Somewhere in the Skies - TRAVIS: The True Story of Travis Walton

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

On episode 56 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan first speaks with Greg Bishop about the 2018 Esotericon that they will be speaking at on May 19th and 20th in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The event is completely free to the public. To learn more and to attend, use the contact tab at: www.winterlightproductions.com Then Ryan sits down face-to-face with Jennifer Stein and Peter Robbins, co-producers of the award-winning documentary, Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton.  Driving home after a day of clearing brush in the forest, six lumberjacks come upon a 40-foot disk hovering silently over the crest of a ridge. As if spellbound, Travis Walton jumps from the passenger side of the truck, running towards it for a closer look. That decision on November 5th, 1975, would change him forever. The 21-year-old logger from Snowflake, Arizona was struck by a powerful blue beam of light from the craft. He disappeared for five days, igniting a firestorm of controversy aimed at the logging crew who were the last to see him. Travis Walton’s 1975 experience comes alive as he recounts the ordeal. TRAVIS combines new and archived interviews with the logging crew, police and the polygraph examiner. Walton explains how this event changed his life forever, as the media, skeptics and debunkers attacked him, his friends and family. UFO experts explain why this story continues to astound investigators, astrophysicists and journalists as they investigate for reliable evidence of other worlds, other beings, and more advanced technologies.  Guest Bios: Greg Bishop: Greg Bishop is a writer, researcher and radio host from Los Angeles. He hosts the long-running program Radio Mistirioso, and is the author of Project Beta, It Defies Language, Weird California, and Wake Up Down There.  Peter Robbins: Peter is co-author (along with Larry Warren) of the British best-seller Left at East Gate: A First-Hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-Up and Investigation. He is the author of Deliberate Deception: A Case of Disinformation in the UFO Research Community, and Halt In Woodbridge: An Air Force Colonel’s Thirty-Year Fight To Silence An Authentic UFO Whistle-Blower. Jennifer Stein: Jennifer has been making documentaries since 1989. In 2012 Jennifer won two Open Minds’ International UFO Congress film festival awards for The Disclosure Dialogues with filmmaker Ron James, then in 2015, two EBEs at the 2015 Open Minds’ film festival for Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton, that she co-produced with Bob Terrio, Ron James, and Zachary Weil. Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Official Store: CLICK HERE Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Closing song, "Awake" by Tycho SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with eOne Entertainment   Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms apply. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. It was a terrifying experience. I thought we was going to go to jail for murder. That day, you know, we were a little behind, so we worked until we was starting to get dark. We loaded up the equipment, and hadn't driven very far when we caught glimmers of this glow coming through the tree.

As he got closer, I heard the sound. One of the guy said, do you feel that? I really panicked then. I told him, get the hell out of here. It didn't come directly to me. It came to a deputy sheriff. It's three. I was volunteered right away to tell him what had happened. Sheriff Gillespie definitely didn't believe it.

He says that we better be certain because we get in a lot of trouble. When we went to search the next day, they split us up. And the whole time the deputies asked me, you know, if you just tell us where the body is, we can all go home and get this over with. We're talking about 100 people. Combing through the wooded area, nothing turns up. All week long, I've been hearing they're going to set it up to make you guys look guilty. We're a rough-looking bunch then.

Some of us have been in trouble with the law before. You know, he ain't never going to come out of that jailhouse. Granny said, this is Travis. I'm back. I need help. When I did hear that he had been returned, it was almost as unbelievable as the original thing. I just looked at my mom and said, I told you, we didn't kill him. Travis Walton reappeared after several days with a bizarre story about a ride in an unidentified flying object. People were desperate to explain it away. Why are you sticking up with Travis for all this time?

you know this really didn't happen. What happened to Travis after we took off in that truck, I can't tell you. I hated Travis for a long time after this. My whole world just tore up. But I believe every word Travis said about it. He's never lied to me about nothing. It's a net negative. We lost our jobs in the immediate aftermath.

And now you're not able to talk about it with anyone because you know that they're going to laugh at you, they're going to look at you like you're crazy. But if you don't come out and tell your story, somebody else is going to tell it for you. There's a degree of responsibility. But certainly I have to accept the bad. If I can direct what's happened in a way that I can make something good happen in the world, I'm looking for it.

Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. By the time you hear this, I'll be on the road traveling to Nova Scotia, where I'll be speaking at the esotericon, a collection of researchers exploring every weird and esoteric thing you can possibly think of. So, before we get to this week's main interview, I want to bring to the... on one of the other speakers and a good friend of mine, Greg Bishop, to give everyone a sneak peek at what to expect at the Esotericon. Greg Bishop, as a fellow speaker, I wanted to bring you on today to give listeners a little sneak peek at the lineup for the Esotericon taking place on May 19th and 20th in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Thank you so much, man, for hopping on today with me.

Hey, no problem. Just about any time. I don't have a schedule. I'm a bum. I've seen the photos. Yeah, for sure. You're living that caroac life. I love it, man. Well, sort of, yeah. You've got to schedule it, but at least I've got the freedom to schedule it, which is way more important. Absolutely. I love anyone who has the opportunity to just to not be forced to deadlines at a constant rate. And I think that's what makes you the kind of researcher you are. And when you have something to say, you're going to come out and say it. So I love that about you, man. And that's why I wanted to bring you on today,

because you and I are both going to be speaking at the esotericon and a bunch of other people who I kind of wanted to go over today, a little sneak peek for our audience. So first, I guess we should start with our host. The guy who put this all together, who invited all of us to Nova Scotia, and that's Paul Kimball. He's going to be speaking with Holly Stevens,

his partner in crime in a talk titled, Haunted Ghosts, Demons, shadow people in Nova Scotia. So for those who don't know, Paul and Holly have a TV show in Canada called Haunted. So I'm assuming that's what this is going to be in examination, maybe of some of their investigation. So yeah, what do you think about this one, man? I can't wait to hear more because as you and I both, you and I were both there when stuff

was happening when they were shooting like extra stuff for an episode. And that's the only time I've ever been on some kind of what you might call a ghost hunt, which is, yeah, I've been doing that. I've done that maybe five times. But that's the only time where something happened. And like five things happened. Yeah, me too. That was my first time.

Yeah, where things were not like, well, that could have been something else. All of it could have been something else. But it was definitely in the, this isn't, I can't explain this away easily category. And a couple of them were I can't explain this away at all category, which was, what's great. I mean, it didn't make me nervous. It made me excited, actually, when things have. happen. Not like, oh boy, you know, throw my hands up or scream like Scooby-Doo or whatever the hell. I would just think that was really cool. And that's what happens on some of the shows.

Obviously, they edit them down so that, you know, it turns into a narrative and things happen a little bit quicker and all that. But for, you know, minute by minute or hour for hour or whatever, I think they've got more genuine stuff happening on their show than just about anyone. And they don't do this kind of like, what was that and the night vision and running around or teasing the ghosts or anything like that, really. It's actually very Canadian. Paul's done things like, if there are any Nazi ghosts here, please make yourselves known. In the very polite Canadian way. It's not a joke, too. You go to the airport and the guards and all that security people are very polite. It's a cliche, but it's kind of frighteningly true. Yeah, cliches are cliches for reason. I always think there's

nothing wrong with that. And, you know, in terms of this, yeah, this is why I love when we get invited to these things up north. It's, it's a whole different universe. It's almost a time warp in some ways for people like you and I who live in L.A. or, you know, I lived in New York for a long time. You get a really interesting breed of people from, it's a melting pot, and that's good, and sometimes it's just hectic is all hell. So to get a chance to go to Canada, Halifax, in specific, is a vacation, but it's also just such a rewarding experience. It's a beautiful place with some some really interesting ghosts, I'm sure. Ghosts and people, and it's a completely different environment than I've grown up with and

are used to. My friend from Montreal told me, she said, when you come here to visit, I'm sorry, but my apartment is sweltering. It's horrible. So maybe we won't go to my place. We'll just go out and eat or whatever. And I thought, and I looked at the weather report, the high was like 72 degrees. Right.

