Walton Abduction Case

W M .TON ABDUCTION CASEFew abduction reports have generated so much con-troversy as an incident that began on WednesdayNovember 5, 1975, in a remote area of east-centralArizona. Two decades later the dispute still rages. Toall but a venr few combatants the stakes seem high. IfTravis Walton and other participants are telling thetruth, so it is assumed, UFOs exist; UFO abductionsare physical, not imaginan', events; and UFOs arepiloted by alien presumably extraterrestrial beings.No wonder, then, that thc Walton case has becomeone debunker's particular obsession. By now, afteryears of wildly contlicting claims and charges, a massof confusion surrounds the episode. Thus the sortingof the reasonable conclusion from the unreasonableinference, much less the certifiably true from theundeniably false is no simple task. It is not, however,entirely impossible. This account draws on manysources, including the two books that have beenwritten on the case.

The disappearance. Travis Walton 22 worked on awood-cutting crew in the Apache-sitgreaves Nation-al Forest set in a high mountainous area 15 milessouth of Heber. The crew's foreman Mike Rogers,had contracted with the U.S. Forest Sewice to thinout 1277 acres of scrub brush at Turkey Springs. lnpractice that meant that brush six inches or less indiameterwas to be cleared with chainsaws. While halfof the crew wielcled the saws, the other membersdumped the debris into slash piles bebind them.Besides Walton and Rogers, the crew consisted ofKen Peterson, John Goulette, Steve Pierce, AllenDalis and Dwayne Smith. All were young men, rang-ing from 17 (Pierce) to 28 (Rogers). Al1 of them livedkn Snowflake, a small Mormon town 33 miles east ofHuber.

Rogers had been doing contract work for the ForestService for nine years. The Turkey Springs contractwas the most lucrative he had landed so far, but hewas late in fulfilling it. He already had secured oneextension, and he and his crew were working hardand long to catch up. Thus the men labored untilafter sunset. When they quit for the day at 6 P.M.darkness had begun to fall.

Waltorl Abduction Case Htkh StrangvnessTen minutes later the exhausted workers piled intotheir battered pickup to begin the return trip toSnowflake. Rogers, Walton, and Peterson, the threenonsmokers, sat in the front seat, the others- al-ready puffing away- in the back. As Rogers drove,Walton sat by the right window, bouncing up anddown as the vehicle its shock absorbers long wornout, negotiated what passed for a road. It had goneno more than 200 yards before something unusualcame into view.

Fither Walton or Dalis (accounts vanr) saw it lirst. ltwas a glow shining through the trees on the right,about a hundred yards ahead of them. As the truckdrove up the hill, the men fell silent. Fortyyards away,the light bled over the road but a dense stand of treesstill obscured its source. Then they passed a smallclearing to their right and the source was now clearlyin view. It was a luminous disc-shaped stzazcturehovering 15 to 20 feet above a slash pile and casting amilky yellow glow through all of the clearing. Ap-proximately 100 feet from them, 20 feet wide andeight feet high, it was divided by dark-silver verticallincs, longer than they were wide, into panel-likegeometrical forms on its surface. A thin band with anouter protruding ring encircled the middle. Some-one hlurted out, unnecessarily at this point, dd-l-hat's aUFO!''

Rogers was bringing the truck to a stop when Waltonjumped out and walked briskly toward the UFO.Later he would explain his action thus: dtI was sudden-ly seized with the urgency to see the craft at closerange. I was afraid the thing would fly away and lwould miss the chance of a lifetime to satisfy mycuriosity about it.'' W hen his co-workers, whosereactions to the UFO's presence ranged from in-trigued to petrified saw what he was doing, theyshouted at him to get back. Walton paused for amoment, turned to glance over at the truck andreflected briefly on the wisdom of llis course beforedeciding to proceed.

In short order he was standing on the perimeter ofthe dim halo of light the object was casting on theground. He was only six feet away from being directlyunderneath the object. Mesmerized by the Sçunbeliev-ably smooth, unblemished surface of the culwinghul1,'' he at first did not realize that the UFO was

Rogers and his crew were beside themselves with fearat this point, and amid much shouting and cursingthey fled the scene leaving their fallen comradebehind. Rogers was driving dangerously fast thoughhe could barely see the road' he was certain that theobjectwas coming up behind him. A quarter of a milelater, he swerxed to avoid hitting a pine tree. Thetruck slid sideways and stopped, stuck crossways in abulldozed pile of hard dirt.

As one of his passengcrs screamed at him to getgoing, Rogers looked around and saw that the UFOwas gone. The sky was quiet and empty of anythingbut stars. No one spoke for some moments. Theneveryone began to talk at once not necessarilycolaerently. Peterson and Rogers argued that Theyshould go back to rescue Walton. At t'irst the othersrejected the idea, but over the next few minutes, asthe discussion continued outside the truck and nenrescalmed, they changed their minds. As they piled backinto the truck, Rogers thought he saw a flash of whitelight in the woods something like a streak ascendinginto the air. No one else saw it, but then none l4adbeen looking in that direction at that moment. Rog-

beginning to emit sounds. The men in the truck werehearing 1ow beeps. Then Walton heard them, too,only they were mixed somehow with a distant rum-bling, an industrial sound reminiscent of a tfmulti-tude of turbine generators starting up.'' The UFOstarted to wobble slowly, one side tipped toward him.Then it wobbled faster and the sounds grew louder.

By now thoroughly shaken, he ducked down behind a1og which wms jutting from the slash pile. He bad toget away. He rose to his feet, and just as he wasturning away from the UFO and toward the truck, hefelt a 'dnumbing shock . . . like a high voltage electro-cution.'' lt hit particularly in his head and chest, buthe could feel it all over his body. He heard a crackingor popping sound, and then he heard saw and feltflo m ore.

Walton did not know what had hit him. Those look-ing on, however, saw a bluish-green beam strike him.He rose a foot into the air his arms and legs out-stretched, and shot stiffly back some 10 feet, a11 thewhile caught in the glow of the light. His right shoul-der hit the earth, and his body sprawled limply overthe ground.

High Stvangeness W alton Abduction Case

ers believed làe had witnessed the departure of theUFO.

Rogers drove around in the gatlaering darkness insearch of the spot where they had seen the UFO.There were a number of clearings and any number ofslash piles in the vicinity, and one looked pretty muchlike another so it was not easy. But eventually theyfound it. Rogers drove into the site. His headlightsrevealed nothing except the slash pile their compan-ion lud been standing beside. He shined a ftashlightthrough the clearing. Then he stepped out of the caband his crew reluctantly followed. Tl4e panic they hadsuffered had made them feel alrnost physically ill.

good part of their attention on the trail that wouldhave led Walton from the pickup to the slash pile.There were no prints in the hard ground. The pineneedles that covered the clearing floor looked undis-turbed. There were no broken twigs. There were nobux'n marks or other unusual effects in the slasb pileor in the trees. Nothing, in short, to back up the storp

When last seen, Walton had been wearing no morethan a light jacket. As the evening progressed, thetemperature plummeted. If Walton was somewhereout in the wroods, the bitter cold could represent adirect threat to his life. Ellison went back to Heber tocollect additional searchers, but even with the furthermanpower the mystery of Walton's wlzereabouts re-mained unresolved.Twenty minutes of searching failtd to uncover any

trace of Walton. As the enormity of the evening'sstrange events began to sink in some of the menincluding Rogers, who considered Walton his bestfriencl wept. When they pulled themselves togetherthey headed for Heber and the initiation of the policeinvestigation.

