Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
We were talking about you and your crew rolling up
on this crazy light that you see in nineteen seventy
five in the forest in Arizona outside of Hebrew, or
in Heber, and the crew kind of backed off, you
kind of went forward and you feel a shock in
what the crew sees is a giant light hit you.
(00:26):
Some say that it's the brightest thing that they've ever seen.
You see this craft and the light coming from the craft,
and now you're right in the middle of the light.
And when I'm watching the documentary, they say that it
looked like what you see the animation look like where
you're literally getting pulled up and they just assumed that
you had to have been dead. Is that pretty much
(00:47):
what you hear from the crew.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Well, it blasted me back through the air. And they
did say that they were yelling at each other, let's go,
I'm swearing, you know, a lot of swearing, but it
killed in. Let's get this sob moving. And you know,
they were criticized for not being more heroic, but it
(01:09):
was so violent. It threw me like twenty feet and
they said my body fell like a sack of meat,
like a just totally limp, and they said that I
looked dead.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Okay, well, let's let me ask you about that.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
With them for leaving the scene. And the movie shows
that Mike invites the crew to get out when it's
time we got to go back and see if we
can help him. And they didn't get out and wait
for Mike in the dark like in the movie. They
(01:47):
none of them were willing to get out of the truck.
They all went back with Mike to see if they
could see if I was still.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Alive, and it sounds like they saw other cars passing,
so they thought, well, maybe those were hunters out there
since it was deer season. Maybe they're heading towards the
same light that they saw, and maybe you got strengthened numbers.
They were kind of thinking about that as well.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Right, Yeah, they did see one one hunter vehicle and
they tried to chase it down but couldn't catch up
to it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
But I mean that had to be hairwing for them too.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
That's what they say that they were under suspicion of murder.
The police were, you know, extremely you know, giveing them
the third degree, and my family members also, so they
were really under the gun, you know, John, some of
(02:39):
the guys on the crew to talk about walking down
the street and have people yell out the window murderer.
You know, so this is and where to hide the body?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, what we can tell our audience here too is
you were gone for five and a half days, I mean,
and the police totally thought that there was some fight
amongst the crew and that they killed you and just
hid the body somewhere. So even though they're telling all
the same story, they're all saying, no, here's what happened,
and nobody believes us, But here's what happened.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
You know, if you had seven people say that they
had witnessed a murder and all told the same story
without police light detector tests, that would be an open shutcase.
They have that many people saying sticking to the same
story for forty nine years. But it was beyond that.
(03:30):
They are all passed light detector tests, and it wasn't
a group of buddies. You know. Some of the guys
had only been on the crew for three days, so,
you know, and we've had conflicts, you know. I think
that's the reason Alan was more suspected of having murdered
me because I had gotten in a fight with him
that morning, just kind of not real serious fight, but
(03:57):
you know, an argument about a girl that he was
trying to lure away from me by, you know, saying
things about me that weren't true.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
It's always about a girl, isn't it, Travis.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, it was. He tried to do a spin kick
on me and missed and fell on his behind and
the crew was laughing at him. But it didn't get
out of hand at that point because you know, the
boss came out of the house and said, come on,
we got to get to work, and so everybody straightened
up and got in the truck and headed out.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Well I'm thinking too, Alan, especially well, well maybe not especially,
but so he sees his friend get basically zapped by
a light thrown twenty feet, he thinks he might be dead.
So that's got to be PTSD. And then I don't know,
I would be afraid if I was being questioned by
the police for murder of something that I found hard
(04:53):
to explain. So you got to have a little bit
of empathy for what those guys were going through back
on Earth, as they say, where I might have done
the same thing I might have taken off too. In fact,
part of me wonders if maybe what shot from that
laser did kill you, and they brought you back up
to fix you in some way.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Maybe maybe that I later came up with. At the time,
I you know, I just interpreted as you know, invading monsters,
just you know, abducting someone. But I realize now that
most likely they took me aboard because they were the
only ones that could save my life at that point.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure if you ended up in
a in a you know, an urgent care and flag staff,
they wouldn't know what to do with being blasted by
a you know, one foot wide blue laser beam.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You would think that, would you know, if these beings
had dumped me on some asteroids somewhere, you know, they
would go down in history as a murder by a
logging crew. And you know, it was simple. But the
obviously I think they they they want to be low
key about their presence here, but in order to save
(06:05):
my life. Now, it was an exceptional situation to be
taken for that long.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
When I talk about your story, you know, even including
in my own house, people think, well, I've read that
he knew that the National Inquirer had a you know,
ten thousand dollars award for people who could prove that
they had an alien story. So why can't just five
people or seven people coroborate that and split the money
(06:33):
and one of them, you know, just get stoned and
hides in the cabin somewhere for five days and then
we all coroborate the story. What doesn't make sense to
me is that you guys haven't changed that story in
the last fifty years. And it's not like you all
hung out right afterwards either. Everybody sort of lost touch.
So what would be the point of that? But what
do you say to people who say you just did
(06:55):
it for you made up the story for the Inquirer.
What would you tell them?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
We weren't aware of that kind of stuff. We weren't
that into it. It was just kind of like one of
the many subjects you talk about, you know, like there's
stories about Bigfoot, there's you know, just in passing. There's
jillions of subjects, and we weren't focused narrowly on the
paranormal or anything like that. But it was just seven
(07:23):
people sticking by their stories. Actually, my mother and my
brother took police light factor tests too, so that was
nine or more people passing multiple tests. And Steve says
that every time he got a new wife, he took
a new polygraph test. So I don't know the details
(07:43):
of that, but it was consistent that the state police
polygraph examiner was absolutely certain that we were telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
That when you go missing, I take the crew with
the police go back to what would be the scene
of the disappearance, right they are they not go back
at all?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, they went back. I think there was some reluctance.
