November 11, 2025 • 23 mins
It has been 50 years since Travis Walton reappeared in the Arizona wilderness after vanishing for five days. Six men watched him get struck by a beam of light from a hovering disc. They fled. He was gone. And when he finally came back... everything had changed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:32):
Tomorrow marks 50 years since TravisWalton
reappeared in the Arizona wildernessafter vanishing for five days.
Six men watched him get struckby a beam of light from a hovering disc.
They fled in terror.
He vanished.
When he finally came back,everything had changed.
(00:54):
I'm Carol Ann.
Welcome to The InBetween.
Your eyes flutter
open to a darkness not all that differentfrom when they were closed.
As your mind is trying to movefrom the unconscious to the conscious,
new sensory information is flooding in.
(01:16):
You feel the rough texture and coldtemperature of pavement under your cheek.
You pull what little energy you have
to focus on one prime directive.
Get up.
Your muscles strain as you begin theHerculean task of defying gravity itself.
But something in your peripheral visionshatters that concentration.
(01:40):
A light.
You look up to see a glowing, discshaped object floating above you.
But as soon as it registers in your mindwhat you were looking at,
you watch it zip away into the night sky.
You stand up on wobbly legs and you lookaround with no idea where you are.
So you just start running,using the ambiguous
(02:01):
but overpowering fearyou feel to fuel your escape.
But escape from what?
You quickly see a towncome into view at the bottom of the hill.
And miracle of all miracles,you recognize it.
You start running faster
with the amorphous certaintythat familiarity is a good thing.
(02:21):
It takes every molecule of strengththat you don't have,
but you make it to a phone boothand call your family,
uttering the only wordsyou have the strength to blurt out.
It's me.
Travis. They brought me back.
This is the moment that, like it
or not, TravisWalton started his new life.
(02:43):
Not the hopeful, joyous startmarked with the birth of a new child,
but more like the confusing,hazardous haze that engulfs you
when your entire worldviewhas been yanked from beneath your feet.
After about a half an hourof sitting in that phone booth,
that lifeline, headlights floodthrough the glass.
(03:03):
Travis’s brother Duane and brotherin law Grant, despite severe
misgivings of this phone call being yetanother prank call,
arrive at the gas stationto see Travis slumped to the ground.
I can't even
imagine the feelingsthat ran through them at that moment.
Travis has been gone for five days.
(03:24):
Everyone thought he was dead,but there he was.
A million questions had to have beengoing through their minds.
But they put all of that asidein an instant.
It's obvious their little brotherneeds their help fast.
But let me rewind a bit,because before Travis is slumped
in that phone booth,before his family thought he was dead,
(03:48):
we need to go back to November 5th, 1975
to a logging crew heading homeafter a long day's work in the Turkey
Springs area of the Apaches-SitgreavesNational Forest.
Seven men are packed into a single truck
bouncing down a dirt roadas twilight settles over the pines.
Travis Walton, Mike Rogers,
(04:11):
the crew bossand a good friend of Travis's.
Allen Dalis, not a friend of Travis's.
John Goulette.
Kenneth Petersona young husband and a new dad.
Dwayne Smith and Steve Pearce,
the youngest on the crew,who actually lied to Mike Rogers
to get the job, telling Mike he was 18when he really was only 17.
(04:34):
Just regular guys doing regular work.
Until they weren't.
There, winding through the forest whensomeone spots a glow through the trees.
At first Travis thinks it's sunset,maybe a fire.
But as they round a bend in the viewopens up,
every singleone of them sees it at the same time.
(04:56):
A disc hovering about 15ft
off the ground,maybe 100ft from the road, glowing.
And it's humming.
Definitely not the sun.
Mike slams on the brakesand the truck skids to a stop.
The other six guys are frozenin their seats,
wrestling with the cognitive dissonanceof what their eyes
(05:19):
are telling them versuswhat their brains say is possible.
But not Travis.
Now, I need you to understand something.
Travis is all of 22 years old,with an insatiable curiosity
and very little fear of anything.
That is a dangerous combo.
This guy is an amateur boxer as a hobby,and once jumped out of the crew
(05:43):
truck to chase a bear that had crossedthe road in front of them.
And on this night,even though his coworkers are screaming
at him to get back in the truck,Travis does what Travis always does.