Five dals. The authorities first heard of thc incidentjust after 7:30, when Navajo County Deputy ShcriffChuck Ellison took a call from Ken Peterson, whosaid only that one of the crew was missing. Fllisonmet the group at a Heber shopping center. The menurere in a highly emotional state. Two were crying.Even as they related the bizaz're and unbelievableUFO stonr, Ellison could not help reflecting that ifthey were actlng, they were awfully good at it.

Ellison quickly notitied SheriffMarlin Gillespie, whoordered him to wait with the crew until he could getto Heber. Gillespie was in Holbrook 40 miles to thenortla. Within the hour he and Uudersberkff KenCoplan arrived and commenced thcir own interviewof the witnesses. Rogers, who wanted to get back tothe site as quickly as possible, urged the sherift''s mento bringbloodhounds to aid in the tracking, but nonewere available. Pierce, Smith, and Goulette said theyhad no desire to return and so they went off inRogers's truck to Snowflake to notify Rogers's wife ofwhat had happened.

At the site the six men stalked the cleartng andsurrounding arca with flmshlkhts and a searchlightmounted atop a founwheel jeep. The understand-ably suspicious law-enforcement officers focused a

Finally arourtd miclnight Rogers remarked that-rravis'smother, Mary Walton Kellett ought to be notitied.She was staying in a remote cabin on a ranch in BearSprings, about 10 miles in the woods to tlae east.(Kellett lived there part of the ycar and spent wintersat her home in Snowflake. She was shortly to returnto town.) Rogers and Undersheriff Coplan set off tosee her. They showed up at her door around 1 A.M.Mrs. Kellett knew Rogers, of course? but had not metCoplan before now.

Still visibly shaken, Rogers related the circumstancesof her son's disappearance. Apparently not quitecomprehendingwhathe was telling her Kellett askedhim to repeat the stoo,. Then, after some moments'pause, she asked him if he had told anyone else.

Coplans who had expected Kellett to respond moredramaticalllr, did not like the way she was acting, andhe- as well as Iater critics of the case- would makemuch of Kellett's apparent composure, interpretingit as evidence that as a party to the izoax she knew herson was a1l right and hidden away somewhere. In fact,those who knew Kellett far better than Coplan wouldinsist that a laard life- slle had raised six children onher own under difscult economic circumsmnces-had long since taught her not to fly to pieces in theface of crises and tragedies. It was part of her person-al code not to display emotion before strangers. Yetin the days ahead as events overwhelmed ber shewould show emotion before fricnds acquaintancesand strangers alike-a fact that would go unmerttionedin debunking treatments of the Walton episode.

Walton Abduction Case High Styangeness

At 3 A.M. Kellett called Duane W alton, tlae secondoldest of the Walton sons and the one who owing tostrength of personality, typically took charge wlaencircumstances called for it. Duane Ieft his home inGlendale, a western suburb of Plloenixs almostimmediately.

By morning yet more volunteers, including localForest Senice personncl hadjoincd the search. Thethree crew members who had stayed away tlle nightbefore had not retunwd in the morning so againonly Rogers, Peterson, and Dalis participated in therenewed effort. Already the sheriff's men and otherarea police officers were entertaining dark suspicionsthat the UFO tale wms a stonr concocted to coversomething far morc sinister such as murder. But atthe same time Mike Rogers, who presumably wouldhave been in on this hypothetical murder plot was asinsistent as Duane Walton who presumably wouldnot have heen that the search be continued. The twoof them showed up together at Sheriff Gillespie'soffice on Saturday in an explosively angt'y mood.They had just been to the site tlaey said and lzaddetected not a soul. The search resumed that aftennoon. This time it included a helicopter, riders onhorseback and four-wheeljeeps.

brought back because tïthey don't kill people.'' Heand Mike denied, however, that thcy were UFO buffs.tfI follow it likc I do alot of other tlaings,'' Duane said.

Later in the inteniew Rogers expressed concernabotzt anotber sort of problem: ts-lnlais contz-act thatwe lzave is scriously behind schedule. In fact, Monday(November 10l the time is up. We haven't done anywork on it since W ednesday became of this thhlg'therefore, it won't be done. I hope they take that intoaccount, this problem.'' He tlten returned to apromi-nent theme in the interview: his frtzstration with whathe saw as a less than adequate search for his missingfriend. 'tNobody seemed that interested in searchingthat extensively. No bloodhounds were brought in.And now it's too late. I've been mentioning it evezyday.'' Duane also complained bitterlyabout the lacka-daisical nature of the search.

It certainly seemed Sylvanus thought as if the twowere genuinely concerned about Tz-avis. Yet at tl'lesame time Duane's remarks abotzt UFOs alïd tlleintentions of their occupants made him uneasy; sodicl Mike's expressed concerns about the lateness ofhis Forest 3enrice contract. As would soon becomeclear, the foundations for an alternative interpreta-tion of the case had been laid.

That day also brought the outside world into thisobscure corner of America. Along with hordes ofreporters and curiosity-seekers UFO investigatorFred Sylvanus showed up, sought out Mike Rogersand interviewed him in the late afternoon and earlyevening. Duane W alton who sat in on the interviewrepeatedly interjected with comments of his own.These comments would come back to haunt him andto take a permanent place in the controversy sur-rounding the case. Duane claimed to have seen aUFO ç'almost identical to what they described, for aperiod of about 30 minutes, in broad daylight, about12 years ago.'' He went on to asscrt, t'Travis and 1discussed this many, many times at great length. . . .We 130th said that we would immediately get asdirectll' under the object as wms physically possi-ble. . . . The opportunity would be too great to passup, and at any cost, except death we were to makecontact wit.ll therfl. . . . E'l-rav-is) performedjust as wesaid we would . . . and he's received tlle benefits forit.'' No: nearly so sure, Rogers said ldàrou hope hehas.'' Duane said he was sure his brother would be

Meanwhile Snowtlake Town Marshal Sanford (Sank)Flake was telling the press of lais certainty that thestoly was a hoax ''staged by Travis and his brotherDuane to make some money. I believe the other kidsdid sce gomething, but they were hoaxed, too.'' TheWalton brothers, he said, had $t1it up a balloon andlaunched it at tlle appropz'iate Lime.'' Flake's wifedissented. isxrour idea is just as farfctched as DuaneWalton's.'' Marshal Flake had a Iongstanding griev-ance against the Walton family stemming from adispute with Travis some years earlier, and he had nospecific evidence to support his charge, though hewas poking around the Bear Springs ranch where hesuspected Travis was hiding. On one occasion hebrought a London television crew with him to thesite, presumably so that it could Glm the live capture.

Flake was not the only officer hoping to crack the caseby breaking down one of the supposed conspirators,who so far were sLicking resolutely to their story.Some officers made repeated visits to Kellett's houseto interrogate her at length. Finally one evening

548

Higlt Strangeness Walton Abduction Case

Duane arrived from the sherift''s offke at Holbrookwhere he hadsatin onyet another inten'iew of the sixwitnesses. His mother was crying as an obliviousdeputy kept plying her with questions. Furious Duanetook him to the porch and told him not to returnunless or until he really had something to talk about.Then Duane told his mother that from now on sheshould not allow investigutors into the house; sheshould talk with them on the porch, which wouldallow her to end the discuEsion any time she wantedto.

