Every Town - Travis Walton's Terrifying Abduction Encounter: A Deep Dive Into The Alien Experience

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

 Since the 1940s, people have been gradually become accustomed to hearing stories about sightings or encounters with alleged flying saucers and alien space crafts. But the story of a man being taken up into a spacecraft and expermented on is fairly rare which is why when Travis narrated his strange experience as witnessed by his co-workers in 1975, he easily got the attention of the world. So let’s delve into this alien kidnapping case down in Arizona – the first to be reported while the victim was still missing, and the first alien abduction story given serious consideration by many credible scientists and skeptics alike. 💥 Watch On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries🎧 Our Other Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579💀 Follow Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 💀 Follow Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg👁 Follow Our TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald💥 Follow Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial🗣 Business Inquiries: [e-mail] Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime. Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every town has a dark side. One issue that's always been highly debatable and often divisive is aliens and unidentified flying objects. Whether it's about alleged sightings, photographs, and video, or abduction, his unusual stories always seem to create controversy, and they court hundreds of opinions that usually fall into two distinctly contrasting categories.

The alien or UFO story is deemed. as either genuine or fabricated, real or fake, truth or hoax. Well, in November of 1975, 22-year-old American forestry worker Travis Walton disappeared while working in the remote forests of Snowflake, Arizona. And then, five days later, he reappeared, telling an insane story about being abducted by aliens. As expected, UFO believers and skeptics had a few. day scrutinizing the alleged alien abduction, and it became one of the best known stories of its kind. Hey guys, it's Andrew Fitzgerald, and welcome to this week's episode of Everytown.

Since the 1940s, people have gradually become accustomed to hearing stories about sightings or encounters with alleged flying saucers and alien spacecrafts. But the story of somebody being taken up into one and being experimented on is fairly rare, which is why when Travis narrated his strange experience as witnessed by his co-workers in 1975, easily got the attention of the world. So let's delve into this alien kidnapping case down in Arizona. The first to be reported while the victim was still missing, and the first alien abduction story given serious consideration by many credible scientists and skeptics alike.

Travis Walton was born on February 10, 1953 in Arizona. Arizona, and lived most of his life in Snowflake, a remote town located in the states, Navajo County. The unusual name of the town was derived from the surnames of its founders, Arastus Snow, and William Jordan Flake. And really, not many people cared about the town or knew anything about it unless you lived in the area, that is, until November of 1975. During that fall, Travis was employed by his best friend Mike Rogers, so they were more than just co-workers. In fact, Travis was dating Mike's sister, Dana, who would later on become his wife. Now, Mike had been working for nine years for the United States Forest Service on a contractual basis, and that November, he was hired to thin out,

scrub brush, and undergrowth from a 1,200-plus acre area in northeastern Arizona's Apache, Sitgreaves, National Forest near Snowflake. The job was the most lucrative contract, and Mike had received from the government agency, but he was behind schedule. Thus, he assembled a logging crew of seven workers, including himself and Travis. The five other crew members were Ken Peterson, John Gullet, Steve Pierce, Alan Dallas, and Dwayne Smith, who were all from Snowflake as well. In order to meet the deadline and fulfill the contract, they worked overtime, typically from 6 a.m. until sunset, before heading back home together.

But something extraordinary and out of this world happened after they packed up just after 6 p.m. on November 5th. Travis had a vivid recollection of what occurred before he was taken. The crew had wrapped up for the day and piled into Mike's truck. Shortly after they left the area with Mike behind the wheel, they saw bright glimmers of light from behind a hill and thought that there had to be a fire. As they drove on and got closer, though,

they realized there was no smoke at all, though. Then, just above the tree line, they all saw it. A large, silver-colored object shaped like a flattened disk, hovering above a clearing, illuminating the area. It was around eight feet thick and about 20 feet wide. Travis said, When we pulled up into the light, we had straight view. It was unmistakable.

