Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Chuck Ellison was sitting down to eat dinner with his wife when the telephone rang. The voice on the other end was hard to read, both frantic and oddly hesitant at the same time. Ellison asked the caller to calm down and start again by telling him who he was. It was Kenny Peterson, came the
speedy reply, and they needed the police right away. As Peterson went on to explain, he and his Forestry Service co workers had been clearing a section of Arizona's Apache Sitgreave's forest earlier that night when something inexplicable had occurred, and now one of their crew was missing. But when Ellison pushed for more details, Peterson paused for a moment before replying that perhaps it would be better if they
could explain it to him in person. Ten minutes later, after apologizing to his wife for having to leave so suddenly, Ellison pulled into the parking lot of Wilbur's Market shopping center in Haber, a small junction town about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix, Arizona, where he'd agreed
to meet Kenny. It didn't take long for the deputy to spot the man at His colleagues, Mike Rodgers, John Goulette, Alan Dallas, Dwayne Smith, and Steve Pearce all gathered together in an anxious huddle by the entrance, still covered in dust and debris from the day's shift. At least two of the group was struggling to hold back tears. In no mood to mess around, Ellison asked the men to
explain exactly what was going on. They all looked sheepishly toward each each other, as if they didn't quite know what they were going to say to him, until finally Mike began to speak. The twenty eight year old Mike was an independent contractor and the crew were his responsibility, so too, ultimately was the man who was missing. His name was Travis Walton, who also happened to be Mike's best friend. Ordinarily, they would never have left him behind up there in the forest, but as Mike tried to
explain to Ellison, these were far from ordinary circumstances. You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McClain Smith, like the rest of Mike Roger's crew. Twenty two year old Travis Walton lived in Snowflake, a farming town located about thirty miles east of Haber with a population of just over
two and a half thousand. It was founded by Mormon settlers in eighteen seventy eight and was comprised largely of low rise houses and small local stores, all overshadowed by the huge red bricked Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints that dominated the town square. Delinquency was not looked on lightly by the community, nor was any one
who deigned to be a little different. Back in nineteen seventy one, Travis, who with his long hair was dismissed by many as a feckless hippy, and a friend were convicted of forging payroll checks from a local company. The pair were given two years privation and forced to pay the money back. In a town as small and god fearing as Snowflake, such reputations were hard to shake. Those
who knew Travis, however, knew a different story. Some of his school teachers even considered him one of the smartest pupils that they'd ever taught. After dropping out of Northern Arizona University a few years previously, Travis had been picking up work wherever he could find it. When Mike Rogers, a forestry contractor with nine years experience, procured another of his United States Forest Service contracts, Travis jumped at the
opportunity to join the team. The job was to clear one thousand, two hundred and seventy seven acres of thick scrub brush from a section of the Apache Si Grieves National Forest known as Turkey Springs, which was about ten miles into the pine covered mountains just to the west
of Haber. That Wednesday, November fifth, started out just like any other day, as one by one Rogers collected each of his crew members in his battered Crew Cab International from their homes in Snowflake, then headed off on their forty mile journey into the mountains. With it being November, there was always a slight chill in the air first thing in the morning, but it soon heated up when
the sun came out. Though the work was arduous, cutting back all new growth less than six inches in diameter and gathering it up into great slash piles, Travis never tired of being up there on that mountain ridge with the fresh air in his lungs, wild horses galloping through the trees all around them, and that ancient forest stretching out below, older than the people whose name it took,
older even than God themselves. Hours later, with darkness returning, and so too that light chill in the air, the men called it a day. Gathering their tools, they slung them into the back of Mike's truck before piling in themselves, Travis and Kenny up front with Mike, while the others, all smokers, sat in the back, gleefully lighting up. Mike switched on the engine, bathing the narrow forest road ahead in the light of the head lamps, and eased out
of the clearing. They'd barely made it two hundred yards along the rugged forest track when Alleyn broke in from the back. Hey, what is that, he said, pointing toward a soft glowing light coming from out of the trees to the right. Have you guys never seen the moon? Mocked Kenny, only as the others were quick to point out the moon was already sitting high in the sky
above on the other side of the truck. The soft white glow grew brighter as they continued on, slowly edging ever closer toward it, now no more than a hundred yards from its source. The light bled out across the road before them, but frustratingly, whatever it was remained obscured by the trees until eventually they reached a clearing and they were finally able to see it, a large disc like structure roughly twenty feet wide and eight feet high,