Thc ncxt morning Marshal Flakc showcd up to dcliv-er a message. Because Kellett had no phone allcommunications between ber and the authoritieshad to be canied outin person. Kellett stepped olzt tothe porch, closed the door behind her, took themessage, and went back inside. Flake and other skep-tics would later conclude that she was hiding some-thing. Or lomeone.

On Monday morning Rogers and the crew met inHolbrook to undergo polygrapb testing at the sbeniff's office. The examiner. Cy Gilson, worked for LheArizona Department of Public Safety and had beenbrought up from Phoenix for the occasion. Whilereporters milled around outside, each of the witness-es underwent four zo-minute tests which consisted ofvariously phrased versions of four basic questiong:

(l) Did you cause Tra'ds Walton any seriousphysical harm last Wednesday afternoon?

(2) Do you know if Travis Walton was plzysicallyinjured by somc othcr mcmbcr of your workcrew last W ednesday?

(3) Do you know if Traqris Walton's body isburied or hidden somewhere in the TurkeySprings area?

(4) Did you tell the truth about actually seeing aUFO last Wednesday when Travis Waltondisappeared?

One of the variants of this last question was Do youbelieve that TraNis W alton wa.s acrually taken aboarda UFO last Wednesday?

In his oflicial report Gilson wrote:

Each of the six men answered ''No'' to ques-tions //1 2 and 3 and they each answered ''Yes''

Close to midnight a phone rang in Taylor, a smalltown two or three miles south of Snowflake and 30miles east of Heber. W hen Grant Neff took the callhe heard a faint confused-sounding voice mutteridrrhis is Travis. l'm in a phone booth at the Heber gasstation, and l need help. Come and get me.''

Neff, who was married to Travis's sister Allison, toldthe caller he had the wrong number. From hi! pointof view, Neff had no reason to take the messageseriously. The voice did not sound like Travis's forone thing. For another the Waltons and their rela-tives already had been subjected to too many prankand crank calls. Butjust as he was preparing to hangup, Neff heard the voice screaming. The hysteria

to question #4. The test results were conciusiveon Goulette smith Peterson Rogers andPierce. Rhe test results on Dalis were incondtzsive.

Based on the polygraph chart tracing, it is theopinion of this examiner that Goulette SmithPeterson, Rogers, and Pierce were being truth-fu1 when they answered these relevant questions.

These polygnaph examinations prove that thesefive mendid see some object that theybelieve tobe a UFO, and that Travis Walton was notinjured or murdered by any of these men onthat Wednesday. If an actual UFO did not existand the UFO is a man-made hoax, five of thesemen hid no prior knowledge of a hoax. No suchdetermination can be made of the sixth manwhose test results were inconclusive.

Even Flake did not make much of Dalis's test results.Dalig after all was a man with much to hide! acriminal past and (as we slaall see) a criminal future.He had behaved with hostility all through the polpgraph process, as if fearing secrets he had evenrreason not to wish revealed would accidentally cometo light. Flake remarked :fI wouldn't trust him as faras l could throw him. Since he's the only one whodicln't pass the lie tegt, l'd almost have to believe theopposite with him. Not passing means he's probablytelling the truth. He saw it. the UFO.'' After the testsheritl' Gillespie pronounced himself satisjied,''There's no doubt they're telling the truth-rightdown the line,'' he said. '<I feel sure thatall sixof themsaw a UFO.''

549

Walton Abduction Case Higù Strangeness

sounded genuine. <slt's me, Grant,'' the caller said.ddl'm hurt, and I need help badly. You come and getm e P '

It was Travis al1 right. Neff promised to get Duaneand to be in Heber as soon as possible.

The rcc/jwcrtzzlcc. Neffdrove to Snowllake andpickedup Duane, who had not left the sheriff's oflice until10 that evening. From there Duane had gone toSnowflake and to his mother's house. The two weretalking when a white-faced Neff walked in and brokethe news.

Grant Neffand Duane Walton found Tnavis hunchedover in the second of three phone booths at a senricestation on Heber's outskirts. Though conscious, heseemed to be in shock. He had t'ive days' worth ofbeard on his face and he looked thinner than he hadbeen when last seen. (Later, members of the familywould claim that he had weighed 165. wejghed notlong after his return, he wms 154.) Clothed in the levishirt andjeans and cotton shirt he had been wearingat the time of his disappeanance, he was shivering inthe l8-degree cold.

On the way back to Snowflake, Travis spoke vapzclyof encountering creatures with eyes that had terrifiedhim. He was still frightened. He wms startled to hearthat five days had passed; he thought it had been onlya couple of hours. When he heard that, lae shook hishead and ceased speaking altogether.

At his mother's house he took a bath and drankquantities of water. When he tried to eat cottagecheese and pecan cookies he threw up.

who went to the gtation and began to dust for prints.There were no prints at a1l on the phone in the third1:00th, perhaps because no one had used it since tlaeserviceman had emptied the till and wiped the instru-m ent clean. The other two had prints, but so far asEllison and Romo could determine in the cold anddark, none was W alton's.

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Travis Walton's live-day disappearance and alleged UFOabduction in November 1975 generated two books a mo-tion picture. and two decades of controversy.

Duane decided that someone in his brother's fragilecondition needed to be shielded, at least for now,from harassment by police officers journalists andbusphodies. Travis himself was saying over and overagain, almost as if reciting something from memorytflàon't 1et the police know 1'm here. . . . I've got tohave a doctor. . . . Don't let the police know. . . . Getme some medical help.''

But the police already knem or at least suspccted,that something was up. At 2:30 A.u. Gillespie got a tipfrom a phone company informant that someone hadcalled tl4e Neffs from the Heber gas-station 1700th.Gillespie alerted Deputy Fllison and Lt. E. M. Romo,

Travis was there but Deputy Flake would not knowthat till later. When hc pulled up, h.e obsen'ed lightson inside the house. Duane was in the front yard

Meanwhile ofticers on duty in the early-morninghours were looking for cars owned by W alton familymembers. Deputy Glen Flake (Sanford Flake's broth-er), who had been positioned in Snowllake at thejunction of Highways 77 and 277 so that he coulcl seeWalton vehjcles heading to or from Taylor (on 77) orHeber (014 277) saw nothing. ln due course thesheriff told him to drive over to Mary Kellett's house.

Iliglb Stvangenms Walton Xbduction Case

siphoning gus from a friend's truck. He explainedthat he had driven from Holbrook too late to refill histank for the trip back to Glendale. He did not addthat Travis would be accompanying him there, andFlake asked no further questions. Not long after heleft, Duane Ieft with Travis. By the time they got toPhoenix, the Walton abduction case would bc indanger of collapsing into farce.

Travailsand jez/a. Among the ufologists whom DuaneWalton met prior to his brother's return was a Phoe-nix man named William H. Spaulding, head of GroundSaucer Watch IGSWI. A frequent lecturer at UFOconventions, Spaulding specialized in photoanalysis;he claimed to laave developed a computenenhance-ment technique by which he could distinguisla phonyand authentic UFO pllotogl-aphs with something ap-proaching certainty. In speeches and articles in popu-lar UFO magazines, he spoke and wrote in a Sort ofpseudotechnicul jargon which puzzled (and there-forc usually impressed) tlàe technically untrainedeven as it eutertained the technically sophisticated,who found idle amusementin the enumeration of themalapropisms that habitually permeated Spaulding'sdiscourse.

