Alien Abductions

Fire In The Sky

The Taking Of Travis Walton
by Anson Kennedy

The following appeared in the March/April [1993] issue of _The Georgia Skeptic_, the newsletter of the Georgia Skeptics:

On November 5, 1975, a 22 year old logger by the name of Travis Walton was allegedly abducted by a UFO near Snowflake, Arizona. Witnessed by six companions, his experience is possibly the most unique and controversial alien abduction tale in the short history of the phenomenon. Now, some seventeen years later, Paramount Pictures has brought this incredible story to the silver screen. On March 12, 1993, Fire in the Sky{ext. link} opened in theaters across the country. Scripted by Tracy Torme', who also wrote last year's CBS miniseries on alien abductions, Intruders{ext. link}, the movie is loosely based on Walton's book, aptly named _The Walton Experience_. "Loosely" because Torme' has significantly altered the portrayal of Walton's experience on the UFO from what Walton himself described, because Torme' has created a fictional UFO investigating organization to replace the real group involved, and because Torme' combined several real individuals into "composites," all for the sake of literary license. However, after examining the full evidence of the case, he may be forgiven these fictionalizations -- for how can one be too critical of fictionalizing a work of fiction? Philip J. Klass, chairman of CSICOP's UFO Subcommittee (which also includes such noted skeptics as Robert Sheaffer and James Oberg), investigated the Walton case immediately after it occurred. As detailed in his book _UFOs: The Public Deceived_ (Prometheus, 1983), in the months following Walton's disappearance, Klass found significant evidence of "gross deception."

According to Walton, he and six other loggers were driving from their work site at Turkey Springs in Sitgreaves National Forest to their homes in Snowflake about forty-five miles away. Sometime after 6:00 P.M., both Walton and one of his companions, Allen Dalis, saw a saucer-shaped object hovering over a slash pile of cut timber in a clearing. Walton jumped out of the truck (luckily, he was sitting next to the door) and ran towards the object, which was emitting a yellowish light. Suddenly, the object let loose a flash of brilliant blue-green light which reportedly "blew him [Walton] back ten feet" according to Walton's friend and employer Mike Rogers, who was driving the truck at the time. In a panic, Rogers sped off leaving Walton at the mercy of whatever controlled the UFO.

Upon reaching Heber (a small town between the work site and Snowflake), Rogers contacted Undersheriff L.C. Ellison, who met them in the village. Rogers and the rest of his crew told Ellison their story; Ellison then called Navajo County Sheriff Marlin Gillespie. Gillespie, his deputy Kenneth Coplan, Ellison, Rogers, and two other crew members (the other three refused to go along) returned to the site and searched for several hours for Walton.

Approximately 1:30 A.M. on the morning of the sixth (and after abandoning the search for the night), Coplan and Rogers went to notify Walton's mother, Mary Kellett, of her son's disappearance. Mrs. Kellett's calm response upon being awakened and told her youngest son had been kidnapped by a UFO was "Well, that's the way these things happen" and then she proceeded to described two instances when she and/or her oldest son, Duane, had also seen UFOs. Later that morning (approximately 3:00 A.M.) when Mrs. Kellett told Walton's sister, Mrs. Grant Neff, that "a flying saucer got him [Travis]," Mrs. Neff surprised Coplan with how calmly she too took the news.

The rest of the that day, November 6, was taken up by an extensive search of the area where Walton allegedly disappeared. Curiously absent from the site was any physical evidence of anything happening, in spite of the "explosive" force of the blue-green beam. No blood, no shreds of clothing, no evidence of the blast effects was found by any of the nearly fifty searchers involved.