He runs toward danger.
He gets out of the truck.
Now, in all fairness, Travis even admitsthat he never intends to get too close.
(06:07):
He thinks this thing is going to fly awayany second.
Like, if you're running straight towarda rabbit.
He thinks there's no wayit'll stick around long enough
to let him get too close.
He gets maybe 20ft away when the noisy,
humming soundit's making starts to get louder.
Like maybe it's gearing up to take offand it starts to wobble.
(06:30):
This is when Travis seriously startsto rethink his life choices.
He sees the only real cover in a login front of him, so he dives for it,
but that just brings himcloser to the craft.
He can still hear the guys in the truckyelling for him to come back.
And he's thinkingthat's exactly what he needs to do.
(06:50):
But when he stands up to make a runfor it, a beam of blue
green light shoots out and hits himsquare in the chest.
His body goes rigid.
The impact lifts him off the groundand throws him
backward about ten feet,landing in a heap.
That's when panic takes over.
(07:11):
Mike floors it, and the truck tears down
that mountain road with six terrified meninside.
Convincedthat they just watched their friend die.
When they finally stop about a quartermile away, they're fighting about
what to do.
Do they go back for Travis?
Do they call the police?
Some want to help.
(07:32):
Others are too scared to move.
Mike, feeling like a coward for
just leaving his friendthere, makes a final decision.
He tells them that he's going backand anyone who doesn't want to go back
can stay there,and he'll come back and get them.
But nobody wants to stay thereby themselves,
so they all get back in the truckand turn around.
(07:54):
As they're nearing that clearing,
they see the same disc shaped objectfly away.
Okay, good.
At least they don't have to worry about itgetting them, too.
But when they return to that spot,Travis is gone.
There's nothing.
The darkness and pine treesand the crushing weight of knowing
(08:16):
they're about to have to explainthe unexplainable to somebody.
At around 7:30 p.m., they roll into Heber,
Arizonaand stop in a parking lot with a payphone.
They all get out of the truck,still not knowing what to do.
If they tell the truth, everyone'sgoing to think they're crazy.
(08:38):
But once Travis shows up missing,
the sheriff is going to be knockingon their doors anyway.
So they make the call.
Can you imagine being that deputy?
Six grown men, some of them in tears.
All of them talking over each other,trying to explain that
their friend just got zapped by a UFO.
(09:01):
Deputy Ellison doesn't know what to think.
How could he?
But these guys are genuinely terrified.
They're not screwing around.
They're not drunk.
Something happened to out there.
Whatever it was,it has them all completely freaked out.
A search begins immediately.
(09:22):
Police, volunteers.
They scour that forest all nightand into the next day.
Nothing. No body. No footprints.
No. Travis.
The Arizona Department of Public Safetygets involved.
The FBI startssniffing around, and the press.
Oh, the press had a field day.
Man abducted by UFO screams from headlinesacross the country.
(09:45):
The search lasts for four days withnot a single bit of anything ever found.
The six witnesses are put throughthe ringer.
Polygraph tests, interrogations.
Skeptics accusing them of murder,
of a hoax, of covering up an accident.
However, no one can explainhow five out of the six of them
(10:08):
passed their polygraph test.
Five men telling same story.
And none of them are lying to the test.
The only one who didn't pass was AllenDalis.
His test was ruled inconclusive
because he became uncooperativebefore the test was over.
Remember at the beginning,I said Alan was not a friend of Travis's?
(10:31):
Well, because pre abduction
Alan and Travis,they just didn't really get along.
And Alan was terrified that those feelingsof ill will would skew his results.
He panicked and leftbefore the test was over.
Still, Travis is missing.
Agonizing days pass.
(10:53):
Everyone, including his family, startsto accept the worst.
Until that phone call.
It's me. Travis.
They brought me back.
When Duane and Grant pull up to that
gas station,they find Travis barely able to stand.
He's disoriented, dehydrated.
(11:14):
He's lost about 10 pounds.
But he's alive.
And he has a storythat is going to make the last five days
look simple by comparison.
Travis says the last thing he remembersbefore waking up is that beam of light
hitting him. Then darkness.
When he comes to, he's lying on a table inwhat he thinks is a hospital.
(11:36):
There's a bright light above him.
