Travis Walton and Mike Rogers recount their 1975 Arizona encounter with a glowing, 20-foot UFO near Mogion Rim, where Travis was struck unconscious and vanished—leaving no trace. Both passed lie detector tests in 1993 (including Alan Dallas) under experienced operator Cyrus Gilson, debunking skeptic Jerry Black’s hoax claims. The film Fire in the Sky distorted details, like Travis’s wet, naked return or Mike’s exaggerated financial struggles, despite their attempts to correct inaccuracies. Their families now largely accept the story, though most friends abandoned them amid public doubt and media sensationalism, proving how easily extraordinary accounts are dismissed when credibility clashes with commercial storytelling. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high desert in the great American Southwest.
I hid you all good evening and or good morning wherever you may be across this great land of ours from Guam out across the date line, all the way east to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where I'm going to go visit one day, south into South America, north all the way to the Pole.
This is Coast to Coast AM worldwide, of course, on the internet.
All right, now, to that portion of the show promised, he does not do frequent interviews, barely ever does them.
As a matter of fact, that really goes for both of these gentlemen.
I now would like to bring on Mike Rogers and Travis Walton.
So let's do it one at a time and be sure we can get them planted properly.
I sat down and watched Fire in the Sky again and took notes this time.
And so I guess I'll kind of move through it the way they did, except I would like to not do it the way they did with the flashback in the beginning and then the story taking up.
Mike, you had a government contract of some kind with the Forest Service.
As soon as we got around this group of trees, this thicket, to where we could see the source of this, somebody in the back yelled out, it's a spaceship.
Or something like that.
And I mean, it was unmistakable.
It was so close that, you know, I mean, everybody knew what it was right off the bat.
Here's where I got to stop you for a second, Travis.
You know, in the horror movies, when inevitably the lady, you hear this noise, this horrible noise, and inevitably she goes the one place she shouldn't go, down to the basement, where something eats her.
So in other words, here you are with a pretty frightening thing going on, a ship hovering, what, 20 feet above the ground or something, and you get out of the truck and go under it?
In fact, there's little difference, if any, between all the guys that were there in the descriptions of everything concerning it, from its distance to its size to its look and the sound that it was giving off.
Six in the truck and Travis out there under the craft.
So there's Travis under the craft.
How much time went by, Travis, before your memory either ends or that bolt of light hit you?
unidentified
Just second, because as soon as it started to move, you know, I jumped for cover and resolved, I made up my mind to get out of there and get back to the truck like they were saying.
And as soon as I raised up to go, wham, that's when I went out.
How far down the road, I guess still going down the mountain, right?
How far down the mountain did you get?
How much further away from the scene did you get before you started talking about stopping and going back?
unidentified
Probably not even a quarter of a mile.
You know, me and Ken Peterson, who was sitting right next to me, the one sitting between Travis and I in the front seat of the truck, he was the next oldest to myself.
He was only two years younger than me.
He was 26.
I was 28.
And he was like the next oldest.
Travis was actually four years younger than that.
But Ken and I both seemed to realize about the same time that, you know, here we are flying down the road like this.
But it was like as soon as I could see that it wasn't following us, as soon as you could tell from looking in the rearview mirror and the other guy's looking back and it's not following us.
Whatever it is, it's still way back there.
We've got a quarter of a mile distance between us.
I'll try to give them equal top billing here as we go along.
Back with you again.
So, Mike, the truck stops, and you say, what?
unidentified
Well, Ken and I looked at each other, and nobody said anything for a moment.
And I said, you know, finally, you know, we're going to have to go back.
You know, and somebody in the back, Alan, I think, yells out, what?
You know, we left Travis back there, and, you know, he certainly looked hurt, but we need to go back.
And of course, you know, a quarter of a mile down the road, it didn't take very long to get there at the speed I was traveling, and this is not something that took well.
They started arguing about this.
After a couple of minutes, we got out of the truck, all of us but one, I think.
And we stood out there on the other side of the truck, side of the truck away from this thing because I'd made a left-hand turn, and now this thing was looking back to the north and across through the forest there.
And I really couldn't see any light or anything at all.