By November 7, law enforcement officials were concentrating on the possibility that Walton might have been the victim of foul play at the hands of his coworkers. Walton's other brother Donald also felt that the UFO story was a cover for something else. To this end, Rogers and his crew volunteered to take polygraph examinations the following Monday, November 10. During the exams, C.E. Gilson of the Arizona Department of Public Safety asked four "relevant" questions; three of which dealt with whether Walton had been seriously injured or killed by the one or more members of the crew. The fourth question, added at the last minute, was: "Did you tell the truth about actually seeing a UFO last Wednesday when Travis Walton disappeared?" Not surprisingly, the six crew members were unanimous in their responses: "No" to the first three questions and "Yes" to the last. Five were judged to be truthful, results on the sixth (Allen Dalis) were "inconclusive." In his formal written report, Gilson said, "The polygraph examinations prove that these five men did see some object that they believe to be a UFO and that Travis Walton was not injured or murdered by any of these men, on that Wednesday (5 November 1975). If an actual UFO did not exist and the UFO is a manmade hoax, five of these men had no prior knowledge of a hoax. No such determination can be made of the sixth man whose test results were inconclusive."

On November 8, Phoenix UFOlogist Fred Sylvanus interviewed both Rogers and Duane Walton. The tape of this conversation reveals several striking details. Not once during the entire sixty-five minute interview did Duane or Rogers express any concern over Walton's well-being. Rogers described the UFO as "beautiful." Duane stated he had been seeing UFOs for the past "ten or twelve years. I've been seeing them all the time." He also stated that he and Walton had made an agreement to "immediately get as directly under the object as physically possible" if one of them ever saw a UFO. Duane went on the state that he felt Walton was "having the experience of a lifetime."

Later on the 10th, Travis Walton reappeared at a gas station in Heber.

Calling his sister collect after midnight, Walton begged for help when her husband answered the phone. Grant Neff picked up Walton's brother Duane and the two drove to Heber to pick up Walton after informing Mrs. Kellett of his call. The telephone operator who handled the collect call called Sheriff Gillespie to let him know of Walton's reappearance; Gillespie then called Deputy Glen Flake and asked him to keep a look out for the men returning to Snowflake.

Flake missed Neff, Duane, and Walton on the way in, so he went to Mrs. Kellett's house. It was after 2:00 A.M., but the lights were on and Duane was outside siphoning gas from one car to another. He made no mention to the officer that Walton had been found and Flake did not reveal the information the telephone operator had provided.

Duane did not inform the deputy that Walton was inside Mrs. Kellett's house, nor did he tell him of the physical examination Duane had performed on Walton. During the exam, Duane found no bruises, burns, or evidence of any physical injury except for a red mark on the inside of Walton's right elbow. Walton's physical condition was curious given his reported violent encounter with the blue-green beam.

In any case, Duane decided to drive Walton to a doctor in Phoenix after the deputy left. They made an abortive attempt to see a hypnotherapist, but Duane backed out saying that Walton was not ready for regressive hypnosis. It was not until the afternoon of November 11 that a cursory exam by two doctors was performed. Like Duane, they found no evidence of physical injury, except for the mark on Walton's arm. One of the doctors, Howard Kandell, stated it "was compatible with a puncture wound such as when somebody takes blood from you." He went on to note that Walton claimed he had not noticed it before, in spite of the fact that both Duane and the hypnotherapist had seen the mark earlier.

More telling, though, were the results of the urine analysis performed on a sample from Walton. It showed no trace of drugs, but also no trace of acetone. After going without food for more than a couple of days, the body begins to break down its own fat. The waste product of this is acetone, and it is excreted in the urine. If Walton had been without food for several days, his urine should have shown some traces of acetone. Also, Walton later claimed to have lost ten pounds during his missing five days.

The doctors who examined Walton were members of APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, and it was at this time that APRO became intimately involved in the case. It is also at this time that the National Enquirer became involved. Coral Lorenzen, who had made the arrangements for the doctor's examination, received a call from the National Enquirer about the case. She convinced the paper to pay Duane and Walton's expenses while being "sequestered" in a local hotel in exchange for exclusive rights to the story.

When Duane finally called Sheriff Gillespie to inform him of Walton's reappearance, he told the sheriff they were in Tucson where Walton was receiving a check-up. He changed the story in a later phone call, saying they were at a private home in Phoenix. At Gillespie's insistence, Duane reluctantly agreed to let him interview Walton. The Walton brothers refused to allow Gillespie to record the interview, but Travis did agree to take a polygraph exam later in the week.

