Travis Walton  The Travis Walton abduction case from 1975 is arguably the biggest, most investigated account of alien/ufo abduction ever. Books have been written about it, newspaper articles, a movie made and internet debates and discussion abound. So when Planet Flipside and our sister publication High Strangeness, got word that Travis himself would be appearing in Rachel, Nevada for a book signing before moving on to Alamo where he would deliver a talk - it seemed the perfect opportunity to despatch our in-house encyclopedia of all things 'UFO', Mary Whyte, to catch up with him there.

As UFO researchers, there are times (after investigation) when objectivity has to be placed to one side and subjectivity embraced with an 'I believe' or an 'I don't believe' - after 35 years of researching the Walton case our standpoint before despatching Mary was one of 'We believe - but maybe there's more to the story, even after all this time?'  We weren't disappointed.

Rachel welcomed Mary and reinforced its reputation as one of the friendliest places around, especially at the renowned Little A'Le'Inn. There, Walton and his wife Dana dutifully signed copies of his book and their affable manner disarmed folks and made them at ease. The main event from the standpoint of High Strangeness however was the talk he would deliver in Alamo. A quick drive down Nevada 375 (ET Highway) and Mary (as most good ufo researchers are) was ready to listen.

Fire In The Sky

Travis, of course, dealt with the abduction itself and recalled most of the events which have long been in the public domain since 1975. He was up and speaking for about 60 minutes at the Alamo meeting. His talk began with an old TV show clip of Travis and his brother-in-law Mike Rogers (Dana's brother) being interviewed along with actors D.B. Sweeney and Robert Patrick, the men who portrayed Travis and Mike in the film, "Fire in the Sky". Travis explained again, as he has over the years, the film was a tremendous embellishment of the actual story. He said, as the film neared completion, Tracey Torme, a producer whom Travis considered a friend and who was an advocate for NOT Hollywood-izing Travis' story, walked away from the movie set up in Oregon, saying the production was not as faithful to the story as it should have been.

In a bid to put the 'record straight' Travis highlighted some of the major differences between the movie and reality;

There were six other guys with him in the work truck as they left the logging site that night. The truck was a big, white IH (International Harvester) four door crew cab and he showed some pictures of it. The movie shows some of them nodding off after a long day at work, as if they had been riding for 45 minutes or so, but Travis insists they came upon the sighting right after they left the work site, just ten minutes or so down the mountain.

He said when they came around a curve, there was a logged clearing on the right side of the road and there in the air at the edge of the clearing, was the saucer, brightly lit, it did make a humming noise and it was about 25 feet in diameter.

He remembered clearly being bent on seeing it as much as he could, because he figured it would be gone in a flash, as saucers so often are. He jumped right out of the truck and ran beneath the craft so he could look up at it. He showed an artist's depiction of what the bottom of it looked like...a bluish, shiny round center which reflected the shapes/images of the trees around and then about six big, whitish panels around it, like window sections, no tree reflections in those.

He recalled that logging clearing activity had left a pile of logging debris near the center, with one big log sticking up. He said that's how loggers are supposed to leave it, then when there is some snowfall and fire will not spread, they burn the piles. That pile was where he tried to jump for shelter when the saucer became menacing.

He remembers looking up at it and his friends were screaming for him to run away, back to the truck. But he was looking up, calling for them to come and see and they were yelling him back for the best part of a minute or so.

Then, he said the saucer started a real wobbling motion, gained just a little altitude and just as it did that, its humming noise sped up and got much louder, like it was ramping up to do something. He thought it was getting ready to fly away fast. His biggest memory right then was landing from what he thought was him jumping and hitting and really hurting his shoulder when he hit the shelter of the debris pile. He was figuring he'd hit an unseen rock in there.

He said the next memory was waking up in what he thought was a hospital.

He showed two diagrams of where he went and where he was led in the ship. He showed some artists' depictions of what the grey types and the human types looked like.

Travis Walton was very clear about remembering the human ones being very strong and laying him back down in another room and putting a mask on his face. He sdescribed how he definitely got the fingers of his right hand under the left side of the mask and tried to pull it off, but could not.

His next memory was being face down next to the right side of the road on the hill above Heber, Arizona. He said just his head and shoulders were on the pavement and the rest of him was on the dirt and grass next to the road.

Seeing bright light from above, he looked up and it looked like a bright white gathered light, a craft, was moving away and leaving him. He knew right where he was because he had come into Heber by that road so many times. So, he got to a house on the road where there were lights and smoke coming from the chimney, but they did not answer his calls and his knocking.

He went into town and got to the now-famous three public phones at a mini mart/gas station, the first phone did not work, second one did and he called the operator for free and got connected with his brother-in-law, Grant Neff. Travis said, no, he was NOT naked, as seen in the movie, and yes, Grant did not believe it was Travis calling at first.

He pointed out that in 2009 he took two more lie detector tests in relation to these events and passed both.

The Edmund Fitzgerald

Anyone who has studied the UFO phenomena will be aware of what Dr J Allen Hynek coined as 'High Strangeness' which surrounds them. Odd things happen, unexpected connections are made, bizarre phenomena (like raining fish and frogs) follow or precede sightings. The Travis Walton abduction account was no exception - what might seem trivial to some, what might seem nothing more than coincidence (but means so much more to those who are aware of 'High Strangeness') - will be intrigued to know that on the evening Travis was returned (10th of Novemeber 1975), the first person he called was 'Grant' his Brother in Law - Out in Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior on the same evening, one of the largest ships ever to sail the Great Lakes, The Edmund Fitzgerald, was being swallowed by the water in the most mysterious of circumstances. None of the crewmen were ever recovered. Aboard that ship on that fateful night was none other than one crewman, listed as Ralph Grant Walton.

(Editors note) The usual High Strangeness surrounding UFO's strikes again - As I was saving the images for this article = everyone referred to the ship above affectionately as 'Fitz' - So I saved the image originally as such. When saving Travis Walton's book cover I realised I was saving it as Fits - Fire in the sky. Strange....