We put enough distance between us and the forest was thick enough through the quarter mile of foliage there that we couldn't see a thing.
There was a sliver of a moon just about to go down on the horizon.
Just a sliver.
And it was really getting quite dark there.
And so after a little bit of a hectic discussion, a wild and crazy attempt to explain what had happened to each other, there was no sense going on there at all, really.
The only sensical thing was that Travis is still back there.
We don't know what happened to him.
We don't know what's happening to him.
We need to go back.
It wasn't very brave of us to leave, and we need to go back.
And finally, we just made the decision, at least Ken Peterson and I made the decision, that we had to go back.
Unlike the movie, where in the movie they had the guys stand there by the road, that's one difference there.
In reality, everybody elected to get back in the truck and go back rather than stand there in the dark.
As a matter of fact, I would think the other guys would resent the way the movie portrayed them.
unidentified
Well, yeah, there has been a little of that.
Well, for all of us, I guess.
There's been the good and the bad as far as the way we looked at the movie, but this was one particular difference that made a lot of difference to me because it made it look like I was the only one that went back at all and had any, you know, look-see, when in reality everybody went back.
And one thing that made it easier for us, and I think was kind of the reason why we just went ahead and went back, is because as I was rounding the truck to get back in my door on the other side of the truck, and the other guys were getting in, we looked back over in the direction that this thing had been, and a light, this thing never really got above the treetops.
It just, you could see the light.
I mean, it lifted up and streaked away to the northeast from the street.
A quarter of a mile away, and you saw it lift up and streak away at this point.
unidentified
Right.
It was so fast, and you couldn't see it clearly because you're looking through the trees.
Remember, these trees right next to us are reaching to the sky, and there wasn't any way that you can see anything clearly, but you can see through the foliage.
You can see this light a quarter of a mile away raise up and streak away.
Mike Rogers, who was the crew chief, along with Travis Walton.
Travis is also here.
And we're talking about an incident that occurred, an abduction, the abduction of Travis Walton, as depicted in Fire in the Sky, and sometimes not as depicted in Fire in the Sky.
In other words, we're getting the real story.
Travis had already encountered the vehicle, the craft, whatever it is you want to call it, and it had thrown a light on him, zapped him backwards, literally almost blowing him up.
Mike and the rest of the guys had taken off down the hill.
They were down the hill, as a matter of fact, about a quarter of a mile away, finally decided to turn around and go back and get Travis as soon as they calmed down after that truck careened down the hill.
And they're just about to start back up, and we'll get to them in just a moment.
Let me take care of the commercial continuity right now.
unidentified
Let me take care of the commercial continuity right now.
Okay, Mike, so here you are, I guess, headed back up the hill with everybody in the truck.
You're going to find Travis, and I take it you go up a little slower than you came down.
unidentified
A lot slower.
Yeah, we headed back up there and very, very slowly, very cautiously.
We were still in a mild state of panic.
I mean, it wouldn't have taken much to cause us to turn around and run, but we were headed that way and we did get back to the site where this had happened.
Upon doing so, since the thing was gone and there was no trace of it, it took a little bit of time to actually make certain that we had the right clearing.
But once we had done that and were certain we had the right place and we're sure that we were in the right spot, we took a flashlight out of the glove box and shown it around there while we were still in the truck.
Not seeing anything, shown the flashlight into the clearing where Travis had fallen and he wasn't there either.
No depression in the ground like in the cartoons, you know, a Travis Walton depression in the ground.
Well, nothing like that.
unidentified
This was 90 to 100 feet away where he fell, 90 to 100 feet from the road.
Right.
And so, you know, you couldn't have seen a depression from that distance.
But we, you know, there was a slash pile, a pile of logging debris there in the middle of this clearing, which Travis had been standing next to when he had gotten hit.
And so we used that as kind of a locating device.
And he wasn't anywhere in that clearing that we could see.
So we just shone the light around for a while, still being very cautious, very timid, frightened, completely mentally overwrought.
I mean, I know what shock has been explained to me like, and I was definitely in a state of shock.
And the other guys later on explained their feelings of it similarly.