His whole body,especially his head and his chest aches.
He tries to focus his eyes.
That's when he sees them.
Three beings short, maybe four, 4.5ft
tall, pale, bald,with those large dark eyes
that have become the stuff of nightmaresand alien lore.
(11:59):
They're wearing brownish orange coverallsand they're standing over him.
Travis freaks out.
Understandably, he's in pain.
He's terrified.
And these things are right in his face.
He swings his arm to the right at them,knocking one down like it's nothing,
as he jumps off the table to his left,looks around, grabs the first thing
(12:22):
he sees that's even close to a weapon,some kind of glass like tube.
He starts swinging it at them.
They stumble backwardsand then without a word, they just leave.
Now Travis is alone.
He's panicking.
He staggers out of the roominto a curved hallway.
The little beings went to the right,so Travis goes to the left.
(12:45):
He keeps walking around the curvedhallway and finds another room.
But this one's different.
It's got a chair in the centersurrounded by controls,
and there's a large screen or windowshowing
stars like some kind of star map.
He starts touching the controls,hoping to find some button
that opens another doorfor him to get out, and suddenly
(13:07):
the stars on the screen start moving.
He realizes he might be pilotingthis thing, and he immediately stops.
And that's when the door opens.
This time, it'snot one of those gray beings.
It's a human.
Or at least something that looks likea human.
A man about six feet tall,with human features,
(13:29):
wearing a tight fitting suitand a clear, fishbowl looking helmet.
Travis runs up to him, desperate,asking a million questions.
Where am I?
Are you from Earth? Can you help me?
The man doesn't answer.
He just takes Travis by the arm
and leads him out of the room,down the hallway, down a ramp,
into what appears to be a massive hangar
(13:52):
with other disk shaped craft.
They go into another room where three morehuman looking people are waiting.
Two men and a woman who all look likesiblings, all dressed in blue.
Travis tries talking to them too,but nobody will say a word.
They gently but firmly take him to a tableand lay him down.
(14:15):
They put something over his face,like an oxygen mask.
He looks up at a ceiling glowingwith light and then nothing.
The next thing Travis knows, he'swaking up on the cold pavement.
He looks up to see a different discthan the one that took him
shoot straight up and vanish.
He stands up, recognizesthat he's on the outskirts of Heber,
(14:39):
runs to that now famous phone booth,and makes that now famous call.
Now, you would think comingback would be the end of the ordeal.
At least the physical part,as I'm sure he probably
still struggles with the psychologicalramifications to this day.
But he's physically back.
No more searching.
No more whispers of murder chargesfor the other six guys, right?
(15:03):
But for Travis, it's just the beginningof a different kind of nightmare.
The media circus explodes.
Everyone wants a piece of him.
Believers want him to be their poster boy.
Skeptics want to tear him apart.
He's subjected to medical examsand psychological evaluations.
(15:24):
Some people call him a hero.
Others call him a liar.
The National Enquirer pays for himto take a polygraph test on November 15th.
So just five days after his return.
Considering that polygraph test basically
measure a person's level of nervousness,
and considering that Travis is a walking,nervous breakdown
(15:46):
at this point, it's not a real surpriseto anyone when he fails.
Unfortunately,that is just fuel for the fire
for the skeptics and debunkers alreadylining up to take their shots at Travis.
Philip Klass,a prominent UFO skeptic, wages
a decades long campaignto discredit Travis,
(16:09):
and the other witnesses,without even interviewing Travis himself.
Even legendary UFO investigator Stanton
Friedman once commented on an articlewritten by class
that it “contains so much baloney,it should be distributed by delicatessen.”
Klass claims the whole incidentwas all a hoax, so Mike Rogers
(16:33):
could get out of his logging contractbecause he was behind schedule.
Never mind that Mike's crew actuallylost money because of the incident.
Never mind the polygraph test.
Never mindthat six men have stuck to their story
for 50 years.
And according to Steve Pierce,the young kid on the crew,
(16:53):
Klass actually went so far as to offerSteve $10,000
in 1975 money
to recant his story and tell everyoneit was a hoax.
The case becomesone of the most documented
and most debatedabduction cases in history.
It's investigated by APRO, the AerialPhenomena Research Organization.
(17:16):
It's written about in Travis'sbook, “Fire in the Sky.”
