Defined by his absence: Travis Walton

So I have a new format to openers. I'm going to let you choose, but I'm going to give you some topics to choose from. So I have feel good openers, which is feel good, including UFOs, because they make us feel good. We have feel bad. We have can't choose between feeling good or bad. We're feeling like science. I like the idea of feeling science-y. Okay, so feeling like science. Let me just open this. You may regret this, but this is what my openers are for.

This one is titled, There's growing evidence that the universe is connected by giant structures. Scientists are finding that galaxies can move with- Back up, back up, back up. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm getting excited. I'm feeling so science-y. Oh, you were feeling science-y. This is an article by Vice, our favorite. This is by Becky Ferrera. Scientists are finding that galaxies can move with each other across huge distances and against the predictions of basic cosmological models.

The reason why could change everything we know about the universe. The article does go on from there. The Milky Way, which is the galaxy we live in. I hope that wasn't new news to you. Is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies strewn across the universe. Their variety is stunning. Spirals ring galaxies shaped like star-studded loops. And ancient galaxies that outshine virtually everything else in the universe.

But despite their differences and the mind-boggling distances between them, scientists have noticed that some galaxies move together in odd and often unexplained patterns, as if they are connected by a vast unseen force. Galaxies within a few million light-years of each other can gravitationally affect each other in predictable ways, but scientists have observed mysterious patterns between distant galaxies that transcend those local interactions.

These discoveries hint at the enigmatic influence of so-called large-scale structures, which, as the name suggests, are the biggest known objects in the universe. These dim structures are made of hydrogen, gas, and dark matter and take the form of filament sheets and knots that link galaxies in a vast network called the cosmic web. I know these structures have major implications for the evolution and movement of galaxies, but we've barely scratched the surface of the root dynamics driving them.

Scientists are eager to find out details about this, blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, moving in unison, blah blah blah, and that's the gist of the article. Want to know more? No, that's probably good. I personally always find it super interesting when they discover new structures of the universe, particularly because we're too inside the universe and small within it to really be able to picture it. So this is just the best model out there for now.

That doesn't mean that's what it's actually like, but I always like the what's so above, so below. The micro seems to be almost identical to the macro when you look at it from those scales as well. I'm not sure what that means, but yes. Both the really small and the really big seem to be the same in their structures. Yeah, I mean, there's so little that we know about the universe, right?

So we're always finding, not me personally, they're always finding out new things about the universe and it's so small in comparison to what the universe actually is probably. I thought that was interesting and I hope that quenched your feeling science-y first. A little bit. I think it was feeling more spacey than science-y, but yes, that does quench it and it makes me happy in a science-y way. It's a large umbrella. Yes. Okay, good. With that, let's get on with this episode.

From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe. Now, just as award-winning is ever, we are your possibly award-winning hosts, but the same status of award-winning as we have ever been, Taylor and Chelsea. And today we talk about Chelsea. I want to explain my thought process going into this because we do profiles basically on people within the UFO community quite a bit. We generally call that assholes of the UFO community.

However, I don't know if I would call this particular character an asshole of the UFO community. I'll get into kind of why as we're going through this, but today we're going to go over a profile of a man by the name of Travis Walton. I see why you would say that. Yes. He is most famously known for an abduction case known as Fire in the Sky that we're going to go over.

We're going to talk about what happens during this abduction and then kind of what has happened in his life from that abduction to today. So I'm excited. It's an interesting story. I'm going to borrow a lot from a website known as UFOresearch.com because they did a great profile on this. And the Wikipedia page is actually very lacking when it comes to this case. Really? It mostly is just telling you why it didn't happen. I find that's what Wikipedia does. For very particular topics.

There's a lot where it's fantastic, but there's some where you just know they're just looking at it from one side and you're like, you know what? There's more to this story than what you're putting in here. Oh yeah. And my knowledge of Travis Walton, I've seen Fire in the Sky and I've seen a few UFO shows that do it. So I'm excited to see what we've got. But without further ado, let's go through this.

This is always brought up as one of the most credible UFO abduction and sighting cases out there. And it happened in 1975. So we've had a long time to kind of look at it and see here these guys talk. This involves six individuals. It is Travis Walton, Michael Rogers, John Goulet, Alan Dallas, Steve Pierce, Kenneth Peterson, and Dwayne Smith. I've only heard of one. Most of them are dead at this point. There's a couple still alive. Really?