hovering a good fifteen feet above the ground. It was so close they could even see the detail on its surface, how it was divided into a series of thin panels with a thin, darker band that seemed to circle all the way around it, and how its glow appeared to be coming from inside. Before Mike had even brought the truck to a stop, the side door was opened and Travis was gone, hurrying off toward it. The others yelled for him to back, but Travis just kept on going,
edging closer and closer toward it. Then came a strange noise that seemed to emanate from the craft, high pitched at first, before steadily shifting into something much lower, like a vast turbine engine. When suddenly a blinding blue light shot out from the disk, holding Travis in some kind
of grip, with his body now completely rigid. He was slowly lifted a good foot into the air and suspended there for a moment before being flung hard onto the ground, skidding shoulder first into the stone and dirt, and there
he lay completely still. That was enough for Rogers, who, with four kids of his own and the rest of his crew to worry about, turned the key and tore out of the clearing as fast as the truck could go, And then they were racing through the trees, bouncing over the dirt track at speed as Rogers did his best to keep the thing on the road, with the rest of the crew screaming for him to keep going faster and faster, until it was just one bend too many,
With a huge pine tree looming up before him, Rogers pulled hard on the wheel and brought the truck slamming into a pile of bulldoze dirt by the side of the road. The men looked frantically about for any sign of the strange craft, but saw nothing but the frigid dark and the bright half moon above. And for a moment there was silence, and then all hell broke loose. We've got to go back, yelled Kenny. No way, said Steve,
as tears streamed down his face. We've got to get out of here, Kenny's right, said Mike, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Only then had it dawned on him that, without even thinking, he'd abandoned his best friend alone out there with that thing, whatever it was. We're going back, he said. Finally, you can either come
with me or you can wait for me here. With no one willing to take their chances in the forest alone, they headed back to look for Travis, but by the time they got to where they'd last seen him, he was gone. And that, as he finished explaining to an utterly perplexed Deputy Ellison, was when they decided to call
the police. After hearing the men's story, Deputy Ellison reluctantly relayed it back to Sheriff Marlin Gillespie at the Navajo County Sheriff's office in Holbrook, another forty mile drive north of Haber. Though Ellison was quick to clarify that he didn't believe any of it, he had little doubt the men had experienced something traumatic. Less than an hour later, Sheriff Gillespie arrived with Deputy Kenneth Coplin in tow and Mike's crew repeated their extraordinary story for the second time
that night, but Mike was getting impatient. They needed to get back up there and search for Travis. Kenny and Allan were keen to join, but by then Ball, John, Dwayne, and Steve, who at seventeen was the youngest of the group, wanted to do was go home. Taking Mike's truck, they headed back to his house to let his wife know what had happened, while the remaining three joined the sheriff and his two deputies and headed back toward Turkey Springs.
It took a while to find the exact spot again, but soon the men were out in the cold air, flashlights in hand as they scoured the ground for any sign of Travis. But the men found nothing. No scarred or broken trees other than the ones the team had cut down, no scuff marks in the dirt, no sign of Travis's bootmarkings. Neither did they find any pieces of clothing or any blood for that matter. It was almost as if no one had ever been there at all.
All that was clear was that Travis was gone. Sheriff Gillespie ey'd Mike and his men with suspicion Clearly Travis hadn't been abducted by a UFO, so what then exactly had taken place and if he was still alive out here as the men claimed he might be. It was an awfully cold night to only be wearing plaid and denim. Ellison notified more deputies and members of a local volunteer organization to join in the search, but by midnight there
was still no sign of the missing man. Growing increasingly desperate, rogers suggested it was time they notified Travis's mother. At fifty seven years old, Mary Kellett had raised Travis and his five siblings on her own after making a living running a boarding house in Phoenix. By nineteen seventy five, she divided her time between her home in Snowflake and a cabin in Bare Springs, a stretch of woodland a
good ten miles to the southeast of Haber. It was funny, she thought, as she watched Deputy Copland's car pulling up outside the cabin. Just earlier in the day, she'd been overcome with the strange conviction that something terrible had happened to her son, Travis, when Mike stepped out of the vehicle whom she knew well a good friend of Travis's. Her worst fears were confirmed. Once inside, Coplin watched as a clearly distraught Rogers explained to Mary about what they'd
seen that evening and how Travis had disappeared. It was odd, thought Copland, how calm Mary seemed to be in the face of such unusual and disturbing news, almost as if it wasn't news to her at all. About an hour later, Coplin made his goodbyes and headed back to Sheriff Gillespie to report his findings. In the meantime, Rogers drove Mary in her car to her daughter Alison's home in Taylor,
a town just south of Snowflake. Alison, who lived with her husband Grant Nef, was especially close to Travis and was understandably devastated to hear the news. Skeptical of the story, however, she demanded to hear again from Mike exactly what had happened, but he could only tell her what he knew. A few hours later, unable to wait any longer, Mary called her son Dwayne at his home in Phoenix to give