It's turned into a Hollywood moviein 1993.
Though Travis is quick to point outthat Hollywood took some creative
liberties, particularlywith the medical examination scene,
that they turned into somethingout of a horror film.
But through it all, Travis has never
(17:38):
wavered, never changed his story.
He's not trying to make money off of it.
In fact, he's turned downnumerous offers over the years.
He just wants people to knowwhat happened to him.
And just so you know, as the publicityfor the 1993 movie started ramping up,
all seven men once again
(17:59):
took a polygraph test,including Allen Dalis,
the guy who walked out of the testingthe first time.
They were all administered by Cy Gilson,
the same guy who gave themthe first tests in 1975.
Cy was considered the best polygrapherin the state of Arizona in 1975,
and only got more distinguishedin his career over the years.
(18:22):
So the guy knows if you're lying.
Results?
All of them passed with scoresaveraging over 99%.
According to Edward Gelb, presidentof the American Polygraph Association,
in an interview in 1979,the odds against six people successfully
deceivinga trained examiner on a single issue
(18:45):
are over 1 million to 1.
Now they have seven.
So here we are 50 years later.
What do we make of the Travis Walton case?
Six witnessessaw him get hit by that beam of light.
Six witnesses passed polygraph test.
a four day search for him in the forestturned up nothing.
(19:09):
Travis was missing for five days.
He came back dehydrated and traumatized.
Medical exams found no evidence of drugs,
and police found no evidence of a hoax.
And in all these years,nobody has cracked.
Nobody has admitted it was a fake.
(19:29):
Nobody has come forwardwith evidence of a conspiracy.
Does that mean it happenedexactly as Travis describes?
I can't tell you that.
But I can tell you this.
Something happened in that foreston November 5th, 1975.
Something that turnedseven ordinary men's lives upside down.
(19:49):
Something that we still can'tfully explain.
Over the last 50 years,Travis has had a lot of time
to think about this entire ordealfrom every possible angle.
And after reading his book, let me tellyou, he has covered a lot of angles.
One of the possibilitiesto answer the big question of why him,
(20:12):
might lie in that beam of light.
Travisnow thinks was all just a big accident,
that he got too close,causing some kind of electrical arc
that hit him like a monster sized version
of those static electricity shocksyou get in the winter.
And thatthey could have just left him there.
But they brought him aboardnot to experiment on him,
(20:35):
but to fix him beforedropping him off again.
That certainly would accountfor the searing pain in his chest.
Isn't that a nice thought?
To think that even beingsfrom somewhere else might have compassion,
might understand
what it means to hurt someone by accidentand try to make it right.
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
(20:57):
Maybe we'll never know.
What I do know is this.
Travis Walton was 22 years oldwhen it happened, so he is 72 years old
now, and he has spent half a century
living with the weight of five dayshe can barely remember,
and a story that most people findimpossible to believe.
(21:18):
He didn't ask for this.
He didn't go looking for fame.
He was just a young kidtrying to make a living with the chainsaw.
And then something reached downfrom the sky and changed everything.
Whether you believe him or not,you have to admit that it takes a certain
kind of courage to stick to your truth,
even when the whole worldis calling you a liar.
(21:40):
Even when it would be easierto just say it was all a mistake,
a misunderstanding,or even fess up to the lie.
Travis Walton won't do that.
He can't.
Because for him, it's not a story.
It's not a case file. It's not a headline.
It's five days of his lifethat are missing forever.
(22:02):
Whatever happened that day stole from himthe normal life he had been building,
and gave him a new future with a burdenno one would want.
So as we mark the 50th anniversaryof the Travis Walton incident,
maybe the real question isn'twhether we believe him.
Maybe it's,what would we do if it happened to us?
(22:25):
Would we have the courageto tell the truth,
knowing most people wouldn't believe it?
Would we run toward the unknownlike Travis did?
Or would we stay safely in the truck?
Truth be told.
I'm sure my butt would have never leftthat truck.
(22:47):
Frozen in fearwould be an understatement for me.
But I certainly tip my hat for thosewho would not stay in the truck.
Where would we be todayif we didn't have those people
who laugh in the face of dangerand go on to make the biggest discoveries?