Most people have only heard of Travis Walton because he's the one that this actually happens to. And I said there's six. There's actually six plus Travis, so seven. And they're a logging crew in Snowflake, Arizona. They were working one day on November 5th, 1975, put in a full day of work. They're heading back down the logging roads and they witness a bright light in the woods while driving home. Mike Rogers is driving the truck and he decides to drive towards it to see what's going on.

When they get to the light, it's dark. They're about 30 yards away and they stop the truck because they realize that what they're seeing in this light is a UFO. They all describe the UFO as about 20 feet in diameter and eight feet high. At the time, Travis decides when they see it to jump out of the truck and just walks towards it. Not exactly the smartest plan, particularly when you don't have a plan or know what you would do in this scenario.

Okay, is that should we be following that if we ever see UFO? Stay in the car unless you have a plan. Like come up with a plan. I should have a plan. Okay. With the windows up at that point. Once you have that plan, you can leave the vehicle. But until you have that plan, I would highly recommend staying in that vehicle with the windows up. I'm going to be prepared. I should start working on my plan now.

I don't know if you can do the plan ahead of time just because UFO scenarios can happen in so many different ways. That I don't know if you want to come up with just one plan that you're going to use no matter what. I mean, you could come up with the universal and then kind of tweak it from there, I guess. Okay, but like what if you're no good under pressure like me? That's fair. That's a really good point. You should have to drive. You should have to drive.

And this is also, this isn't great blanket information because like what if you accidentally drove your vehicle into a lake? Then you see the UFO. Don't stay in the car. Okay. It has to be flexible. It's what you're saying. Okay. Got it. Got it. I just feel like we need that caveat as well because people listen to us for our UFO know-how. Yeah. This is sound advice. It's all good advice.

So anyhow, Travis takes the stupid plan of not having a plan and jumping out of the car just walking towards this thing. I can try. Everybody in the truck, all six of them, start yelling at him to get back and then they see this bluish light. It comes out of the UFO and it hits Travis like right in the chest. That's not good. Yeah. They all kind of describe this slightly differently, but more or less they all say that he gets hit.

He gets lifted up a little bit off the ground and thrown back several feet. He's down on the ground, passed out, not near the truck. At this point, everybody in the truck is so scared that they just drive away and they leave their friend on the ground. Okay, that's what you get for not having a plan. He came up with the plan. This plan did not involve getting out of the car. It's getting the fuck out of there. I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing. I'd be scared. What do you do?

So these six guys in the truck, they drive off, they start driving away and then about 15 minutes later, they kind of get their composure, they come up with a real plan and they say, okay, let's go check what's up with Travis. So they drive back the way they left him. I would think it would be longer, like days later. Can you imagine brushing your teeth one night? Oh shit, Travis. That was so scary that I just kind of blocked it out. We should go check on him. That's good. 15 minutes isn't bad.

15 minutes is not bad. They drive back. The plan is let's at least see what happened to Travis and if the UFO is still there. And guess what? The answer kind of comes vaguely in that neither of them are there. So they make sure they're in the right spot. They send an hour and a half looking for him in the middle of the night. Oh man. But they couldn't find anything. That would suck. Yeah. And I was saying middle of the night, I apologize.

It's not the middle of the night because they get back into town at 7.30pm. First thing they do is they call the sheriff. His name's Chuck Ellison and they report what happened to Travis and they like, but basically what are you going to do? Because it looks really bad if you're returning to town without somebody. So they tell the sheriff that Travis is missing and they convey the story. They basically say like, look, there was this UFO. We got hit by a beam. We drove away.

We came back and he was gone. I can't imagine uttering those words out. No. And I at least imagine these guys are in the exact same boat in that they don't know how to say this because they know it sounds crazy too. One person said that they were very skeptical of flying saucers, but not so much anymore. And another said that he doesn't believe in them, but he saw one. And that's the group of that group on November night. That's what they said he was told.

That's the large variety of leaving in UFOs. Yeah. On November night, the police had gone up there. They did an investigation of the area where he's abducted. They said there was a slightly higher radiation reading on the Geiger counter, but nobody took any soil samples of the area. And the sheriff's department has found nobody in their search as of November night. Okay. According to their research. It checks out. Deputy Ellison, super skeptical about this account and what happened.