And to be, that. That's like, oh, God, that's perfect. That's all the sports weather for me. No, not even shorts. It's kind of like, that's kind of, you know, I'm so got my jeans on and maybe a long-sleeve shirt. We bring a jacket. Your friends are like, oh, God, it's sweltering. It's horrible.

That was my big, my biggest adaptation from moving from the East Coast to the West Coast is I moved in the middle of summer when the heat wave struck here in L.A. And I thought, Greg, is this how it's going to be for the next two years I'm going to be here? And thank God it wasn't. But yeah, it is a big shift for sure. It's just the summer. And plus, there's no humidity. But if, yeah, if you go outside in the summer, it's like being sitting in a furnace.

Yes. You know, it gets up to, it gets up over a hundred. That starts bothering me. Anything up to 100 doesn't bother me that much. Over 100, I start getting slightly irritated. Yeah, that's when the AC kicks in, brother, for sure. Let's see. Who do we got next?

We got, oh, Micah Hanks. We got Micah Hanks. Thanks talking about his book, Magic, Mysticism, and the Molecule. We both saw this talk at the Liverpool event that we are at, and this explores magical practices, mystical states, and out-of-body encounters and altered consciousness. Wow. This one blew my mind. I didn't know. I hadn't read Micah's book about all this. And I was blown away when I heard this last year. You attended that talk as well, right? Yeah. We had talked about this. I'd read some of his book. And also we talked on my show, oh God, he was on like five years ago on my show. And so I just saw the evolution of his thinking

to sort of a unified field of if our minds can do these things, you know, why are we missing out on, you know, in things that we know about like, you know, psychedelics and altered states. Why are we not comparing this to an altered state of an extraordinary experience? And Micah does a good job of pointing that out, pointing out the parallels and what we might be able to do with that. Yeah, so Micah's is going to be great. I know the idea of like inducing a extraordinary experience is alluring to me. So I look forward to that. But yeah, Tim, Tim, Benal of Benal of America fame.

We all know him. We all love him. He's going to be talking about the flat earthers. Oh, my God, man. This is going to be epic. I'm sure it'll be what, like an analysis of the pseudoscience, the claims, and why it's coming back now. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, he, I work with him occasionally on coast. Not like with him, but we, you know, we're kind of doing the same things in different areas. I got his old job. People might not know that. But he said, you know, he's like, oh, dude, you know, all these, you know, the craziest thing that's happened the last year is these flat earther people. There's Tim's voice. But he saw it as like this huge trend and he was just as flabbergasted as we are. It's like, what?

How is this big now? He's got, since he's, you know, got his finger on the news, since he does. a lot of that for Coast. And he's interviewed tons of people. I don't think he's ever had a flat earther on his show that ever had one on, uh, been all of America. He said, this is the craziest, biggest thing that's come down the pike in the last year or two. And so he's really dug into the, the, uh, the world of these people, their, their, their, their, uh, their groups, their, their, their meetings, what they think, famous people who are into it. And it's just kind of, it's, it's, it's kind of jaw dropping to me that people would even believe this, but Tim's

going to tell us why they do, what they're talking about, and where this, uh, where this movement might be going. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's crazy. It's not, he says. All over the place. Yeah, exactly. All over the, the, uh, round earth, as it were, moving on. We have, we have Aaron Gleis presenting a talk titled, Reduce, reuse, recycle, the past and future evolution of UFO narratives. This is going to be awesome. man. I've been listening to Aaron for a while now. I read a couple of his books. Yeah, so he's going to be talking all about the evolution of the UFO topic, you know, all the forms it takes. Why some topics within UFO studies, research come to the forefront and then go back into the fringe every now and again. It's going to be really interesting, almost like a, I guess, like a sociological examination. Yeah, do you know anything about this one? Have you ever heard Aaron talk about this? No, this is a brand new talk. Cool.

Which kind of amazes me that he's presenting this great, brand new talk. And I think it's obviously based on his Saucer Life podcast, which makes me insanely jealous because it's so well done. It's gorgeous. Absolutely. I mean, talk about like production quality. It took the best people from NPR's production staff and then have them just talk about UFOs. A match made in heaven. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to errands. Then we have Walter Bosley. Now, as far as I know, he's kind of keeping us in the dark about what he's going to be talking about. I have no doubt whatever it is. It's going to be something nobody's really thought about before if we know this guy and what he's done before. Do you have any predictions on what he might be talking about? I think he'll probably be talking about his Empire of the Wheel research, which is what he's done as has uncovered a history of occult rituals, occultists.

possible ritual murders in Southern California over a period spanning from the 19th century up to now, actually. Wow. He's been working on this for probably like the past six or eight years or more. He took me on a tour of some of his spots, like some of the spots in Southern California, where he said, you know, these are significant places in my storyline. You know, he took me to a stone quarry where he said there was possibly a ritual murder or a body was discovered there. He took me to a house where two children were found murdered, poisoned in the early 20th century. It's a fascinating story. I've had to show a few times about that.

And I think that's probably what he'll be talking about because it's not listed on the website yet. Right. And I mean, he just announced a couple days ago, too, that this entire Emperor of the Wheel work that he's been doing has been optioned for a television series. So fingers crossed, that happens. That's definitely something I'd want to check out being a huge binge watching fan, myself falling victim to that. So yeah, we got to sort of cap this

with, before we get to your talk, with the man of the hour, the keynote speaker, Mr. Stanton T. Friedman, giving apparently his last lecture ever, which was also his first lecture ever, and that's flying saucers are real. It's come full circle, man. He's retiring from the lecturing circuit.

it. And yeah, I look forward to seeing this finally. I've never heard it. I've never seen it. Have you ever heard him give this talk? No, I've never heard him give this. I came in too late to give him this. I'm not that old. I came in too late to have him here to have him present this actual talk. I'm sure it's like, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of blacked out documents in it because that's his bread and butter. But I'd like to hear, you know, from the horse's mouth from Stan, you know, and I'm sure he's going to go over. It's like, well, this is what happened to me. He's not going to give the verbatim talk. He doesn't have. have to, and I don't think you will. But it's that, just for that, just to see Stan Friedman do his

final lecture after what, 40 something years? I think it's more than that. 50 years. Almost up to 50 years now at this point. Yeah. And like you said, like the dude knows this thing from front to back. He doesn't need a PowerPoint. He doesn't need a script. And he's entertaining as hell. People do not agree with him on a lot of things, but that doesn't matter. He's a stalwart. He's a legend he's uncovered incredible amounts of information you know you got to respect that plus he's a nice guy i mean i've talked to him extensively and he's really nice i interviewed him for my show finally at ufo congress and like two weeks later he said i'm retiring everybody wanted to interview him and they started interviewing him about about stuff that i wanted to talk to him about like well

what's what what's been going on in your life what was your life like but that's what i asked him about in the interview and then everybody else did now i kind of feel like i don't want to run the interview Oh, no, I might be one of those culprits. It doesn't, because everybody's like, yeah, I've got to talk to Stan. The funny thing is, did you notice this in the interview? I tried to get him off the UFO subject, and he would just bring it right back. Yeah, yeah, man, it's like clockwork with him. It really is.