If you are feeling courageousand are ready to jump from the truck
into more tales of the unknown, clickright here.
(23:10):
Be careful out there
and I will see youhere again, on The InBetween.
Tomorrow marks 50 years since TravisWalton
reappeared in the Arizona wildernessafter vanishing for five days.
Six men watched him get struckby a beam of light from a hovering disc.
They fled in terror.
He vanished.
When he finally came back,everything had changed.
(00:54):
I'm Carol Ann.
Welcome to The InBetween.
Your eyes flutter
open to a darkness not all that differentfrom when they were closed.
As your mind is trying to movefrom the unconscious to the conscious,
new sensory information is flooding in.
(01:16):
You feel the rough texture and coldtemperature of pavement under your cheek.
You pull what little energy you have
to focus on one prime directive.
Get up.
Your muscles strain as you begin theHerculean task of defying gravity itself.
But something in your peripheral visionshatters that concentration.
(01:40):
A light.
You look up to see a glowing, discshaped object floating above you.
But as soon as it registers in your mindwhat you were looking at,
you watch it zip away into the night sky.
You stand up on wobbly legs and you lookaround with no idea where you are.
So you just start running,using the ambiguous
(02:01):
but overpowering fearyou feel to fuel your escape.
But escape from what?
You quickly see a towncome into view at the bottom of the hill.
And miracle of all miracles,you recognize it.
You start running faster
with the amorphous certaintythat familiarity is a good thing.
(02:21):
It takes every molecule of strengththat you don't have,
but you make it to a phone boothand call your family,
uttering the only wordsyou have the strength to blurt out.
It's me.
Travis. They brought me back.
This is the moment that, like it
or not, TravisWalton started his new life.
(02:43):
Not the hopeful, joyous startmarked with the birth of a new child,
but more like the confusing,hazardous haze that engulfs you
when your entire worldviewhas been yanked from beneath your feet.
After about a half an hourof sitting in that phone booth,
that lifeline, headlights floodthrough the glass.
(03:03):
Travis’s brother Duane and brotherin law Grant, despite severe
misgivings of this phone call being yetanother prank call,
arrive at the gas stationto see Travis slumped to the ground.
I can't even
imagine the feelingsthat ran through them at that moment.
Travis has been gone for five days.
(03:24):
Everyone thought he was dead,but there he was.
A million questions had to have beengoing through their minds.
But they put all of that asidein an instant.
It's obvious their little brotherneeds their help fast.
But let me rewind a bit,because before Travis is slumped
in that phone booth,before his family thought he was dead,
(03:48):
we need to go back to November 5th, 1975
to a logging crew heading homeafter a long day's work in the Turkey
Springs area of the Apaches-SitgreavesNational Forest.
Seven men are packed into a single truck
bouncing down a dirt roadas twilight settles over the pines.
Travis Walton, Mike Rogers,
(04:11):
the crew bossand a good friend of Travis's.
Allen Dalis, not a friend of Travis's.
John Goulette.
Kenneth Petersona young husband and a new dad.
Dwayne Smith and Steve Pearce,
the youngest on the crew,who actually lied to Mike Rogers
to get the job, telling Mike he was 18when he really was only 17.
(04:34):
Just regular guys doing regular work.
Until they weren't.
There, winding through the forest whensomeone spots a glow through the trees.
At first Travis thinks it's sunset,maybe a fire.
But as they round a bend in the viewopens up,
every singleone of them sees it at the same time.
(04:56):
A disc hovering about 15ft
off the ground,maybe 100ft from the road, glowing.
And it's humming.
Definitely not the sun.
Mike slams on the brakesand the truck skids to a stop.
The other six guys are frozenin their seats,
wrestling with the cognitive dissonanceof what their eyes
(05:19):
are telling them versuswhat their brains say is possible.
But not Travis.
Now, I need you to understand something.
Travis is all of 22 years old,with an insatiable curiosity
and very little fear of anything.
That is a dangerous combo.
This guy is an amateur boxer as a hobby,and once jumped out of the crew
(05:43):
truck to chase a bear that had crossedthe road in front of them.
And on this night,even though his coworkers are screaming
at him to get back in the truck,Travis does what Travis always does.
He runs toward danger.
He gets out of the truck.
Now, in all fairness, Travis even admitsthat he never intends to get too close.