Even though these guys are all super like stressed out and distraught. And Ellison is even quoted as saying if they were acting, they were awfully good at it because they are so distraught about what happened up there. These are loggers. I think Travis was around the middle age for these people. And he's 22 years old in 1975. So they're all super young. They're loggers. They don't exactly have acting credentials behind them.

I was just going to say, I don't think loggers are particularly good actors, but. Yeah. But Ellison really wants to know what actually happened. He believes that something outside of a UFO happened to make this guy go missing. So he brings in Sheriff Marlene Gillespie who came down to interview the men with Officer Ken Copeland. They decided to get a search team together to look for Walton back at the scene, but there was absolutely no trace of him or the UFO that the men said had struck Travis.

And the police were beginning to suspect these guys had gotten rid of Travis. What would you do if you were the sheriff and you're fairly certain that these guys, these six loggers had just offed or gotten rid of their logger friend? They bring in the polygraph team. I was just going to say lie detector test. The police decide to administer this polygraph test to the six guys. And the test is taken on November 10th.

This is five days after the incident happened and there's been no sight or scene of Travis in those days. So they bring in a guy by the name of Sy Gilson. During the polygraph test, the men were asked these questions. If they had caused harm to Walton, if they were telling the truth about the UFO, if they knew where his body was buried and all of the men answered to the best of their ability, basically they all say the same thing.

He was abducted, they did not cause harm to Travis, and they did not know where his body was, or if it was buried somewhere. Five out of the six, the results come back as they're telling the truth. The sixth one comes back inconclusive. And then later on, like as there's been 40, 50 years since this has happened, he's done multiple polygraph tests since then and they've all come back truthful.

In Gilson's official report, he stated these polygraph examinations prove that these five men did see some object they believed to be a UFO, and that Travis Walton was not injured or murdered by any of these men on that Wednesday. So Travis has gone five days at this point? Yeah, November 5th, abducted. November 10th, the lie detector tests to see if they murdered him. That's crazy. Most of the questions are like overnight for a few hours is what they... Yeah, exactly.

And it's just missing time. Yeah. This is crazy. And then late in the evening, November 10th, the man by the name of Grant Neff gets a phone call from someone claiming to be Travis Walton. He has a low raspy voice and basically says, this is Travis. I'm at a phone booth at the Heber gas station and I need help. Come and get me. Like, that's it. Because of the attention the story got in the last five days, he thought it was a prank phone call and almost hung up.

But the man on the phone expressed again that it was Travis and he needed help. Grant and Dwayne drove out to the gas station and they find Travis on the floor of the phone booth that he made the call from. He was in the same clothes as he was when he went missing. He was unshaven and visibly thinner than before. He was dismayed, talking gibberish, like just completely distraught. Again, a great word for this. And they took him to his mother's house and tried to feed him and wash him up.

But he was in pretty bad condition and had a hard time doing anything. So like they had to take care of him for a while there. It takes Travis a while to tell his story as to what happened because he's out of it. Probably processing what happened to him as well. It's fairly embarrassing because everybody's going to ridicule you for this story that you're going to tell.

And how do you go about, I can just imagine being in that situation being like, how do I even process what happened and how do I say that I was just abducted by aliens? Yeah, and he has talked about this in the time since. Like he was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2021 and Joe asked him, why didn't they just take you to the sheriff's department? Because they were looking for you and they have questions about like what happened.

And he's like, I was in no shape to answer police questions at that time. I can't imagine. I can only imagine. I mean, I can't. It takes him a while, but he finally kind of starts telling his story. I believe it was probably the next day or the day after. So that'd be November 11th or November 12th. Oh, that quickly. Okay. Yeah. By a while, I mean, like he got cleaned up. He just slept, but he clearly remembers it.

The first thing he remembers after being struck by the blueish light in the woods was waking up, thinking he may be in a hospital as he was laid out on a table with a bright light above him. He said that it was a muggy and warm as he first opened his eyes and looked around in pain. He saw three figures standing around him, which he at first thought were doctors, but were wearing orange garments. It was then when his vision cleared that he realized they were not human.

