Somewhere in the Skies - Travis Walton Speaks: 50 Years After His UFO Abduction Experience

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Nearly fifty years after one of the most famous alien abduction cases in history, Travis Walton joins us to reflect on his extraordinary experience. In 1975, Travis disappeared for five days after a mysterious encounter in the Arizona woods — an event witnessed by six of his coworkers and later dramatized in the Hollywood film Fire in the Sky. Now, half a century later, Travis shares where he stands on that life-altering event, how it shaped his life, and what he believes it means today in the larger UFO conversation. We’re also joined by filmmaker Jennifer Stein, director of the award-winning documentary Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton, who takes us behind the scenes of her research and why this case continues to resonate with believers, skeptics, and UFO investigators around the world. From the beam of light in the forest to the ongoing debates about truth, trauma, and extraterrestrial contact — this is the definitive conversation on the Travis Walton case, fifty years on. Skyfire Summit: https://ticketstripe.com/skyfire-summit Travis Documentary on Amazon Prime Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. ANOMACON 2025: http://www.anomacon.com Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Email: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Proud member of SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #TravisWalton #AlienAbduction #UFOPodcast #FireInTheSky #UAP #JenniferStein #UFODisclosure #ExtraterrestrialLife #UFOEncounter #ParanormalPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Anomicon. Getting to the heart of life's mysteries, one discussion at a time. A November 5th, 1975, Travis Walton, a 22-year-old logger, was working with a crew in the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest near Snowflake, Arizona. As the logging crew drove home at dusk, they spotted a glowing, disc-shaped object hovering above a clearing.

Travis got out of the truck and approached the object. According to the other crew members, a beam of light struck Travis, violently propelling him backwards. The crew, fearing he was seriously injured or even worse, dead, fled in a panic. After some discussion, they decided to return shortly after, but Travis was nowhere to be found.

A massive search did follow, but again, there was no trace of Travis anywhere. Authorities suspected foul play, but the crew stuck to their story and passed multiple polygraph tests to prove it. And then, five days later, Travis Walton reappeared. He was disoriented and confused, and he claimed to have been taken aboard an alien spacecraft, where he encountered humanoid and non-human entities. His story shook an entire town, the UFO community as a whole, and it triggered national attention and controversy. Over the decades, the incident has become one of the most famous alleged alien abduction cases ever recorded, sparking books, documentaries,

and even the iconic film, Fire in the Sky. To this day, the truth behind the Travis Walton incident remains fiercely debated. Today, we speak with a man at the center of it all, Travis Walton. Featuring documentary filmmaker, Jennifer Stein, we examine the evidence, the explanations brought forward by skeptics, and a deeper look at the profound impact this event has had on Travis over 50 years later.

While our government's official position is not to speculate on this subject, we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities. To use of our imaginations, for if we consider that astro scientists agree on one point that the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable, some field is there without a doubt. Let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles, extraterrestrial origin, and not an illusion of the mind. I'm Ryan Spray, and you are now Somewhere in the Skies. Welcome to a very special episode of Somewhere in the Skies. And I can't believe I'm saying this.

But for the very first time, we have special guest Travis Walton joining us, along with return guest Jennifer Stein. And it has been 50 years since Travis's experience. And I can't believe that this is the first time I'm actually going to get to talk to you, Travis, on the show. So I'm honored to have both of you here with us today. We're going to talk about your film, Jennifer. We're going to talk about the upcoming event. that you were both going to be speaking at and kind of just get this retrospective of 50 years

since the 1975 event that ushered in all of this. So thank you. Thank you for being here on summer this guy's Jennifer and Travis. Thanks for having us. Now, Travis, I know you have answered this question a million times. You're probably sick of it, but you probably got it down to a T. For our viewers or listeners who may not be familiar with your story, which I have no idea how that could be possible.

But for anyone who hasn't, can you kind of run us through the event of 1975 in your own words? In 1975, I was working in the forest with six other men, and we completed a long, hard day's work. We're headed home and encountered a large glowing object near the road. I got out to get a closer look and was struck by a blast of, energy from the craft and my my crewmates reasonably fled in terror and I woke up on board the craft. I was missing for over five days, massive search in the area. And it was quite an ordeal, but after, you know,

a period of time I was actually able to talk about it, which until then I hadn't even talked to those closest to me about it. Now, okay, so, you know, a lot of us, Travis, we have this, we have this interpretation of your story through the movie Fire in the Sky. I know for many that was their introduction to it. And I know that the actual event differs greatly from what we see. saw in that Hollywood version of it. And that's where kind of Jennifer comes into this. I had the pleasure of seeing the first ever screening, I believe, of your film, Travis, the true story of

Travis Walton in New York City, Jennifer. So how did you get involved with Travis? And how did the idea for this documentary come to be? Well, I was honored to me, Travis, at the Roswell UFO conference. It happens every year in Roswell in 2010. He was there speaking and I was functioning as an assistant with our good friend Peter Robbins. And Peter and I had dinner with Travis and Ruben Udiarte and a couple of other people. And we said to Travis, how come, you know, Snowflake, Heber and the Holbrook area are, you know, how come you're not running a conference up there, your story is as significant as the Rodwell story, really. And, you know, it would be a great idea to have a, like, a 40th anniversary conference,

because at this point it was the 35th anniversary, 2010 was five years before that. So I kind of got involved in the back door, helping Travis kind of as a coach, plan a conference, which he did. He did a 39th and a 40th anniversary conference in the Heber Snowflake. area. And Travis will laugh about this. His idea was to take people into the forest at night. And as a former event coordinator and conference planner, I was like panicked at that idea. I was like, oh my God, you know, there's lions and tigers and bears, you know, in the forest at night. You know, like maybe that's not a good idea. It's a 45 minute hike from the nearest, you know,

dirt roads. People could get lost or trip or fall or, you know, what happens when they need to use the bathroom? And it's going to be cold. and there could be snow on the ground. So I started filming all the crew members, kind of thinking that at the conference, we'd show them all on the big screen, and people would have a virtual experience. And after doing that and then filming some other experts as well,