(06:07):
He thinks this thing is going to fly awayany second.
Like, if you're running straight towarda rabbit.
He thinks there's no wayit'll stick around long enough
to let him get too close.
He gets maybe 20ft away when the noisy,
humming soundit's making starts to get louder.
Like maybe it's gearing up to take offand it starts to wobble.
(06:30):
This is when Travis seriously startsto rethink his life choices.
He sees the only real cover in a login front of him, so he dives for it,
but that just brings himcloser to the craft.
He can still hear the guys in the truckyelling for him to come back.
And he's thinkingthat's exactly what he needs to do.
(06:50):
But when he stands up to make a runfor it, a beam of blue
green light shoots out and hits himsquare in the chest.
His body goes rigid.
The impact lifts him off the groundand throws him
backward about ten feet,landing in a heap.
That's when panic takes over.
(07:11):
Mike floors it, and the truck tears down
that mountain road with six terrified meninside.
Convincedthat they just watched their friend die.
When they finally stop about a quartermile away, they're fighting about
what to do.
Do they go back for Travis?
Do they call the police?
Some want to help.
(07:32):
Others are too scared to move.
Mike, feeling like a coward for
just leaving his friendthere, makes a final decision.
He tells them that he's going backand anyone who doesn't want to go back
can stay there,and he'll come back and get them.
But nobody wants to stay thereby themselves,
so they all get back in the truckand turn around.
(07:54):
As they're nearing that clearing,
they see the same disc shaped objectfly away.
Okay, good.
At least they don't have to worry about itgetting them, too.
But when they return to that spot,Travis is gone.
There's nothing.
The darkness and pine treesand the crushing weight of knowing
(08:16):
they're about to have to explainthe unexplainable to somebody.
At around 7:30 p.m., they roll into Heber,
Arizonaand stop in a parking lot with a payphone.
They all get out of the truck,still not knowing what to do.
If they tell the truth, everyone'sgoing to think they're crazy.
(08:38):
But once Travis shows up missing,
the sheriff is going to be knockingon their doors anyway.
So they make the call.
Can you imagine being that deputy?
Six grown men, some of them in tears.
All of them talking over each other,trying to explain that
their friend just got zapped by a UFO.
(09:01):
Deputy Ellison doesn't know what to think.
How could he?
But these guys are genuinely terrified.
They're not screwing around.
They're not drunk.
Something happened to out there.
Whatever it was,it has them all completely freaked out.
A search begins immediately.
(09:22):
Police, volunteers.
They scour that forest all nightand into the next day.
Nothing. No body. No footprints.
No. Travis.
The Arizona Department of Public Safetygets involved.
The FBI startssniffing around, and the press.
Oh, the press had a field day.
Man abducted by UFO screams from headlinesacross the country.
(09:45):
The search lasts for four days withnot a single bit of anything ever found.
The six witnesses are put throughthe ringer.
Polygraph tests, interrogations.
Skeptics accusing them of murder,
of a hoax, of covering up an accident.
However, no one can explainhow five out of the six of them
(10:08):
passed their polygraph test.
Five men telling same story.
And none of them are lying to the test.
The only one who didn't pass was AllenDalis.
His test was ruled inconclusive
because he became uncooperativebefore the test was over.
Remember at the beginning,I said Alan was not a friend of Travis's?
(10:31):
Well, because pre abduction
Alan and Travis,they just didn't really get along.
And Alan was terrified that those feelingsof ill will would skew his results.
He panicked and leftbefore the test was over.
Still, Travis is missing.
Agonizing days pass.
(10:53):
Everyone, including his family, startsto accept the worst.
Until that phone call.
It's me. Travis.
They brought me back.
When Duane and Grant pull up to that
gas station,they find Travis barely able to stand.
He's disoriented, dehydrated.
(11:14):
He's lost about 10 pounds.
But he's alive.
And he has a storythat is going to make the last five days
look simple by comparison.
Travis says the last thing he remembersbefore waking up is that beam of light
hitting him. Then darkness.
When he comes to, he's lying on a table inwhat he thinks is a hospital.
(11:36):
There's a bright light above him.
His whole body,especially his head and his chest aches.
He tries to focus his eyes.
That's when he sees them.