I yelled stop, and one of the guys in the back said it's a spaceship or a flying ship. saucer. It was less than 100 feet away. Mike stopped the truck and Travis got out impulsively to get a closer look at the object. Travis described the cosmic saucer saying it was a clearly defined metallic disc outlined against the sky and fantastic and the grandeur of it. The oddity of what they were staring at alarmed the other guys so they yelled out to Travis to get back into the truck. But the entranced young logger continued walking towards the disc. Then after about a minute or two, the disc began making noises similar to a loud turbine when Travis was nearly standing below it. Then started to wobble sideways, to Travis dove for cover behind a lawn.

He then tried to stand up and run away, but a beam of blue-green light coming from beneath the disc struck him with stunning force. The other loggers who saw everything firsthand recall would transpire thereafter. The bright light hurled Travis in a backer. backward motion at least 10 feet into the air, then landed on the ground unconscious. The men stated that the horror was unreal. They were certain that Travis was badly hurt, if not dead. And fearing for their own lives, they drove away from the scene. Like I recounted that as they fled, he looked back and saw the luminous object lifting up

out of the woods and disappearing towards the horizon. The six men came to their senses a bit and knew they had to go back to help their friend. There they searched in the woods for Travis, but the object was gone, and so was he. Dressed in just a shirt, jeans, and denim jacket on that unforgettable November evening. The men wondered how he could survive the cold winter night if he was out there still alive. One of the logging crew members, Ken Peterson, called the sheriff's office at 7.30 p.m. and initially reported Travis was missing. Deputy Sheriff Chuck Ellison then met the crew at a shopping center and Hebererner.

Arizona. All of them were distraught, while two couldn't even control their tears. It related what they witnessed to the deputy who was skeptical of the men's surreal account. Ellison thought that if they were acting, they were awfully good at it. Then he notified his supervisor, Sheriff Marlon Gillespie, who arrived an hour later with another police officer, and listened to the story of the six longers. Mike Rogers, the lead crewman, insisted on going back to the force to search. for his friend, but possibly some tracking dogs. Despite the absence of canines of the police and three of the loggers returned to the scene,

as the three other crew members were too upset and decided to go home and tell their family and friends. The search party grew bigger as more police and volunteers joined in. At the scene of the alleged alien encounter, the police officers found no physical evidence that would validate the account of the loggers. Thus, they raised their suspicion about the story's legitimacy. and they were worried that Travis was actually lost and would succumb to hypothermia. The following day on November 6th, Mike and Officer Ken Copeland went to Travis's mother, Mary Colette, who lived on a small ranch and Bear Creek, some 10 miles from Snowflake.

When told of what happened to her son, Mrs. Collette, was calm and reserved and simply asked if anyone other than the police and the eyewitnesses had heard the story. Officer Copeland found a reaction and behavior awed. And it increased the police suspicion that there was more to Travis's disappearance aside from the alleged UFO story. In the early morning that day, officials and volunteers combed the area again, but still found no trace of Travis. Thus, their suspicion that the UFO story was fabricated in order to cover up an accident or even a homicide was heightened. The police had already left and were gone when Mike and Travis' his older brother Duane went to the scene in the mid-morning. This angered them, thinking that no follow-up

search was done. That afternoon, police continued a more thorough search for Travis with helicopters, horse-mounted officers, and jeeps. Curiously, despite the explosive, bluish-green light that forcefully hurled Travis into the air, then dropped him to the ground, there wasn't any evidence of blast effects, blood, or any shreds of clothing. Neither was there proof of any physical. Neither was there proof of any physically violent altercations among the seven longers. Separate interrogations of the six witnesses showed similarities in their detailed description of what they termed as a UFO. Mike described the disc as a large glowing object hovering in the air below the tree top about 100 feet away. Dwayne Smith's description of it was smooth and giving off a yellowish orange light.