I realized that if I was able to get Marlon Gillespie, Chuck Ellison, and Cy Gilsen on film, I'd have a pretty decent documentary, and nobody'd bother to do one. So I couldn't ask. Those were the police officers, the main people involved in the case. So with a little bit of digging and with Travis's great help and support, I think after I came Travis's trust, we embarked on actually doing more than just a conference, but actually

doing a documentary that would help promote the conference. So by 2015, I had put together a decent documentary, and I launched it in a conference. couple of film festivals, including the one you were at, the Richard K. Dick, is it called? Philip K. Dick. In New York City, because at that point, I was a Pennsylvania resident, lived in Pennsylvania, and New York City wasn't far, so I enlisted it, got accepted in the film festival and came up there and screened it, along with Open Minds Film Festival and things like that. So I actually had to end up remaking the film, as many filmmakers do, because of a rights issue. So I came out with a newer version in 2000, end of 2017 into 2018.

And we called that the 45th anniversary production. Oh, interesting. So there's two versions out there, you know. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. I remember after the film, a young couple, they had to be in their 20s from like Brooklyn sitting in front of me. And they were astounded. I mean, they had never heard of the case. the evidence you brought forward,

the unbelievable, vulnerable testimonies of both Travis, the other loggers and, you know, the law enforcement that got involved, the UFO researchers you interviewed, it just painted this picture of one of the most iconic UFO abduction cases of all time with Travis. And it was so refreshing to see younger people taking this topic seriously.

And I will never forget that day. But Travis, speaking of never forgetting, now 50 years have passed, I'm sure in that time, in that journey, I mean, you've seen it all, man. You've been through the slings and arrows of debunkers, skeptics, believers, and everyone in between,

giving their own thoughts and opinions on what happened to you, you know. And I love to know what, 50 years later, what part of your story sticks with you the most? Is there any part of the experience that really, you know, just never leaves your mind? I would assume all of it, but anything come to mind right now from your gut of that day? Obviously, you know, when my vision finally cleared to where I could see these persons standing over me were not doctors, but were alien beings. That was a shock that

you know to this day still affects me I reinterpreted the whole thing I had time to think it over and recategorize everything but

you said this place was steps from the water we just haven't found the steps yet how much did we save enough enough to get lost or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Nevertheless, what I felt at that moment

is just something that will never go away. Recategorizing. Now, I know in the past, you know, several years, you have kind of looked at your incident in a different light when it comes to after the beam hit you, the beam of energy hit you and you were taken aboard the craft, something you had eventually sort of coined a rescue mission of sorts. Would you mind maybe sort of elaborating on that aspect? Well, initially, you know, being hit by this blast of energy, I thought initially that it was a weapon being fired at me for getting too close.

But realistically, they could not possibly have seen me as a threat. But the term abduction, I think, isn't warranted because if covering up their appearance there was a part of the deal, they could have just disappeared. But if I was killed, if I was laying there, then the charge of murder on my coworkers would have stuck. It wasn't an attack. I think it was an accident. Thinking that there was some kind of electrical energy discharge

from that craft. at the instant I closed the distance too greatly between me and it probably led to a discharge of energy that wasn't planned, wasn't intended, and probably could have possibly even been fatal. But they could have taken my body and dumped me on some asteroid somewhere, disappeared me, and couple of up their presence much more effectively, but they not only took me and I think with superior technology where to revive me also took me to where I could get help at the town there is where this happened. Yeah, I do see that as, you know, these beings. quote unquote, were there to help you after realizing what they had done. And I know there were different types of beings on the craft, right?

Two different types. Yeah, you had the, you know, sort of the, quote unquote, prototypical grays or, you know, like that. And then you had these human nodes as well. That's correct, right? Well, I was combative. I was fighting them. And there was no way they were going to be able to do anything to heal me or revive me as long as I was fighting them.

And apparently they were unable to use any kind of mind control or mental telepathy or anything like that to communicate reassuring messages. So I was instantly reassured by the presence of a human-looking individual. and it was instantly cooperative. And that was the only thing I can think that that would be necessary, that they would enlist the help of this being if it was a person. Now, some people think it was some kind of an illusion or some kind of a robot, whatever. It was something that I think they brought that I would cooperate with. They were then able to get me under sedation and do the repairs that were necessary.

That's fair. I'm going to throw it over to Suzanne in just a moment here, Travis. But I'd like to ask you, why do you think the craft was originally there? Have you ever kind of gone through that and why you think it might have originally been in the forest to begin with? Well, I speculate that it had something to do with something that was discovered much later that part of the Moghion Rim there has the highest frequency of lightning strikes of any place in the continental United States, second only to the Florida Everglades.

And a side effect of lightning strikes, hitting these trees and damaging a few of them. It's not, it doesn't totally kill the tree. You can see examples of this there at the Hebrew Ranger Station where the tree right in their front yard was hit by lightning. What it does is it blasts a strip of bark down the length of the tree, which instantly turns to steam and explodes and knocks the bark off the tree. but other than that the tree continues to live.

So walking down the rim road there, if you're in sight of one tree that's been hit by lightning, you are probably in sight of the next one. So it's a kind of a phenomenon that may have contributed to the reason the craft had such a charge that would discharge to the ground through me. But going beyond that, that the effects of the presence of the craft,

perhaps they were in search of something that's formed when lightning strikes the ground. It forms a mineral crystal called Fulgurite, extremely rare and maybe something that even the aliens couldn't build in a lab. But if they were there harvesting Foggerite, maybe that's why they were there.