During Travis's absence Spaulding had introducedhimself to Duane and thc two had spoken at length.Spaulding boasted that as a scientific organizationGSW had access to a11 kinds of professicnals, includ-ing physicians. The Waltons, who had the good fontune of being healthy and the bad luck of beingpoor,had no family doctor. But Duane knew that Traviswould require medical attention on his return (as-suming he did return). Spaulding assured him thatGSW had a local physician who could Lake care ofTravis and perform ç<all the scientific testing he'llllecd ' '

On his arrival in Phoenix, Duanc called Spaulding,who directed him to GSW'S medical consultant, Dr.Lester Steward. He and Duane would meet him at hisoffice at 9 A.M. Duane and Travis then went to sleep atthe former's Glendale residence awakeningjust after9. They hurried to Steward's office, which they weredisconcerted to Iearn was located in a rundown hotelnot far from the airport. Nothing about the officeitself inspired confidence either. It looked as seedy asits surroundings. The curtains were ycllowed; there

Nonetheless Mrs. Lorenzen managed to get throughwhen shc phoned. She spoke with Duane and man-

was no air-conditioning, and the deafening roar oflanding and departing jets blew through the openwindows. Worse, the room was devoid of medicalequipment and textbooks. Even more ominously, thesign on the door identified Steward simply asi'Hypnotherapist.''

Duanc immcdiately wanted to know if Steward was amedical doctor. At first he insisted he was, theneventually admitted that he was not licensed to prac-tice in Arizona. (A subsequent inquiry determinedthat Steward's degree was from a California-basedcorrespondence school witbout academic accredita-tion.) He said hc would call a doctor friend andarrange for a full physical examination, but his'dfriend''--so Duane ancl Travisjudged from hearingSteward's side of the conversation--did not appearto know who he was.

The Waltons walked out soon afterwards. R'he amountof time they spent in Steward's officc itself became apart of the controversy. Steward and Spaulding wouldassert that the brothers had been there for two hours.during which Steward questioned them thoroughly,This is certainly false. The Wnltons showed up half anhourlate for tlzeirappointment; afterwards theywentout to eat in a ncarby restaurant before driving on toGlendale. At 10:45 Duane took a call from anotherufologist Coral Lorenzen of the Tucson-based Aeri-al Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). Thusthe time with Steward probably did not exceed 45minutes.

By tlw ume they gotback to Duane's the two leaxnedthat the world now knew about Travis's return-tillthen a secret known only to the family, Spauldingand Steward. ln their absence Duane's girl friendCarol had becn fielding phone calls from reporters.On their return both Spaulding and Steward calledbut Duane bluntly informed them that they shouldbother them no more. This action as the Waltonssoon found out, made Spaulding- who till now hadbeen telling the press of his conlidence in the case- asworn enemy and the source of a great deal of futuretrouble. Other inquirers were tolcl that Travis hadgone to a private hospital in Tucson and could not bereached.

Walton Abduction Cmse High Strangeness

aged to persuade laim that she could arrange for anexamination by local physicians-recf ones. So at3:30 that afternoon Duane and Travis met two Phoe-nix APRO members, Drs. Joseph Saultss (a generalpractitioner) and Howard Kandell (a pediatrician), atDuane's home.

This was well and good-the first step toward a realinvestigation- but between Lorenzen's call and thephysicians' examination anotlaer party would enterand hugely complicate the story. At noon Lorenzenheard from the Natiomzl F'a,gzfrpr. Tn exchange forAPRO'S cooperation and access to the Waltons thetabloid offered to pay a11 expenses. To start with, itwould pay for a hotel room in which the brotherscould be sequestered; it would also dispatch a team ofreporters to the scene. Since APRO could not matchthe Enluirer's linancial resources, Lorenzen agreed.

Travis's examination went well. Saults and Fuandellfound that be was in good health. There were onlytwo out-otlthe-ordinary physiological symptoms. AsKandell who wrote the medical report, would note:

Travis would speculate that the red spotwms probablysomething he had picked up in the course of hiswork, probably from a thorny bush. On the otherhand, as we shall soon see some critics would chargethat the mark was evidence that Travis had injecteddrugs, probably I.,SD, into his right elbow. W hile thislatter theozy is hardly plausible, Travis's defenderswould never be able to offer an explanation for thecurious absence of bnzises which one would expectin the wake of Travis's alleged beam-driven collisionwith the ground.

Meanwhile Duane wms maintaining the pretense thathis brother was hospitalized in Tucson. He told thisuntruth--or as he thought of it cover story-notonly to press inquirers but to Sheriff Gillespie whohad learned of Travis's return only through mediaaccounts. On Tuesday, however, he found out thatTravis wms staying with Duane near Phoenix. Hedrove to Glendale and confronted Duane and Travisnear midnight.

There were no bruises or evidence of traumaexcept for a two-mm red spot in the creasc ofhis right elbow which was suggestive of a nee-d1e puncture; however, it was not overlying anysignificant blood vessel. He denied being awareof its presence and did not know what it mightbe due to. . . .

Urinalysis- volume 560 cc; normal, with goodconcentration (SPG 1.0321. however, there wasno acetone present, which is unusual consider-ing that any person who is without adequatenutzition for twenty-four to forty-eight hourswill break down his own body-fat stores, whichshould result in ketones gacetonesj being ex-creted into the urine. The absence of ketones inhis urine, considering a ten-pound weight lossis dîfficult to explain.

Gillespie listened as an exhausted Travis relatedwhatlittle he remembered of what happened after heawoke in a hospital-like setting inside what he as-sumed was an alien spacecraft. Afterhearing him outthe sheriff wondered aloud if Travis had not been hitwith a club or baseball bat, then drugged and taken toan eartltly hospital. Travis disagreedo pointing outthat the physical tests he had just undergone haddetected no trace of drugs or bumps on his head. Theincident had occurredjust as he said it had, and hewould take a lie-detector test to prove it. Duaneadded that Travis would take any kind of test, notjustpolygraph but truth serum voice stress analysis orhypnosis, to prove that he was tclling the truth.

Gillespie said a polygraph test would do.

By the next day, Wednesday, November 12, Spauldingwas being quoted in the press as sayingthat he and hisgroup had found unspecified ''holes in this story.''Spaulding, who bad directed the Waltons to <fDr.''Steward also stressed that the investigation requiredmore than anything %dcompetent scientitic personnelconducting scientific tests.'' Later that day he toldreporters, çllve're going to blow this stonrout today.''

On Thursday, Travis and Duane slipped away tonearby Scottsdale, where the Natioytal Enquirer had a

Duane had given the doctors a bottle of urine-thcproduct of Tnavis's Iirst post-return micturition'early on Spaulding had urged Duane to make suresuch a sample was preserved. Of course there was noway to prove this was Travis's specimen. The physi-cians had to take the brothers' word for it.

