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Jan. 31, 2018 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
51:52
Edition 330 - Travis Walton

World-famous "alien abductee" Travis Walton - his amazing and controversial story...

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes, and this is the Return of the Unexplained.
Thank you very much for all of your emails, for keeping the faith with the show, and for keeping the wheels turning here.
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If you'd like to make a donation towards development of this show online, then that would be gratefully received.
The website designed by Adam from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool is theunexplained.tv.
And if you email me with thoughts about the show, maybe a guest suggestion or whatever, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
Now, on this edition of the show, I thought that it's important for me to bring you a conversation that I've just had with Travis Walton.
A name that if you're listening to a show like this, I guess you are well familiar with.
But just in case you're not, Travis Walton is arguably the most famous alien contactee abductee in history.
And like all stories of this kind, this one is massively controversial.
It happened in 1975, and people have been disputing it since then.
People have been actively debunking it since then.
But Travis Walton has resolutely stuck to his story over all of these decades.
And I felt that no show of this kind could be complete without a conversation with Travis Walton.
So that we have done.
This edition, very slightly shorter than usual editions, but I think you'll want to hear this conversation with Travis Walton.
And then you might want to give me your views on it when you've heard it.
So, Travis Walton, coming up.
Thank you very much for your emails.
Keep them coming.
You know that they are the lifeblood of this show.
And I see all of your emails.
And, you know, a lot of them, not only comments about the show, but very useful to me.
There's Jonathan down on the south coast of England who sends me news stories that I might have missed.
And they're very useful.
Thank you, Jonathan.
And people like Brett at Cumbran in South Wales, who's just emailed to tell me that my voice was heard in a clip from a radio show that I used to do in London that was replayed this morning on the Chris Moyle show on Radio X across the UK and in London.
So that was nice.
I wouldn't have known about that if Brett in Cumbran hadn't told me.
Thanks, Brett.
That's why your emails are important to this show.
Let's get to the guest on this edition.
As I say, arguably the most famous, maybe the most controversial alien abductee contactee of all time, Travis Walton.
Here he is.
If you're listening to this show wherever in the world you are, you might be familiar with that name, because arguably Travis Walton is the greatest of all the people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and had contact.
Those who are still alive.
Of course, the most famous case was Betty and Barney Hill.
They both are sadly no longer with us, but Travis definitely is.
And he's been talking about what happened to him for 43 years now.
It happened in 1975.
Just to tell you something from his website to introduce this, if you've never heard the story before.
And I'll read it exactly as it appears.
It was the morning of Wednesday, November the 5th, 1975.
To us, the seven loggers working in Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, it was an ordinary workday.
There was nothing in that sunny fall morning to foreshadow the tremendous fear, shock, and confusion that we would all be feeling as darkness fell.
And then we moved forward a bit.
As we continued driving up the road towards the brightness, we passed in sight of the thing for an instant.
We barely got a glimpse through gnarled branches before we rolled past the opening in the trees.
What the hell was that?
I asked.
Stop, John cried out.
Stop the truck.
My God, Alan yelled.
It's a flying saucer.
Does that give you a flavor of what happened here?
Seven people out logging, as people in North America tend to do, and one of them is, the story goes, abducted by something and has five days of missing time.
They made a movie out of this.
The movie was called Fire in the Sky.
There's also a book of that title.
This is the abduction scene, which will give you a flavor of it from Fire in the Sky.
Get out of there!
What is that?
I don't know what that is.
Hey, Mike!
Terrorist, get out of there!
Terrorist, get back here!
Terror!
You feel that?
TREAS!
Kevin!
He's dead!
That's his guard, Tom!
I'm not leaving!
He's dead!
Get out of here!
What the hell are you doing?
He's dead!
Come on!
Yeah!
Let's go!
Well, that is the abduction scene from the movie Fire in the Sky, dramatic there.
All but one of the guys in the truck, Travis, the man we're about to speak with here, goes forward, as you might.
I think I might.
You know, you'd think, this is once in a lifetime.
If I die doing this, at least I've been doing something important for humanity.
Just quickly, before we get to the man himself in the U.S., this is part of the trailer for the Travis Walton documentary.
Grandma, this is Travis.
I'm back.
I need help.
When I did hear that he had been returned, it was almost as unbelievable as the original thing.
I just looked at my mom and says, I told you we didn't kill him.
Travis Walton reappeared after several days with a bizarre store, the body wide in an unidentified flying object.