Something, when lightning strikes the ground, it forms these crystals and bizarre formations that are really amazing. On the Joe Rogan Show, I mentioned this, and his assistant instantly brought up all these examples of Foggerite. And man, the appearance of these things is quite diverse. And it's plausible to me that they may have been in search of some of these foliarite crystals

that are rare in the rest of the world. That is fascinating. Jennifer, I know you have done some research as well in terms of like, this being in close proximity to other sites where like nuclear tests and stuff were done. Did you want to add anything to that? I think Travis's point is very well taken. They could have been there looking for some sort of magnetic material because as we know, magnetics are very important in anti-gravitic experiments and things like that.

But it's not too far as the crow flies from the Trinity test sites and some of the nuclear explosions that were done in New Mexico in the salt flats. And as, you know, it's like 50, 60 miles to where those test sites are as the crow flies. So if there was fallout, fallout would happen at one of the highest possible rims. And the Mogian rim is a rim that extends from northeastern New Mexico, or I'm sorry, northwestern New Mexico into northeastern Arizona and straight on up into Colorado. It's like the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world. and it's a Wren that sits about 7,000 feet high.

So if you're looking for environmental fallout, you might find it. And there was lots of evidence of many people with cancers, leukemia, things like that, in that whole regional area around Snowflake. I think even Travis's mom may have had some form of cancer. Other members of his family did. So they may have been looking for environmental stuff. We really just don't know. It's speculation.

Right. Wow, you know, and I'm just thinking now of the lightning thing, Travis. I mean, a lot of people do theorize that the Roswell craft came down because it was possibly struck by lightning. So there's got to be something between these minerals, the lightning. I don't know. That's fascinating. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Suzanne, I'd love to throw it over to you. I know you have some very unique questions that I would never have even thought to ask Travis and Jennifer. So I'll let you take it from here. Sure. Travis and Jennifer, thanks so much for being here. Travis, I have a couple of questions about your actual experience, and then I have some questions about afterwards and the aftermath. I would love for you to describe for our listeners what that beam of light felt like when it hit you.

Well, I was unconscious just pretty much instantly. I'm working on cars or electricity. I know what it feels like an electric shock. It's like that, but also kind of like getting hit by a car or something, a stunning amount of force and blacked out, instantly lost consciousness. Wow. Well, and my other question around this was once you were on board, if they were not speaking with you telepathically, were they just talking to you or were they basically silent?

What happened that way? Well, there was no attempt for them to communicate. verbally but if they if it if their principal communication method is is telepathic then perhaps my injuries being hit in the head with this blast of energy may have sort of canceled out the ability to give me any sort of reassuring message and you know people recognize that they're telepathic but they don't understand that this one also imply that facial expression is obsolete with them. So them setting stone faced for me and many other witnesses is perceived as very threatening.

When we encounter human beings whose face or expression doesn't change, we interpret that threatening when they could be in very rich communication between each other, but nothing that necessitates using facial muscles to send the message. That makes sense to me. It's not unlike different cultures here on the planet when Smiley Americans go to France. They're met with a very different exterior from the French, and they don't mean a thing by it. it's not a negative. It's just simply different. I wonder if that's what's going on in your experience. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I experienced that in Germany.

Those German people are quite serious. I'll tell you about much. So true. Well, Travis, I was also curious to know if you had any other experiences with NHI or with unusual synchronicities or coincidences that really stood out to you after your incident? What's NIH? Non-human intelligence. Oh, okay. Well, I try to stick to experiences that I can document, you know, the fact that I had six other people with me and also some other people in the area. some deer hunters and some fishermen at the lake there had witnessed the craft departing.

Was, you know, added greatly to my willingness to talk publicly about it. There was one other incident where it was just my son and I and a girlfriend returning from a talk in California. Tracy Tormay, the screenwriter on the movie, Fire in the Sky. I spoke there and we headed home and we encountered a gigantic UFO. Just driving down the freeway there, we saw this point of light in the distance. It very quickly became three lights and possibly quickly. I mean, it went from so far away.

It was a dot of light to where it was over the top of us with a light on each of the point of the triangles. triangles. And it stopped impossibly quickly after that kind of speed turned 90 degrees and then shot off towards the Pacific. But this thing was huge. I mean, it could have been a quarter of a mile across. And I would have hesitated to try to relate something that amazing visually if I would if the three of us were the only one seeing it. But a website called UFOstalker.com received over a dozen reports by the next morning that other people who didn't know us and didn't know each other all reported seeing this thing, fly up there, stop, turn, and shoot off into the distance.

Now, was that aliens? I don't know. I didn't see any beings, but if it was, it's definitely would explain that technology that nothing we have could accelerate that fast, stop that fast. Unless it's something secret and our government wanted me to report it as a UFO, but that would be something awful. How do you keep that kind of a thing secret? Or are you going to put something that big? There's no hanger that big. But that is probably the most outstanding thing that I can report because there were so many witnesses. That's pretty outstanding. But I am so glad you were able to get confirmation from others about it as well, because sometimes that's a lonely feeling to be out there on your own with

no other witnesses. Well, I was also curious, did at any time after your incident, did anyone medically scan you for implants or other things? Oh, definitely. That was the top of the line order. The night I was returned, my brother said, I'm not letting that mob get a hold of this guy. And he took me to Phoenix, and he had the help of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization,

the premier UFO investigating organization in the field at the time. They had arranged medical doctors, psychiatrists, the whole team of experts to examine me very thoroughly, starting immediately in the next day, covering everything. I had brainwave scans. MRI, what's the other one, EEG. Yeah, on the same, in the same clinic that Muhammad Ali had been examined in. He was in, um, um, Burroughs Neurological Institute. You know, he came there when he developed neurological problems and, and top of the line, the Barrow's Neurological was the

place to go. And, um, one of the non-average, um, one of the non-average. that came up in my brainwave scan was, I'm trying to quote it. The report said, an alternating, synchronous wave traveling from front to back. I should get the actual quote, but the significance of this is that because of the incredible media scrutiny and hysteria,