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High Strangeness Walton Abduction Case

room at the Sheraton Hotel waiting for them. Therethey met APRO scientific consultantlames A. Hard-cr, a professor of cnginccring at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley. Harder, who had a particularinterest in hypnotizing UFO witnesses, soon regressedTravis, who proceeded to tell for tlle tirst time a11 thathad happened, or supposedly happened, aboard theUFO. Heretofore he lzad been reluctant to discuss itand had given it out piecemeal even to his brother.Unlike many other abductees, however Walton'sconscious recall and unconscious iKmemory'' werethe same and he could account for only a maximumof two hours and perhaps even less of his missingfive days. (The onboard experience will be discussedlater.)Sheriff Gillespic had arranged for polyp'aplà exallli-nations for Travis and Duane, to be administered byCy Gilson, tbe same man who bad tested the loggingteam earlier in the week. All concerned agrced tlaat itmust be done in secrecy, to eliminate the mediacircus that had afflicted the previous polygraph epi-sode. Unfortunately someone leaked news of theintended examination. On Friday morning, ms thesherifrleft his office he saw clear signs that reporterswere following him. Around that time a reporterphoned Duane's house and wanted to know whenDuane and Travis plazTned to go to Holbrook for thetest. When Duane heard about the call, he exploded.He cancelled the test and accused the sheriff- wlaowas in fact as innocent as the Waltons themselves-of bad faith.

At this stage everybody's nenres were on edge. TheWaltons also were angry and upset at the manyrumors and accusations in circulation. Some of tbesesaw print. The next day, Saturday the sfteenth thePhoenix Gazette ran an uncritical piece on t'Dr. LesterH. Steward director of the Modern Hypnosis 1n-struction Center.'' After spending tttwo hours MrithWaltorf and his brother Duane,'' the article reportedSteward stated, ''He (Tmvisj was out hallucinatingonsome drug, probably L,SD.'' He further claimed thatthe W altons had come on like a couple of freeloaderswho wanted a physical examination without having topay for it; yet when he arranged forjust such an examthe two young men fled his office. The article wentonto recite other false and dubious allegations:

Steward said Duane Walton called him Tuesdayabout regressive hypnosis rnot truel. . . . Thellypttosis never cafrte off gtt was never mskedforj, Steward said and he believes the reason isfhat the W altons fear exposure.

Steward challenged the alleged infallibility oftl'ie lie-detector tests. . . . Five reportedly passed,but steward said he would be unconvinced thatthey were telling the truth unless they wentthrough regressive hypnosis gas, in fact, TravisWalton already hadq.çuhe polygraph is only a macbine, and l thinkthey got togetller and beat it '' he said. ffButthey can't beat hypnosis. lf they did go intohypnosis, they can lie, but I can show they arelying, and they can't control it. gNothing in theprofessional literature of hypnosis substanti-ates these claims. Lies told under hypnosis areindistinguishable from truths.jK<-fhey're afraid of the tests,'' he added gwithoutevidencej.He said that Travis appeared upset at srst buthe was completely calm wheu tlze two brothersIeft, and Steward described that reaction assymptomatic of drug use (Lowe, 19751.

These were extraordinarily irresponsible charges. Tostart withs no evidence whatever existed to supportthe allcgation that Travis was under tlze illfluence ofdrugs at any time. According to a11 available testimo-ny, not just Travis's but othcr people's, Travis soopposed drug use thathe did not consume alcohol oreven coffee. True, he had taken drugs in the past, incommon with many other young people of thc peri-od, but he had stopped doing so two years previously.Whatever one makes of the UFO claim the drugaccusation was and remains a canard though would-be debuakers would keep it alive for years to come.

The National Enquirer wanted Tra.is to take a polpgraph examination as soon as possible while it stillhad him available ancl before another publicationwasable to scoop it. Harder thought Travis was still toonervous and distraught to take a tcst which strictlyspeaking, measured stress, not lies. Travis might ormight not be lying (though Harder was convinced ofhis truthfulness) but there could be no question that

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Walton Abduction Case High Seangeness

he was exhibiting plenty of stress. Three psychiatristswho had been brought into the case concurredinsisting that any results would have no meaning.One psychiatrist, Jean Rosenbaum, spoke with panticular authority here; he wms a court-accepted experton polygraph use.

But the Enquiver persisted. A positive polygraph re-sult would bolster the impact of its ston'; besides,reporter Paulgcnkins argued the results would notbe relemsedwithoutrrravis's permission. Travistxnallyconsentedy and APRO directorlim Lorenzen (Cor-al's husband) contactedlohnl. Vccarthy, director ofthe Pboenix-based Arizona Polygraph l-aboratory.Mccarthy said he would be willîng to administer thetest. When Harder expressed concern about Travis'semotional state, Mccarthy mssured him that he wouldtake it into account.

in collusion with this friend of yours to burglarize theoffice steal the checks and forge them rightp''

A few minutes later Mccarthy announced ''Travisyour responses are deceptive '' and declared that hehad failed the polygraph test. Flabbergasted, Travisprotested, t'There must be some mistake.'' He askedfor anotber test. Mccarthy refused. tlerhere's no needto go any furthery'' he said. %il've ot my answers.''ï'

He concluded his official report thus:

His reactions on the control test were normal.He appearcd to be lucid, and prior to testing hestated that he understood each of the questionsto be asked and that he would answer each witha ''Yes'' or ''No.'' It was obvious during theexamination that he was deliberately attempt-ing to distort his respiration pattern.

Unfortunately, when they met in the W altonsis roomat the Sheraton, Mccarthy did nothing to reassureTravis. lnstead in tbe pre-trial intenicw Mccarthygot Tl-avis to admit to two episodes about which hewas deeply ashamed: his past drug usc and a 1971scrape with the law. In the latter instance he andCharles Rogers (Mike Rogcrs's younger brother) hadpled g'uilty to the theft of blank payroll checks whichthey had cashed using a forged signature, Appre-hended almost immediately, they were given twoyears' probation and ordered to repay the stolenmoney. That was the beginning and end of Travis'scriminal histon'. Not even Sank Flake who did notlike Tnavis and openly accused him of hoaxing theUFO stonr, deemed this anything other than a youth-fu1 mistake but it was deeply embarrassing to have toadmit to it and Travis talked about it only on theunderstanding that the matter would be kept con-fidential.

Duane expressed his enormous displeasure with theresults to Mccarthy. The psychiatrists reiterated theirconviction that under the circumstances the resultsmeant nothing. Dr. Rosenbaum spoke for his col-leagues in a formal statement:

goqur conclusion wlaich was absolute, is thatthis young man is not lying, that there is nocollusion involved. The full test results showthat he really believes these things, that he is notlying. He really believes that he was abducted bya UFO.

Based on his reactions on all charts it is theopinion of this examiner that W alton in con-cer: with others is attempting to perpetrate aUFO hoax and that he has not been on anyspacecraft.

Rosenbaum then went on to offer his own distinctiveinterpretation of the cpisode:

Yet Mccarthy, whose occasionally sarcastic and some-times abrasive remarks betrayed his skepticism, wentout of his way to remind Travis of the incident a fewminutes later. After Mccarthy had used Lhe word''collusion'' anctTravis admitted that he did rtot krtowthe word Mccarthy snapped, <'That means acting inconcert with somebody else one or more people toperpetrate a hoax, acting in collusion with somebodyelse, you know, to set thîs thing upvlustlike you acted

But my evaluation of the boy's story is that,although he believcs this is what happened itwas all in his own mind. l feel that he sufferedfrom a combination of imagination and amne-sia, a transitol'y psychosis-that he did not goon a UFO but simply was wandering aroundduring the period of his disappearance. But I'munable to account for five witnesses having thesame basic story and passing lie-detector testsabout it.