I think. I think they said that some of them
went back with the with the police, and some of
them took the crew truck on home and to let
family know why they weren't coming home after work. But
(08:31):
it was Yeah, in the movie they said, oh well,
well we'll go back in the morning. But in real
life they went back that night too.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
How close is the movie to your experience?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Well, it takes liberties. You know, there was actually seven
of us, and in the movie there's only five. You know,
it helps to simplify the script. And you know, like
I said, you know, having everybody go back out that
night and then again the next day, you know, to
simplify the story.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, when you're watching it, though, are you having some
flashback moments?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Oh? Definitely, you know, it captures the feeling that we
experienced at the time. Now, if we do a remake
of the movie, I wanted to be more closer to
some other details that you know, actually weren't We weren't
aware of at the time.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
As time goes by, the memories of that moment, I know,
you've been under hypnosis and things like that. Do the
events leading up to it and then during the five days,
did they become more clearer or do they start fading away?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Well, they neither faded nor became clear. I guess. You know,
in the in the months afterwards, I was doing so
many interviews that I started having some dreams that you know.
I went to some of the researcher and asked them,
do you think that that could be some repressed memories
coming back? And they said, n Yeah, you've just been
(10:07):
doing a lot of interviews and that's that's why I
was Then I asked the same researcher later if they
thought that might be memories coming back and the story change.
The opinion changed at that time. Yeah, I guess it
could be, but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
So let's talk about what did happen. Once you get
hit by that laser and seemingly thrown twenty feet and
left for dead. Then at some point you wake up,
but you think you're in a hospital. Tell me what
that's like.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
At first, it wasn't all that uncomfortable. I just thought
I was, you know, injured. First I didn't know where
I was, and it was just disoriented. And then I
remembered approaching that object and that stunning force, and I thought, well,
they must have taken me to the hospital. And my
vision was so blurry, and my head was hurting, and
(11:03):
the you know, breathing was difficult. It was I felt
like I was dying. And you know, there was a
light above me. It wasn't terribly bright, but it it
hurt to look at it, so I didn't try to
keep looking around at first, And then I could make
(11:25):
out the forms of what I thought were doctors, and
then then it was these these creatures, these non human beings.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, now, so when do you see that? What's going
through your head?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Now?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
You're you've gone from groggy to hyper awake.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I would think, yeah, shot adrenaline a big time, and
I just I started screaming and flailing at them, grabbing objects,
some of their stuff, and uh, the thing they had
laying on my chest fell off. But I was paying
attention to them mostly, you know, where they going to
(12:03):
attack me.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
What did they look like?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Well, they were they weren't huge. They were small beings,
hairless with huge eyes.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Like the grays. Is that what?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, Well, they didn't call them then that back then
they didn't.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But what we would typically see is like the alien
the drawing that we see.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
That's been a much more common description nowadays. But yeah,
I think, you know, my own personal theory is that
probably the alignment of descriptions that you encounter, people that
see the beings could actually be seeing species that just
(12:49):
happen to be very similar, but not really maybe necessarily
even from the same planet. It's just.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think that Why did you think though, as soon
as you woke up and you said you were sort
of looking for a weapon, even though they didn't look human,
What made you think that they weren't there to help
you right away? What? What? Because of the pain that
you were in.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, that was the pain, the feeling of trapped and
the feeling of suffocation, like Okay, I was dying, so
I was going to attack them to be you know,
because I thought they wouldn't be attacking me.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
And none of the tools, our instruments looked like they
were from a typical operating room. No, no, Scoppel. They
looked completely otherworldly.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
To you recognized but some kinds of utensils. I was
mainly focused on them and what they their intentions seemed
to be, and how.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Did they react to you freaking out?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
No change in expression, They just turned and went out.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Well they left, they left the room, or they whatever
wherever you were.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, but you know, I had I come up with
a theory about that too, because if these beings are telepathic,
the idea that they would have facial expressions like friendly
smiles or anything like that, it's becomes obsolete. If they
are telepathic, they do not need to change expression to
(14:17):
communicate with each other, and that would very quickly become
something that wouldn't be a part of their communication.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Well, that's true, and I guess the idea of communicating
with you isn't really on the agenda. If they whatever
they're there.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
For, when they won't see any change in expression, a
stone face expression. We interpret that as hostility, and in
that case maybe maybe not so, but it took me
years to come to that kind of thinking.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
At this point, do you still have on the clothes
that you had on when you were working in the forest.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah? Yeah, I was still in my word clothes. And
of course Hollywood's got a you know, did the whole
naked thing. But actually they got kind of carried away
with that naked stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Well, I mean they had dB Sweeney playing you. I
mean they wanted to show you, had to show off
the goods.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
There was worse stuff that was actually cut out, but
oh of the movie.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, okay, So you when you are in this other place,
I don't think you probably don't know that you're in
the craft yet. You just don't don't know where you are,
So you are you? So you sit up kind of
waving whatever you can, you know, knock off a piece
of around and make it look like a weapon. And
they leave the room. Do you get up and go
(15:40):
after them or start looking around to see where you are?
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah? I wanted to get out of there, and but
at that moment this other person came in, I took
it to be somebody from Earth based military air force,
or some kind of intervention of that. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
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