The technician did not know who I was. So he was totally blinded, which is a good thing in terms of objective measurement, to report this unusual brainwave pattern, which in a subsequent follow-up brainwave scan had disappeared. So evidently some residual effect of my injury that I fully recovered from. Wow. Wow. Well, you mentioned earlier in the interview that you calmed down after you got, you know, put back on the planet and that you got some clarity around your thoughts. Some experiencers have that process continuing for them for years, where over the years memory expands and clarifies. Has that happened for you? Yeah, well, I try to stick to the things I can document, but yeah, there were things that came back. And I questioned the experts, could this be repressed memories coming through, or could it just be because I'm finally talking about it after all this time? And I got different replies.

Was it repressed memories or not? But it mostly involved the human type. Really? Can you tell us more about what became clarified for you? Well, these memories that popped up that came through were disjointed and unclear, and that was the reason I was questioning. Could this just be nightmares or memories of something that happened that I had supposedly blanked out from? I see.

I have one more question for you. many high-profile experiences are the victims of intimidation tactics by people who clearly seem to be related to governmental entities, such as the men in black or similar. Have you had any of that? No. What few aerospace contacts I've had have been totally friendly, amateur sort of on the QT of each of them. emphasizing that this was just out of their own interest. Wow. What do you make of that? Why do you think you were not targeted when others were so viciously targeted? I think it's really lucky that you weren't. Because I was highly visible,

that any such contact would be, it would imply a confirmation of something that was already being attacked. So they were smart to just leave it alone because there was plenty of work being done to discredit me that with the, I hate the term debunkers because they're not removing bunk. They're creating it. I couldn't agree more. We went back on my character, just coming up with all kinds. of ridiculous explanations for what really happened that we really were just seeing a fire watch tower that the Forest Service had seen or or that it was actually just the planet Jupiter. There was a number of really bizarre theories. I came up, I thought of one the other

thing. What was that? I'll think of it before we get done here. Just absurd explanations for what happened anything to try to explain it away. Right. People will work really hard for crazy explanations to make it make it make sense to them. Well, you know, it's only natural and, you know, one or two of the crew members eventually, even though they came out and spoke with me and testified to what they had witnessed later started hungering for some way to explain it away. It's so much easier to say, that the government did it to us or something like that rather than have to face up to the fears that alien creatures bring to them. Well, I have one more question for you, and then I'm done, I promise.

You have told your story so many times. We have Jennifer's documentary. We have YouTube videos with zillions of details. But that makes this lawyer curious about the flip of that, which is, were there things that you experienced that you decided just to keep to yourself? I won't ask you what those are. I'll respect the boundary you set as a human on that. But I was just curious.

Sometimes we hear behind the scenes that there are details that were just not going to be shared. Yeah, I guess you could say there's things like that. Hey, everyone, Ryan Sprague here, host of Somewhere in the Skies. If you've ever thought about supporting us, we have great two easy options for you right now. If you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, you can click the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Or you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Both of these options give you the same benefits, early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and content, and priority to ask our guests. your listener questions. So to help support Somewhere in the Skies, click that subscribe button

on Apple or visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you so much for your support. And keep looking up. Generous with your time today. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I wanted to kind of go back to the skeptical side. Now, Jennifer stressed to me, you know, remember what Philip Classes, you know, in terms of almost trying to bribe your crew, at times offering a $10,000 bribe at one point to one of your former crew members. Now, there have been some pretty specific and harsh, quote-unquote, debunks in the past couple years, Travis, of people trying to explain away your experience or say that this was staged or that it was a watchtower.

and all this stuff. And I know that at this event that you and Jennifer will be speaking at, that you will address such debunking efforts and show, you know, why this simply is not the case. So Jennifer, would you mind maybe touching on that aspect a little bit? Travis and Jennifer, whoever wants to hop in there. What about the debunkers? What would you put in front of them to finally shut them up?

Well, the thing is, is that anyone is always, entitled to come up with their own opinion case but when they haven't really done the research or you know really been to the site and looked at where the fire towers are I mean the latest big debunking that kind of seemed to get a lot of people's attention was in 2021 I guess it started around April or so when it was finally produced in shows but the The investigation on the planning of this debunking started around 2020 with a filmmaker named Ryan Gordon, who showed up in the snowflake area, contacted some of the living members of the crew, especially Mike Rogers, and tried to confuse him into believing that Travis was going to reveal that this was really all a hoax, which was not, of course, true. And this film producer also called Travis and, you know, tried to work with him.

Travis actually recorded the conversation and said, I don't want to have anything to do with you. Once he figured out what his agenda was. But that didn't stop this guy. And he worked his way on to a podcast. I think it was Erica Luke's UFO Classified show. He kind of took over in the spring of 2021 and started like presenting these PowerPoint presentations about how Travis and Mike Rogers' younger brother Cheney were really like juvenile delinquents when they were like 14 or 15. bringing up something that was long taking care of and dealt with as early 14, 15-year-old boys can get into some mischief.