People were desperate to explain it away.
Why are you sticking up with Travis for all this time?
You know this really didn't happen.
What happened to Travis after we took off in that truck?
I can't tell you.
I hated Travis for looking at this.
My whole world just tore up, but I believe every word Travis said about it.
He's never lied to me about nothing.
It's a net negative.
We lost our jobs in the immediate aftermath.
And now you're not able to talk about it with anyone because you know that they're going to laugh at you.
They're going to look at you like you're Crazy.
If you don't come out and tell your story, somebody else is going to tell it for you.
There's a degree of responsibility.
Certainly, I have to accept the bad.
If I can direct what's happened in a way that I can make something good happen in the world, I'm looking for it.
You are about to hear one of the most hair-raising stories I would venture to suggest of your life.
In the United States, Travis Walton, welcome to The Unexplained.
Thanks for coming on here, Travis.
Thanks for having me.
I think you and I spoke many, many years ago, only briefly on another radio show.
There's no reason why you should remember this, but I wanted to get you on here and expose this story to a British audience and let them hear you live as you are now.
Travis Walton, whereabouts in the States are you?
Well, I'm in Arizona, you know, the southwest part of the nation.
And Arizona is not 100% desert.
A lot of people might have the idea there's a lot of desert here, but there's also the largest Ponderosa pine forest in the world here.
So, you know, that's the reason we were logging, you know, or in the tall timber.
I think it's going to be a surprise to a lot of people because they kind of think of it as Bonanza Country.
Well, yeah, yeah, Ponderosa Pine.
All right.
But, you know, this is an incredible event.
It had just the most tremendous impact on the lives of seven men.
Now, in the movie, they reduced the crews of like five people, I think, but there were seven of us out there.
All right.
And those people were Mike Rogers, Alan Dawes, John Goulette, Kenneth Peterson, Steve Pierce, who we'll hear a little clip of a little later, and Dwayne Smith.
You were a bunch of people back in 1975 given a contract or a job to do some logging, yes?
Yes.
And we'd completed quite a bit of the contract at that point.
Okay.
And talk to me about the day then.
It was November the 5th, 1975.
Was there anything unusual about that day?
Was there anything that indicated that something beyond the normal might be happening to you at some point?
Just an ordinary workday, just trying to, you know, well, you know, probably the one thing that was we were working longer hours.
But, you know, we'd been doing that for a number of weeks, you know, because we knew winter weather was coming and that would make the roads impassable.
So we wanted to get as much of it done before that time as we could.
So you'd worked a full day and you all pile into the truck to go back to where you were staying.
What happened?
Well, we're just driving along.
You know, I saw this little glow coming through the trees.
And at first, it wasn't anything alarming.
It was just, I wonder what the heck that is.
You know, we'd heard some shots in the distance.
It was deer hunting season.
So I thought maybe hunters or campers up there on the ridge.
But what we were seeing just wasn't fitting in with any scenario.
The light was from higher than where ground level would be.
So we thought about maybe the sunset or the moon, but the moon was in the other direction.
It wasn't a camp tent because it was, you know, from higher up.
Thought about a plane crash.
Didn't have a whole lot of time to speculate on it.
Was it hovering or moving, Travis?
It didn't seem to be moving.
I could just see light coming through the trees.
It could have been moving in a small area there.
But we were progressing up this road, and I could see up ahead where the light, there was a break in the trees, and some of the light was shining across the road.
I said, Mike, hurry up, get up there before we can see what it is, you know.
And so it didn't take very long before we came into that break in the trees and could see up into the clearing there, and there it was.
And it was just the most amazing sight.
It was just, it was stunning.
So you came to a clearing, you looked up, and you saw more detail of this thing.
Now, people who report UFOs and craft above them seldom report any noise or sound.
Were you able to hear anything?
It wasn't immediately apparent, but when I threw open the door and started towards it, I could hear the sound it was making.
It was a very complex range of tones from the lowest to the highest.
Really hard to describe.
But I believe every one of the crew heard the sound it was making.
And they said they felt a kind of vibration in the truck, sort of maybe like a charge in the air.
So what made you, look, I explained to my audience here in the UK that I would probably, because I'm unusual, be the person who gets out and wants to have a look.
Because, hell, it could be something important.
I'm a very curious person.
And, you know, if I expire doing this, well, at least I've been doing something useful.
What went through your mind when you were the one who decided when the truck stopped and when you saw this thing that you wanted to get out?