Which enjoyed, actually. It's like, Stan, what happened in, you know, what were you working in 1952? Well, actually, I was doing rockets and nuclear rockets, but let him do my UFO work, which is very interesting. You know, you just always bring it back to the UFO thing. He's a professional through and through. Well, let's cap this off, man. We have you giving your talk on UFOs, the co-creation hypothesis. I've seen this lecture done.

It was so awesome. You got a standing ovation at the Congress. You did. I saw it. I saw it. So give us the elevator pitch. I don't remember that. Maybe I couldn't see it.

I don't know. Yeah, it's pretty dark. in there, man, but I was standing. I can tell you that much. Well, thank you. I never knew that. I would have told people, hey, you know, I got a standing ovation. I guess I didn't see it. I don't know. I don't even remember that happening, but thank you. Of course, brother. So tell us what the co-creation hypothesis is. I mean, I know that's a very broad question, but what are you going to be sharing with the audience with this one? Well, there's kind of two parts of my co-creation. One is what does the human mind do when it is confronted with something it's extraordinary and unexpected?

What is the psychology behind it? What is the neurological basis of a traumatic experience? How does memory work? How does your visual system work? How do you tell stories about things? How does all this work? Because if we don't discover how are the system, the human body, the individual, the instrument that is that is experience of this works.

If we don't know how it processes the information, how can we be sure that the information it was gathering was what it says it is? You know what I mean? We can't because, you know, 99.9% of the time UFO encounters are by people just seeing something. And occasionally, if we're really lucky, there's radar or photos or something like that. But for most of the time, we don't really know what goes on. and people can say, well, there's pictures that show something's going on or radar returns and all that. But if you look at the body of UFO literature, it's not standardized.

It's not nearly as standardized as you think it would be. And there's a lot of things associated with it with people's belief systems getting affected and their emotional life and their personal lives getting affected. And then what they report, it goes all over the map. I think this indicates that there's something going on in our minds that makes the experience something we can handle and remember and and refer to rather than what actually happened. I don't know, you know, for instance, if we got somebody there seeing something, a close encounter like, you know, 500 feet or less, if there's a camera sitting there like 200 feet away at an angle showing them and whatever they're looking at, I've got a very strong

suspicion that the camera is not going to see what they see. Or they remember, actually. That's the more important part. How did they remember what that was? So that's very interesting to me. And then the second part of the lecture, I talk about something that's really interesting to me right now, which is information theory. What's that?

Well, the information theory I'm interested in is the theory that reality at its very base is not particles and is not atoms and particles and quarks and, you know, subatomic particles. It's information. And the information is formed into the physical universe by our interaction with it. Now, this sounds stupid and spooky and new aging. It does. But the fact that what really floored me was that a Nobel laureate and somebody who was fairly conservative, John Archibald Wheeler, was wrestling with this exact problem before he died in,

I think, what was it, the early 2000s or maybe mid-2000s before 2010. One of his last books in the 1990s, he proposed that, he proposed something called the anthropomorphic principle in physics. I don't think I'm getting the name right. I'll get it right in the talk. His idea was that reality as we see it is a result of a long series of yes or no questions, but that has as its base. pure information and that everything, like I said, everything we see, our physical universe,

everything that happens in it is a result, is a result of us experiencing it. Physical laws, everything. That sounds completely wacky and way out and doesn't make any sense and it sounds almost worse than quantum theory. But if you think about it and somebody way smarter than me once told me, I mean, if you think of the UFO enigma in a physical universe, it is, it is improbable. It's highly improbable. It's hard to imagine some of this stuff being real.

But if you think of it in an informational universe, it's almost, it's almost, it's almost, it's almost the exact thing you would expect in an informational universe. Yeah, yeah. It's weird because it can be made into whatever we think it might be. And I know I've got people saying that I think that people make things up that physical evidence trumps the idea that people aren't seeing what they actually they're seeing. But I don't think so. I don't think so every time. And another thing I get with people to me saying that this is the only way to go and that UFO research, every other form is terrible and this is the pinnacle of it. I don't think that at all.

I think it's just an interesting tributary that I like to follow. Yeah, exactly, man. And just bringing new things to the forefront. Like you've said before, like these theories, they're not exactly new. They've been around in different forms for many decades. It's just about, you know, looking at them again when all else fails and seeing, oh, what can we glean from that that we can now look at? So I think that's a really good point.

Nothing I'm saying is really that new. or original. I'm just trying to get, I'm trying to find things that I find interesting and just, you know, see what I can get out of them by, by delving into them a little bit deeper and seeing what these ideas, what fruit comes out of, you know, planning these ideas and, and messing with them and watering them and, you know, fertilizing them by other people talking about them and seeing what happens, you know, and if nothing happens, great, we'll move on to something else, but this interests me right now. Exactly. And again, I think what's really interesting about what you do with your talks is you ask questions of the audience. And that's a thing that a lot of speakers or

presenters don't do. Like, you have this theory and you want to see what other people can contribute to it. Get the ball rolling. See if there is something to it. And I think that's what's really cool about the esotericon, um, is that you have speakers who are willing to listen to the audience. We're not preaching. We're bringing our thoughts forward and we want to know what the people think. And I think that's what's really cool about things like this. And something that works really well in Canada is you have such a receptive audience who's willing to take that journey with you. So that's something I'm looking forward to. Do you think, am I getting that right here about the people in Canada?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there are not people standing up trying to take over the narrative. Exactly. The thing when you, during question and answer, it is question and answer. It's not somebody up standing up and giving their own lecture. which often happens at conferences. And I don't know about you, but I've learned to deal with that. If they go on for more than about a minute, I say something like,

other people are waiting to ask questions, so please ask your question. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough in the situation because you want to be respectful. But at the same time, yeah, like, where's the question? Yeah, and it's like, well, I've got to, you know, I've got to finish. It's like, well, hurry up and finish because other people want to ask a question. Unless there's nobody standing behind them, then I can't really say that. anymore. Then we all just stand there awkwardly silent. Yeah. Well, then if it goes on too long,

I say, I have no idea what you're talking about, or if I do have an idea of what they're talking about, I engage with them a little bit and discuss it. But yeah, there's other people waiting and they're just going on and on. I'm like, you're being rude. Please don't be rude to other people. Exactly. Exactly, man. Well, I mean, I think that's it for the speakers, right? I forget that anyone? Yeah. I mean, we've mentioned all the speakers

and not too much about Holly, but I think she's just going to talk basically about some of the things she's experienced on this, on Haunted, because her experience is quite different than Paul's, and it's quite different than their cameraman Dylan was how things happened to him.

He became part of the cast just by being there, because stuff started happening to him. In fact, the stuff that happened at that ghost hunt kind of happened around him when I was in the room with it. Yes, I remember that, yep. We talked about that afterwards. That's really interesting. Dylan was a severe skeptic before all of this.

He was just looking for a job, you know, get his foot in the door film-wise. And it turned into like a whole new journey for him, I would say. Like you said, he became a character in what he was filming. That's really cool. Yeah. And maybe Dylan, talk a little bit too but yeah you know holly holly holly and paul are the main hosts and most of the stuff happens on them and to them and around them and that's what makes the show so i like the show a lot

i mean i paul's my friend and holly's my friend and all that but i actually enjoy the show because it's so non-s sensationalistic and it's so kind of like look this weird thing happened and we're not going to scream and jump around or speculate that it's you know the old ghost of whatever trying to kill us or anything like that it's just more like This was very interesting. This is the history. This is what it could be. Here's some strange stuff that happened while we were there, which is not normally explainable. So I like the show a lot, and I don't think it would be popular in the United States because people want people screaming and jumping around and saying what was that with night vision cameras strapped all over them. Exactly. Yeah. And if it's any indication of what they showed evidence-wise at this last conference we were at, That evidence alone is incredible and terrifying and just all sorts of weird.