He described the beings as being less than five feet tall, having large dark eyes, large heads, small facial features such as nostrils and ears. And this account is comparable to other alien abductions similar to what people sometimes call the grays, but he doesn't quite say they're gray either. Frightened, he jumps off the table and attacks one of the creatures by striking it in the back with his fist.

He mentioned that it wasn't as solid as a human would be and was lighter and was thrown back way more easily than if it was a human. So like this might be him trying to say he's a badass and just like punch this guy right across the room. At this time, three aliens tried to subdue him, so he grabbed the nearest object to him and tries to fend them off.

He managed to find a thin foot and a half long glass-like cylinder on the table next to where he woke up, and he tried to break off the top and use it as a sharp weapon. He couldn't manage to break it though. He started to yell, keep back, the whole time they never tried to communicate with him or from what he could tell each other. He was ready to fight them off at this point, so the three aliens fled the room.

After they left, he decided this was a good time to try to find a way to escape, and he left the first room and headed down a hallway which led to a large spherical room with a chair in the center. Thinking there may be one of the creatures in the chair, he approached it carefully, while noticing lights appearing all around him as he did so. These lights seemed to be stars from the walls around him becoming transparent.

After he realized the coast was clear, he sat in the chair and pushed a small lever next to the chair, hoping desperately it might open a door for him to escape. This time, the stars around him started to shift and rotate slowly as if he may be controlling the ship. He then gets out of the chair, walks towards an entrance to look for another possible way out, when he heard a noise and turned around.

To his surprise, it was not one of the aliens but a tall human wearing a blue suit, a thick belt, and some kind of helmet with a glass face. He frantically asked him hundreds of questions all at once, but the man simply grabbed his arm and motioned for him to follow him, and he did.

They traveled down a corridor and the man led him into a large room that was shaped like a quarter of a sideways cylinder, and in the room, which he describes as like a hanger, was about three shiny 40-foot saucer-shaped ships. From there, the man continued to lead him down to other hallways and into a room that contained three other humans wearing the same blue suits. He proceeded to ask these humans what was going on and if they could help him, but they did not respond.

Instead, they led him to a table and covered his face with something that looked similar to an oxygen mask, and after that, he awoke by the gas station in Hebrew, Arizona and saw the distant object fly away. Okay, that's crazy. Yeah, that's somewhat the same as like a lot of the abduction cases that you hear, but then there's that second half that is just... Yeah, with the humans, right? Human-like, I should say. Human-like, yeah. He doesn't give too much detail about what they look like.

He does remember quite a bit of it. Personally, he just does. He did go through hypnotic regression. He says that was just to make him better able to remember because he had so much PTSD with regards to his memory. So he just needed the calming factors to help him through that. Yeah. It in my mind makes a lot of sense too. Yeah. He gives his first interview on November 11th of 1975, like the next day.

Okay. It was on a show called Face of the State, and the interview, Travis describes the aliens as being like men, but not quite human. He said they had underdeveloped features, were hairless, were slightly shorter than himself, and were dressed in a kind of brownish-orange one-piece garment. Well, this is the human guys. I think he's talking about the other guys there. I'm not quite sure. Grace?

Yeah. He said that after packing up from work and heading home, he saw what he thought was a sunset and was going to comment on it, and that's when they all saw UFO hovering over the side of the road about 30 yards away and stopped the truck. He got out of the truck and started walking towards the object. This is when, as he says, he got struck and was knocked back. And when he regained consciousness, he was looking up at a light from a ceiling while lying on a table.

He filed a new fork report, which is a UFO reporting network like MUFON, but it was bigger at the time than MUFON. His brother-in-law reported Travis to this group while he was still missing on November 8th. I love that. I mean, you're going to go to all avenues, I guess. Yeah, exactly. He had talked about UFOs in the past, his brother said that Travis had mentioned before that if he ever saw flying saucer, he would try and communicate with it.

So I guess he actually did have a plan, and that is why he got out of the car. Fair enough. I was just going to say, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say, pardon my plan should be not getting out of the car. I feel like if they're going to abduct you, they're going to abduct you because Benny and Barty Hale were just taken right from their car. Yeah. It's hard to narrow down a plan. That's basically the entire incident.

If you want to read more about it, like more in detail, Travis did come out with a book. I believe it's called The Travis Walton Experience in 1978 just to kind of get the record down on what happened. That is later made into a fairly famous movie called Fire in the Sky, which came out in 1993. It's a pretty good movie. Yeah, it is. And there's a lot of creative liberties taken, though.