But we eventually pulled the truck up into the clearing where the headlights of the truck shone right into the clearing and right where Travis had fallen.
And then there was another discussion that had to take place about getting out of the truck and looking around.
And again, it was a unanimous decision that everybody do it together.
Rather than me or Ken getting out, everybody decided to go with us rather than stay in the truck alone.
So we were all walking around out there, but we were all very close to each other, you know, shoulder to shoulder.
And we had the one flashlight, but we walked up and down the ridge.
We looked for everything.
The only tracks we could find, which were barely visible in the pine needles intermittently, a heel mark in the edge of the road that I saw before we got out of the truck.
And then, you know, you could see the pine needles were disturbed there where Travis had fallen, where he had stood.
But that was the only sign of him.
There was nothing else there.
And there were no footprints in the road leading out.
But, you know, from what we saw of the way this thing hit him and how he flew backwards and how he hit the ground, it was pretty unanimous feeling among us that he wouldn't have gotten up from where he lay.
All right, so you guys drove back to town probably half in a state of shock the whole way and reached this cafe gas station that they showed in the movie.
Is that accurate?
unidentified
Fairly.
There wasn't a lot of people around.
Like in the movie, they added more people and whatnot into that.
But what actually happened is that we stopped there.
In fact, on the way into town, see, I wasn't the one that actually made the call.
I guess they just chose to use my character throughout the movie there in certain places.
Yeah, I just knew that we needed to look for him before the authorities were notified because I just knew that they would not believe this.
And that was my feeling.
So this was a discussion on the way back into town.
And so by the time we got there, it was Ken Peterson that called.
And the reason he called was because he was very firm.
He was the guy in the movie that was even though they changed his name he's depicted as the choir boy, the steadfast The church-going choir boy, right.
Never told a lie in his life.
And that's a very accurate description of Ken Peterson.
And he was very adamant about reporting this to the authorities.
He wouldn't take any other thing for a way of doing it.
I mean, he was firm on that entirely.
And so he's the one that called.
And he called, he didn't know who the authorities were, but the call that he made there in Heber connected him with Chuck Ellison, who was a local deputy there, Navajo County deputy.
And he's the first one we talked to.
And then after talking to him for a while, and I don't think that Chuck Ellison believed it at all, just like I suspected.
But after a while, an hour later, after Chuck Ellison had notified the county seat, the actual sheriff, who was Sheriff Marlon Gillespie, came down with another man, an undersheriff, Ken Copeland, with him.
See, there were a lot more law authorities all together involved, and to get all those people and their real names in there, you know, there was composite characters.
That was done several times in the movie because the movie involved a lot more characters everywhere along, and they had to simplify that, I guess, is the only explanation I know of that it makes sense that they would do that.
Well, there was one point there where, I guess just before the law arrived, you said, look, we're going to stick with our story, or somebody said, we're going to stick with our story.
Was there a general agreement to do that?
unidentified
Well, it's funny.
I think the movie was trying to play kind of a murder mystery type of thing to the audience.
In reality, this stick to it is, you know, let's not have contention among us here, even though we have differences of opinion of what we should do and what we should say to the authorities.
It was like, you know, Ken says, I'm going to call him, and I'm going to tell him the whole truth here.
And I hope you guys don't, you know, try to act differently because this is what we need to do.
We need to tell the complete whole truth about this thing and just let the chips fall where they may.
Travis, I don't mean to leave you out, but this is the part where you're left out.
Travis, when you hear all this now, you know, about all that went on and what they thought and what they did, I know that after the whole thing, you felt, according to the movie, some resentment that Mike and company didn't stay there and try to get you, that they took off.
When you hear all of this now from Mike and others, what goes through your mind?
I mean, do you suddenly understand or do you still feel any resentment?
unidentified
Well, you know, I felt less resentment than Mike might have believed for a while.
I mean, you know, back when this happened, Mike, every time he was interviewed, you know, somebody would ask him, how could you go off and leave your friend like this, you know?
So they were really dumping this load of Guilt on him, which really added to the sort of feelings that he was getting from my family, you know, during the search and things.
Sure.
So it was kind of a blame situation that came about, and he kind of misread me as feeling that way.