Seven days after Walton had disappeared and two days after his sudden reappearance, his story was hitting the local newspapers. The Tucson Arizona Daily Star quoted Duane as saying, in part: "I'm not a UFO buff and neither is my brother" -- this flatly contradicts Duane's earlier statements to UFOlogist Fred Sylvanus.

Gillespie had scheduled Walton's polygraph examination for Friday, November 14, but Walton did not show up. The excuse was that the press had "laid siege" and Duane did not feel Walton was ready to face the press. This is curious, since a team of reporters from the National Enquirer had been interviewing Walton already. Also, Duane could have had the polygrapher come to the hotel where Walton was staying if he was concerned about exposing Walton to the media.

Some of the most damning evidence that the entire case was a hoax surrounds the various polygraph examinations and the behavior of the principles involved, Duane and Travis Walton, and Mike Rogers. APRO announced on February 7, 1976, that both Travis and Duane had passed an exam given by George Pfeiffer, who worked for Tom Ezell and Associates. But that test was flawed in a number of respects: Pfeiffer allowed Walton to dictate a number of the questions he asked. While it is not uncommon for polygraphers to allow the test subjects and/or sponsors to outline the general area to be probed, allowing the subject to dictate specific questions violates the basic principles of polygraphy and should invalidate the test results. Also, Pfeiffer was relatively inexperienced, having been practicing only two years. This inexperience expressed itself when he judged Walton's "No" answer to the question "Before November 5, 1975, were you a UFO buff?" to be truthful. Walton's answer directly contradicted information provided by both his mother and brother Duane and by Walton himself during an earlier psychological examination.

Later in March of 1976, when Pfeiffer's employer Tom Ezell had reviewed the charts, he concluded that it was impossible to determine if Walton and Duane were answering the test questions truthfully. Ezell stated in a letter to Phil Klass: "Upon review of this examination, I find that to me it is not acceptable. In the first place I would not be a party to an examination in which the subject dictated the questions to be asked ... Because of the dictation of the questions to be asked, this test should be invalidated. Also, upon examining the resultant charts, I find that I cannot give an opinion one way or another" whether the subjects had been truthful or not. Yet this is the examination to which Walton refers when he states he has passed a lie detector test.

But the real "bombshell," as Klass describes it in his book, was the fact that Walton had failed an earlier polygraph examination miserably and this information had been suppressed by APRO, which had been proclaiming the Walton case "one of the most important and intriguing in the history of the UFO phenomena." This test was administered by John McCarthy, who with twenty years of experience was one of the most respected examiners in the state of Arizona. His conclusion: "Gross deception." Proponents of the Walton case never mention this examination.

If the case is a hoax, what possible motivation could Walton and the others have? Two possibilities have been identified: every year, the National Enquirer offered a multi-thousand dollar award for the "Best Case" of the year (up to $100,000 for "positive proof" of ET). Walton and the other crew members divided a $5000 award from the National Enquirer. The second, and more compelling, motive involved a contract Rogers had with the U.S. Forest Service. Rogers had contracted with the Service to thin out the Turkey Springs area over a year before Walton's experience. He won the contract when he submitted the low bid of $24.70/acre in June of 1974. The contract term was 200 working days ("working days" to allow for bad weather and the long mountain winter) to thin 1277 acres, later reduced to 1205 acres. Rogers was seriously behind schedule and in fact had received an eighty-four day extension (accompanied with a $1.00 per acre penalty for missing the completion date). Only five days of this extension remained at the time of Walton's alleged abduction. At the time of Walton's disappearance, Rogers was in serious trouble: he had over a hundred acres left to finish in five days or he would default on the contract and lose some $2500 -- money sorely needed to get through the winter months -- or he request a second extension and accept another penalty for failing to finish on schedule a second time.