He also has appeared since this time in several UFO documentaries and attends UFO conferences, basically as an alien abductee. He also says that he now believes since this has happened, he has kind of changed his mind as to what happened. He believes that they were experimenting on him at first, but since that time he's had life experiences take place.

And he says that he now believes that the aliens were not being hostile, but rather they're trying to help him because they hit him with an errant beam of whatever that was. He thinks that they were actually just trying to treat his wounds from it. Oh, interesting. And he believes that basically what happened was that thing was going to give him cancer like it was severe radiation and they were treating his radiation. Oh, and has he had any health issues or anything as a result?

He has not, no. He said one of the witnesses, I forget which of the six in the car, but one had their arm out the window and he developed skin cancer on that arm. Really? And about changing the story, I think that's more... I wouldn't say changing the story. Greetings to what happened because like updating it as you have time to sit with it and realize kind of what's happened. I mean, if you're giving your first account the day after it happens, I mean, that's still fresh in your mind.

You're still processing it. And I would assume after you are sitting with it and accepted that you got objected by aliens, you're going to think more about what happened and kind of update it. Yeah, of course. But the overall story has stayed consistent. It's his view of what the aliens were doing that has changed, not the story itself. Yeah, okay. Obviously, this event that happened, whether or not he was abducted, it has greatly impacted his life.

He's had a ton of media attention and public scrutiny as well as skeptics look at this story. He's also had to deal with the log of the psychological trauma, at least as he says from this experience. He described it at the time as terrifying and confusing and it has changed since then, probably because of the therapy as well. Yeah, how do you reconcile that within yourself that I got abducted by aliens?

Well, yeah, there are actually trauma groups for this, but it's really hard to actually make sure that it has just people who actually say they've had this experience. Yeah. Just because there's so many people who are either a crazy, mentally ill, or B, just straight up narcissists or liars that want the clout. Yeah, that's true.

And if it really did happen to you, I'd imagine that it would be, depending on your view of it, whether or not you believe in it, it would still be really hard to accept that. Exactly. And even like within his own family, like some of them just straight up believe the story and what happened. Some are skeptical though and accuse him of lying and hoaxing this entire thing.

Some people say that Mike Rogers, the crew leader, has come out since this in the early 2000s and said that this entire thing was a hoax. I think I remember that. Yeah, but I just listened to a podcast that he was on recently, like either last year or the year before, where he's talking about the experience and he's like, this was not hoaxed. If people bring this up as Mike Rogers said that it was a hoax, that is not true.

At this point, he may have said something with regards to a hoax, but he does not believe this incident was fake. He does believe that Travis Walton was abducted. And all these guys that were part of the crew when they got back, they were also like being investigated for murder. So this is like such a profound case. It's super interesting. And just for everybody who has started using GPT or AIs to do research, always keep a lookout for it because it'll straight up lie sometimes.

I was trying to find the quote where Mike Rogers is saying this hoax thing. I have to read this to you one second. I said, can you tell me the story of the guy who attracted his Travis Walton story? I'm not sure which guy you're referring to, but it's possible that you're referring to Travis Walton, who in 2018 retracted his story about alien abduction experiences. What? He said he lied about the incident and it was a hoax. That did not happen. Okay AI, so you just straight up lied to us.

Yeah. Oh my god. It did put a source for it. The source did not say that at all either. So should stay careful when you're doing, you're asking AI to do research for you. That's hilarious. Thanks for nothing. And I find this interesting. I don't consider him an asshole if you have a community. He has not gotten into like UFO research or alternate sciences. He does attend conferences. He does speaking engagements. He's been on documentaries. The only thing he will talk about though is his story.

Yeah. I could see why. He's only an expert on his story. Exactly. Yeah. And he's maintained it. He hasn't held himself out to be a physicist. He does not partake in the sciences out there for this. And he's kind of been forced into this just because he couldn't get a normal job after this happened. He tried to work as a logger, but really couldn't get any work doing it because the story was attached to him.

He's had a bunch of different jobs, but he's never been able to like do anything that was a consistent career because this followed him around everywhere. So I think he was a bit forced into being part of the UFO community because of this. Well, I hope he was able to support himself with that at the very least. Yeah. I think with the book and the movie deal, it worked out okay for him. Good. He still lives in the same area. He's in Arizona. I don't know. Would you stay in the same area?