Three beings short, maybe four, 4.5ft
tall, pale, bald,with those large dark eyes
that have become the stuff of nightmaresand alien lore.
(11:59):
They're wearing brownish orange coverallsand they're standing over him.
Travis freaks out.
Understandably, he's in pain.
He's terrified.
And these things are right in his face.
He swings his arm to the right at them,knocking one down like it's nothing,
as he jumps off the table to his left,looks around, grabs the first thing
(12:22):
he sees that's even close to a weapon,some kind of glass like tube.
He starts swinging it at them.
They stumble backwardsand then without a word, they just leave.
Now Travis is alone.
He's panicking.
He staggers out of the roominto a curved hallway.
The little beings went to the right,so Travis goes to the left.
(12:45):
He keeps walking around the curvedhallway and finds another room.
But this one's different.
It's got a chair in the centersurrounded by controls,
and there's a large screen or windowshowing
stars like some kind of star map.
He starts touching the controls,hoping to find some button
that opens another doorfor him to get out, and suddenly
(13:07):
the stars on the screen start moving.
He realizes he might be pilotingthis thing, and he immediately stops.
And that's when the door opens.
This time, it'snot one of those gray beings.
It's a human.
Or at least something that looks likea human.
A man about six feet tall,with human features,
(13:29):
wearing a tight fitting suitand a clear, fishbowl looking helmet.
Travis runs up to him, desperate,asking a million questions.
Where am I?
Are you from Earth? Can you help me?
The man doesn't answer.
He just takes Travis by the arm
and leads him out of the room,down the hallway, down a ramp,
into what appears to be a massive hangar
(13:52):
with other disk shaped craft.
They go into another room where three morehuman looking people are waiting.
Two men and a woman who all look likesiblings, all dressed in blue.
Travis tries talking to them too,but nobody will say a word.
They gently but firmly take him to a tableand lay him down.
(14:15):
They put something over his face,like an oxygen mask.
He looks up at a ceiling glowingwith light and then nothing.
The next thing Travis knows, he'swaking up on the cold pavement.
He looks up to see a different discthan the one that took him
shoot straight up and vanish.
He stands up, recognizesthat he's on the outskirts of Heber,
(14:39):
runs to that now famous phone booth,and makes that now famous call.
Now, you would think comingback would be the end of the ordeal.
At least the physical part,as I'm sure he probably
still struggles with the psychologicalramifications to this day.
But he's physically back.
No more searching.
No more whispers of murder chargesfor the other six guys, right?
(15:03):
But for Travis, it's just the beginningof a different kind of nightmare.
The media circus explodes.
Everyone wants a piece of him.
Believers want him to be their poster boy.
Skeptics want to tear him apart.
He's subjected to medical examsand psychological evaluations.
(15:24):
Some people call him a hero.
Others call him a liar.
The National Enquirer pays for himto take a polygraph test on November 15th.
So just five days after his return.
Considering that polygraph test basically
measure a person's level of nervousness,
and considering that Travis is a walking,nervous breakdown
(15:46):
at this point, it's not a real surpriseto anyone when he fails.
Unfortunately,that is just fuel for the fire
for the skeptics and debunkers alreadylining up to take their shots at Travis.
Philip Klass,a prominent UFO skeptic, wages
a decades long campaignto discredit Travis,
(16:09):
and the other witnesses,without even interviewing Travis himself.
Even legendary UFO investigator Stanton
Friedman once commented on an articlewritten by class
that it “contains so much baloney,it should be distributed by delicatessen.”
Klass claims the whole incidentwas all a hoax, so Mike Rogers
(16:33):
could get out of his logging contractbecause he was behind schedule.
Never mind that Mike's crew actuallylost money because of the incident.
Never mind the polygraph test.
Never mindthat six men have stuck to their story
for 50 years.
And according to Steve Pierce,the young kid on the crew,
(16:53):
Klass actually went so far as to offerSteve $10,000
in 1975 money
to recant his story and tell everyoneit was a hoax.
The case becomesone of the most documented
and most debatedabduction cases in history.
It's investigated by APRO, the AerialPhenomena Research Organization.
(17:16):
It's written about in Travis'sbook, “Fire in the Sky.”
It's turned into a Hollywood moviein 1993.