Just two weeks prior to Walton's disappearance, NBC-TV aired a two hour movie featuring the abduction tale of Betty and Barney Hill. Rogers has acknowledged watching the first portion of the movie, the portion that detailed the Hills' "abduction." Klass speculates in his book that "to a man facing two unattractive alternatives on his Turkey Springs contract, the account of the Hills' 'UFO-abduction' could easily suggest a third." By making Turkey Springs the site of an alien abduction, Rogers could claim his men were too afraid to return and continue working -- providing an "act of God" that could result in contract termination with no penalty and full payment to Rogers.

During the months after Klass revealed the results of his investigation, Rogers and Walton entered into a lengthy negotiation with him to have the flawed polygraph exams re- administered -- this time with a mutually acceptable, independent polygrapher. Rogers issued a "challenge" to Klass: Duane and Travis Walton and Rogers would agree to be retested by "a mutually acceptable examiner of high standing and proper credentials" and that, if all parties passed the tests, Klass would pay all costs involved; if any of them failed, Klass would be "reimbursed." Klass agreed in principle with most of the conditions, however as time progressed and negotiations continued it became clear that Rogers was engaging in delaying tactics and was, in fact, doing everything possible to not be retested. Ultimately, none of the principles in the Walton case was given new polygraph examinations.

And there the case laid for seventeen years, with proponents still proclaiming it one of the best documented abductions in history and skeptics decrying the multiple instances of intentional deception which imply "hoax." Then comes _Fire in the Sky_ and a media blitz to promote the "true story." Travis Walton has made appearances on national talk shows (from CNBC's Tom Snyder show to _Larry King Live_ on the night of the movie's premier), tabloid television shows (such as _Hard Copy_ and Fox's _Sightings_), radio call-in shows, and has even appeared via satellite on local news programs (the week of the premier, Walton was interviewed on WAGA Channel 5's _Good Day Atlanta_ morning show).

In the February, 1993, issue of the Mutual UFO Network's _MUFON UFO Journal_, Travis Walton "takes time to address his critics." Describing himself as a "naive country boy" (Walton hardly seemed naive when he accused Phil Klass of being a government disinformation agent on _Larry King Live_ - a charge for which he has absolutely no proof) Walton tells of his shock at the "attacks" he received from skeptics such as Klass and repeats throughout his article that Klass' claims had been refuted time and time again. Unfortunately, Walton provides little information in the article which actually refutes Klass' evidence; instead he offers tantalizing tidbits which seem intended more to enduce the reader to buy a copy of his newly revised book (whose title he has changed to, oddly enough, _Fire in the Sky_) than to actually "set the record straight." Walton claims that the various charges against him "starkly contradict each other" [emphasis in original], but provides no specific examples of these contradictions. He says, "So the irony is that when one's foremost detractor [Klass] makes an internally inconsistent scattergun assault, he is actually making a perverse sort of endorsement because it says loud and clear that the detractor himself doesn't believe that any of his attacks has sufficient merit to stand alone." It is a perverse sort of logic which will go through such convolutions in an effort to justify a failing position.

In a recent issue of his _Skeptics' UFO Newsletter_, Klass wonders if Walton will refute the fact that his first polygraph exam indicated "gross deception," or that his mother was abnormally calm upon hearing word of his disappearance, or that he - along with his mother and brother - had a long history of seeing UFOs prior to November 5, 1975, or that the lie detector test he did pass was seriously flawed. The list can go on and on.

So what can we make of this long and twisted tale? At the time, the Walton experience seemed little more than yet another in a long line of elaborate hoaxes. It continued to have its supporters among the UFO community, but enough questions surrounded it that few considered it "proof positive." Now, a multi-million dollar movie billed as a "true story" is in theaters across the country. Prior to its release, UFO fans were predicting how this would "raise the public's awareness" of UFOs in general and the alien abduction phenomenon in particular. Of course, they said they same thing about last year's _Intruders_, which seems to have had little impact on the public's perception of these things. We expect that _Fire in the Sky_ will sway the public just as much. Unfortunately, we also expect that Hollywood will make more of such "fiction as truth" productions. The bottom line for the public is to always view these productions with a critical eye.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws