Travis Walton: One of the Most Sinister Abduction Cases of All Time
As you may know, we at Mega Curious love stories about alien abductions and we already share a lot of them here - you can find a selection through this link. For these days, one of our readers sent our newsroom an intriguing case. This is the account of a guy named Travis Walton, who allegedly had a very sinister encounter with extraterrestrial beings on a cold November night in 1975.
Weird sighting
Travis worked as a lumberjack and was serving in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, Arizona, in the company of six other men: Mike Rogers, Ken Peterson, Allen Dallis, John Goulette, Dwayne Smith, and Steve Pierce. The group had been hired by the US Forest Service to perform a variety of tasks, including pruning shrubs and small trees in an area of more than 1, 200 acres near the village of Snowflake, where the men lived.
However, as the work schedule was delayed, the men decided to take longer shifts, starting tasks around 6 am and ending only after sunset. Then, on November 5, around 6 pm, the group boarded a pickup truck and, as they returned to Snowflake to rest, the woodcutters spotted an intense light coming from behind a hill.
Of course they got supercurious and decided to approach to find out what the glow was after all - and that's when they spotted a UFO hovering about twenty feet above the ground. According to their testimonies, the object was disc-shaped, about 6 meters in diameter and 2.5 meters high, and had a series of dark vertical dividing lines on its surface.
The group stopped the truck, and Walton - then 22 - jumped out and ran to meet the flying saucer as his astonished companions shouted for him to return. As he later told him, he didn't do that to prove he was braver than his colleagues, but simply because he didn't want to miss the opportunity to see an alien ship up close. We think the justification is fair!
Then, when Walton was practically underneath the object, the disc began to spin and make turbine-like noises. He even tried to hide behind a rock, but suddenly the object emitted an intense bluish green light and Walton remembers that it felt as if his body had been electrocuted.
Disappearance
Walton does not remember what happened next, but his companions - who claim to have witnessed it all! - they said that his body began to levitate, arched backwards, and was about 3 meters from the ground. Then Walton was thrown away like a puppet, and his colleagues, terrified and believers that he had died, fled in the truck for fear of being next.
However, after making sure they were not being followed, the men started an argument and decided to return to retrieve his friend's body. Only, when he returned to the spot where they had last seen Walton, he was no longer there. The group even scoured the area for clues, but after finding absolutely nothing, they began to consider the idea that it had been taken by the occupants of the ship.
The companions called on Snowflake's authorities to report Walton's disappearance and revealed the details of what they had witnessed. Of course, the police doubted the reports, especially after going to the scene of the incident and concluding that there was nothing to prove that a flying saucer had been there.
Investigations
It was not long before word of what had happened began to spread - and reporters, curious and, of course, ufologists, began to poke around. And as investigations continued, a search team was organized, and even helicopters and horse-mounted men joined in the effort.
However, despite all the mobilization over the days, the hope of finding Walton alive was dwindling as temperatures in the region dropped below freezing overnight. In fact, investigators even suspected that the UFO story had been invented to cover up an accident - or perhaps even a murder. However, Walton's companions even underwent polygraph testing and the results indicated that they told the truth.
Then, on November 10, five days after the disappearance, Walton's sister Alison's phone started ringing. It was shortly after midnight, and the call was answered by Grant Neff, Alison's husband. At the other end of the line, the lumberjack explained that he was at a gas station, was injured and needed help.
Grant found Walton lying in one of the phone booths at the post he had indicated and said that his brother-in-law was downcast, confused, had no idea he had been missing for so long, and kept talking about scary humanoids.
Memories
Walton said that after being struck by the beam, he woke up inside the ship, lying on a stretcher in what appeared to be a ward, and found that there were a number of tubes attached to his body. In addition, there were a trio of beings with him that Walton described as having disproportionately large heads, extremely white skin, and huge eyes. The creatures were short in stature, devoid of protruding ears, mouths, and noses, and had no hair.
The woodcutter said that although he was in great pain and very weak, he panicked and managed to escape from the room where he was. Then, as he raced inside the ship trying to find a way out, he came across another flying saucer crewman: a 10-foot-tall blond man wearing a helmet and space suits.
According to Walton, this man took him outside the ship, and there he discovered that he was in a kind of hangar where there were other flying saucers. The mysterious crewman led him into a room, where he saw other human-looking beings. In a panic, the lumberjack kept asking questions, but his hosts said nothing.
Then the beings delicately put a mask over his face - and all Walton remembers after that is watching the ship pull away as he woke up on the side of a road. It was then that he walked to the gas station, called his sister's house and passed out in the phone booth.
Controversy
The incident generated huge repercussions and was largely covered by the media. So much so that the story of Walton and his companions eventually became known as the best documented alien abduction case of all time. And it was to be expected! After all, the whole thing was supposed to be closely witnessed by the lumberjack's six colleagues - and they even underwent and passed the polygraph test.
In fact, Walton has passed the test on other occasions, including at the request of UFO organizations. He has also appeared on numerous television shows and, along with his comrades, received a cash prize from a sensational tabloid called The National Enquirer for the "best UFO case of the year."
In 1978 Walton released a book recounting his experience, and the case turned into a movie - "Fire in the Sky" from 1993. However, despite the fact that the lumberjack has become a celebrity and many people believe his story, there was no shortage of critics. saying that it was all a well-crafted scam.
According to skeptics, there are numerous inconsistencies in the case, and polygraph tests were not performed correctly. In addition, critics argue that, concurrently, two weeks before Walton disappeared, a popular US television channel presented a drama about the abduction of the couple Betty and Barney Hill, and that the woodcutter's disappearance was orchestrated to take advantage of the talk that the program generated.
Travis Walton goes on to defend the version that he was actually abducted that cold night of 1975. Moreover, his case still generates a lot of interest, and to this day he is invited to give interviews and attend meetings of ufologists around the world.
* The Mega Curioso team would like to thank our reader Wérickson Santos for the suggested agenda.