So, yeah, I really look forward to whatever they got in store for us. Again, the event is taking place Saturday and Sunday, May 19th and 20th at the KTS Lecture Hall at the Historic University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And it's completely free to the public. What? Are you kidding me? Yeah, what the hell happened there? That's incredible. Like for...

False gone insane. Insane. This is what I'm talking about, though, man. I mean, Canada, like free conferences, free healthcare. They're doing something, right. Yeah, what the hell's going? Those people are nuts. If people are interested, the talks begin at 9.30 each morning.

The space is limited. So Paul has asked, if you want to reserve a seat, email him at Paul Kimball at Winterlight Productions. or you can just show up the morning of probably wiggle your way in either way i know it's going to be an incredible weekend you know again just people having conversations and i love any any opportunity to visit canada and it's even better meeting new people seeing all of you guys so again if you're in canada make the flight over to halifax and come join us on may 19th and 20th uh before we go can you please gregg tell us where we can find your

podcast Radio Mysterio. At Radio Mysteriooso.com. That was easy. It's not, and it's not spelled like the English. It's spelled like Spanish, M-I-S-T-E-R-I-O. Yep, absolutely. But if you put it, M-Y-S-T-E-R, it'll still come up. It'll show up.

There's shows going back years. I think there's a couple hundred shows on there with everybody from Ghost Hunters to, you know, I recently had Dean Raden on, to a lot of, of female researchers I've had on recently. I'm about to put one up with Shannon Taggart, who does spirit photography. So that one's going to be, that was a good show, and that'll go up in the next probably week

or two, maybe after I get back from Canada. Yes, and I'm sure we will be doing some recording while we're there and have some really interesting things to talk about after. So we're going to have you back on for sure. Live show from Canada on the, what is it, a week from Sunday. Yep. which would be the 13th, or no, I'm sorry, the 20th. Yep, the 20th.

That's correct. Writing Mysterious, we'll have a live esotericon cool-down show. Love it. I can't wait to be involved with that. And to see you in about a week, my friend. So I have to thank you for coming on for this brief time, giving us a sneak peek at what to expect at the esotericon, and look forward to seeing everybody and learning new things and asking new questions.

So again, Greg Bishop, Thanks for joining me, brother. Thanks so much, Ryan. November 5, 1975. Travis Walton is 22 years old. He was working a logging contract in central Arizona in the Apache Stickgreaves National Forest. While driving home one evening with his fellow loggers,

they came across something burning bright in the distance, fearing it was a brush fire. They drove a bit closer to get a better look. As they approached, they realized it was a lot. anything but a fire. Above them, they witnessed a hovering disc-shaped object in the night sky. Walton jumped out of his truck and approached it, curiosity, getting the best of him. It would be the decision that would change the course of his entire life. As he walked directly below the hovering object, the other lockers begged and pleaded for him

to get back in the truck. When he got within close proximity, the object shot a bolt of light down, striking Travis and sending him over 20 feet in the air, knocking him unconscious. The other loggers, fearing the same fate, fled the scene in pure terror. They phoned the local sheriff, and soon they all went back to try to find Travis. They could not. A search was soon underway by the local law enforcement and the neighboring towns of Snowflake, Arizona, where Travis called home. Days passed and Travis was nowhere to be found. Fearing he was dead, locals began to speculate

that the other loggers may have killed Travis, whether on purpose or by accident, and hid the body. This was now turning into a murder case when the men started to tell their story of what they'd seen happened to Travis that night. The entire case now went international, and reporters from all over the world began to descend on the sleepy, town of Snowflake. For five days, the other loggers stuck to their story, taking lie detector tests to prove their innocence. Meanwhile, the story of the UFO brought many believers and debunkers to town as well. One noted skeptic, Philip J. Class, even offering the loggers a hefty bribe to admit the UFO event had never happened. They refused, and they passed the lie detector tests with flying colors.

As the case spun more and more out of control, something had to break, and soon, Travis Walton returned. And the story he told of what happened while he was gone will forever be remembered as perhaps the most famous alien

abduction account of all time. In 2016, a documentary was screened in New York City at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival. It won Best Documentary of the entire festival. That film was titled Travis, the true story of Travis Walton. It was directed by Jennifer Stein and co-produced by both her and bestselling author and UFO researcher Peter Robbins.

The documentary was an intimate examination of the entire Travis Walton event, told through the eyes, mouths, and hearts of everyone involved, where the 1993 Hollywood film adaptation, Fire in the Sky, took a fantastical and horror-driven approach to telling Travis's story. This documentary dives deep into the very factual and very well-documented accounts of what truly happened in the woods that night. Upon viewing the film, I was able to sit down face-to-face with Jennifer Stein and Peter Robbins to discuss it in depth and the incredible developments in the case that continue up until today.

So, without further ado, here's my conversation. with Jennifer Stein and Peter Robbins. I hope you enjoy. So guys, why are we celebrating? We won the best UFO, are actually the best documentary or the best science fiction feature film of the festival.

And we're scratching our heads. And delighted. Yeah. Well, congratulations. Very exciting news. Thanks for joining us today. Glad to do. So Jennifer, I guess we'll start with you.

What made you want to make this film? Well, I felt that Travis's story really needed to be remembered and understood, certainly by younger generations who don't seem to pick up books anymore. They're becoming a thing of the past. And if anyone really wants a perspective on one of the top 10 best, you know, documented UFO stories, Travis's story is amazing. There's a lot of evidence to it, a lot of people involved in the case. it's not one of those stories that could easily be buried and shoved under the rug. There's polygraph involved in it. It made international news because it was a homicide story, a missing person story, and a UFO story.

The story was heavily attacked and debunked. These guys' lives were destroyed by this. There was a huge story there. And after I read his book and Peter introduced me to Travis in 2010, I just felt like if I could produce something like it would be amazing. And I wasn't even sure I could do it. I didn't actually even start out to make a documentary. And that's another story. But I just felt like if it could happen, it would be a great coup for Travis. And for myself as a filmmaker, if I could do a decent job, I would have had made a contribution to maybe shifting the awareness or the consciousness of the planet to

remember and be aware of Travis's story. And that's why I put the time and effort and money into it. Had you ever done a documentary before? Yes, I've done a couple. I started documentary filmmaking around maybe the late 80s, early 90s. A friend of mine was killed in a terrorist bus attack and I was motivated to her memory and to raising awareness about the beginning of the antifada and actually the very good relationship that Arabs and Jews had in Israel because a lot of people think it's bad, but in actuality for thousands of years, they've lived very peacefully and collaboratively with one another. And my friend had gone to Israel and was caught a terrorist bus attack. And she'd made the nightly news because she survived the initial attack and then died

later. So I made a documentary about her, used the documentary to raise about $100,000 and we built a legal aid bureau in Central Israel and Karmiel Israel that helps both Druze, Arabs, Muslims, women seeking political asylum. It was a women's organization that we funneled the money through. And that was my first documentary film. So I'm a purpose-driven filmmaker. And I'm a social activist, and I think that we need to all kind of pull up our bootstraps and do what we can to heal the world. I mean, it's a Jewish theme, Takuna Lum. What do you do to make your life matter? And what impacts you in your life that you want, to remember and try to change. So I wanted to do something that was non-retaliatory in nature. And honoring my friend, Rita Levine, was the best thing I could do. So that was my first film. Okay.