Steve and Alan later in separate interviews said that to them it looked like I was under outside control, like I was in some kind of a trance.
But if you could see the look on everybody's face, everybody was like entranced.
I mean, it was just the most mesmerizing sight.
And to me, it felt like it was my own idea.
It just felt like some kind of a spontaneous something that surprised even me, that I would just, you know, try to get a little closer look and expecting it to take off before I, you know, went very far.
I thought it would be something that, you know, I was just, you know, catching a glimpse of it and it'd be gone in a flash.
Because, you know, very often we're driving through the woods and we'll see, you know, wild horses or a bear or something like that.
But if you call the crew's attention to it and get them to look in the right direction, you know, they're lucky if they even turn to look in time to see it.
So that was kind of my thinking.
I was thinking, you know, if this thing would take off before I got that close.
But did you then, at that stage, I suppose I'm asking, at what stage did you start to think this is not a helicopter?
This is not a plane?
No, before I even threw open the door, Alan yelled out, it's a spaceship or a flying saucer.
I don't remember which one, but I think it was him that said it.
And I mean, like, nobody needed to be told.
I mean, it was just, you know, this metallic disc hovering there, glowing and with this incredible aura around it.
You've got to have some kahunas, though, to be the one who wants to get out and have a look.
You know, I told you why I would, and you tell me why you wanted to, I mean, you moved towards the thing.
I was very curious.
I did want to see it up close, but I really didn't think it was going to stick around too long.
You know, I'd done some risky things in my life.
You know, I was in that stage, kind of a phase I was going through.
How old were you then, Translate?
I was more cautious.
How old were you?
I was 22 at the time.
Okay.
So you were old enough to know what you were doing.
Yeah, I'd done some amateur boxing.
I'd, you know, been a bull rider.
You know, you know, some things that most people don't do, but, you know, martial arts.
Well, they prepare you for life, but I don't know whether they would prepare you for this.
So there you are.
No, this was beyond anything like that.
So there you are staring up at the thing.
Staring up at the thing.
What did it look like?
Well, it was smooth as glass.
And, you know, my impression, you know, is something the other guys said independently in interviews.
I read the stuff that they told the deputies that went into the reports that went into the sheriff's file.
I mean, everybody had the impression that it was beautiful.
It was just, it was, that's kind of a strange thing, a strange term for something that's frightening at the same time.
Well, some people who've seen these things have described them as looking a little bit like a chandelier hanging in the sky.
Well, it was giving off this glow, and the glow wasn't so bright you couldn't see the surface clearly.
You could see it was smooth as glass, and at the same time, the surface was so smooth that you could see the trees reflected in it.
If you've ever been watching television and you're seeing light that's coming in the window at the same time you're seeing the light that's coming from the TV.
Right, so it was like that.
The year is 1975.
It's November.
Travis Walton and a team of loggers discover something hanging in the sky.
They drive to a clearing in the forest and they see something that they think is a flying saucer.
That's how they describe it.
One of them gets out of the truck, Travis Walton.
And he didn't know at that point, but he was about to etch his name and this story into history for 43 years.
And he is still talking about it now.
He's live to us here at Talk Radio.
So, Travis, this thing was hanging there.
It was reflective.
And as you say, it was almost beautiful.
Did you get the sense that there was any intelligence behind it?
Something that was aware of you?
Oh, well, definitely.
I can't say that it reacted to me, but I definitely reacted to it.
I was looking up at it like about a 45, and by this time, the crew was working themselves into pretty much of a frenzy, yelling at me, cussing me out, telling me to get back in the truck.
I wanted to get the heck out of there.
Well, in the movie, they're shouting at you, you know, crazy son of a something, get back in here.
Oh, yeah, all that happened just like that.
That was pretty accurate.
But I was looking up at an angle, and suddenly the sound got louder, and it started to move.
And that sort of startled me.
So I just jumped for cover, which, you know, in this case was actually a little bit down and forward because there was a pile of logging debris there.
So I crouched down behind this log, and they were saying, let's go, let's go, let's go.
And I really didn't need to be told.
I was just, you know, that was just an impulse to get down behind that log.
But I was planning on running back to the truck.
But when I stood up, I felt this shock, a numbing, electrical, sort of a stunning shock, like I'd been hit by a truck or something.
It was so powerful, I immediately lost consciousness.
But the crew told me later that they immediately started yelling at each other that it killed him.