But actually, it wasn't mischief. And they took care of whatever they did when they were 14 and 15 with a local police, which was not a problem, paid retribution to something that was might have, could have been perceived as a crime, but really what really finally silenced Ryan Gordon was learning that I had recorded the phone call in which he claimed I was demanding payment, but he just, quote, couldn't meet my price, which was just totally a lie, a flat out lie. So, you know, he has had to completely drop the whole issue against me because I, you know, proof for anyone that's interested that he was lying. On top of that, Philip Klass, um, um, uh, uh, a fan of you know, um, uh,

hobbyists from Australia had investigated Philip class. The FBI had been investigating him. He was editor and chief of Aviation Week and Space Technology. He had access to a lot of very critical strategic information. And the FBI, I've got that file. She sent me copies of it, much of it blacked out. I'd love to see what's behind the blackouts. But their description of him was not being in full possession of his faculties. But other than that, I would love to know what they had on him selling our secrets to our enemies or whatever. That totally discredits him. He was not seen as someone doing the bidding of the government to discredit something that didn't happen, quite the contrary. He was under investigation as a potential enemy.

And I had the great pleasure of working with Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Martin and doing archival work on Philip because they were considering writing a book about him. So when I lived in Philadelphia, I hosted both of them at my home for about a week. And we spent a week at the American Philosophical Society going through his files. And I was amazed to find that Philip Klass had quite a close relationship with people like Donald Menzel and Edward Condon, right? And I think someone else named Robert Lowe. So there were all these letters back and forth about, see you in the Mediterranean when we're going to spend time on a boat and a cruise together and things like that. So there were a lot of perks that he got.

and there had to be money that came from somewhere to cover some of these expenses because as the writer for air and space, he wasn't necessarily making enough to attend all these conferences. And he also had incredibly quick connections with media. Like if he wanted to get on the Larry King show, boom, he called up and got on as skeptic in the back room, right? Which is a very famous YouTube people can watch when the Fire and the Sky came out. Yeah, and that was the closest I ever came to speaking or hearing him or seeing him is that he was brought in by remote camera and he totally ignored me.

Didn't say a word to me, immediately lit into Mike Rogers, discredited himself, just snarling with some profanity. That's right. But I'm surprised that someone that pursued this case that thoroughly, badgering Mike for months on end and seeking out Steve Pearson, taking him out to dinner and trying to bribe him and, you know, trying to reach the witnesses and never a single attempt to speak to me. Wouldn't you think that if I was making something up, first thing you'd want to do is come to me and see if he could trip me up.

up, you know, not a single contact, you know, after I was available to the media. Never a single attempt. And to me, explain that. That's weird. Even in the role we accept for him, wouldn't you want to go after the main character? I'll mention something that I found interesting as well, is that in the archives I found a long relationship with a student that Northwestern University named Robert Schaefer, who was a PhD student at the time when Jay Allen Heineck was then brought in to manage and supervise Blue Book, right? When Edward Rupelt was demoted and the names of the various projects like Sign and Grudge and Starlight and whatnot, suddenly became then Blue Book project and Jay Allen Heinek ran that for 25 years, something like that. He had a long correspondence

with a man named Robert Schaefer, and Robert Schaefer was essentially kind of like reporting back on what Jay Allen Heineck was doing to Philip Class. Well, on this podcast, it seemed to me, I kept watching the things they were coming up with on the Erica Luke show. And it was all the same stuff that Philip Class had done. And I kept saying to my friend, who would call me like, have you watched this? Do you know what they're actually coming up with? These ideas are coming up with. I said, yeah, it's all the same stuff that Robert did. I mean, well, I'm sorry, Philip Kless did. Well, lo and behold, who shows up on this podcast around the fourth episode, kind of as a friend of the show, was Robert Schaefer as a very old man now

and I'm very happy to be there agreeing with all of their accusations that these loggers really just saw a fire tower. They didn't see a UFO. They saw a fire tower lit up at night. And that really Travis hid out in the fire tower instead of being, you know, going missing. Of course, they don't deal with the fact that all the loggers saw the craft fly away. You know, if it, if the craft was a fire tower, how did the fire tower fly away? Right. I mean, like there are these ridiculous questions. And also fire towers aren't in valleys. You're at the top of the mountains, right? They're for lookout.

So you can see from the top of one point to the top of another point. They weren't working at the top of the mountain. They were working in a valley, the Turkey Springs Valley. So and the nearest fire tower is five miles away. So you can't, in rolling hills, you cannot see a fire tower from that valley. In fact, I proved that by putting my video footage up,

because we flew drones right around that area and did a 360-degree view. Long before Ryan Gordon or Erika Lutz were debunking this, you know. So we had footage from the, from the forest site, you know, that we did in 2012, 2013, 2014. And in fact, we anticipated, continued debunking on this case because it's been non-stop, even since 1975. So Ben Hansen, who used to do the television show, Fact or Fiction, came to the site and did a site review with Travis and I, another wonderful man named Gary Hilton.

And we went out there in 2014 and just documented the whole forest, what it looked like then. And I'm really glad we did because after Ryan Gordon's programs, Travis and I did go back to the forest just last December with a local podcaster named Patrick James here from the Phoenix area who's going to be doing an episodic special on Travis. And guess what we discovered? those standing stumps in the trees that we knew showed rapid tree growth had been set on fire and hatcheted up with some kind of hatchet or axe or something, trying to destroy the leftover tree evidence of the rapid tree growth. So, you know, people will go to any extent to try to destroy the evidence.