The other witnesses had parallel observations describing it as unbelievably smooth, a flattened disk with edges clearly defined. Their testimonies about how the event unfolded until Travis went missing ran consistently along the same line. In order to establish their truthfulness, though, Mike and the five other men indicated their willingness to undergo any kind of lie detector test. On November 8th, three days after the inexplicable incident and with Travis still missing, the crew, individual took polygraph test administered by Cy Gilson, a polygraph examiner from the Department of Public Safety, which was associated with the Arizona State Police. Mr. Gilson's vital questions included

asking the men if they caused harm to Travis or knew who had caused him harm, if they knew where Travis's body was buried, and if they told the truth about seeing a UFO. The men all denied harming their fellow logger or knowing who had harmed Travis, denied knowing where it was. his body was and insisted they had indeed seen a UFO. Five of the crewmen passed the polygraph examination while Alan Dallas wasn't able to complete the test, so it was ruled inconclusive. Part of Mr. Gilson's official report stated, These polygraph examinations proved that these five men did see some object they believed to be a UFO and that Travis Walton was not injured or murdered by any one of these men on that Wednesday.

He concluded that five of the six men tested were truthful, the exam results were conclusive. The polygraph examiner thought that if the UFO was fake, a-k.a. a hoax, five of these men had no prior knowledge of it. After the release of the tests, Sheriff Marlon Gillespie announced that he accepted the UFO story and believed that the men were telling the truth about the Travis Walden alien abduction incident. Expectedly, the news of Travis's disappearance in the surrounding circumstances soon attracted international news reporters, ufologists, and curious individuals who traveled a snowflake. In one interview, Duane disclosed that he and his brother Travis were quite interested in UFOs, and they would want to get close as possible to any UFO if they ever had a chance.

Moreover, Duane himself had witnessed a UFO similar to his brother's incident sometime in 1960. Shortly after the interviews, Sanford Flake, Snowflakes Town Marshall announced that the whole incident was a prank engineered by the Walton brothers. Flake said, They had fooled the logging crew by lighting a balloon and releasing it at the appropriate time. But Flake's wife disagreed and said that her husband's story was just as far-fetched as Dwayne Walton's. The authorities tried to keep the scene of the incident for serious forensic examination, but It was made impossible by the mass influx of local and international visitors curious about what happened. Of course, there were mixed reactions from many people.

Well, some admired the crewmen's story, others branded them as liars or pranksters, whose account was simply a joke gone bad. They surmise that Travis would suddenly reappear on cue from deliberately hiding somewhere. So everyone's big question was, where was Travis Walton? And the most awaited answer came five days after Travis went missing. November 11, 1975 marked the return or reappearance of Travis, who brought with him an even more bizarre story that filled the gap since his mysterious disappearance. The last thing he remembered after approaching the UFO in that forest was being struck by the beam of light and then nothingness.

He woke up in pain, felt an overwhelming thirst and weakness, and had breathing difficulties. A bright light shone above him, and the air was heavy and wet. Slowly gaining back his consciousness, he first thought he was in a regular hospital, surrounded by three figures wearing orange jumpsuits, perhaps medical practitioners. But when his vision became clearer, he then realized they were not humans,

but horrible-looking creatures. He described them as having a basic humanoid appearance. Shorter than five feet, They had bald heads, no hair. Their heads were domed, disproportionately larger for their little bodies. They looked like fetuses. They had large eyes, enormous eyes,

almost all brown without much whiten them. The creepiest thing about them were those eyes. They just stared through me. They had no lashes and no eyebrows, and their little noses, ears, and especially mouths never moved. Travis further said they were, were thin with delicate hands that didn't have nails and covered with marshmallow-looking skin. He attempted to push the one closest to him, but it simply shot back with ease.