He's dead.
It was that violent.
It was so powerful that it threw me through the air 15 or 20 feet.
And, you know, John said that my body fell like a sack of meat, like there wasn't a bone in my body.
Were you injured?
15 to 20 feet being thrown is a long way.
I mean, it would have an effect on my body.
Yeah, you would think.
They took off at that point.
What they put the vehicle into reverse and they left you there?
Yeah, they spun out and drove off.
It wasn't reverse.
It was straight ahead.
And when they left you, were you unconscious?
Yeah, I didn't know anything about what happened then.
Now, you know that there are many debunkers and people have spent decades debunking your story and also decades supporting you and going to see you at many events that you've appeared at.
But some of the debunkers say, well, you'd been drinking beer in the truck and you'd actually passed out from drinking beer.
Well, that's totally ridiculous.
Working in the logwoods where you're falling trees and working with chainsaws, which can just rip your leg off in a split second, you know, you've got to have all of your wits about you or you're going to get hurt.
You can't be drunk because you're using chainsaws, but machinery.
Absolutely.
And you've got to be totally sober.
Very often people who are totally sober get seriously, seriously hurt.
And just everybody on the crew had been hurt in that way at some time.
And drinking just was not allowed.
And I think that it's kind of really reaching to try to say that seven people got so drunk they all hallucinated.
I mean, you know, it was also, you know, goes along with the theory that this was all a drug hallucination.
And that's just as ridiculous.
Seven people are not going to have the identical hallucination no matter what the cause might be.
And plus, what really is the point that the debunkers ignore is that I had blood and urine samples put through the county medical examiner's drug screen, which proved there was not a trace of any drug in my body.
Right.
I'm glad we dealt with that point because if you go online, you've seen the stuff yourself.
Those are the things that are claimed.
So we've dealt with that.
There you are on the ground.
Your friends left you behind in a semi-conscious state.
How do you feel about that?
I hold them no grudge.
You know, some of the guys used to come with me and talk, and people would actually stand up in the audience and call them cowards for doing that.
And I say, no way.
You know, that was the most sensible reaction at that point.
They thought you were dead, I think, didn't they?
Yeah, they thought they were dead.
Why risk anyone's life to save a dead man?
And, you know, Mike's the driver of the truck.
He's the boss.
And it's his responsibility, the lives of the remaining crew.
So it was the best thing to do is just get the rest of the crew to safety.
So they've gone.
You were there.
You came to.
What happened then?
When I came to, I was on board the craft, so I don't know how that happened.
Very often, artists' depictions have me being beamed up or levitated or something.
Yeah, I've seen some of those sketches online.
They show you being almost plucked by a beam.
Well, I don't know anything about that.
All I know is when I woke up, I was in a lot of pain and really very foggy in the head.
Something definitely very wrong with me still at that point.
And how clearly do you, do these recollections that we're about to go into, because this is you supposedly on this craft, how, just as, you know, if you go on holiday to Spain, you can recall it in pretty clear detail.
You know, most of us can anyway.
Is the recollection of what happened on board this craft, you say, how clear is that?
It's very clear, you know.
Of course, my attention was riveted on these creatures once I became aware that they were there.
I didn't spend a lot of time just musing and gazing around and you know looking into the corners and that sort of thing I was terrified by these beings because Well, they were humanoid, two arms, two legs, a head on top, but they were small, hairless, with very large eyes.
Now, you know, debunkers and skeptics are very fond of saying, well, an alien creature is not going to have two arms and two legs.
It's going to look like a cockroach or an octopus.
But I, you know, I've had 40 years to think about this, and biological science would not support such a thing.
You know, a tool-using creature that's going to build a craft that can convey them across the universe is going to be very human-like.
And it's just a rule that you see throughout biology, that form follows function, and the life process that they're engaging in is what shapes the creature, and vice versa.
The way people talk.
Everything that comes to live in the sea comes to look very fish-like, even if it's a mammal or a bird or a reptile or a amphibian.
The thing that works is two fins in the front and one big one in the back.
Some representations show them as having elongated heads, six long fingers, very spindly limbs.
Is that how they were?
No, no, it was stubbier than that.
There was no elongated.
The cranium was very large, but it wasn't like stretched out.
It was just large.
What was going through your head?
If it was me in that situation, I think it would be abject terror.
How about you?
Total.
Total, abject terror.
You know, I associated the feeling that I had.