And I really got my boot sweat. I literally did it with a video camera and a VHR with a jog shuttle, where you could lay a soundtrack and then an audio track, and that was it. Yeah. So you had to lay stuff, wind back your jog shuttle. Lay more stuff, wind back your jog shuttle. Oh, my. I can imagine how long. And that's how I started. Awesome. Wow. Well, that's fascinating.

Like the dichotomy of your subject matter in your documentaries. But it all seems to somehow be connected and moving the world forward. Yes. The consciousness, the collective consciousness. It's consciousness and awareness. So how did this man get involved over here to my right, Mr. Peter Robbins? Well, I'll tell you, Peter is the one that introduced me to Travis. I came to a Roswell UFO conference that Peter.

Peter was helping to orchestrate and offered to be Peter's assistant and help. I wanted to kind of get my feet wet and understanding how the Roswell Conference work because I'd run a lot of UFO conferences myself in Philly. And Peter was kind enough to say, oh, gosh, yes, come and you can help. So I was there that year with Jesse Marcel Jr., assisting him and helping, and that's where I met Travis, and that's where we had the conversation about Travis hosting. his own conference, possibly in Heber at some time in the future, because at that point, it was 35 years after his event. And we said to Travis, Roswell is a huge economic boom to the

city of Roswell. Your conference and your story could be just as important for northeastern Arizona. Why don't you put a conference together? And he said, well, I've been thinking about it. And Peter and I sort of self-volunteered ourselves over a bottle of wine. I don't. I don't think we knew what we were getting into, but we volunteered to help him. And we started then working towards the 40th anniversary and trying to have conferences building up to that. And the rest is kind of history. That's how I started making this film. I said to Travis, if you want to do it in November, in northeastern Arizona, and one of the main things Travis wanted to do at a conference is take people to the actual forest where the event took place. But in no one of

In November, it could be snowing. It could be raining. The road to get up there is a switchback, and it's steeping. You need a four-wheel drive vehicle. You can't necessarily get a bus in there in November. What if it snows? So, you know, I'm a former event planner. So I said, you always have to have a plan B.

So what will be our plan B? It's natural. Let's go there in the summer. When we know we can get there, let's shoot, let's get the guys back in the forest. let's do a virtual filmed, you know, tour of the site. And in the event that it snows, we have a backup. You get everybody that shows up, put them in a conference room, show a film of a tour of the site. So that's what I did first.

The summer of 2013, I flew out there with a co-producer of mine named Bob Terrio, who was willing to really help me get this project underway because I was like going, oh, my gosh, how can I do this? it's a huge nightmare to pack your camera equipment, everything you need, fly to Arizona, then drive three hours north, then schlep all this equipment up to the forest, hike it in a mile, carrying tripods and mics and all this stuff. And he helped me. And after we got that virtual tour done, which is called tracking sky fire, and it's something that Travis has for sale and also Bob Terrio and Philadelphia has for sale, it's a virtual tour of the forest. After we looked at that,

and we finished that in time for a conference that we'd hoped that would have happened, the 38th conference, I realized, you know, with a little more work, I'm halfway to a really decent documentary. Why don't I take that virtual tour, shoot some interviews, try to get a few more interviews with a polygraph person, and try to find the police chief and whoever else I can find from the town, maybe make another trip back out there and see what I can do. And the other unique thing is, since I'm involved in Mufon, I happen to be organizing the National Symposium for the Mutual UFO Network in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill in the summer of 2014. And we were bringing in, you know, Lee Spiegel and Stanton Friedman and Kathy Martin and George Knapp.

We had all these wonderful speakers. We even had James Fox. And I said, wow, if I'll take over. a hotel room, set it up like a studio. I'll shoot all these interviews. And then I'll have these core interviews. Then I'll get a couple more. And then I'll edit my tushy off, right? And try to create a new film. And that's what I did. So actively, I started working on this documentary, reshaping it in probably around August of 2014. And like, it's unheard of to do a, to edit like this. And I had a,

a lot of help. I had some great guys in California that helped me. Zachary Weil and Adam Stein, who took my four-hour film in October and pulled it tightly together in time for the Open Minds Film Festival. I wrote a little song to remind you,

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Book direct at choiceotails.com. See you on the roof. Right, which you also won. Which we won both award categories, which I was really honored by. Congratulations again. Seems to be a running theme. I'm very happy. You know, when you look at the Internet and you look at what people really want to know about,

the UFO topic is still one of the most high. highly researched topics next to porn. You know, so I don't know if that puts it in a good light or a bad light, but it's... It's been that way since the birth of the Internet. Yes, it's the people are most curious about who are we, where are we, where did we come from, what's the nature of reality. And sex. And sex.

You know, of course. I mean, these are the core questions. They are. And it doesn't matter what nationality you are, what religion you are. these are the human conditions that we need to really wrestle with. We need to understand our nature. That's great. I want to get a little back to the film itself that I viewed last night,

and I had the privilege of seeing at the Congress as well last year. You mentioned earlier you had spoken to the sheriff, Gillespie. Yes, Marlon, Marlon, Gillespie. Chief Investigator during the investigation. What was it like hearing his side of the story face to face? When I was interviewing Marlon, he was still very skeptical, very much on the edge of his seat, and very cautious with his words. He never wanted to admit that he believed that this had happened. He said, I believe they were trying to tell the truth.

He never said, I believe they told the truth. So I was amazed that still, after 40 years, he was really on the fence about everything. But when we turned the cameras off, he told us his own UFO story. Really? Which was amazing. I mean, he's had more than one. Okay. And in fact, he had had some events prior to the Travis Walton incident.

So he didn't discount the boys and he didn't disrespect them because he'd seen enough odd stuff himself. Yeah. At the same time as a long... enforcement officer in a business where there's a lot of macho bantering and posturing, the ridicule factors amped up tenfold. And at the same time, he knew that this could be real. So when you see the film, the Hollywood film, I think one of the things that works best about fire in the sky is the human dynamic.

You know, forget about the special effects and the alien experience. experience, the late great James Garner playing the sheriff was wonderful, and the actors playing the deputies, what they were wrestling with. We can only imagine in terms of, you know, we're free to think. It's not like we work in law enforcement or the military or whatever and would have problems expressing opinions in a public forum. When I saw the footage, I was dumbstruck with that. a backstory. It makes perfect sense knowing what we do and that these things do happen. And Arizona

has a fairly high ratio of authentic, truly anomalous UFO situations over the decades. But for me, that was one of the really most quietly exciting parts of the documentary. And you just said it, he's in his 80s now. And yet you could almost smell the woodburning in terms of him choosing what for him would be the right word rather than the almost right word to sound objective, to sound open-minded, but to still protect himself. Of course. Within his greater community in the way that he is perceived as seeing the world.

And there's another important point to remember, and a lot of people seem to forget this. It's well mentioned in the film, but we don't beat you over the head with it. This is a Mormon town. Right. They're most everybody in. the town is Mormon. They're very conservative. And we had, we went and visited the newspaper man, who was 11 years old at the time when his dad was running the newspaper. I think it's called

the Holbrook Tribune. And when I went and looked at those articles, I photographed them all, there's over 40 articles, almost one a year. You know, there were certainly more during 1975 to 1995, but when you read those articles, you would think that this really didn't happen because the newspaper was so conservative and their approach was so conservative. Oh, everybody wanted to protect themselves and nobody wanted to be ridiculed. And of course, this story was heavily attacked by Philip Klass. Yes. We won't get started on class.

But piggybacking off of that. someone like class who is a professional debunker, as it were, what we need is physical evidence. And this case is the epitome of physical evidence when it comes to the abduction phenomenon. You brought forth some of the most compelling evidence that I personally didn't know about. I think 90% of the people in the audience didn't know about. And I heard literal holy S-H-I-T's when you brought forward the tree growth in the area. I mean, the guy next to me almost jumped out of his seat. Is there any other evidence that you'd steer skeptics towards in terms of this case that you found while making the documentary?

