics engineering professor from the
University of California, Berkeley. Famed UFO researcher j Allen Heineck
described at PRO as one of the best to civilian
organizations of its day. Still desperate to prove what had
happened to him, Travis agreed to then let APRO conduct
(47:39):
the medical exam. That afternoon, doctor Howard Kendall, predominantly a
pediatrician and general practitioner, doctor Joseph Saltz, arrived at Dwayne's
house to assess the apparent abductee. Kendall and Salts were
(48:02):
shown into a bedroom where Travis was waiting for them,
lying down on the bed in his shirt and jeans.
Doctor Kendall's report would later state that from the moment
they saw him, it was clear that Travis was suffering
from extreme stress and anxiety. Kendall and Salts observed that
his vital signs were all normal, with no overt signs
(48:26):
of weight loss, though his mouth was unusually dry, suggesting
a high level of dehydration. Examining his body for any
signs of bruising or damage. Curiously, doctor Kendall discovered a
two millimeter wide red spot in the crease of Travis's
right elbow, much like a needle puncture wound. Travis suggested
(48:48):
that it might have been a thorn wound picked up
at some point while he was working out in the forest.
After the preliminary examination, Dwayne then handed doctor Kendall a
jar that he claim aimed contained Travis's urine, which William
Spaulding had advised him to collect. The sample was later
found to be normal, displaying no evidence of drug use
(49:11):
or anything else untoward, with the exception that it contained
no trace of acetone. Had Travis not eaten in the
last few days, ordinarily, acetone, which is created when fat
stores are broken down in the body, would be present.
If Travis had indeed lost ten pounds, an absence of
acetone would have been deeply unusual. Intriguingly, the doctors also
(49:36):
noted that the combination of Travis's unmarked body and the
fact that it was relatively odorless despite apparently not having
used any soap since his return, seemed to suggest that
wherever Travis had been for the past five days, it
wasn't outside in the woods. Sheriff Gillespie having listened to
(49:57):
it all with quiet patients, thanked the brothers for bringing
him up to speed, then stood up to leave. Sensing
the sheriff wasn't entirely convinced by the story, Travis made
a request. Since his coworkers had taken a polygraph test,
it only made sense that he should be able to
take one too. Perhaps then people might believe him. We'll
(50:21):
be in touch, said the sheriff, before thanking the young
men again for their time and heading out. The following day, Wednesday,
November twelfth, Travis and Dwayne were moved into the Sheraton
Hotel in Scottsdale, courtesy of The National Inquirer. By the
(50:46):
nineteen seventies, The Inquirer, a notorious and controversial tabloid that
had previously promoted fascist causes, was enjoying a resurgence as
the nation's go to paper for all things celebrity and bizarre,
with a particular interest in apparent altercations with UFOs. Having
managed to get hold of Coral and Jim Lawrenson before
(51:08):
Travis's medical examination, the paper struck a deal with both
Travis and Apro to cover all costs in their efforts
to prove he was telling the truth. In return, Travis
gave them exclusive rights to his story. Later that afternoon,
doctor James Harder of the University California, Berkeley arrived at
(51:30):
the hotel to conduct a regressive hypnosis session with Travis,
in which, while apparently under hypnosis, Travis repeated the exact
same story he told everyone else about his experience on
board a UFO. Afterwards, Travis is informed by Sheriff Gillespie
that a polygraph test has been arranged for him in
(51:51):
two days time, to be conducted by cy Gilson, the
same individual who tested his coworkers. The test is agreed
on the one condition that remained a secret from the press. However,
the test is abruptly canceled at the last minute by
Dwayne when he receives a call from a reporter an
(52:11):
hour before the test is due to be taken, wanting
to know where it's taking place. The next morning, a
new story breaks in the Phoenix Gazette with the headline
UFO case is linked to drugs by expert. The expert
turned out to be none other than doctor Lester Stewart,
the hypnotherapist that Dwayne and Travis had blown off after
(52:35):
spending only a few minutes with him at his office
in the westward Hoe Hotel. Only the way Steward told it,
it had been more like two hours, in which he
had ample time to assess the patient. It was his
conclusion that Travis had made the entire thing up, going
on to speculate that his cosmic visions had been nothing
(52:57):
but the hallucinatory effects of LSD. William Spaulding was also
quoted in the article stating that in fact, it had
been Dwayne and Travis that specifically asked him to set
them up with a hypnotherapist. Spaulding, having only days before
been so convinced of Travis's story he was willing to
(53:18):
offer them financial support to prove it. Was now convinced
more than ever that it was all just a hoax.
Though we can never know for sure whose version of
events is the truth, it has been pointed out that
it would have been physically impossible for the Walton brothers
to have spent even one hour with doctor Stewart and
got back to Dwayne's home in time to receive the
(53:41):
later phone call from Coral and Jim Lawrenson that doctor
Stewart was found not to even have a license to
practice medicine in the United States also cast further doubt
on his credibility. The sudden attack, as some have suggested,
appeared to have been made out of spite more than
anything else, in retaliation for Travis's rejection of Spauting's help.
(54:11):
The following week, doctor James Harder released his own assessment
to Travis on behalf of apro coming to the conclusion that,
one way or another, whether the events had occurred or
not as Travis said they had, Harder had little doubt that,
at the very least, Travis believed he was telling the truth.