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High Strangeness W alton Abduction Case

Nor would Rosenbaum's hypothesis explain how would almost certainly know of the hoax; some specu-Travis could have maintaained relative good health, or lated that he had hidden in her Bear Springs cabin. Soeven stayed alive, over five nights of well-below- Pfeifer asked her if she had participated in a hoax, iffreezing temperatures--especially considering that she had concealed Travis

, and if she knew wherethe clothes he was wearingwere manifestly not suited Travis was between November 5 and 10. She an-to such bitter cold. Moreover formal psycholoscal swered no to these questions. Pfeifer also wanted totesting of Tnavis by Aplto-affiliated psychologists know if she believed Travis was telling the tnlth. SheHarold Cahn and R. Leo Sprinkle would uncover no said yes. Pfeifer wrote:evidence of emotional abnormality.

In any event, it was apparent tojust about everybodyexcept Mccarthy that the polygraph test had been abad idea. Then the Waltons, National Enquirer, Mc-Carthy, and APRO signed on to another bad idea:they agreed to keep the test and its results confiden-tial. Hardly anyone else would hear of the incidentuntil eight months later, when the Walton case's mostintense and persîstent clitic exposed it to the world.

On February 7, 1976, Duane took a polygraph testadministered by George Pfeifer of Tom Ezell andAssociates. Travis hoped to be there as well butAPRO had not made an appointment for him be-cause he was having car trouble and it was by nomeans certain that he would be able to negotiate thel60 miles between Snowflake and Phoenix. But as ithappened, Travis made it. He asked if he could takethe test after Duane was through. Drs. Harold Cahnand R. Leo Sprinkle and APRO directorlim Lorenzendrew up a list of questions, and later Travis addedsome others. Travis wanted the test to cover otheraccusations that had been leveled at him.

Pfeifer concluded as follows:

The ctmfwtlrcxsy. Even in the absence of clear evidenceof a hoax-as well as in ignorance of the suppressedMccarthy test-spaulding continued his assault onthe case, telling journalists and ufologists tllat theWaltons were lying. Persons knowledgeable aboutthe cmse somctimes foutïd llis logic hard to follow. Hew'rote, for eumple, tdWalton never boarded the UFO.This fact is supported by the six witnesses and the(Gilson) polygraph test results.'' Spaulding did notelahorate on tllis curious contention.

After a very careful analysis of thc polygraphsproduced and comparing the polygraph trac-ings with the Known Lie pattern, it is the opin-ion of this examiner that Mrs. Mary Kellett hasanswered al1 the questions truthfully accordingto the best of her knowledge and beliefs.

gllt is the opinion of this examiner t-hat DuaneWaiton has answered a11 questions truthfullyaccording to what he believes to be the truthregarding this incident and he has not attempt-ed to be deceptive in any area. . . .

After a careful analysis of the polygrams pro-duced, there are no areas left unresolved and itis the opinion of this examiner that TravisWalton has answered all questions in a mannerthat he himself is firmly convinced to be truthregarding the incident commencing l 1-5-75.

Nonetheless other UFO groups were willing to takeSpaulding at his word. The National IlwestigationsCommittee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) inaccu-l-ately chal-acterized the incident as a <fcontactee case ''complained about the çtundue excitement and intenest'' it had generated, and remarked that tfeither ahoax has been committed or . . . a psychologicalphenomena (sicl is involved.'' It cited as authority its''investigatory'' an Arizonauniversityprofessor. Laterthe ''investigator'' acknowledged that he laad notdone any actual investigating (ddAlleged Arizona Ab-ductiony'f 1976). The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)also treated the case cautiously, citing 170th sides ofthe dispute without taking sides (S'APRO, NICAP,GSW,'' 1976). APRO'S treatment, the most compre-hensive, was the wholly posjtive one (<dThe TravisWalton Case,'' 1975; Lorenzen and Lorenzen, 1975)9though it made much of the Pfeifer tests, it failed tomention the failed examination with Mccarthy.

So did tïleNationalEnquirevkn its December l6, 1975,issue, even though its reporters had privately volcedtheir disenchantment with the case to the Lorenzens

Pfeifer also conducted a polygraph examination onMary Kellett. Those who thought Travis's disappear-ance had been staged suspected that his mother

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Walton Abduction Case High Strangeness

a day after the Mccarthy examination. One of them, lined sentences (and sometimes combinations there-Jeff Wells, prepared a l6-page memorandum urging o0, Klass told a complex tale of deceit, conspiracy,that the story be killed. Unlike Mcflarthy, the report- and incompetence. He portrayed the Waltons asers did not believe Travis had perpetrated a homx; UFO buffs who seemed oddly unconcerned byTravis'sthey were persuaded by Dr. Rosenbaum that he had disappearance. To get around the positive polygraphhad a psychological experience. As Wells recalled in results, Klass argued that Mccarthy's experience and1981, &<He had seen something out there in tlle qualifications were greater tllan Gilson's and Pfeifer's;woods, some kind of an gsic) eerie light that had moreover, Tnavis lmd i<dictated'' the questions Pfeifertriggered a powerful hallucination that might recur at had asked him.

any time'' (wells, 1981). 'l''he November 10 Gilson examination of the crewA far more formidable and serious attack on thc case members proved nothing, according to Klass, exceptwas launched by Philipl. Klass inlune 1976. Klass, by that the loggers had not murdered Travis. 'rhe oneprofession an editor of the Wasbington weekly Avia- UFo-related question, Klass wrote, went, Lfllid yoution I'lwà andskace TecFlzlolor, issued 17 pages' worth tell the truth about actually seeing a UFO last Wed-of accusations against virtually evermne-investiga- nesday when Travis Walton disappearcd?'' Klass not-tor, polygrapb examiner, and alleged witness-who ecl, ''The question dàcl not ask whether they saw-rravisin one way or another supported the case. A rero- being 'zapped' by a t;F(), nor whether they reallycious UFO debunker who seldom llesitated to hurl believed that Travis had been abducted by a UFO.

''

hoax charges against witnesses ordinarily deemed He then made this rather strange observation:reliable (including police officers and members ofthe clergy), Klass approached the Walton episode lessas an investigator than as a prosecutor.

His most damaging revelation concerned the Mccar-thy examination and APRO'S role in covering it up.jim Lorenzen would subsequently defend his organi-zation's actions, sayingthat the results werc meaninpless-probably true, but hardly the point. Klass gotthe story from Mcflarthy, who had decided to speakout because of the continuing attention W alton'sclaims were receivîng. (ln July Travks and the sîxwitnesses would split a $5000 award from the Nation.al Enquirer after its Blue ltibbon Panel on Unidenti-5ed Flying Objects judged the case the most impontant UFO event of 1975.) He also learned fromMccarthy of Travis's pmst drug use and run-in withthe Iaw. ltlass used these, along with the claims ofLester Steward (charitably referred to as a ldpsycholo-gist and hypnotist whose PII.D. is from a small privateschool in Southern California''), to charge that Traviswas befuddled with drugs, possibly from tfI-SD inject-ed into the spot where the puncture mark was found.''Rcaders of ltlass's paper could only conclude thatTravis was both a substance abuser and a criminal.

Drawingliberally on speculation, the darkest possibleinterpretation of every remark and action and regu-lar use of capital letters, bold type, italics and urlden

Celestial bodies are sometimes mistaken forUFOs. At the time of the W alton incident, theplanetyupiter was very bright in the early eve-ning sky and would have been visible at 6:15 P.M.''I-his is not to suggest that Rogers and his crewhonestly imagined that-rravis hadbeen 'tzxapped''by Jupiter. But if they were a11 partners in aprearranged hoax, a1l might be able to answer'6yes'' to this one UFo-related question withoutdisplaying overt signs of telling a signiticantfalsehood.