Well, obviously, the polygraphs. Yes. You can't have seven, eight, nine people. take polygraphs in all pass and not have something very significant there. And in fact, it's one thing to take a polygraph once, but to take them multiple times and pass, your numbers start to go exponentially off the charts. So if anyone wanted to look at that alone, it was huge. The other fact that there were probably roughly 250 to upwards of 500 people that looked for Travis, I've heard different people give different numbers, so that's why I give that kind of a range.

People were looking for him for five days over a five-mile radius. There was helicopters. There were dogs sniffing hounds out there. And the only place they could find traces of Travis's scent was where he had been working that day, where he jumped out of the truck, where he walked up to the UFO where there was a slash pile, and where he landed. This dog's noses don't lie. There was a fellow who showed up unidentified who was doing Geiger counter readings. And he got huge Geiger counter readings on the fellow's helmets and on the truck.

Now, they had washed their clothes. But where Travis had been struck, where Travis landed, and the truck and the helmets went off the charts. Once he got those readings, he packed up his equipment. and took off and nobody really knew who he was. Somebody said he was from the Forestry Service. Other people said, no, he was from the FBI. Naturally, yes. So we don't know.

To me, the other thing that's really interesting is there was an awful lot of men in black that seemed to show up and track and follow these guys in Hebrew. They were standing outside waiting for them. Who were these people? Like Steve Pierce was talking about his mother observing the government cars, the guys in the suits who fit into the snowflake scene like a fish and a bicycle. It also occurs to me that for some people who you watch something as compelling and as loaded and as effective as this documentary, if you have a problem with the subject and you're not quite at the point of, turning and trying to attack the character of the witnesses, most of us know that in the great majority of states,

polygraphs are dismissed in courts of law. They're interesting. They may add something. You know, people will often say, well, I know I'm innocent. I'm going to pay to have a polygraph just so that it's on record, etc. Ben Hansen, who did such a wonderful job of being a participant, Ben, of course, started in his own television show a few years back on sci-fi.

And he's not, you know, he's a fairly young guy. A former FBI agent. Yeah, that's just it, who did profiling work. And I mean, you know, he's a great-looking guy and he's up there and he's talking. I think it's lost on some people that this is a man who speaks with real credentials. And interestingly, even if it's not admissible in a court of law, this thing. statistics that they were talking about for me were as quietly effective as the animation on tree growth or the close-up on the ring, severeing in the direction of the event, that the most conservative, and I'm sure it's an extremely conservative number of the odds of six people, seven people, being polygraphed one of the multiple times.

and the way the example he gave me a few years ago was if there were two crooks and they plot a crime and they're caught and they're subjected to a polygraph the chances are very good that one of them will screw up the story and then certainly in a follow-up that will fall apart but that figure of 78,000 to one I've also heard closer to a million to one whatever it is it's very very very compelling. And when you're looking for ways to negate or dismiss or belittle, this will dog you. This is just one more brick in the wall and a very important one as well, I think. Yeah. And I also think that when you look, I know we don't really want to get into Philip Class, but why was this story so adamantly attacked for 25, almost 30 years? years. Why did Philip keep trying to put it in the garbage? Where did that $10,000 bribe come up

from? Exactly. When something's really true and you need to bury it for whatever reason, if the government's trying, you know, has informants like this that try to bury things, they are going to go after the stuff that really doesn't have holes in it. And Travis's story does not have holes in it, but you have to dig to know that. And the more you dig, the more you find. I mean, even I uncovered stuff I didn't really know about when I started.

Yeah, I mean, you've connected some dots in terms of Philip class in his connections to some three-letter agencies. We won't go into specifics. We'll let people see the film to see those fascinating connections you made with that. But you're right.

Yeah. I mean, 25 years, the content with this case continues and continues. And again, the most challenging thing is that it has more physical evidence than any abduction case out there, perceivably. Perhaps only the Betty and Bernie Hill case being the exception. I wanted to touch on, this is for you, Peter. The film was part of the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Festival. You brought up a good point at the panel last night. I didn't mention there was a panel after the screening with Peter, yourself, and Lee Spiegel of the Huffington Post. You were interested, Peter, in the perception of a nonfiction

documentary being part of a science fiction festival. Could you elaborate on that and what that meant to you? Yeah. Over the decades that I've been doing this work, and I know for both of you as well in your time, you become a focal point for views and stories and things that people will confide to you that they might not to the next person over because they know you take it seriously and, you know, your eyebrows won't go up and no wink, wink, nudge, nudge reactions, etc. Anyway, like most people, I've enjoyed science fiction on and off since I was a kid. I wouldn't call myself a major science fiction fan, But then again, by the time I was five or six, I was given my father's hard, bound, very wonderfully beat up copies of 20,000 leagues under the sea.

And either the time machine or another really great classic. And I read them when I was very young. And in the early 50s, Walt Disney had done, they really hopped the whole studio. It could have gone under when they made their first live action film, which was 20,000 leagues under the sea. And I saw it as a very young child, and I still have watercolors and drawings that I did that afternoon

when I went back to my grandparents' house and couldn't get the idea of this submarine in ancient times, the 1800s, to cut to the chase. So what I've observed is in the pantheon of science fiction fans, and they can be generalists or people who, you know, are just major fans of the first two seasons of Star Trek or Star Wars fans or whatever, or the classics or Philip K. Dick or any of the other great, great science fiction writers, the ratio of taking the UFO-related subject seriously, which, in some ways one would think they might be more predisposed to because they're into all of this futurism and science fiction is about the same as the general populace that they don't.

They think, you know, UFOs are real in science fiction, but you really think this is serious, which I find in a Mr. Spock kind of way fascinating. And so I was curious as to how this brilliantly documented, very heartfelt, very professional documentary on one of the most shatteringly challenging, authentic, true UFO events and this major disappearance and all the attendant drama upon it would resonate with the crowd that didn't really think much about UFOs. and came to a science fiction film festival for science fiction films. I realized later on in the evening that we probably had because it was a screening of Travis the documentary, most of our audience were there because they are into this subject. I recognize many faces from, you know, in the field. But there were people in there who, after the conference came up to me and said it really did challenge my thinking. I found it very exciting.

I had to remind myself that this was real. And I thought that was a great compliment for Jennifer and for Travis and for the film in general. A testament also, the head of the film festival, viewed the entire documentary, remarked on it. And I remember there was a documentary two years ago or perhaps last year. I was on a path then as well. I think that was the very first non-sumption. science fiction when they had ever had there. And it also was a very lively discussion

with good questions from the audience as well. James Carmen's film. Did it in hand. And then last year there was Murray Island. Okay. Oh, I didn't even realize that. Well, good for them. And again, Wonderful for the director of the festival. I think he shows a lot of guts in

beginning to integrate this material into a world where there's more than enough enjoyment, satisfaction, excitement in reading the wonderful work of a writer at the level of Philip K. Dick, who many people have no idea the tremendous impact he's had on a culture, and the number of his books and stories that have been made into films over the years and influenced other science fiction films over the years.