(54:32):
Harder's assessment was made partially from the medical evidence, but
also on account of another apparent abduction case that had
supposedly occurred three months previously. The case involving US Air
Force Sergeant Charles Moody had never previously been reported, and
yet Moody's description of the beings that he allegedly encountered
(54:55):
bore a striking similarity to those described by Travis, also
being five foot tall, with large bald heads, large eyes,
and unusually lightweight bodies. The National Enquirer would eventually publish
the story, for which Travis was paid two thousand, five
hundred U S. Dollars equivalent to twelve thousand dollars today,
(55:18):
with each of his co workers receiving just over four
hundred dollars. Over time, the national interest in Travis's story
began to die down, until eventually the news outlets stopped calling,
and the colorful array of out of towners and UFO
buffs headed back to wherever they had come from. By
(55:39):
the new year, Sheriff Gillespie, still none the wiser, with
no one to prosecute or charge for Travis's bizarre disappearance,
closed the case two months later. In February nineteen seventy six, Travis, Dwayne,
and their mother Mary would all be given polygraph tests
set up by the Aerial Phenomena Research Group, which concluded
(56:03):
that all three were telling the truth with regards to
their own experiences during those extraordinary days in November nineteen
seventy five. In the months and years that followed, the
people of Snowflake remained divided, with some convinced it was
a hoax and others not entirely sure. Being a Mormon settlement,
(56:26):
many took umbradge to the heresy at the heart of
Travis's story that the creatures he'd encountered were very much
not in what they considered to be God's image. Though
they accepted that God had created other worlds and populated
them with people, that those people might look a little
different was a stretch too far for their beliefs. As
(56:48):
for the rest of the crew, the event appeared to
affect them in different ways. Kenny Peterson would eventually leave
the town, making his way to Mexico, where he married
settled down for a time before returning to Snowflake. Though
Mike Rogers was stripped of the Turkey Springs contract, he
was eventually paid in full for the unfinished job and
(57:11):
continued to work successfully as a contractor. Dwayne Smith and
Allan Dallas later underwent hypnotic regression, and both maintained their
original version of events pertaining to the night that Travis disappeared.
Despite all the many strange looks and subsequent mickey taking
that came with being part of the story, John Gouleette
(57:34):
had no regrets, saying later only that he was glad
to have experienced it. All seven men involved have never
altered their story once to this day, with Steve Pearce,
who was suffering from financial hardship at the time, even
said to have turned down a ten thousand dollar offer
to retract his story. Travis Walton would eventually settle down
(58:00):
and marry Mike Rodgers's sister Dana, with the pair taking
up residents above a local store on Snowflake's main Street.
In nineteen seventy eight, he published a full account of
his story in the book The Walton Experience that was
later adapted into the nineteen ninety three film Fire in
(58:20):
the Sky. He continues to lecture about his apparent abduction
to day. In the summer of nineteen seventy six, a
report was produced by journalist and prominent UFO skeptic Philip
Klass that purported to provide a detailed forensic analysis of
(58:44):
Travis Walton's story, demonstrating that it had been entirely fabricated.
Class's claim hinged largely on new and highly controversial information
that he'd unearthed during his investigation. As it turned out,
the polygraph test that Travis eventually took in February nineteen
seventy six was not the first polygraph test he'd taken
(59:08):
on the subject of his apparent abduction. In fact, he'd
sat for one as early as November sixteenth, less than
a week after his return. Organized by the Aerial Phenomena
Research Group and witnessed by a representative for the National Inquirer,
the test was conducted by John McCarthy, the director of
(59:28):
the Arizona Polygraph Laboratory, who determined on balance that Travis
was not telling the truth. Both the National Inquirer and
APRO agreed not to publish the result. It was a
few nights later. The Deputy Glen Flake was sat in
the Navajo County Sheriff's office in Holbrook, fielding one call
(59:52):
after another from news outlets across the world, desperate to
know more about the forestry workers and the UFO. With
the phones finally having calmed down, Flake was taking a
moment of downtime when a burst of static from out
of the station radio was followed by a flurry of
excited voices discussing a strange light that was currently hovering
(01:00:16):
near the mountains just to the east. Flake listened in
as the voices two deputies stationed at Pinetop, a town
just fifty miles to the south, detailed the light and
how it seemed to just be sitting there in the
sky and slowly changing from red to white to blue.
(01:00:37):
Seconds later, a third voice broke in in excitement, another deputy,
this time from Saint john Sheriff's station, about forty miles
to the east. They could see it too, Whatever it was,
he said, it was no aeroplane. Deputy Flake grabbed his coat,
stepped out into the freezing cold night, and turned his
(01:01:00):
eyes to the east. Well, I'll be damned, he said,
as they're clearly discernible in the sky. Just above the
forest sat a small bright light changing slowly from red
to white to blue. Thank you as ever for listening, unexplained.
(01:01:26):
As an av Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
also produced by me Richard McLain Smith, unexplained. The book
and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
(01:01:48):
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
of your own you'd like to share. You can find
out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reaches online
through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook
(01:02:10):
at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast h
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