Such strained conjecture did little to advance Klass'sargument. It was moreover unfair to conflate Tl-avis'syouthful troubles into evidence of a continuing pat-tern of criminal behavior, including substance abuse.Of this charge Lorenzen said <$The arresting officergin the forgery episodej will write Travis a letter ofrecommendation ancl the people that he robbed willdo the same'' (Clark, 1977). No area law-enforce-ment people, even those who did not especially likehim, considered Travis a criminal tBarry, 1978).lt was not true that Travis had t'dictated'' the poly-graph questions to Pfeifer Lorenzen would argue.Pfeifer himself would characterize the verb as lessthan accurate; Tdsuggest'' would bc closer to the truth.In any event, as Klass neglected to mention thequestions Travis wanted asked were potentially dam-

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High Sfrtzzlgerldl, W alton Abduction Case

aging ones if he was trzing to perpetrate a hoax. Insuggesting them, Travis was trying to address theaccusations made against him never imagining thathis action would be turned into yet another accusa-tion against him.

No one denied that the Waltons had discussed UFOsin the past. ln common with a number of arearesidents, including Sheriff Gillespie, 130th Duaneand his motber claimed to have seen them in tlàe past(Duane reporting a close encounter, Kellett distantlights). By Duane's own testimony he and his brotherhad talked about the prospect of entering a UFO. lt isnot unreasonable to incorporate these elements intoa hypothesis which sees the Waltons therefore aslogical suspects in a flyinpsaucer hoax. To call themUFO buffs however, is to overstate the case. Theywere not consumers of UFO literature, and Travishad never heard or .J. Allen Hynek. NorthwesternUniversity astronomer, former Project Blue Bookconsultant, and then the world's most famous UFOinvestigator. Travis learned of him only when Hynekproposed a meeting. Travis refused, thinking thatHynek was someone associated witll Spaulding'sgroup.

Duane maintained that his repeated talk of Travis'sreturn, including his insistence that his brother wassafe with the UFO people, was done to reassure hismother and himself. Here of course, we have to takehis word for it and Klmss was not the only critic towonder.

In Klass's renderingof the incident, the witnesses hada strong Iinancial motive for perpetrating a hoax.Mîke Rogers was far behind on the timber-trimmingoperation for which he had contmcted with the For-est Service. The completion date on the originalcontract, awardedlune 26, 1974, wms for the summerof 1975. Rogers managed to get an 84-day extension,and the new deadline was November l0, 1975. But asthat date neared he realized that he was still nowherenear completion. The Forest Service witbheld 10percent of its payment on the contract until the jobwas finished. As lklass had it Rogers knew that he wasrisking that penalty, which he could ill afford, and sohe dccided to make use of the t'Act of God'' clause inthe contract. Thus the $<UFO abduction'' came at aconvenient time for him. On November 18 he wrote

Moreover, as the A.P.R.O. Bulletin observed:

The facts are that Rogers was behind on thecontract in question since he had been workingon three other contracts simultaneously. Hehad collected on the other contracts and therc-fore was not in financial trouble.

the Forest Service to explain tlaat he could not com-plete his contract because the UFO incident %<causedme to lose my crew and Emadej it difficult to get anyof them back on thejob site.''This claim seemingly plausible, was repeated in sub-sequent Itlmss white papers and in two books hewould write years later. It would be accepted as areasonable explanation even by some UFO propo-nents. It is howcver, almost certainly false.

To start with thc seven crew members were unlikelyconspirators in a scheme to commit what amountedto fraud against the federal government. Rogers'smen were aIl temporanr employees, picked up for thespecit'ic job and paid by the hour. Only Travis andMike Rogers were personally close. Dwayne Smithbarely knew the other crew members; the incidenttook place on his third day on the job. Later, whenAllen Dalis by al1 accounts the least-liked member ofthe crew (and thus arguably the one most likely toinform on his fellows), fell afoul of the iaw, he con-fessed to crimes with which the authorities had notthought to link him; yet he resolutely insisted that theUFO story was true. One individual, never publiclyidentified, offered money- $l0,000, according toone account- to crew member Steve Pierce if hewould admit that the incident was a hoax. He refused.ln the early 1990s the Walton story was back in thenews because a feature t'ilm had been made about it;if any of tbe presumed conspirators had wanted tosell an exposé tcl a tabloid newspaper, he certainlycould have done so-and no doubt laid claim to asizeable check. None did so.

Also, it was to his advantage and to the advan-tage of the crew to work as long ms possible onthe contract. Rogers knew from experience thata small time overrun would be tolerated provid-ed they were making good progress. In addi-tion, a contract could be defaulted withoutserious penalty orprejudice without going to al1

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Walton Abduction Case High Stvangeness

the trouble of creating an excuse. Rogers knewthis because he had defaulted a contract a fewyears earlier.

Rogers had requested an inspection from theForest Service to take place on November 7thwhich would enable him to collect for the pastthree weeks' work. The UFO incident prevent-ed the inspection and held up monies alreadyearned (''The Waltomlllass Affair,'' 19761.

APRO pointed out that Rogers had not mentionedUFOs as the remson forhis not being able to completethe contract on time. Rogers's failure to t'inish thejobin the required period caused no serious diflkultywit.h the Forest Service; not long afterwards Rogerswas awarded another contract with it. This timehowever, he used a two-man machine and no longerneeded a six-man crew. After a while Rogers rehiredTravis Walton. The othertive who had comprised theoriginal crew were left out in the proverbial cold.tfxttre we to believey'' APRO asked, ''that (thel menwho perpetrated a hoax for Rogers's benefit are nowgoing to remain silent while Rogers collects the bestacreage rate he has cver received without them?''

No one connected with the contract took Klass'stheory seriously. Maurice Marchbanks and JuniorWilliams the Forest Service officers who contractedwith Rogers, rejected the idea as absurd. So didSherit'f Gillespie. So did journalist Bill Barn,, whoextensively investigated all aspects of the Waltonstozy as he gathered material for a popular magazinearticle and then a book tBarl7r, 1977, 1978). Yet lklasspersisted, and the notion that the Walton case was ahoax cooked up to excuse an overdue contract en-tered the folklore of ufology.

ln 1993 Arizona ufologistlim Speiser, at that pointno partisan of either side in the debate, conducted hisown inquiries. After examining contract documentshe discovered that Rogers had not drawn on the t'Actof God'' clause to get out of the contract. ''The wordstztct of God' were never mentioned by him byMarchbanks, or by anyone in connection with thedefault of his contract,'' Speiser wrote. He observed:

Throughout my conversations with Rogers itbecame clear that an in-depth knowledge of

As the stonr he would relate consistently over theyears went, he returned to consciousness in a hospi-tal-like room. His whole body ached, his vision wasblurred, and he felt weak and thirsty. A metallic taste5lled his mouth. Above him a luminous rectanglethree feet by one ancl a half and composed of seam-iess metal, gave off a soft white glow. A plastic, rockenshaped device extended from l4is armpits to his rib

Forest Service contracting practices would benecessary for anyone to evaluate Klass' argtz-mentationgyj and that it would be a simplematter for Klmss to exploit this complexity, know-ing full well that the casual reader would behard put to distinguish what passes for in-depthresearch from what is really half-knowledge-able sophistry. lndeed, Klass' behavior is notunlike (that ofl a shrewd prosecutor, familiarwith al1 mspects of the cmse, but sifting throughthe clues for the elements that would presentthe defendant-Rogers-in the worst lightIspeisers 19931.