Remarkable character. So I felt doubly proud because his name is one worthy of great respect, science fiction, Shmaiam's fiction, he's a great American writer, and he knew how to tell a hell of a story that will be retold in variations as long as there are people on Earth,

I think. He's one of our great, great writers, and he happened to work in science fiction. That was his genre. Dan actually shared something interesting with me last night. He's the director of the Philip K. Dick Festival. He said that somewhere in the Philip K. Dick literature, or maybe it was an interview that was done,

Philip admitted that he believed he was communicated with, that he'd had his own sightings, and that he was being directed or communicated with by a higher intelligence. I wasn't aware of that. And I wasn't aware of that either. I was profound to me. I said, really? And that's, I think, one of the reasons

why Dan was attracted to hosting films like this that are true stories. But, of course, the nature of the story leans towards the surreal or the science fiction. I would bet you that anybody who is seriously

in his work knows that wonderful story about him and if so, here's an example of how a writer's experience in a very challenging realm can impact itself tremendously on popular

culture. The actual a film that I just included in my general favorite films. It's just fun from beginning to end was Back to the Future, the original film. It's just lovely. It's great fun. It's great science fiction.

Beautifully drawn characters. A great dramatic arc. A lot of humor with the Bathos. And the character of Michael J. Fox's father, who is, you know, when we meet him originally, is just this loser. nerd, you know, milk toast kind of guy. But when we go back to the future and, well, when we go back to the past and he and his son develop a relationship, there is that moment where Michael J. Fox panicked that his mother is going to fall in love with him and that he'll never get home again and all that stuff.

He does something which is literally lifted from, I think, the reality of this Philip K. Dick experience in a way. He gets into his father's bedroom at night, wears his radiation hat, puts his headset on his dad, and blasts heavy metal at him. And of course, it's hysterically funny, but at the end of the film, when we see how things really did work out, and we find out that his father is a tremendously popular science fiction writer. Yeah. It happened because of a transcendent life-changing experience. Yes, of course, it was staged, but it didn't matter. The reality sunk in, and he went forward from there.

You know, I wonder if Philip K. Dick either wrote about this at any place, and if we have any Philip K. Dick fans in your audience, if they'd let you know, because it'd be really interesting to see whether or not that was recorded in an interview or he ever wrote about it, or it was just something people know about him from anecdotes and what have you. Absolutely. We run into this all the time. We take Whitley Streber, for instance, the adbin flow of what was his fiction writing and what was his nonfiction writing. What chicken or egg, let's be honest. Well, I mean, bringing up, you know, the sort of that blurred line. I wanted to share this with you guys because I don't know if you were aware. During the film, there was a couple in the audience who was having a. very heated argument mid-film. They were pretty audible.

And I could hear one of them arguing the validity of several of the loggers and some of the individuals in the film. And the other one, just a back and forth, back and forth. Of course they're telling the truth. No, it's through the, he's, he's with them on this, this, that. It got so heated that they eventually left the theater because they were disrupting the people around them. So I think it was a good thing that they did that. This is an indicator that, Jennifer, you most definitely hit a nerve and started a conversation,

even mid-film. So I have to commend you on that. Most of these conversations take place after the film during a panel, but you know you've done your job when it's mid-film. So I definitely had to bring that up. Thank you. I heard them. And I wondered what. was going on. I didn't. I thought, why are they talking through the film? They were obviously annoying the people around. I was like 10 rows back and I saw them leave and I went, well, that's two we've lost. What an offhand compliment that's so interesting. Yes, I thought, oh, well, either they really hated or they have to be somewhere. Right. Or they, yeah, exactly. But again, a testament to the film. Both of you have spent countless hours with Travis. I've met

him on two occasions and the guy, he's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. He's a straight shooter and he admits that he wishes this event never happened to him. Do you think that the abduction phenomenon or uphology in general, would it be set back if this incident never occurred? What are your personal thoughts on that? Again, this seems to be one of the preeminent cases that has that evidence that we strive for and we're we search for. Where do you think we would be as a community, as a field, had this case not happened? I think probably very much where we are right now. Things have a way of filling space if something is missing. Perhaps there would have been that much more historic study and

debate and media projects focus on the hills or on Debbie Jordan, the subject of Bud Hopkins intruders or Linda Cortille. There's plenty of information and plenty of good casework out there. And if one major case, I think, were displaced, it would hardly put a hole in the field. ranks would simply close and people would argue about or argue for other case materials,

other evidences, etc. But who knows? Again, it's all what-if stuff, isn't it? I think the fact that it did happen and that like it or not,

Travis was thrust into not a national, but an international spotlight. Whatever his reflections on it now, he has been of tremendous value as a rational representative of what for most people is impossible, crazy science fiction, a fabrication. The mantra there for me, and it's a skeptics mantra, is it can't be, therefore it isn't, therefore it's something else.

And the job that I've chosen in life is to explain to you, you poor deluded person, who actually believes this nonsense, what it is in the real world that you were misunderstanding. Now, whether or not that person actually believes that pose or, you know, they've got ulterior motives of some sort. Travis Walton is very difficult to take down. He literally radiates a certain integrity. I saw him speak for the first time more than 25 years ago.

It was at a conference in North Haven, Connecticut that Larry and I were speaking at during the period of time we were working on Left at East Gate. We both had tremendous admiration for this guy, but we're both a little bit starstruck at the same time. Concurrent with that, watching him on stage, there was no question in my mind that he was not only not enjoying the process of communicating with an audience from a, stage, which is something I do enjoy, even when you're dealing with loaded material, but that he was there for a very different reason. He was there because he felt it was his responsibility to be there. The other thing about Travis, which I try always to remember, is from the get-go, it's not like this arced up over a period of time. He walked into an absolute international storm of controversy.

Dehydrated, in shock, hadn't eaten in five days, completely, as he said, borderline catatonic at first. And he could have tried, he could have become a recluse. He could have, you know, just gone off and been a mountain man or something. Over the, in several decades, he's been a lecturer. He has become one of the most articulate spokespeople we've ever had. Yeah. For unusual stuff happening to regular people.

And I get the sense, and I mean this in a way with no negative or positive value added. It's simply a fact. He is always overwhelmed by requests from people. It's a problem. I don't know anybody who is or will ever be more behind in their emails. There's thousands behind. He can never keep up with it. I think he walks around with a certain sense of,

I wish I could keep up with all this stuff. And it still happens with him. I mean, bless his heart, he is a hard guy to get hold of and confirm. And I think it's deeply conditioned going back 40 years now of people wanting a piece of him. And that's another interesting thing to observe. He's a very generous person.

I've rarely seen speakers who, when there isn't a time constraint at the end of a program, will not just take questions from the audience, but repeatedly, and we've done quite a number of appearances together since the film came out with and without Jennifer, he will answer every single question, every single question,

until there is no questions left in that audience. Then he will, for the countless number of time, take photographs with anybody who wants to take pictures, sign anything. He will inscribe things in ways that I find thoughtful, poignant, fun, and treat everybody as an individual with respect, whether they're a senior citizen or a kid or what have you. That's really worthy of respect in itself. I don't know if he's ever going to get out. from under this sort of psychic load.

It may just be part of his destiny. I'll tell you what, though, a year or so ago, we were sitting and talking, one thing leading to another, and I asked him, we can never know the answers to these questions for sure, had this never happened, how he thought his life might have gone. He thought about it for a minute, and he said, you know, I had a year of college. I was 22 years old. I think I might have gone back to school and become a pharmacist. I said, well, you know, it's a profession. It's, you know, a good living.

My intentions were to stay in my hometown. And I thought, well, how about that? I bet he would have been a very good pharmacist. Yeah. And I'm glad in a way that fate has given him to this extraordinary community. Yeah. where I see us all in our own ways, finding our path to be educators in a manner that maybe for some of us is unconscious. For others of us, you remember that special teacher or that amazing lecture or that extraordinary film or that book you can never forget.