I felt mortally wounded.
I felt like there was something seriously wrong inside.
And I connected this sensation with them.
And, you know, on years of reflection, that might not have been an accurate connection, but that's the way I felt at the time, that I associated this feeling trapped.
It was very dimly lit and difficult to breathe.
It was humid, heavy atmosphere.
Okay, and did it have a smell to it?
Anything that you could regard?
Was it plastic?
I don't recall a particular odor, but I think, you know, my injuries at that point might have impaired my sense of smell temporarily.
So they've got you there, and obviously you're terrified because you would be.
When did they begin to communicate with you?
Well, they didn't really communicate.
They were heading towards me and extending their hands.
And I took that as a threatening gesture.
But I had a medical doctor at one of my talks that suggested that this stare that they were putting on me wasn't meant to be threatening.
That what he said was that the eye sockets are the largest opening in the front of the skull.
And if they are projecting telepathy, mental mind control, that the stare might be connected to that.
And that they were trying to join forces to regain control of me.
And apparently it wasn't working.
And it may be that this blast of energy that hit me had temporarily scrambled the neural circuits in a way to where their normal means of control weren't functioning.
So you were a 22-year-old guy in a state of confusion who'd been through an experience like that.
They are looking at you, but they're not communicating with you.
What happened?
Well, I was planning fighting my way past them.
The only door out of that little space was behind them, and I was planning to fight my way past them.
I grabbed the biggest thing I could find and flailed through the air at them and screamed threats.
But before I could actually make a move towards them, they just abruptly, simultaneously turned and went out of the room.
So they left you there?
And the next thing on my mind was escape.
Somehow escape.
And were you conscious of this thing being in space or in the sky?
Where did you think you were?
Well, I subconsciously just assumed it was where it was when I first saw it.
In hindsight, I really doubt it was anywhere near there.
But at that point, I thought, if I can just open a door, I can drop to the ground and escape this thing.
So this is not at all like the story of Betty and Barney Hill, where they had communication and they had experiments done on them, and they were shown a map of a star system, parts of which we hadn't yet discovered at that point, as far as the story goes.
Your experience was not like that.
It almost seemed as if you'd blindsided them.
They had to do something with you because you were maybe posing some kind of threat, or maybe you were discovering things about them they didn't want discovered.
So they supposedly beamed you aboard the craft, but didn't have much of a sense of what to do with you.
Is that so?
Well, you know, it took me years to figure this out, and it is just my own guesswork.
But I really do think that what happened there is when I stood up, my head became the closest thing to that craft for the first time.
And I think there was some kind of an energy discharge that might not necessarily have even been some sort of a weapon or anything that was actually fired.
It was just a discharge.
The feeling, the charge in the air that was making everybody's hair stand on end, was probably some kind of an electrical effect.
And we did find effect on the growth of the trees at a later date that supports that theory.
So maybe something to do with the propulsion that they might have been using to make that thing move.
But there you are in a situation that would terrify an awful lot of people.
Of course you were.
But I suppose also going through your mind, as would go through my mind, would be the feeling and the thought, all the stuff I've seen in the movies, it's all true.
Yeah, and the movies do tend to emphasize the invading monsters take on alien beings.
And I've had a lot of time to think about it.
I'm totally 180 from that at this point.
But at that time, the idea, well, even the skeptics at that time thought that it could be an accidental discharge.
Some of the major debunkers actually wrote elaborate explanations to where sightings by pilots were actually due to a static discharge that builds up in the surface of aircraft just from flying at high speed through dry air.
Is it true that the Air Force had been maneuvering in those areas?
They've been doing exercises in that area around about the US.
No, that's not true.
That's not true.
That was an attempt to dismiss this whole thing as us mistaking an Air Force helicopter for a UFO.
And this thing was below treetop level.
It was so close we couldn't possibly be mistaken.
And, you know, a helicopter makes a very characteristic noise.
And the spread on those rotors would be so large that there's no way they wouldn't be hitting the trees.
Whoever, you know, come up with that explanation wrote an elaborate debunking and just filled and riddled with incorrect information, things that just are not true.
So the aliens had you there.
They left the room.
Maybe they went out to have a conflab about what to do with you.
Who knows?
And in the meantime, you're thinking, how do I get out of here?
Yeah, and so I went looking for a way out and struggling to open a door or manipulate controls to open a door.
And none of that was successful.
So you're lying there.
You can't get out.
What happened then?