Though Travis is quick to point outthat Hollywood took some creative
liberties, particularlywith the medical examination scene,
that they turned into somethingout of a horror film.
But through it all, Travis has never
(17:38):
wavered, never changed his story.
He's not trying to make money off of it.
In fact, he's turned downnumerous offers over the years.
He just wants people to knowwhat happened to him.
And just so you know, as the publicityfor the 1993 movie started ramping up,
all seven men once again
(17:59):
took a polygraph test,including Allen Dalis,
the guy who walked out of the testingthe first time.
They were all administered by Cy Gilson,
the same guy who gave themthe first tests in 1975.
Cy was considered the best polygrapherin the state of Arizona in 1975,
and only got more distinguishedin his career over the years.
(18:22):
So the guy knows if you're lying.
Results?
All of them passed with scoresaveraging over 99%.
According to Edward Gelb, presidentof the American Polygraph Association,
in an interview in 1979,the odds against six people successfully
deceivinga trained examiner on a single issue
(18:45):
are over 1 million to 1.
Now they have seven.
So here we are 50 years later.
What do we make of the Travis Walton case?
Six witnessessaw him get hit by that beam of light.
Six witnesses passed polygraph test.
a four day search for him in the forestturned up nothing.
(19:09):
Travis was missing for five days.
He came back dehydrated and traumatized.
Medical exams found no evidence of drugs,
and police found no evidence of a hoax.
And in all these years,nobody has cracked.
Nobody has admitted it was a fake.
(19:29):
Nobody has come forwardwith evidence of a conspiracy.
Does that mean it happenedexactly as Travis describes?
I can't tell you that.
But I can tell you this.
Something happened in that foreston November 5th, 1975.
Something that turnedseven ordinary men's lives upside down.
(19:49):
Something that we still can'tfully explain.
Over the last 50 years,Travis has had a lot of time
to think about this entire ordealfrom every possible angle.
And after reading his book, let me tellyou, he has covered a lot of angles.
One of the possibilitiesto answer the big question of why him,
(20:12):
might lie in that beam of light.
Travisnow thinks was all just a big accident,
that he got too close,causing some kind of electrical arc
that hit him like a monster sized version
of those static electricity shocksyou get in the winter.
And thatthey could have just left him there.
But they brought him aboardnot to experiment on him,
(20:35):
but to fix him beforedropping him off again.
That certainly would accountfor the searing pain in his chest.
Isn't that a nice thought?
To think that even beingsfrom somewhere else might have compassion,
might understand
what it means to hurt someone by accidentand try to make it right.
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
(20:57):
Maybe we'll never know.
What I do know is this.
Travis Walton was 22 years oldwhen it happened, so he is 72 years old
now, and he has spent half a century
living with the weight of five dayshe can barely remember,
and a story that most people findimpossible to believe.
(21:18):
He didn't ask for this.
He didn't go looking for fame.
He was just a young kidtrying to make a living with the chainsaw.
And then something reached downfrom the sky and changed everything.
Whether you believe him or not,you have to admit that it takes a certain
kind of courage to stick to your truth,
even when the whole worldis calling you a liar.
(21:40):
Even when it would be easierto just say it was all a mistake,
a misunderstanding,or even fess up to the lie.
Travis Walton won't do that.
He can't.
Because for him, it's not a story.
It's not a case file. It's not a headline.
It's five days of his lifethat are missing forever.
(22:02):
Whatever happened that day stole from himthe normal life he had been building,
and gave him a new future with a burdenno one would want.
So as we mark the 50th anniversaryof the Travis Walton incident,
maybe the real question isn'twhether we believe him.
Maybe it's,what would we do if it happened to us?
(22:25):
Would we have the courageto tell the truth,
knowing most people wouldn't believe it?
Would we run toward the unknownlike Travis did?
Or would we stay safely in the truck?
Truth be told.
I'm sure my butt would have never leftthat truck.
(22:47):
Frozen in fearwould be an understatement for me.
But I certainly tip my hat for thosewho would not stay in the truck.
Where would we be todayif we didn't have those people
who laugh in the face of dangerand go on to make the biggest discoveries?
If you are feeling courageousand are ready to jump from the truck
into more tales of the unknown, clickright here.
(23:10):
Be careful out there
and I will see youhere again, on The InBetween.
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