And I just sit back and watch them and think, okay, you know, I think they got a lot of views on their podcast, thousands and thousands, thousands of views, you know. I sold more DVDs, you know. I knew something was up. There must be some debunker because normally I, you know, I don't sell a DVD except once a month or something. I get an eBay order and I'm like, oh, okay, I better package that up and send it. So when you're sending like, you know, three or four or five a month or ten a month, you know, something's up, you know, somebody's paying attention. What happened to the researchers who found unusual magnetic readings that faded quickly?

after that or high ozone readings or what about the tracking dogs which it tracked my foot from where I got out of the truck up to where my body fell and that was it. That was it. End of story on the tracking dogs. Right. Right. The guy that took the radiation readings on the men's hard hats during the search, what about them? Right.

kind of things that i mean some of the explanations that they used to try to explain it away like it was really ball lightning it was just a ball of lightning and when i got too close the ball of lightning hit me and then i wandered off in a days and was lost for five days you know there are them theories you would not believe how many they had very that it was all um a psychedelic drug experience you know. Cutting trees with chainsaws is very dangerous work. That's a good way to get killed to be impaired in any way. But I had blood and urine samples put through the Maricopa County medical examiners drug screen the next day, not a trace of any such thing in my body whatsoever. And, you know, the sheriff was questioned about the men in terms of intoxication. He said,

I didn't spot anything. I sure didn't spot anything, and those are his words. In fact, on the website, Travis, the true story of Travis Walton, people can find it if they go to Travis Walton, themovie.com, has a debunking page because there's been so many attacks against not only my film, but also fire in the sky, and they confuse the storylines between the two, which is really what a disinformation's job is to do, just to confuse people.

So you don't even know when they say the film, what film they're talking about. Are they talking about my film? Are they talking about firing the sky? Anyway, I put a whole page up called the debunking subjects, and I put the full interviews there for people to watch of Marlon Gillespie, Chuck Ellison, and I've got Stanton Friedman there. I've got the site review that Ben Hanson and I did. I've got aerial footage there,

so people can just go there and just look at the facts and start to. educate themselves if they're interested. They stand, you know, as evidence on their own accord, and people really want to look at the facts they're there. If you had seven people witness a murder, testify to that fact without light detector tests, it would be an open and shut case. But here, with repeated light detector tests, you know, there's no collaboration here. One of the men on the crew was there for three days. So, you know, anything that they can throw at it, you know, is really the planet Jupiter. I mean, they had to go to the astronomical charts and find that, but, you know, Jupiter might be a little brighter than other stars, but nobody's going to mistake it for

what we saw. Or hit you with a beam, Travis. Let's be completely honest. Yeah, and not to mention. mention the polygraph test. I'm glad you brought that up as well. We will link the website as well, Jennifer. I would love, guys, if it's okay with you with our limited time, I have some listener questions. When I put this out, I have never received this many questions in my life for an episode, but I picked what I thought would be the greatest hits from our Patreon subscribers. They do get priority to ask guests questions. So would it be okay to run a few of these by you guys before we let you go. Sure.

I'll start with this one from Rodrigo on Patreon. And this is sort of for both of you. Why do you think we don't hear much about alien abductions any longer? Is it because they aren't happening as much or has something changed? You know, we do have the pinnacle cases, whether it's Travis's, Whitley Streber. There's many out there. Linda Cortiel case as well, no matter what you think of that one. I know it's very controversial.

They all are. let's be honest. But why do we not hear as much about these high-profile abduction cases? Well, they're all controversial, and that's by design. I think this is not an accident. I've said it before. The aliens are not like slapping their forehead and say, oh, humans spotted me again.

I'll have to be more careful next time. No, I think that the sightings and contacts that have been had were intentional with the ideas. of getting humans to say there's something else out there. Nothing more. Because anything more would be quite disruptive. You know, the government finally gave in and quit trying to say, they're all crazy and none of this is true. And they actually, you know, did a throw open the cases thing and say look at here's here's a of something that we tracked it's definitely not ours it's definitely superior technology and they did it late on a friday which left the news with nothing to talk about for three days by monday i was surprised like like oh and then what happened you know

the anti-climax so they actually did this amazing first time release twice you know, issued the gun camera footage from the military jets of this craft moving it and doing maneuvers that nothing we have could match. And same kind of a thing, late on a Friday, by Monday it's all forgotten. But, you know, I think it's intentional on the part of the aliens that they're just basically want us to be aware, but not upset in a way that would be destructive. And because, you know, if they're just visiting for the purpose of observing humans or something, I think they're perfectly capable of disguising their presence 100%.

We never know they were here. I think the sightings that happen are always margin. on the edge of this kind of thing that would cause hysteria. And that's, I think, just my opinion part of the plan. I do have a little bit of an opinion about that. I noticed that in 2021, there seemed to be a new agenda afloat. We did have governmental, right, congressional hearings going on. We were openly talking about the subject on major newscast without the laughter curtain, right?

the subject was now being taken seriously in terms of there's craft in the sky and they could be alien. We don't know if they're alien or not. We don't know who's flying them if there's a who behind the scenes, right? But there's definitely craft out maneuvering our military capabilities. But it seemed to me that there was on two continents a major effort to debunk anyone who said they had close to, you know, contact with non-human intelligence. And that was the Betty and Barney Hill case was majorly attacked along with the Walton case on two continents, both in Australia and in the United States. And they seem to be working together and using the same themes, right? So to put major websites together to do major debunking like Ryan Gordon was doing or disinformation campaigns, like was on the Erica Luke's program, that takes a lot of money.

And I think it's financed. And I think it's because if the government comes clean about the fact that, yes, we're not alone and they've known for decades, how are they ever going to deal with any kind of responsibility that maybe there's some connection between abductions and these crafts flying around in the sky? If the government feels like they have to take some kind of responsibility for that, they cannot. Well, the government's the position to justify their interest in this subject at all. It has to be categorized as a threat. We know it's not a problem. We know it's not a threat because it's been happening for many decades. And if they wanted to eliminate the humans

and take the planet, we never know what hit us. It would have happened a long time ago. Right. I don't see them as a threat. And so the government needs to recognize it as a potential threat just to justify their interests. Yeah. And I do think we all need to be aware of the potential of a false flag operation. That was predicted by Werner. Von Braun to Carol Rosen when they work together. He said to her, there's going to be many, many wars. And he predicted things like 9-11, war in the Middle East, war on drugs, were on terror.