You got abducted? I don't know. It's like a small town. It's hard to leave a small town. Particularly if you know everybody, but that also means that everybody knows you too and what happened. Yeah, but then again, it's a pretty big story. Wherever you go, people would probably know. And with this story too, all the crew members have consistently told the same story, although one of them apparently got offered $10,000 to lie and say the whole story was a hoax.

Both Travis and Mike Rogers have spoken about this. Travis talks about it on the Joe Rogan experience. Specifically, he said he thinks it was the CIA that offered him $10,000 because he's like, who would offer this guy $10,000 to fake a story? Like it seems weird. Yeah. His theory was the CIA. Has he mentioned any other abduction experiences after the major one?

No. He said he has seen a UFO since then and that it was reported to MUFON with like 16,000 witnesses because it was a flying triangle over California. Yeah, but outside of that, he says he'll only talk about those two. He has had another experience, but nobody else saw it, so he doesn't talk about it. I mean, I don't blame him for that.

Yeah. And basically, he really wants the subduction story to be believed, so he only talks about the parts that can be substantiated, like the fact that six other people saw this. And yeah, he's just trying to get this experience known for what he believes is the truth. I'm also curious. I don't mean to interrupt the story of what you're telling. What do the skeptics say about this? Do you know? I do. And that comes up at the end. Okay. They eagerly await this.

At the 40th anniversary of this event, he hosted something called the Fire Sky Summit, which was basically he brought as many of the people together that he could. And they filmed the documentary about the events. He got three of the members. Is that the people that were with him? Yes. Vloggers? Okay. And it was the first time actually since the event, these three guys have been together. They all answer questions. They remain consistent about what happened.

One guy has gotten pissed at Tramon since then because apparently for some of the book that he wrote, Travis asked him to draw some sketches. And Travis never paid him for them. So he's pissed off about that, but he maintains that the story is still the same. Okay. He didn't piss him off that much that he retracted it. And yeah, some of them are upset that like Travis doesn't give them any money for like the movie or the book. Or enough. But yeah.

And yeah, that Sky Fire Summit, I was trying to find anything about it. I really couldn't. There appears to be a show made about it, but it was on Discovery Plus and I'm not going to pay for Discovery Plus. I think I have it. What's it called? Sky Fire Summit. Sky Fire Summit. I'm going to write it down. And basically what he's up to right now, he in 2021, he was on the Joe Rogan experience. He does still attend conferences.

His website actually has and much like everybody in UFO community, his website definitely does not look like it's been updated in years. If you're into UFOs and you have a website, you cannot have a modernized website. No, it has to have been built in the 90s, Chelsea. You can look at it. Travis-Walton.com. Pull that out. Yep. This checks out. Selling the truth. Yeah. And it hasn't been updated since I believe 2019 or he just stops doing events since COVID.

He like just in 2019, he was at AlienCon. He was on UFO cruise seminar at sea. He went to portal to Ascension Conference. ParanormaCon at the Mabel Alien Cosmic Expo International UFO Congress. Alien Expo 2019, 2019 Roswell UFO Festival. Like that's this is how he makes money now. Yeah. Contact at the desert. Pine Busch UFO Fair. Phoenix Lights Anniversary Celebration. Ivy Congresso Internacionale de Ovnilova. I have no idea how to say that.

Yeah. I mean, he's a pretty major guy in the community now because he has one of the best. Stories. What would you call it? Stories. Experience. Adduction experience. And one of the most evident based. Yes. One of the most reputable ones out there. And I just have to add it this time before I forget. Coming up with your plan for when you see a UFO, like a general catch all of a plan. You can kind of tweak it as you go.

But I just want to read this quote from Travis Walton's website that might help you in making that plan. This quote, if I had to ever do it again, I wouldn't get out of the truck and quote. So probably keep that in mind. You know what? Yeah. Take your advice from him, not from us. Yeah. Because he's somebody who's done that attempt and not a good one. Take it from us telling you what Travis Walton would do.

Yeah. And most recently what I found is that apparently they're in the works to remake Fire in the Sky. He doesn't like the creative licensing that the first movie took. Like specifically they tried to make the aliens as scary as possible and spice the story up. I mean, why does that need spicing? I know. Okay. So I would be curious to see how like a remake would go.