him the worrying news. Though Dwayne was Mary's second oldest son, she'd always considered him the most mature, and it was often to him that she first turned in times of stress. Minutes later, Dwayne jumped into his car and started out on the two hundred mile journey to Snowflake to meet up with the others. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself,
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get started, that's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. At eight am the morning after Travis's disappearance, a number of search teams assembled in Turkey Springs to assist the Navajo County and Silver Creek Sheriff's officers in their continued search for the missing man. Among them were a group of US Forest Service personnel drafted in for their knowledge of the local area. Mike Rodgers, Kenny Peterson, and Alan Dallas
were back too to help with the search. That morning, the thirty or so search team, starting from the point that Travis was last seen, began the laborious task of scouring the forest for any sign of him, a search that would eventually encompass a region of roughly a mile squared. As the forestry workers scoured the area for any sign of unusually broken trees or foot markings, it was hard to ignore just how dry the whole area was, with some of the dead brush piles being almost a year
old and the floor carpeted in dry pine needles. Though no one gave it much credence if some kind of craft had indeed lifted off from around there, the whole place would have gone up in flames elsewhere, Sheriff Gillespie and Deputy Ellison were looking for something a little different, Trying to square the obvious distress shown by Mike and his crew the previous night with the ridiculous cock and
bull story they had given them. Gillespie and Ellison had got to thinking could it be whether it was premeditated or the result of a tragic accident That the men knew only too well where Travis was, after all, because they had buried his body. As the two police kept one eye on the men for any sign of suspicious activity, their other was kept firmly on the ground, looking for any sign of recently disturbed earth or fresh piles of
dirt and of course blood. Later that afternoon, Mary and Dwayne also joined the search, with May seeming once again far too calm for Deputy Copland's liking. By the afternoon, however, the search teams were yet to find anything. With little else to go on, Sheriff Gillespie suggested contacting the nearest firewatch tower. Perhaps they had seen something that night. At the very least, it would end all the ridiculous talk
about UFOs. Sadly, however, the guards stationed at the tower only a few miles to the west, had gone off duty at five PM. The search continued the next day, this time with the help of search dogs from Arizona State Prison, but still no evidence of Travis's whereabouts or any sign that any unidentified flying object had been in the vicinity was found. On Saturday morning, Gillespie was back in his office in Holbrook when a kafuffle was heard
in the reception running through. He was startled to find Dwayne and Mike Roger's demanding to know why no one was up on the ridge looking for Travis. The pair had gone out to join the third day of the search, only to find nobody there. Having begun to suspect that some kind of hoax was being played out, Gillespie was somewhat taken aback by the evident concern and passion in
Dwaine and Mike's demand. Within an hour, the search was reinstated, with horses, jeeps, and a rescue helicopter brought in for good measure, having flown in helicopters during his time in the military. That afternoon, Dwane joined the helicopter crew in the air, peering down at the gaps in between the trees for any sign of his brother. He couldn't decide whether to be worried or relieved when by the end of the day they'd once again failed to find anything.
Back in Snowflake, a Volkswagen van pulled into the town square to join the throng of news vans and other unfamiliar vehicles that had been steadily descending on the town. By then, news of Travis's disappearance and the unusual explanation behind it had spread far and wide, with many journalists and UFO enthusiasts keen to investigate the wild story for themselves. One such enthusiast was Fred Sylvanus from Phoenix, who for the past twenty years had conducted field research for the
Arizona Regional UFO Project. That afternoon, Fred was put in touch with Mike and Dwain, who agreed to join him in his van for an interview. Mike began with an account of the craft they'd seen, how pretty it had been, like a fancy new car, he said, and how he'd been almost mesmerized by just how beautiful a thing it was to look at. Then Dwain chimed in with something unexpected. He had also seen one almost identical to what might
described in Broad Daylight twelve years before. Not only that he and Travis had discussed UFOs at great length and what they would do if they ever got close to one, which was what asked Fred, they would try to establish contact with it. Of course, came Dwaine's reply. It was an alarming admission to Sylvanus, since he was previously under the impression that none of the men involved had any
prior interest in UFOs. In his experienced opinion, evidence of such interest was often a red flag where stories of apparent sightings and abductions were concerned. And then came another troubling revelation, this time from Mike. As it turned out he and his crew were wildly behind schedule on their contract.
Having already received one extension, the crew were struggling to meet their second deadline, as Mike let slip to Sylvanus, perhaps with all that had been going on, the Forestry Service might be willing to offer them a second extension. There was just one final question, said Sylvanus, before wrapping up. Where did the pair think that Travis was now? Wherever he is, said Dwayne. It is not on this earth.
