20 Chilling Facts You Never Knew About The Horrifying Alien Abduction Of Travis Walton

Travis Walton was a forestry worker in the 1970s. He and the rest of his logging crew were working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest outside Snowflake, Arizona, on November 5, 1975. He and six members of his crew were in a work truck heading back for the night when they all saw bright light in the trees to their right. They drove toward it and pretty soon, they all saw the source of the light. It was a saucer-shaped craft hovering about 20 feet in the air just above a clearing in the woods. 

All the loggers were freaked out, to say the least. They were curious, of course, but also extremely terrified. Wouldn’t you be? What they were seeing defying logic. Of course, they had all heard stories of UFO sightings before. Heck, the Roswell Incident of 1947 occurred just one state away in neighboring New Mexico. But they never thought they would have a front-row seat to one of the decade’s most controversial close encounters. 

Mike Rogers, who was Travis Walton’s best friend and co-worker, was driving the truck. He stopped the vehicle when the men saw the spacecraft, but everyone stayed in the truck. Everyone, that is, except Travis Walton. He got out to investigate. You might think that was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid…like the person in all the horror movies that you just know is going to get killed first. In the moment, however, getting out of the truck to get a closer look didn’t seem that crazy. 

Years later, Travis Walton, Mike Rogers, and John Goulette, another co-worker who was in the truck with them that night in 1975, sat on a panel at a UFO conference to field questions about their encounter. Walton was asked why he was the only one to exit the truck and approach the strange craft. He replied, “I was awestruck and entranced by the beauty of the thing. I thought it would take off, but it didn’t.” He later admitted that it was foolish to have left the relative safety of the work truck. He explained, “I didn’t appreciate the danger I was in.” 

When Travis Walton approached the hovering saucer, he heard a high-pitched buzzing sound. Then suddenly, a beam of light shot down from the craft and knocked him unconscious. This was corroborated by Mike Rogers and the other men in the truck. They all witnessed an intense bluish-green beam of light engulfing their friend and they saw him fall to the ground. 

Fear and adrenaline kicked in. Rogers hit the gas and sped away as fast as he could, with the other workers urging him to go even faster. But Walton was Rogers’ best friend. About a mile away, he calmed down enough to turn the truck around and go back for his buddy. When the men arrived back at the clearing both the space craft and Walton were gone. Later, Walton was asked how he felt when he learned that his best friend and co-workers deserted him. He responded that he would have done the same thing. 

According to Travis Walton, he was knocked out in the clearing in the woods and woke up in a room that reminded him of a hospital room. Three strange-looking creatures – short and bald, with large eyes – were watching over him. This would freak anyone out, right? Walton said he tried to fight the three creatures so he could get away, but a human (or human-looking creature) wearing an odd helmet came into the room. Seeing a human calmed Walton down somewhat, but he was still nearly paralyzed with fear. 

Travis Walton’s description of the interior of the space craft and the details of what the aliens did to him are sparse. Walton claims that the human in the helmet led him to another room. There, three other humans placed a clear plastic mask over his mouth and nose. After that, he has no further recollection of his time as an alien abductee. If there was alien probing, he has no memory of it. That’s probably a good thing. Would you want to know what bizarre otherworldly experiments were done on you? 

Mike Rogers, John Goulette, and the other witnesses reported the encounter and their missing friend to the authorities. The police had a hard time believing their story. It was the 1970s, after all. They assumed the men had been doing drugs, had a bad trip, and their friend wandered off. Nonetheless, they launched a search for the missing Travis Walton, using scent dogs and helicopters, as well as boots on the ground. Here’s a fun fact … this was the first time that a person was reported abducted by aliens while that person was still missing. 

When Travis Walton was reported missing and his co-workers offered a fantastic and unbelievable story about his abduction, the authorities launched a massive manhunt for him. But they also questioned the Mike Rogers, John Goulette, and the others. At the time, the working theory was that the other loggers had killed Walton – either intentionally or accidentally – and had invented the alien abduction tale to explain his absence. The police fully expected to find Walton’s murdered body in the forest. Meanwhile, Rogers and the others were frantically trying to clear their names and find their missing friend. 