Actually, if they're like his viewpoint of it now is that they were trying to help him so they probably wouldn't make it a horror movie that's time around. That would be really cool to see. And I would say the odds are probably in favor of this is how he's making his money now. He's probably pushing for them to remake it. For that 2015 40 year anniversary thing, Travis participated in a documentary that took him back to the forest with some crew members and a UFO expert.

And he says that he was surprised by some of the findings that they made there such as the growth patterns of the trees near the abduction site that were way bigger than they should have been. They found that the trees near the abduction site had some unusual growth patterns and they said that the trees directly surrounding the area where Travis was struck by the beam of light had grown faster than the other trees nearby.

They say that this could be due to radiation exposure from the UFO, which stimulated the growth of the tree rings, and they said that this was a possible evidence of the presence of the UFO and its effect on the environment. But yeah, I don't have anything like he isn't an asshole. He sticks to his one particular area. That's all he talks about. And that's what he does. So that's why I can't call this guy an asshole of the UFO community.

I would rule that he's not an asshole either, but he's a lovable person of the UFO community. But here are some of the things that the detractors say. Okay. On October 20th, 1975, roughly two weeks before this incident occurred, a made-for-TV movie inspired by the Barney and Betty Hill incident airs starring James Earl Jones.

And the film aired two weeks before Travis Walton's UFO incident, which led cognitive psychologist Susan Clancy to argue that this film influenced Travis and his abduction story. Walton's account shares commonality with other alien abduction claims that are made after such stories appear in films and on TV. I did not know there's an uptick of abduction claims or UFO sightings after UFO movies are coming out. And they didn't cite anything for this either, so I'm not sure where that comes from.

It might just be them making it up. Yeah, it does make sense if you think about it that way. Because it's kind of like how suicide rates go up if they start reporting on suicides. Okay, that makes sense. That's all they got on that, is just that he saw this movie.

And Clancy noted the general rise mainly of abduction claims following the showing of the UFO incident, which is this movie that he apparently saw, and cites class's conclusion that after viewing this movie any person with a little imagination could now become an instant celebrity, concluding that one of these instant celebrities was Travis Walton.

Skeptics include the story as an example of a UFO hoax, promoted by a credulous media circus, with the resulting complicity exploited by Walton to make money. UFO researcher Philip J. Klass, who agrees that Walton's story was a hoax perpetrated for financial gain, identified many discrepancies in the stories of Walton and his co-workers.

Interesting. After investigating the case, Klass reported that the polygraph tests were poorly administered, and that Walton used polygraph countermeasures, such as holding his breath, which apparently is how you can counteract it. They'll throw off the... Apparently, that's what he says. To know. And apparently Klass uncovered an earlier failed test administered by an examiner, who included the case involved gross deception.

In 1978, Walton wrote the book The Walton Experience Detailing His Claims, which became the basis for the 1993 film, and Walton's account was too fuzzy and too similar to other televised close encounters, so they ordered a screenwriter to write a flashier, more provocative abduction story. I don't know if saying it's too similar to other cases which tracks from the fact that this abduction... I don't know.

Similarity, in my mind, makes it more likely, but I guess it's easier to lie if you're just gonna say, yeah, it's exactly like that, and get that. It's true. It goes either way, I guess. Yeah. They would also say if it was wildly different from other abduction stories, like this clearly is a lie because it's not similar to these other chasers. Like, you could do it either way. And then this is one people point to as well.

30 years after his book release, he was on a TV show called The Moment of Truth, and they administered a polygraph test to him where they asked him if he was abducted, and he said yes, it came back that he was lying. Okay, so one... That was one of 15 questions that they asked him, and it was the only one where they said he was lying. Yeah, okay.

Science and skeptic writer Michael Schermer, who sat on the panel for that episode, subsequently wrote about this experience, I think the polygraph is not a reliable determiner of truth. I think Travis Walton was not abducted by aliens, and in both cases, the power of deception and self-deception is all we need to understand what really happened in 1975 and after. And then this is just a list of parts of the story that people don't believe.