Well, in my efforts to open a door, it may have actually moved the craft.
I don't know.
It might have just moved a map.
I didn't feel any movement of the craft.
But a man came in.
A man?
Yes, and at that point, took him to be someone that was there to rescue me, you know, some sort of a military or, you know, NASA, some sort of a person that was aware of what had happened and had come to save me from these monsters.
So these aliens had sent him a human being.
Yeah.
Some people I've heard many people, you know, suggest that they somehow were able to simulate a human-looking being just because that would be more reassuring to me.
And they were unable to regain control in that way.
And, you know, what further supports the idea that the neural circuits were jumbled was the EEG, the brainwave scan that I underwent after I was returned.
There was a thorough medical exam, and there was an anomalous pattern there that might be further evidence that this blast of energy that hit me in the head could have interfered with their ability to communicate with me.
Oh, right, but there was a person there.
What was this person like?
And presumably you said something to him, and he would have said something to you.
No, he looked to be an authority.
He didn't seem frightened, but he didn't seem inclined to answer my babbling, my pleading, my screaming, all this about trying to find out what was the nature of my situation there.
But when he wanted me to go with him, I figured, well, yeah, that's exactly what I want.
Let's get out of here.
So what words did he use?
Did he say, follow me this way?
No, he just took me by the arm and led me.
He didn't speak.
And that was kind of disturbing, but I thought maybe it was because he had this helmet on his head that it couldn't be heard with it on.
Right.
And did you say to him, as I would say to him, how do I get out of here?
Yeah, well, he takes me out through what I think was like an airlock.
And when we got on the other side of that, the air out there was definitely much cooler, fresher, easier to breathe.
So it was on the ground at that point, if he took you through an airlock?
Or you were still in the craft?
Yeah, it was parked at that point inside of a big hangar-like enclosure.
It was either a huge building or part of a larger craft.
It had a ceiling that curved down to form one wall.
It was kind of like a quarter of a cylinder on its side.
So you think you were in the mothership then?
Well, that's possible.
If it wasn't a hangar, a building somewhere, it was a larger shift somewhere.
So the thought that you would have would be you're not out of danger at that point.
He wasn't leading you.
No, I was still pretty anxious, anxious about, you know, where are you taking me?
What's going on?
But because he looked human, I went with him.
And when he left me with some other people who weren't wearing helmets, I thought, okay, these people can answer my question.
And I was still pretty hysterical, you know, out of control.
And, you know, the first thing you would have said to some ordinary people who were up there, we'll talk about what they were like.
But, you know, you would have said, I'm just an ordinary 22-year-old logger.
Get me out of here.
Well, what's going on?
What are they doing with me?
What were those creatures?
Those kinds of questions.
And these people, were they people like you?
Yeah.
They were all dressed in a blue uniform, coveralls.
But other than that, they looked like Caucasian people.
So, Travis, there you are.
You've been taken to what looks like the mothership by a human being, and there you find other human beings in blue uniforms.
What are you thinking then?
Well, I, you know, thought there was a rescue at first, but then when they wouldn't answer my questions, they were maintaining this silence.
That was spooky.
That was really weird.
You know, why not?
Why not?
You know, I could hear my own screams.
It's not like the sound wasn't carrying.
Were you screaming?
Well, I was babbling at them.
And you're sure you weren't dreaming?
Oh, I'm sure I wasn't dreaming.
They wanted me to lay down on this table, and they were going to force me down.
And I started to resist because, you know, I sort of given up on this idea that this was necessarily a benign situation.
You know, what are you doing with me?
And I started to resist, but I was still in a pretty weakened condition.
And they were pretty strong.
They got me down on that table fairly easily.
And I was in good shape.
I'm normally a pretty strong person.
You can't be a weakling to be a logger.
You've got to be fairly strong.
So did you try and fight your way out of it?
Yeah, I did.
And I got one hand free just long enough to pull this mask away.
One of them put a mask over my face, but before I could pull it away, I just blacked out.
It wasn't painful or anything, but I just lost consciousness.
And that was the last thing I knew until I woke up outside Heber, the town near where this happened.
A lot of time went by, but I didn't know that at the time.
I'm trying to put this delicately.
Did you get a sense when you woke up that you had been experimented on?
Did you have any scars?
Did you feel that?
I was really frightened about that, you know, and for a long time afterwards, especially immediately afterwards, I was very concerned about medical after effects.