It felt spongy and soft, Travis said. If he had gripped the human captive, and despite feeling weak, he stood up and yelled at the creatures. Keep back, damn you. He then grabbed an unbreakable glass-like cylinder from a nearby shelf and waved it at the creatures as a weapon. The aliens suddenly left the room through an open door giving Travis a chance to get out from the exam room via a hallway. He entered a dark spherical room with a high-backed chair at its center. As he walked towards it, the room lit up. When he sat in the empty chair, the room was

filled with lights, similar to stars projected on a round planetarium ceiling. When he stood up, the star-forming lights disappeared, but he saw what he thought was a rectangular. outline on the wall. Perhaps a door and he went to look for it. And suddenly he heard a sound behind him. Turning around, he was pleasantly surprised to see a tall human figure wearing a blue body suit and glassy helmet. Their eyes were larger than normal and were a bright gold color. This man led Travis to a large room similar to an aircraft hanger. There Travis realized he just left a disc-shaped craft similar to the one in the forest just before he was struck by the bluish light. But this craft was perhaps twice as big.

Then Travis was brought to another room and placed on a small table. A woman who resembled a tall, helmeted man held an oxygen mask, which he placed on his face. Before he could fight back, Travis said he passed out. When he awoke on a cold night, Travis said he was outside the gas station in Heber, Arizona. One of the disc-shaped crafts was hovering just above the highway and then shot away shortly after. Travis didn't have an idea he had been gone for five days and thought that only a few hours had passed. He then called his brother-in-law Grant Neff, who initially doubted that Travis was on the line, but later drove to Heber with Dwayne to get him.

Finally, the most wanted man in Snowflag, Arizona was home. Upon his return, he and his family were besieged by UFO researchers, authorities, profiteers, debunkers, and the media that wanted a story. Travis's health was the main concern for his family. His brother Dwayne received a call from the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization, or APRO, a civilian UFO research group which promised to arrange a medical examination for Travis. The National Enquirer, an American tabloid known for sensationalism, and financed APRO's research in exchange for access to Travis.

The metal examination showed that Travis was essentially in good health and no sign of drugs or found in a system. Despite being in a still distraught state, Travis was asked to take a polygraph test, which was controversial as Travis and the examiner had a dispute over the manner in which the test was done. However, Travis subsequently passed two polygraph tests. And following this, the National Inquirer awarded Travis and his co-workers a $5,000 prize for best UFO case of the year.

Some UFOologists, like Jim Ledwith, believed Travis was abducted by aliens. He said, for five days, the authorities thought Travis had been murdered by his co-workers, and then he was returned. All of the co-workers who were there, who saw the spacecraft, he all took polygraph tests, and they all passed, except for one, and that one was inconclusive. As expected, skeptics debunked Travis's story and considered it a hoax. They described it as sensationalizing on the part of the media and a put-up job to make money. UFO researcher and debunker, Philip Klass, reported that Travis's polygraph tests were poorly administered, that Travis used polygraph countermeasures.

He also found many described. in the accounts of Travis and his coworkers. Cognitive psychologists Susan Clancy argued that Travis was likely influenced by the TV movie, The UFO, incident, about the alien abduction claims of Betty and Barney Hill back in 1961. It had aired just two weeks before Travis's claimed abduction, and both Class and Clancy believed Travis was inspired to stage his own in order to become an instant celebrity, and Travis, indeed, deed became one. Four decades later, and Travis, now a father working as a foreman at a lumber mill,

still stands by his story. He'd taken five separate lie detector tests to prove his account was true, while the crew members had taken a total of 11 polygraph tests. Meanwhile, despite allegations of a hoax by many, no one has brought forth any proof to substantiate those claims. In retrospect, Travis Walton, whose story still remains one of the most intriguing reports of UFO abduction, has this to say. When I made that faithful choice to leave the truck, I was leaving behind more than just my six fellow workmen. I was leaving behind forever all semblance of a normal life, running headlong toward an experience so overwhelmingly mind-rending in its effects, so devastating in its aftermath that my life would never, could never be the same again.

So that's going to do it, guys, for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you enjoyed it. And please tune in next week for another one filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because who knows? Maybe your town will be next.