I don't really, you know, I've always said, excuse me, that they, you know, they did what they had to do.
But, you know, in a similar situation, I can't see that it would have made any sense for anyone to have done any different than they did.
They arrived, and you started telling them this story.
unidentified
Yeah, it was a very harrowing five days.
Believe me, it was the worst five days of my life.
And it didn't get much better the next several days after that.
But yeah, the sheriff, although he's always held a line publicly that he's skeptical, I think he was the only one of the three police officers that we met with that night that gave us a glimmer of hope.
He partly believed, at least, at least his mind was open to the possibility that what we were saying altogether was true.
well here's a guy who probably knew you it's pretty small town there and he he knew your characters so And I guess from what I've heard, this was what made him at least open, open-minded to the possibility.
He never just totally believed it, but it left him open enough to where he could take what we were saying serious to an extent.
I don't think anybody knows that's an actual figure, but it eventually involved aircraft and helicopters and dogs.
You know, what's funny about the search, the one thing that I always bring up about it that the movie never showed, is that this search was so thorough that these guys would come back from a jog out and around with their hands full of debris that they had found in the woods.
Everything from pop-tocks to beer cans to old oil bottles, you name it.
Old pieces of logging equipment, you know, pieces of cable and whatnot.
They literally slicked those woods up and they'd come back and throw them in the back of the pickups.
And they had piles of debris there that was gathered up.
This is how thorough the search was.
They were looking for every little speck or clue that they could find and managed to clean up the forest in the process.
And I thought that was kind of funny.
I always have since then thought that was kind of an interesting little part of the whole thing.
Meanwhile, back in town, at this point, how many people started thinking that you had you or the wild one, they called him, I think Alan Dallas had dispatched Travis?
unidentified
Well, there were people who thought that almost immediately.
In fact, you know, in the movie, they have Travis' brother called Dan.
This is another composite character.
In reality, there were two brothers.
One's name is Duane and the other's name is Don.
And Dan was a name in between.
Combined the two brothers together.
In reality, one brother was very supportive because he believed this, because he had an experience himself a few years before that where he had seen something fairly close range in the woods while he was hunting.
The other brother was totally the opposite.
He was hot mad.
He was certain that foul play was involved, that his brother had been murdered, and there were some confrontations between him and us, the crew.
Well, I'm sorry to say it, but I have sympathy with that.
I mean, if somebody, by the way, you two, I've seen a craft myself, so I have a lot of sympathy with the story you're telling.
But if you came back with a story that, sorry, your brother's gone, may be dead, we saw him hit, he looked like he was dead, and it was aliens, you know, that story's not going to go down real easily.
unidentified
Well, that's what I say.
It's funny.
The one brother took it that way.
He believed that foul play was involved, while the other one, the one that knew me best, was completely supportive and believed everything that we said about it.
So two brothers, full brothers, took it exactly opposite from each other.
Yeah, and that was kind of the whole mode of the town there.
That summed up the entire reaction of the town.
You had those that were almost completely supportive and those that were just those who believed that we had murdered him or the whole thing was a hoax or something, but it was very divided that way, almost down the middle.
And that's what made for a real wild situation in the town there for several days, in fact, ever since, really.
So then if you're a cop, if you're a lieutenant or the sheriff or whoever, and you're getting told this story, you're going to figure this Alan Dallas character might have done in Travis.
unidentified
Right.
You know, of course he had an attitude about police, too, of course.
You know, in the movie, they made him look like Mr. Friendly.
And everybody said he's the best.
You'll be happy with this and all the rest of it.
unidentified
Today he sort of looks like Mr. Friendly, you know, 20 years later.
But back at the time, he looked pretty stern.
And he acted real stern.
And he was very intimidating.
And there was a little conference that went on before these started early in the morning.
It was a Monday morning.
And he really had us intimidated pretty bad there.
To the point to where after he went to set up the machines for the lie detector tests, some of the guys, including myself, were feeling just a little bit uncertain.
We were a little bit afraid that just by the way this guy acted and the intimidating manner in which he talked to us there, we were afraid maybe there was some government involvement.
Oh.