So my brother's immediate instinct was to get me medical help, but it was so crazy in this area that was a madhouse, that was generalized panic, that he knew that wasn't going to be able to be done here.
So he took me to Phoenix.
So hold on.
You recovered, you went to a phone, you called your brother.
Yeah.
And among the theories to try to explain it away is that I was never at Heber.
I was never calling my family, blah, blah, blah.
I was really someplace else.
And at this point, had five is this the point at which you discovered five days had elapsed?
It came in the course of the conversation with my brother.
He was talking about how my mother had been handling it, and it was then he realized that I thought it was still the same night.
He said, Travis, feel your face.
You've been gone for five days.
And when you realized that, how did you feel?
I reached up and felt the beard and the shock, and I looked at my watch, saw that the date had changed.
And, you know, I'd been trying to tell him what I'd been through, but at that point, I just couldn't.
I sort of broke down.
I couldn't really.
And in the meantime, your six colleagues had reported your disappearance.
And if I read this right, the police were starting to suspect that maybe they had done something to you.
Yeah, they thought, well, maybe these guys, there was a fight out there and that they had murdered me and hidden my body out there and had to come up with some explanation for my disappearance.
Well, you can imagine somebody in that situation could probably come up with a better explanation.
He went over the hill to use the restroom and the bear got him or something.
To think that a lion or a wild animal carried me off would be a better explanation.
It doesn't seem like a very good story to cover up for a murder.
And in the meantime, the police then, when you appear, much presumably to the relief of the other six guys, got you together and wanted to question you about this.
And from what I've read about this...
And, you know, that's just the way lawmen think.
But you were all questioned once you were all back together again.
You know, presumably the other six were quite relieved to see you because it kind of got them off the hook.
But then you had a hell of a story to try and explain.
And you all stuck to the story, didn't you?
You didn't.
The temptation would be to say this never happened just for a quiet life, but you stuck to the story, all of you.
Well, yeah, the sheriff brought in the state police lie detector expert.
This guy was an experienced officer, an experienced interrogator, and who came in totally skeptical, believing that he was going to discover a murder.
And only his testing persuaded him otherwise.
And he stands by that to this day.
Roberto and others have raised this point.
The lie detector test, I thought that there was an initial lie detector test that was done when the National Inquirer sent a team, a reporting team up there.
And the story goes that you were all so shaken up, you particularly, that they had a psychiatrist brought in to help you.
And at that point, when you were in that state, you were given a lie detector test, which you failed.
Is that wrong?
No, that's not true.
Of course, you know, they love to spin the story how they want.
The National Inquire did write up the story, but that had nothing to do with the lie detector test.
The initial test on the crew was given by a state police officer who concluded they were telling the truth.
Now, every one of those guys has passed the test.
And the president of the American Polygraph Association, the head guy, said that although no single test is 100%, if you have six people passing tests on the same issue, the odds would be a million to one of there being any mistake in the testing.
Now, that was back when there were six tests passed, but now there's been 16 passed tests.
I've taken and passed five tests from three different officers of the law, people with years of experience in law enforcement, which are considered the best trained.
And you passed all five of those tests.
Have you ever failed a lie detector test about this?
Not a real test.
There was a game show where the guy, you know, his job was to keep the show from having to pay any prize money, and so nobody ever won on that show.
And before I was ever on the show, a group of court-recognized polygraph experts attacked the show and said the results you would get with the methods that are being employed here would be no better than flipping a coin.
And there was, you know, all of this attack had nothing to do with me because this controversy happened before I was ever, quote, tested.
They broke every single law of polygraphy.
All of the top experts in the field have said that the show was basically a fraud.
If somebody offered you a polygraph test now to test the veracity of the story, would you take it?
Well, my best five is if five isn't enough.
The last one was with a guy who had years of experience doing tests for New Mexico State Police, the New Mexico prison system, and even the United States Marshals.
And this was more recent, and it was after that game show.
And the results were 100% clear, 100% past.
And with more modern methods and more refined methods are better than anything yet developed.
The debunkers say that you spent the five missing days imbibing substances, they claim, in a house at a place called Concho, Arizona.
Well, that was all made up.
The guy that was making this claim was claiming to be the sheriff's nephew.
I asked the sheriff about him.
He said, I don't know who that is.
And he claimed to know my son and my nephew.
And they didn't know who he was.
And we got out the school yearbook.
Anyway, he's pretending to know stuff.
