The following appeared in the March/April [1993] issue of The Georgia Skeptic, the newsletter of the Georgia Skeptics:
by Anson Kennedy
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> opened in theaters across the country. Scripted by Tracy Torme’, who also wrote last year’s CBS miniseries on alien abductions, Intruders, 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 worksite 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 worksite and Snowflake), Rogers contacted Under-sheriff, 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.