The next thing Travis Walton remembers from his experience is standing on the side of a road with the space craft zooming away from him. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was in Heber, Arizona, and five days and six hours had passed since he was beamed aboard the UFO. He has no memory of anything after he was rendered unconscious by the three humans. None of those memories have ever returned, leading Walton to theorize that he was unconscious the entire time. 

Remember those scent dogs that were used to track his trail … they were unable to pick up Walton’s trail from the clearing and unable to pick up his trail leading to his reappearance on the road in Heber. The dogs’ handlers tried to get the animals to follow Walton’s trail backwards, assuming he has been hiding out somewhere. But there was no trail for the dogs to follow. It was like Walton was plucked off the ground in one location and plopped down in another … which is exactly what claims happened. 

After Travis Walton returned from his alleged abduction and told his incredible story, he faced a lot of skepticism. They claimed that Walton made up the whole incident so he could make money from selling his story. The local sheriff claimed that Walton, along with his brother and mother, were all “longtime students of UFOs.” Folks assumed that Walton was such a UFO fan that he wanted to be part of the alien story. 

But there was also evidence to support Travis Walton’s story. All of the other men in the truck that night – who all saw the UFO and witnessed Walton’s encounter with it – took polygraph tests. All of them passed, except one man and his results were deemed inconclusive. Additionally, Walton was not a publicity-seeker by nature. In fact, he hated the media circus that resulted from his alien abduction. He was not a likely candidate to perpetuate a hoax like this. He wasn’t the type of person searching for fame. 

Critics of Travis Walton and his terrifying tale are quick to point out that, just two weeks before his alien abduction, NBC aired a made-for-TV movie called The UFO Incident. This movie was a dramatization of the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction story. The Hills story is one of the first reported cases of alien abduction in the U.S. They content that on the evening of September 19, 1961, while driving home from a vacation, a space craft followed their car, abducted the couple, and conducted experiments on them. Unlike Walton, the Hills were promptly returned. Could Travis Walton have been inspired by the story of the Hills enough to fake his own alien abduction. 

Travis Walton wrote a book about his UFO encounter that led to his five-day abduction. He titled his book, which was published in 1978, The Walton Experience. In 1993, Tracy Torme adapted to book into a screenplay, and it was made into a movie, Fire in the Sky, directed by Robert Lieberman. Actor D.B. Sweeney played the role of Walton and Robert Patrick was cast as his best friend, Mike Rogers. James Garner also appeared in the film. Travis Walton himself even made a brief appearance in Fire in the Sky. 

Fire in the Sky, the sci-fi biopic of Travis Walton’s UFO experience, grossed $19.9 million but the film critics’ approval was split. Generally, the critics agreed that the movie captured how utterly terrifying Walton’s encounter must have been for him. The film was nominated for four Saturn Award – Best Science Fiction Film, Best Writing, Best Music, and a Best Actor nod to Robert Patrick for his performance as Walton’s best friend. 

The scientific community has long since dismissed Travis Walton’s story as a hoax or the product of the power of deception and self-deception. Yet, there are others who believe Travis Walton. They point to other alien abduction stories with similar details. He critics say that the fact that Walton wrote a book and has profited from his story is proof that it was a hoax. But his supports say that it’s only natural that Walton would want to share his terrifying and otherworldly story to let others know what happened to him and to encourage others to come forward to tell their own stories. 

Several television shows that feature strange stories and incidence of alien encounters had covered Travis Walton’s chilling story. He has been interviewed by Larry King, Joe Rogan, and others. Walton is an occasional guest at UFO conventions where he shares his story with fans. He even sponsors his own UFO conference called the ‘Skyfire Summit’ near his home in Arizona. Has Travis Walton profited from his alien encounter? Yes. Does that mean it was a hoax? No, not necessarily. 

Travis Walton’s 1978 book, The Walton Experience, has a Goodreads rating of 3.80. In the book, he recounts how he was treated when he reappeared from his ordeal. He claims he was badgered by hostile interrogators, exploited by the media, and targeted by religious zealots. He presents himself as an average, hardworking young man who was not prepared to be thrust into the spotlight and attacked for telling his story. It would have been easier, he claims, if he had just kept the incident to himself, but he knew it was too important not to share it with the world. He didn’t expect to be branded a liar or to have his every decision used against him to prove a hoax. He concluded that the world wasn’t ready to grapple with the implications of his experience … that aliens exist and are visiting our planet.