But, you know, it turned out that that just wasn't true.
It was just simply a feeling that we had that maybe this guy had been bought off and we were all going to fail these tests even though we were telling the truth.
Well, that's what I would have been worried about.
That I would feel intimidated probably like Kato Kalen in front of Marsha Clark or something and my pulse would start racing and the machine would say I'm lying.
All right, well, so you all took it, and, you know, the impression I got from the movie was that one of them was inconclusive, but that the others had all passed.
unidentified
Yeah, and the inconclusive one, of course, was Alan Dallas.
But not because he wasn't telling the truth.
Him being the person he was at the time and involved in a few more things than anybody actually knew at the time.
So, you know, you really get grilled, and so you don't just go through the thing one time.
What happened is Alan had gone through like two run-throughs of this thing.
And somewhere along the line, more or less in the middle of the testing series, something happened between him and the examiner where Alan got mad, thought that indeed this guy was bought off by the government for some reason, and that in combination, that feeling because of something that the examiner had said to him.
And so he gets up and he pulls himself loose from the machine and he stomps out of the room and came back.
And I think he was like the second one tested.
There was one before him and he had drawn the straw for second.
And I'd drawn straws for like fifth or something like that.
So at that point, I volunteered to go in ahead of my scheduled fifth place in line and went next after Alan because I figured that somebody needed to cool the situation down.
I knew that we couldn't just all get up and walk out because of Alan's anger, because knowing Alan's personality, I figured that his reaction there was more his personality than anything.
And we didn't want to have this thing in that way.
So I went in next, and the examiner kind of explained a little bit of what happened with Alan, but he wouldn't tell me a whole lot.
He just said, well, you know, he thought I was the next one in.
Only those guys knew who was in order because we'd drawn straws among us to go, you know, in order.
But once in there, he went ahead and convinced me by talking to me that he was on the up and up, that there was nothing going on here.
And then they kind of at the end of that day, they said, well, everybody seemed to be telling the truth, and there was one inconclusive, would you say, is Dallas?
I want to clear something up about Dallas before we go on.
Now, see, had I been you, Travis, or you, Mike, I'd have been really angry about that because the clear implication was you guys were sitting around the truck, yucking it up, drinking some beer or something, and read this story and decided to perpetrate a hoax.
That was the clear implication, wasn't it?
unidentified
Yeah, well, you know, that was the reason they threw that in there was to add suspicion.
And the movie, you know, ignored a lot of, you know, corroborating evidence and threw in a lot of suspicious things that never really happened.
Well, yeah, and I think that that may have contributed to his anxiety in the testing.
You know, because the thrust of the questioning was, do you harbor ill will towards this guy?
But, you know, even though he knew he didn't kill me, he was in a situation where, you know, if he denied ill will, he'd be lying on the test, and I would show up.
And if he admitted it, then they would just fuel the suspicions that were directed towards him.
And so I think that's kind of added to his anxiety there.
Well, you know, there were certain things that occurred in the movie that, you know, sort of symbolized things that I underwent, left you with the same kinds of emotions.
But as far as the actual events were concerned, none of it was really there, you know, except in symbolic form.
And what is the first thing that you can remember after that?
unidentified
Just pain.
I was just coming to, and I was in a lot of pain.
And I didn't come to very quickly.
It was kind of like in and out for a long time.
And I was kind of half conscious and half wondering what had happened to me.
I could hear movement around me, and I even remembered approaching the craft, but I figured that I'd been injured somehow and that I'd been taken to a hospital.
From the time that you were hit with the light until you began to raise from consciousness, unconsciousness, how much time do you guess passed?
unidentified
You know, that's something that really bothered me because, you know, the time that I recall aboard the craft, you know, even though I was hysterical and it kind of affects your perception of time, couldn't have been more than an hour or so at the most, probably less than an hour.
And in this span of time, even though I was missing for five days and six hours, I don't know where in there this conscious period occurred.
Whether I was this coming to was soon after I was taken on board or later on.
All right, back now to my guests, Mike Rogers and Travis Walton.
Hi there, you two.
We're back again.
Travis, I just got a fax from somebody in Washington, and they asked the following.