Travis Walton had previously talked to his workmates about wanting to meet aliens. He and others, including his crew boss, Mike Rogers, had just watched the UFO incident. Travis and his domineering older brother, Dwayne, cooked up a hoax with Mike's help, perhaps in hopes of winning the National Enquire's $100,000 prize for best UFO story for the year. That day, Travis and Mike were missing from the work site for several hours, and three of the crew members got stoned during the lunch break.

Mike made the crew work two hours later than usual until dark, and he drove home a different way west along Rim Road, as reported initially in Not South Pretty Official Story, and stopped when they saw a UFO. Some skeptics believe that what actually happened is there's a place called Gentry Tower, that they lit up and drove the guys there, and that was the UFO that they saw, and also where Travis hid during the five days.

So they believe that he jumped out for a closer look, and they had an accomplice in this tower flashing a blue spotlight on him, and he fell back on the ground. Mike drove off in a fake panic. 15 minutes later, he took the crew back to a different spot to look for Travis. They called in the cops when they got back to Heber, and Mike took the sheriff to what is now the official site, a few hundred yards from the work site.

They also visited Travis' mother, who was staying in the cabin a few miles away. She was unperturbed by the news her son had been abducted by aliens. A five-day manhunt failed to locate Travis, since it never went near the tower where he was hiding, and the crew was suspected to foul play, but passed a polygraph test that asked if they harmed him and if they'd seen a UFO.

The accomplices dropped Travis off five days later in Heber, which is the next town over near a phone booth, and Dwayne picked him up. Although Travis dismally failed the inquirer's polygraph a few days later, the magazine gave him and the crew $5,000 to tell the story, which in today's money would be about $25,000. And J. Allen Heineck has commented on the story in the past. Here's what he said. This is the project blue book guy.

I've always divided the Travis Walden case in my own mind into two parts. The first, which involved six witnesses who were giving lie detector tests, five of who completed it successfully, and the sixth was inconclusive, but not negative. That part of the story fits a very definite pattern, the sighting of a greatly illuminated object which was hovering not far from the ground. All of that fits. The second part, the actual abduction of Travis Walden.

Of course, we only have his word for this, but the story does hang together, and it is unusual in that the time lapse was so long, five days, whereas in most of the abduction cases, the time lapse and the time aboard, so to speak, is a matter of minutes or hours. The rigorous analysis given psychological stress evaluation tests by Charles R. McQuiston seems to indicate that Walden is indeed telling the truth. I thought that would be a good spot to leave off with.

Chelsea, anything else you want to talk about or elaborate on with this story? I believe him. I think this is one of the episodes out of many that we've done that I will say that I think I believe him and I'm not left disappointed in what has gone down in information we have. And this is why I believe it's always called the most credible UFO abduction case there is because there are so many witnesses.

There are people who detract from it, but it's hard to find the detractions overpower the actual evidence that these guys have been able to produce over the time, and especially the fact that it's almost 50 years since this happened and nobody has really changed their story or come out saying they hoaxed it. And he never hoaxed again if he did it. Like he didn't then say I was abducting it again or this thing.

Well, he even had another UFO sighting and he was just like, nah, I'm going to stick with the other one because other people got that. So yeah, I'm happy about that and anybody trying to disprove it. I mean, people make their living as well just trying to debunk UFO sighting. So it's not like there aren't going to be people out there with the most well-known, well-documented UFO story that are going to try and poke holes. So that's just what it is.

They're trying to disgrace but anything to be able to disprove it. And one thing I actually found hilarious, I think it's a great thing to leave off on here. In the Joe Rogan interview, he asked him about other abductees at UFO conferences. Travis says he believes less than half of them. I mean, to shave Travis Walton. And that is interesting though. Dale and Heineck said the same thing I did. It's interesting that it's five days, which seems to be like 300% full of what most abductees carry in.

And the fact that they said that he watched this movie on Betty and Barney Hill, which inspired him, why would he say five days then? Because the Betty and Barney Hill case is not five days. I mean, he could have just been like, I'm going to take that note, do it. That could just be a bad coincidence. UFOs are going to stop abducting people just because there is a TV show on. I think that's a good spot to end off. It's a great case. It's about time. We needed that. It's about time.

This is one of those ones where we should have covered it earlier, but we get to it when we get to it. Yeah, we need it to grow and be able to put it into a nice podcast for you. Yes, of course. And I have been Taylor here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. Hey. Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe.

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