And he said the last war will be a war of alien invasion. And it will be fake. They will all be fake, is what he said to her. These are all planned and they'll all be fake. And I kind of respect Carol Rosen. I think she has something there. But of course, she's been attacked as well and keeps a very low profile. So I think we need to, you know, do our own research because right now it's very hard to understand what's black and what's white.

What's real and what's not. There's so much disinformation out there. And I think you have to go within. You have to develop your own intuition, your own inner way of sensing and knowing. And I think Travis is absolutely right. If the intelligent species that are visiting our planet wanted it and wanted us, you know, they're gone, they could do it in a blink of an eye and we've never know what hit us. Well, skeptics are very fond of saying, well, if this is real, why don't they land on the White House lawn and say, here we are, Mr. President, and here's technology from half a million years in the future. And anybody who can't see how destructive that would be, just eliminating the need for energy that we currently value would cause worldwide economic collapse.

There's no benefit. It's not that they're trying to hide some good from us, this is they're protecting us from ourselves. They're observing that human beings' favorite occupation is war. At any one time, there's a hundred wars going on all over the place. To be in possession of that kind of technology and to weaponize it would be be hugely destructive. So there's all kinds of reason. The minute they had revealed themselves, the governments would be demanding technology that would instantly weaponize. That's what the humans do.

Ryan and I have talked about this many times, Travis and Jennifer, we are the problem. They are not the problem. Yeah, we're the problem. Yeah, well said. I'll go to this next next. Susan, do you have the listener questions pulled up there? Would you mind reading the second one there? Do you have a favorite UFO case? And if any of them have impacted your view of your own case, would you tell us about that? And this is from Jamie T on Patreon. That question is for me.

Yes, sir. I recognize there are other legitimate cases, but I never wanted to step into the role of playing to even one because I would be constantly besieged for pointing out more and more and more. And they're also not pointing to others. The bottom line here is I don't think that the people who pass judgment on my case without even having done the research, they discredited themselves by not by not knowing the facts before they express an opinion. And so because I don't have the time to go research thoroughly anyone else's case,

I will remain silent on passing judgment on other people's experiences. They're a good one. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're going to crack this case and prove for a decoratist partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Destnake.

And your last name? The Snake. Dream team. Pick new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly. Working it.

Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney Plus rated PG. There are some that are not so good. Some that are mistaken identity, you know, not the planet Jupiter, but misidentifying things and sometimes even delusions. but one size doesn't fit all. There's many things going on at the same time. That's fair.

Yeah, good answer, good answer. Jennifer, do you have a favorite case? Oh, I have several, but, you know, I mean, they're the typical ones everybody knows about the Pascagoor case, the Alighash story with the four art students, right? Cash Landrum, the Linda Cortiel case. There's many excellent cases, including Betty and Barney Hill. Yep, absolutely, absolutely.

Awesome. I'll go to the next Patreon question here. Max K. asks, Travis, have you ever consulted on any other movies besides Fire in the Sky? And do you enjoy watching Alien movies, or is it traumatic for you to watch other? I don't watch other movies. I haven't consulted on them. All right, did work with the screenwriter on rewriting Fire in the Sky as it was before he passed away. And that's a project I intend to complete a rewrite and a remake of Fire in the Sky. Wow, like in your own words from your from your eyes, right? Not accurate as possible.

I recognize that Hollywood is in the business of entertaining. I'm just thinking that they didn't need to go so far from the facts of the case to like some of the things they did. cutting down the number of loggers from seven to five. It simplified the writing in the presentation. Are you going to tell everything in an hour and a half? That night, the men went back to the site with the law enforcement. They eliminated that in the movie because it's a step that complicates things. So some of the things that they were doing are just typical of what you're going to get.

when Hollywood tries to take a real-life event and express it in a theatrical form. Don't expect a documentary, but even still, firing the sky as it was, left you with the feeling that we had after having experienced this. Hey, well, you let me know when the auditions are for that one, Travis. I am fully in for that. Hey, I'm in. I'm in. Suzanne, do you want to cover the next one from Anna Maria? Anna Maria on Patreon asked, do you have any memories of childhood abduction experiences?

Reports say that you walk directly to the ship or the light. Was there a familiarity there? Me? No, no familiarity. I had a childhood experience that I explained to my family members. and they'll say, no, no, that was a dream. And to this day, I say, no, that was not a dream. But I have no way to document that other than they remember me telling them about it and saying this really happened. I'd love to hear about that. What was involved?

Little man with a large, bald head and huge eyes, a brief encounter and me chasing him and escaping him in the house with him. Oh, my goodness. How old were you? Third grade. I don't know. You were little. What did you think at the time? How did you process that at the time? I didn't call it an alien. I just said. I just described he. He was dressed the way Betty Hills beings were in a black suit. But he was very quick.