Many in the town had been uttering it among themselves, but it was Snowflake Town Marshall Sandford Flake who said it the loudest that all this talk of UFOs and Travis Walton being abducted was complete rubbish. Some put this down to an ongoing grudge with Travis due to a disagreement from a previous year, but either way, Flake was
determined to put an end to the nonsense. Having deduced that Travis had orchestrated the whole thing in collaboration with his brother Dwayne, using some kind of balloon to fool his colleagues, Flake became convinced that he was merely hiding
out at his mother's cabin in bear Lake. In the days since Travis's disappearance, Marshall Flake made a number of unannounced visits to Mary Kellett's cabin, hoping to catch the family out, one time, even bringing a documentary crew with him from the United Kingdom, but Mary could only tell him what she had told everyone else, that she had
no idea where her son was. Such rumors were becoming a struggle for the rest of Mike's crew, who who couldn't step outside their homes without being harassed by reporters or neighbors telling them to give up the hoax and tell the truth about what happened. On Monday morning, with Travis now having been missing for five days, Mike Rodgers, Kenny Peterson, John Goulette, Steve Pierce, Alan Dallas, and Dwayne Smith received an ominous request to assemble at Sheriff Gillespie's
office in Holbrook. The men arrived on the assumption that they would be giving another statement about the events of the previous Wednesday. What they found was something a little different. Greeting them alongside Gillespie was Arizona Department of Public Safety employee Si Gilson. Gilson also happened to be an expert in polygraph testing, and he was there to give them a lie detect a test. Steve Pierce went white at the sheer mention of the device. It was just as
his mother had been telling him. It didn't matter if he had anything to do with Travis's disappearance. This was how the law really worked. They were going to try and pin something on him, and one way or another, if Steve wasn't careful, he would not be leaving that station anytime soon. Alan Dallas also grew suddenly nervous, a reaction not lost on Sheriff Gillespie, as the Sheriff then explained to them, since they had no evidence to back up any of their claims, he'd been forced to take
drastic action. If they couldn't find Travis, at the very least, he could dismiss their ridiculous story, and if they were telling the truth, none of them had anything to worry about anyway. Having been observing the men closely since they arrived, Gilson was quick to pick out Steve, the younger and clearly most anxious of the group, as a possible weak link.
If they had indeed concocted the whole thing up together, it was Steve, he reasoned, that was most likely to break Alone in the interview room, Gilson took a moment to calibrate the equipment, then asked for Steve to be
sent in. After nervously taking a seat, Gilson proceeded to connect Steve to the machine, pulling the wires tightly across his chest, before asking him to sit up and try his best to relax, And then, after switching on the machine, Gilson began, did you cause Travis any serious physical harm? Last Wednesday? Afternoon, asked Gilson, as the graft paper spoiled out endlessly under the needles. No, said Steve, quickly, looking anxiously towards the fragile arms of the machine as they
flickered lightly across the page. Gilson nodded to himself, then jotted something down in his notebook. I'm not lying, said Steve with quiet determination, Ignoring him. Gilson continued, do you know if Travis Walton was physically injured by some other member of your work crew last Wednesday? No, said Steve emphatically. And then do you know if Travis Walton's body is buried or hidden somewhere in the Turkey Springs area? No,
came Steve's emphatic reply. Again. Then, finally, did you tell the truth about actually seeing a UFO last Wednesday when Travis Walton disappeared? Steve looked Gilson in the eye, and then, after only a moment's pause, yes, he said. One after the other, Mike's crew came and gave their answers to the same set of questions, taking about twenty minutes at a time as they went over and over it again, all giving the exact same answers as Steve and not
once deviating from their story. No, they didn't harm Travis, nor know of any one who did. And yes they did see a UFO that night. At ten p m. That evening, the men were sent home, after which Gilson presented Gillespie with the results. The sheriff could only gorb
in amazement. According to Gilson, not one of the men, with the exception of Allan Dallas, whose results were deemed void, could be determined to have lied about their experience, or, as Gilson understood it, going by the results, the chances that all five had cheated the test was something in the region of one in seventy eight thousand. As Gillespie reported to the press soon after, there's no doubt they're telling the truth right down the line. I feel sure
that all six of them saw a UFO. It was close to midnight on Monday when the phone rang in Allison and Grant Neff's home in Taylor. Having just gone to bed, Grant roused himself awake and stumbled to the receiver nef residence. Who's this, he muttered wearily. Then a scared and faint voice crackled up from the other end of the line. It's Travis. I'm in a phone booth at the Heber gas station. I need help. Please come and get me. Grant stood for a moment, trying to think.
It certainly didn't sound like Travis, and since the family had been fielding crank calls ever since his disappearance, it seems reasonable to assume that this was just another one. Don't call here again, Grant said, But just as he was about to hang up, the voice came back, more desperate this time. Wait, Grant, it's me Please, I'm hurt and I need your help. Please come and get me. You've been listening to Part one, Unexplains, Season four, episode twenty.
The Homecoming. Part two will be released next Friday, December sixth Unexplained. The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.
Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast. Now, it's time
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