Though there are many questions I'd like to ask both Mike and Travis, my main question is, why the human type being, the one who showed Travis the star map, was never shown in the movie?
unidentified
Yeah, that's very curious, you know, and I've always been really amazed at how many times I've been interviewed over the years in which this being is just kind of like excluded from the report.
It came off that way from the very start.
And to me, you know, the amazing similarity to human is this could be the key to the whole thing.
Maybe, Travis, the movie makers thought, gee, how pedestrian or how common to show somebody who looks like a human and they wanted to just show aliens or alien-looking beings.
Could that be?
unidentified
yeah you know i i understand that the reason for it but you know uh...
that uh...
in a commercial sense but certainly you know trying to figure out what's going on here this is this seems to be a key element did uh...
As you look back on this now, Travis, do you think you were taken just because you were crazy enough to walk out there under that craft?
Do you think they decided you were a target of opportunity?
Do you have any idea what they wanted with you?
unidentified
Well, it's all just speculation, you know, but a lot of people, you know, try to suggest that they were waiting for us there, but, you know, I think that it was just kind of an accident.
At least I prefer to believe that this was just a bolt from the blue, so to speak, no unintended.
And that, you know, it's just a one-of-a-kind sort of incident that I can just put behind me and get on with my life.
When you go through something like this tonight with Mike and you sort of go back through the whole story again, is it like reliving it?
unidentified
Yeah, you know, it never failed to just get me all wrenched up inside.
And for a long time, I didn't talk about it hardly at all.
But when the movie happened, you know, I was kind of in a situation where, you know, I was being pressed for large numbers of interviews all of a sudden.
And I was afraid that it was going to just make me so sick of the subject I never could speak of it again.
It would just build up to a point where it'd get worse and worse.
But actually, it's kind of had a desensitizing effect on me.
Yeah.
Even though, you know, it's still there to a certain extent, I do, you know, feel a little easier to talk about it than I used to.
Right at the end of the movie, Mike, this is for you, they rolled something that said, and I think this audience ought to know, that another lie detector test was administered and every single one of you passed.
unidentified
Well, there were only three of us that took this new series of tests.
What happened was there was a fellow by the name of Jerry Black who caught wind of the movie being made just as the movie was beginning to be filmed back in the summer of 1992.
And Jerry Black approached the screenwriter Tracy Tormet on the phone at first, and he was trying to get Tracy to cease the movie, to chop it off, because he said that, you know, this whole thing is a hoax.
Jerry Black was a personal friend of some major skeptics, although he himself is a believer in the UFO phenomena.
And that was his first initial approach to this thing.
And then after launching eventually a whole new investigation into the thing, because Jerry Black is a UFO investigator, he came to the point to where he thought, well, what we need now is some new tests, because the first tests, everybody took them and everybody passed.
Even Alan Dallas, of course, according to the police report that finally came through after all these years, showed that Alan passed the part of the test that he took.
But what Jerry Black wanted for his own personal conclusion to his investigation was a new lie detector test for me and Travis and Alan Dallas, who he considered to be the lead characters of the thing.
Alan, because Alan was not only a lead character, but was the one who had an inconclusive test in 1975.
So in February, first week of February 1993, just a month and a half before the movie came out, we all submitted to a new lie detector test.
And Jerry Black chose the same statefully polygraphic examiner, Cyrus Gilson, who then had 20 years experience, something like that.
He had been in it all these years since then, and he was a very experienced examiner at the time in 1975.
And by this time, Saig Gilson had worked to develop equipment and machinery that is unbeatable and is computer-assisted in analysis.
And Jerry Black was very convinced that the last niche in this investigation was these new polygraph tests.
It would just polish it off.
So we finally, reluctantly but finally agreed to these tests and took them.
and Travis, as a matter of fact, took two.
He was in there all day long, taken by detector tests, two separate tests with two separate lines of tests.
Well, it is widely regarded as one of the best documented cases ever.
There's no question about it.
Let me go back just for a second to that moment when Travis phoned home, so to speak.
And how did you get the news, Mike?
I mean, it must have been pretty important to you.
Here you are, missing a friend, probably accused in the minds of many of having committed murder.