Interesting. Can I ask, Travis, besides you being the focal point, do you think there's any connections between the childhood encounter the encounter in the forest and also the UFO sighting you had with your son? I didn't, you know, I used to tell people that, you know, that by feeling chosen or sing about or anything like that,

I said it's kind of like a human walking by an aunt down. Oh, I think I'll stop and have a conversation with that little aunt. right there and I said it's so absurd they're so far above us that they would have no interest in that but I disagree now with with my former thinking I think that if you saw one when you were younger and you see one when you're older they know it's you and I point to the Utah data center that humans keep it's a gigantic computer in the Utah desert takes millions of gallons of water just to cool it, basically recording every electronic communication on the face of the earth. Utah Data Center, look it up. If humans can manage that much material, these beings probably

can do so, probably inside their heads. So the idea that they wouldn't know it was you, lose a lot of credibility, I think that they would be able to identify you and know a lot more about you than you know about yourself. I love that. Okay. Sort of final big sweeping question for both of you. 50 year anniversary of the Travis Walton incident. Travis for you, what do you want people to truly, understand about what happened to you and what it means for humanity. And Jennifer, for you,

what do you want people to take away most from your involvement with the documentary in this case? I guess. Travis, we'll start with you if you don't mind. Well, first, number one is, before you pass judgment on any reports of any kind, get the facts first. Treated fairly, and that's the starting point for any sort of action on this case on this subject. Okay. How about for you, Jennifer? Well, I think that it's important to mark anniversaries, and this one only happens once.

There's only going to be a one-time, you know, a one-time 50th anniversary, but we are marking it three different times, sort of. We're marking it with a conference in October, which is about two weeks before the anniversary. So in Sedona with Sedona Mufon, I'm now the state section director for Sedona Mufon. Stacey Wright asked me to take that on when I got to Arizona in 2021. So we're doing a four-day event, actually, Friday night, all day, Saturday, half a day, Sunday, and then closing off Monday morning with the New Paradigm Institute's World Disclosure Day will be a watch party, the endowment will offer a statement to the world.

The 165 people probably watching and listening and participating right there in the audience. So that will be very nice. My wife is very interested, can't talk her out of it, in doing a little 50th anniversary event of some kind. And then on the actual day, on the 5th of November 2025, the Sedona Film Festival is going to screen the documentary with two screening, one at three and one at 7 p.m. So depending on what people's schedules are, they can get to it.

And we'll be honoring Travis there. And then on November 8th, we're also going to be doing an event at Phoenix Mufant in Phoenix, right, in Tempe at the Arizona Historical Society. And in each case, we'll have a little dinner reception, you know, after the events that people can come to and connect and sign up with. And everything's on at the website, SedonaMufon.org. O-R-G, Sedona-Mufon.org. So they can go. It's called the Skyfire Summit, 2025. They can look it up and, you know, start to sign up for things. So it should be very special. And I just hope that people

get a chance to meet Travis and sense his integrity and his honesty. I feel honored and privileged that Travis has trusted me. I was happy that the documentary was more complete and more thorough and there's been a few other good ones, but this one actually got personal revelations from the investigating people. And that's unique in its completeness there. Yes. Thanks, Travis. I do think I tried to do a good job of giving people an opportunity to get to know Travis through the film as much as he wanted to strangle me saying, you shouldn't name it my name. Don't name it, Travis. He was like, please don't name it, And I said, I have to because it really is about you and your journey.

And, you know, I could have named it the Turkey Spring, you know, incident or something. But people wouldn't know what it was. So I wanted it to be very clear, you know, very transparent, as Travis is himself. And I think I think this guy was already taken. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. No, I think it really humanizes the story. I agree with you.

Jennifer, and I am literally the, the experiencer guy, the guy who studies the human side of these possibly non-human experiences. So I love that it's named Travis. And I'll say this. I mean, fire in the sky left a huge impact on my life. Your documentary left a huge impact on my life. And Travis, we met briefly at an alien con event, I think, maybe somewhere. And that left a huge impact on me as well. This case lives on. many times as people try to explain it away. For every time they do that, you come back with something stronger to show us all that this happened. This happened to you. What it was, we may never truly know, but it happened.

And it affected you, all the other men, your families, the community, and it just keeps reaching out. And now the entire world knows this story. So, yeah, if anything, I want to just. just say, happy anniversary. You know, I'm sure there's times you wish this had never happened and maybe sometimes you wish it did. But either way, I commend you both for keeping this story alive, for showing others out there.

It's okay to talk about your experiences no matter how bizarre, scary, beautiful, weird they might be. And at the heart of it remains the Travis Walton incident. So, yeah, yeah. Any final words before we let you guys go? Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for your integrity and your honesty and your interest in the story. And I hope that your listeners will take advantage of this opportunity.

Sedona is a beautiful place to visit if they never have. And there is time in this conference schedule for people to really network and get to know one another. The venue we're using is actually a church. So there's Sunday morning church services. So Sunday morning is free. and Saturday evening is free. And then people could stay on a little bit before or a little bit after and enjoy some of what Sedona has to offer, you know, do a night sky watch, something like that.

So we put a lot of other information up there on the website, accommodations and where and how to stay. And if they stay outside of Sedona in Cottonwood or Cornville or Flagstaff, it's less expensive than staying right in Sedona. And people will have to find that, you know, they have to rent a car or flydust. fly in or arrange transportation or use the Sedona shuttle. For two bucks, you can call up the shuttle and it'll come pick you up. So there's lots of ways that people could, you know, get to appreciate this opportunity. But it's designed to be a very small, 165 people is not a lot.

So once we sell out, that's it. There aren't any more seats. So it's a close, intimate opportunity to get to know some of the other great speakers we're going to have there and to get to know traffic. and we'll have some vendors there too. So it really should be a nice event. But don't take the Turkey Spring Shuttle. You don't want that.

No good, Travis. I agree. I love it. I love it. Again, we will link to everything so they can learn more about the events. Well, worth it. Hey, who knows? Maybe I'll even fly over from Scotland.

We shall see. We shall see. But guys, thank you. Travis, Jennifer. Thank you so much for joining me today on Summerless, guys. It's been a huge honor and a very inspiring conversation. So thank you both. Somewhere in the Skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast Universe.

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