He says Conscient was five miles from Snowflake.
Well, it's not.
It's like 15 or 20, you know, and just detail after detail after detail.
The whole thing with this, that it was shown that I was under the influence of drugs, the exact opposite was proven.
And as you told me at the top of this, you were tested for those, and they were...
And this was the county medical examiner, very official, and they've got very refined methods.
They'll find one molecule of anything, and there wasn't a trace of any drug in my body.
Did you have any questions from men in black?
Did anybody from Washington come and see you?
Well, they certainly did harass the men on the crew.
And, you know, John reports coming out of his house and seeing these guys in the government car sitting down the way and watching the house.
And, you know, Mike found out later that his neighbors had rented out there upstairs to the Fed.
So there was quite a bit of...
Definitely.
And I've had some other reports from sources I'd rather protect that there was quite a bit of observation going on.
The government knows this really happened.
Only the debunkers attempt to make the case otherwise.
Now, whether they're doing this at the behest of the government, I don't know.
But as you know, here last couple of weeks, the Pentagon has admitted that they've been seriously researching this topic as genuine for decades.
So they're in possession of video and artifacts.
Well, there's certainly what was reported in the New York Times.
I spoke to Leslie Kane, one of the reporters on that story, on this show exclusively in Europe, and they were talking about this project that existed officially for, I think, five years.
Was that 2007 to 2012 with a $22 million budget?
And the person who was running it went public on it to the New York Times, and they did lots of research, and apparently there was more to come out.
So in a way, you're caught up in this whole web.
You've had a unique experience.
How have you been able to live your life having been through something like this?
How did you adjust to getting back to normal?
Well, there were a number of years where I didn't want to talk about it.
And then the news media said, well, he must have something to hide.
He won't talk about it.
So as soon as I talk about it, oh, he's a publicity seeker, so he can't win one way or the other.
Let's hear a little bit of it.
I just found out that when there was false stories out, it was just best to get out there and meet it head on and set the record.
Well, you continued to talk about it, and you've been very consistent about it.
But one of your colleagues that night, Steve Pierce, didn't speak about it, or I think to you for 35 years.
Here's a little clip of him speaking quite recently about what happened.
I went 35 years without talking to Travis, my wife and my kid.
And they think this is important for me to get back in and start talking about it.
So I got back in it a couple of years ago.
Besides, you know, I want my side of the story told, too.
Steve Pierce, who was in the truck with you, how have you left it together as a bunch of people?
How do you all get on now?
Are you still in contact with me?
Well, you know, we weren't a group of buddies at the time.
You know, the debunkers like to have this conspiratorial, you know, close-knit bunch.
But, you know, there was actually quite a bit of friction amongst the crew at the time.
We weren't a group of buddies and didn't really, all of us associate as a group when we're off the job.
Are you friends now, all of you?
Well, Alan Dallas passed away.
There were periods of time where I'd lose track of these guys.
I mean, they got on with their lives and went elsewhere.
I had a former police officer who had a friend who was a private detective finally tracked down Dwayne Smith, one of the guys on the crew.
And I got and did a phone interview with him, and he agreed that he would come out and speak with me.
But before that came to pass, he passed away, died of a heart attack.
That's very sad.
Very finally, the seconds are ticking down here.
I've only got half a minute.
It's been claimed that as a bunch of people, you created this as a ruse because you were behind on the logging contract.
I've only got seconds.
How do you answer that?
Absolutely didn't happen.
It was never brought up when the contract was defaulted.
Mike Rogers went in and got signed affidavits from the contracting officers that not only was this never brought up, it would not, could not have benefited Mike in any way anyway.
Travis Walton, thank you for that.
If people want to read your story, you have quite a good website.
Just in a couple of seconds, what's that website?
TravisWalton.com.
Well, I've got a feeling that Travis Walton's story will remain controversial for as long as he is alive and as long as I am alive and probably beyond both of those dates.
A remarkable story, always controversial.
Travis Walton, tell me what you thought about that.
And one of the ironies of this is that he sent me a copy of his book, Fire in the Sky.
And sadly, it arrived 24 hours too late.
But I've heard him interviewed so many times and read so much about him.
I felt I knew which questions to ask anyway.
Let's hope that I was right there.
More great guests coming up in the pipeline here on the Unexplained as we go into February.
Your suggestions and thoughts are always welcome.
But until next, we meet here on the Unexplained.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London, and please stay safe.
Stay calm.
Above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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