And all of a sudden, bang, Travis is back.
unidentified
It didn't happen like that with me.
I wasn't the brother-in-law he called.
Again, like I said earlier, they kind of used my character throughout the movie for a lot of things.
Even though I was present throughout this entire time and a kind of a lead character in the thing, they gave me the role of doing certain things like calling the police initially and then again being the one that Travis called from the telephone booth, you know.
Right, no, I understand that you were not the one called, but surely somebody at some point picked up the phone, called you, and said, guess what?
unidentified
Well, see, this is where I kind of got left out.
Everything that happened when Travis' brother and brother-in-law went out and picked him up, he was actually had already been transported down to Phoenix and was beginning this process of being penalized by doctors and hypnotists and psychotherapists and every expert that they could throw at him.
I didn't even know that he was returned for almost a whole day after I've actually been returned.
Nobody had even told me for a long time.
Of course, when I did learn of it, you know, I was elated.
I was thrilled.
I was relieved.
Well, you see, what happened at the time was my brother had been watching what had been happening to my mother and the way the police and the media were just unmerciful.
You know, she'd had to be sedated and the kinds of things that were being done to the family and the community and everything.
And they just felt that, you know, he said, oh, that mob is not going to get hold of this guy.
Maybe it's important for you, too, because every time you go through this, maybe a little, you know, like another piece of it or the pressure of it falls away from you a little bit.
Yeah, it does, and that's been, you know, something that's been in the center of every feeling, you know, not exactly flashback, but when I think back, you know, that's the part of it that just is the most intense.
Other than when some crazy person from the media like me comes along and talks to you, is it getting now to the point where you think about it less and less, or does it still come to you regularly?
unidentified
Well, I work at not letting it.
You know, when somebody brings it up, I never bring it up.
You know, I just never bring up the topic of conversation.
Mike, for you, in the movie, it showed your wife at the time kind of in a crisis and not believing you, and ending up crying and not believing you.
Is that about the way it happened?
unidentified
Well, she did believe me.
I think they just did that for some sort of personal drama there going on and kind of an explanation for why there was eventually a split up between us.
But as far as her wondering what to believe, that it wasn't just her, that was those, all of our relatives, Travis' family, my family.
I think everybody struggled in that way.
And my wife, at first, didn't know what to think.
And in the movie, they didn't actually show her saying that she didn't believe me.
You know, and a lot of people here in the town, you know, over the years, it's grown more and more in favor of it because as one theory after another just sort of fades away, I mean, the evidence against it comes forward.
You know, people are forced to face the facts and, you know, belief has grown.
Well, it seems to me as though the real story, as you two have told it tonight, is to me a lot more convincing and a lot less trying to throw doubt in the mind of the audience than the movie.
I mean, they threw doubt at several places with the tabloid newspaper that never happened, all the rest of it.
When you guys sat down and you watched that movie for the first time, how would you describe your feelings after seeing it?
Were you amused, upset, angry?
unidentified
Well, you know, it kind of became apparent to me in a sort of a gradual way how these departures were being made, and I fought against that as best I could.
And successfully to a certain extent, you just seen what they wanted to do.
I had my own sighting, you two, and I thought really long and really hard before I admitted it publicly because of the job I do.
And I might not do it again.
And I guess that's my question for you.
If it had not been for Travis being abducted and you all had just seen this craft and instead of losing Travis, you'd take it off back to town in the truck, would you have told this story or would you have kept your mouth shut?
unidentified
I would have kept my mouth shut.
If there was any way that I could have had it totally under myself to decide whether or not to tell what happened and could see into the future how things had happened and how I would be treated, there's no way I'd say a word about it.
I wouldn't recommend that.
It's not worth the grief that the world is going to give you.
I ended up not taking any calls because I wanted to get the story out.
I thought it was an important story.
These two strike me as very, very honest individuals.
And I was very impressed by the story.
So I'd like to take a second out to tell you that if you would like a copy of this program, and I can imagine that you would, it's probably one of the best renditions of the Travis Walton abduction.
You can get it by calling 24 hours a day, beginning right now, 1-800-917-4278.