And whether you're answering a question of giving a full talk, knowing you have to walk a line, something that Jennifer had to consider every day working on this project where for everything in the film that was educational and fact-specific it has to be done in a manner and I use the word with great respect that is entertaining and has a certain dynamic

that will carry an average viewer from point to point. It seems every year overall people have lower and lower attention spans And like you said, there is this plague of people reading less and less for pleasure or if possible even for business and listening and watching more and more. It's not bad and good, but, well, it is in a way. Reading especially for book lovers like us is integral to our lives.

And, well, I mean, I could go on, but that's the basic thought. I'm not glad this happened to him. You know, I would have much preferred in an abstract kind of reality that I never heard of him. That there was somebody somewhere else in the United States living a life where they were enjoying themselves and not feeling terribly pressured and, you know, playing with their kids and being a good part of their community. But the fact that things happened the way they did. I remember many years ago sitting with my mother and her saying

her reflecting on the impact that my sister and my UFO sighting as kids had on us and just wistfully almost thinking out loud to me I wonder if your lives would have turned out tremendously different if you've been playing in the backyard rather than the front yard and I thought about that on and off for years, I think, because Helen had had experiences, and that was one of them. They would have found her in the backyard.

Just fine. And at the same time, I can see how both of our lives would have been very different had this subject not entered into it. I probably overwhelmingly would have stayed on my track as a gallery painter and a professional photographer. I might have ended up, you know, with a PhD in fine art and teaching at a university or something. My sister could have easily become a oceanographic biologist or something or a mathematician or a poet. But that's not the way it is. And Travis Walton is Travis Walton because he was at the wrong place. at the exact right moment for something to happen to change him and the lives of everyone he was with

and everyone who knows them and everyone to a degree who knows about what happened to them. Exactly. I mean, Jennifer, you mentioned in the panel very eloquently that he did not have the luxury of not coming forward about his experience. Five days, it became international headlines when the U.S. The foe story became a part of it. So what I think the film does... The UFO story coupled with the potential of murder and hiding the body. Exactly.

And then after that, it became a hoax. Right. So that was another spin. Where's the cabin in the woods that he was really staying at, please? So what I think the film did, and I heard this word specifically afterwards from someone, not only was the production quality good, but it had. had heart. And I think what you did... Well said.

What you did best in the later half of the film is show Travis as a person disconnected from this incident. We do not identify ourselves because of our one experience in our lives, whether it's a sighting, paranormal, a trauma, anything. There is much more to human beings than that. And I think you focused on that and showed Travis as a person and that although this may have shaped him into the person he is, there is more to this man than that. And the title aptly being Travis shows us that. So yeah, I think that was Thanks. I will give credit to Zachary Weil and to Adam Stein who worked with me as editors on this

really guiding me towards that kind of closure. And to making it. as much and even maybe more so a human interest story about how this man and the logging crew that he was with dealt with us over their lives. Yes. And in actuality, I think Travis may not have actually written his book if he wasn't so angry about being accused of hoaxiness. Yes, good point. When Travis first came back, he really wasn't involved in the media or,

answering the media. It was his brother, Dwayne, and the crew boss, Mike Rogers. Mike was the one who really dealt with most of the communications as well with Philip Glass because Mike was accused of coming up with this elaborate scheme to get out of a logging contract with the Forestry Service, which wasn't true, because if you didn't finish your contract, you didn't get paid. You didn't have to get out of it. Either you finished it by a certain deadline and you got your payment. And if you didn't and you missed that deadline, you didn't. You had to submit a new contract. It's just the way they worked. So I think this whole story actually ended up coming more to light with the details that it came to light with Travis

finally writing his book. And Mike Rogers was intimately involved in the early part of writing the book because Mike and Travis were best friends. So Travis was right there at Mike's side with all these letters and affidavits that had to be, you know, filed to prove that they were telling the truth. So if the story hadn't been debunked and attacked as much as it was, the book may never have been written. The Hollywood film may never have been produced, and I may not be here having made this documentary. So the effort to squelch the story and the anger that it created from within that logging crew is what eventually led to us knowing about it in the detail we do today. Yeah. And still ongoing. Travis is still searching for answers in his own experience. That being said, for the future, what's next for the film?

Well, my goal is to try to find a distributor who's interested in taking the film to some networks. I think it has network potential. I'm in the process of doing some re-edits, doing a 43-minute re-edit, so that I can sell it as a one- our television episode. And then also maybe honing it even a little more tightly. I have new interviews to add in with Mike Rogers. We have some live footage of Philip Class. Very interestingly calling Mike a goddamn liar. Naturally.

On national television on Larry King Live, which is wonderful. We have Don Walton, Travis's older brother, and I have Deputy Ellison and Leo Sprinkle to edit in. I was able to get these additional interviews. So I am reworking the film. As you saw last night, we showed a film with some CGI in it. I am making a new piece that will be exclusive for television and for possibly some art houses, or what they call four-wall distribution.

I'd like to distribute it in a major way. As a business person, it's logical that I want to be able to, repay myself with the outlay and the investment I put into making the film so that I can make other films in the future. So my goal is to market the film nationally, internationally, and then eventually release this newer exclusive version on probably Vimeo, Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, and DVD as well. If that will still be around in six or seven years, we'll see. But my goal is that more and more people around the world know this story because I think it is a human interest story and it explains what it's like, what you go through when you have this experience. And over 50% of the world's population has seen something.

So I think there's a market for it. I agree. And, you know, the percentage probably is going up and up. It's that challenge we always have of people reporting it. So where can we find out more? How about the tour? There's a great website, Travis Walton, the movie.com. You can go there.

There's also the trailer is on YouTube. You can, you know, Google Travis Walton, the movie.com. You'll get right to the trailer. There's a lot of insight and background information at the website, photos of our shooting. And I'm looking for testimonials as well from anyone. Of course, I'm looking for important people. I've just gotten a wonderful one from Paul Hellier,

the former defense minister of Canada. Oh, wow. who has seen the film and really liked it and contacted me. So I'm collecting testimonials. I have a great testimonial from Edgar Mitchell as well, which is really wonderful. Oh, fantastic. And Mr. Mitchell's been a friend for many years. So I'm trying to use the social media as best I can to get the word out there.

And I'm really interested in the public communicating with me and letting me know what they think. I'm interested in doing screenings. If I can, I'll drive anywhere. and, you know, 50, 60, 100-mile radius of Philadelphia, I'll do a screening, I'll show up and talk. So I'm just hoping to continue to get the word out there because it helps Travis, and it helps expand our awareness as human beings. I think it begins to open our consciousness to the seriousness and the reality. What we know now, how many planets are potentially life-inhabiting planets that have suns with, you know, planets orbiting them.

As we begin to grow more and more in our awareness, I think this film will only help. And what's that website again? Travis Walton, themovie.com. Well, we look forward to hearing the progress of the film, and we're just so happy to see the UFO field thriving with credible, well-made films like this. So thank you, both of you, for inviting me last night for being with us here today. And again, we look forward to what comes next for the film and for Travis Walton himself as he continues the search for answers. So thank you so much for joining us.

Glad to, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you for doing what you're doing. Oh, my absolutely pleasure. All right, that's it for this week's episode. Thank you again to Jennifer and Peter for coming on the show. Again, the film can be purchased at Travis Walton themovie.com. If you'd like to help support somewhere in the skies and receive rewards, such as bonus episodes, content, Skype panel discussions, or to be a guest or co-host on the show, please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber today. To learn more and to subscribe, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. You can follow us on Twitter at SomewhereSkies and on Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod. To listen to past episodes, read articles, or to contact me personally

with your stories, visit the official website, Somewhere in the skies.com. I'll see you here next week. And remember, keep your feet on the ground. but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Where in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com.