Aboard. Nearly lost in the complicated human sagathat the Walton episode quickly became was Travis'saccount of what he claimed happened to him duringhis disappearance. Real or imagined the story isrelatively sedate and simple compared to some otherabduction claims of the period (see, for example, theAndreasson Abduction Case). If not for the circum-stance that initiated the episode if not for the unde-niable fact of Travis's mysterious absence for 5vedays- ig, in other words, Iike most other abductionreports it was simply an anecdote told by one personand unrelated to anything verifiable-it would notbe nearly so well known as it is. As folklorist ThomasE. Bullard, a scholar of the abduction phenomenonputs it, t<As abduction stories go, the W alton case wasneither lengthy nor complex, but the literature ofchargess countercharges and explanations arisingoutof the investigation has outgrown the literature de-scribing the incident itself ' (Bullard, 1987).Yet-l-ravis's story is interestingin its own right. Part ofthat interest lies, for a1l its simplicity, in its eerie andotherworldly quality. More important, it anticipatesaspects of the abduction phenomenon just begin-ning to come into prominence in the mid-1970swhich were then obscure or unknown altogether.

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High Strangeness Walton Abduction Case

eyes. Oh, man, those eyes, they just staaredthrough me. Their moutlas and ears and nosesseemecl real small maybe just because theireyes were so huge gBarn,, @. cïf.q,

Their hands had five fingers. The beings looked frailwith soft marshmallor r skin.

- Travis staggered to his feetand shoutedat the beings.' ' He struck out and pushed one of them into another.--- From the emse with which he was able to knock them

back, he deduced that they weighed relatively little.R'hen Ne grabbed a cylindrical tube off a shelf whichjutted from the wall. Assuming from itas appearancethat the tube was made ofglass he tried to break thetop off so that he could threaten the beings with its

.,.1 jagged edges. But the object proved unbreakable.

Nonetheless Travis waved it threateningly in theirdilection. Keeping their distance they 'just stoppedand kind of thrust their hands out, like they meantno, or stop, or I don't know wllat.'' After a shorttense standoff, the beings turned around and exited

. .,- quickly out the door immediately behind thern.Vtt', .' Shortly thereafter 'rravis lzimself ran out of the room

and headed left into a cunring corridor three feetwhile allegedly on board a UFO Tzuvis Walton encoun-' wide. In short order he came to an open room on histered two types of alienbeingssinctudingshop'tlrzres who

''Iooked like fetuses.'' This sketch was drawn' riïbt. lt was round, domed, and appareatly empty ofwalton saidby Mike Rogers based on Walton's description. anything except a high-backed metal chair in the

middle. The chair was supported by a single centercage. The air was wet and heavy, and he had some leg. since its back wa$ to him, Tra&is could not be suredimculty breathing it. Still, his first impression was that someone was not sitting in it but he decided tothat he was in a conventional earthly hospital, even if take a chance. Moving slowly and quietly with bishe could not understantl wlzy the nurses had not back ressed up against the wall he positioned him-P ,removed his clothing. self so that he could glimpse the chair's occupant, if

there was one. There wasn't.Travis saw three figures dressed in loose-fittingorange one-piece suits standing near laim one to hisright, the other two to his left. As his dsion clearedhe recoiled in sllock and horror as he realized thesewere nothuman beings. He would describe them thisway:

W hen he slepped toward the chair the light began tofade. He stepped back and the light returned. Hestepped forward again and slzddenly was surroundedby stars. He could not tell whether the walls, ceiling,and floor had become transparent, revealing thedeep space through which the cnaft presumably wasnaoving. or starlike points of light had been project-ed, planetarium-fashion on a1l surrounding sur-faces. Except for the facf that the walls were stillvaguely visible, ftthe effect was like sitting in a chair inthe middle of space,'' Travis would write ('Walton,1978).

They were short, shorter than tive feet and theyhad very large, bald heads, no hair. Their headswere dorned very large. They looked like fetus-es. Tlaey bad no eyebrows no eyelashes. Theyhad very large eyes--enormous eyes- almostall brown, without much white in them. Thecreepiest thing about them were gsic) those

559

walton Abduction Case High stxangeness

'rhere was a panel of buttons on the rigbt armrest, they canae to a closed door to their right. It openedalong with a screen with vertical black lines. 'rhe left into a tiny 'smetal cubicle'' of a room which the twoarmrest laeld a lever, Travis pushed a couple or the entered as the door closed againbehind them.-rravisbuttons, but nothing happened. Then lle sat on tlae asked where they were going, but his companionchair and pushed the lever forward. The black lines again ignored the question.on the screen moved and the stars started rotating,'

'rhey then entered an enormous room wlàich Travisthough keeping tlaeir relative positions a11 the while.F i htened and disoriented, Travis pulled his hand tholvht of as an airlock or a hangar. Inside it tb.e airr gff the lever, which then returned to its original WaS fresh and cool with gently flowing breezes, a1-oition on its own. 'rhe stars stopped rotating and mt''t ms if they were outside, and the light was asposrrozen into their new positions. bright as sunlight. Travis descended a short, steepwere

ramp and looked around him. He would recall:soon he was rooling with the lever again, and now

dically, pushing it in a1l directions, hoping T1lC Ceiling was sectioned into alternating rec-more rathat he could open one of the doors whose thin tangles of dark metal and those that gave offtangular outlines lae thougbt he could see on the light like the sun shining through a translucentrec11 in rront of Iaim. The stars again whirled around. Panel. The alternation of the light and darkwa

Travis let go once more, rearing that if he kept Panels reminded me of a checkerboard. Thelaying with the instruments, he might cause some Ceiling itself curved down to form one of thePreal damage. larger walls in tlae room. The room wms shaped

like one quarter or a cylinder laid on its sideHe got to his feet and walked over to the wall. The gfju.j.stars faded away, and the room lighted up. Travis ranhis fingers along the outline or what he thought The craft Tsavis and the strange man had just leftmightbeacloseddoor, thenwalkedbacktothe claair. looked like the one he had seen in the woods exceptAs he was standing beside it. he heard sounds and that it was considerably Iarger, perlaaps 60 feet inlooked to the open doorway behind the chair. There diameterand 16 feet high. To his left were two similarhe was startled to see a human figure wearing a butsmallervehicles (40 to 45feetin diameter) parkedtransparent bubble helmet over his head. Shock fol- Close to the wall. A silver reflection nearby looked aslowed relieras Travis reflected that he was among his if it couldhave conze from a third craft, but hewas notown kind. sure because ics source was mostly obscured by the

large ship.The man looked like a deeply tanned, muscularCaucasian, about six feet two inches tall perhaps 200pounds. He had sandy blond hair long enough tocover his ears and he was dressed in a tight-fitting,bright blue covenall suit with a black band or beltacross the middle. He wore blackboots. In his excite-ment Travis failed to appreciate just how odd theman's eyes looked. A fsstrange bright golden hazel ''they were not really the eyes of a human being.

The t'igure motioned to Travis, who approached witha series of frantic questions to which the only re-sponse was a tttolerant grin.'' Travis thought the manhad said notlzing because his helmet blocked out hishearing; maybe they were going some place wherethe man would remove the helmet and then theycould talk. Led by the arm, Travis was taken into thecurving, narrow hallway, the man in the lead, until

The two walked across a floor of spring'y greenrubberlike material to a door in the hangar room. Itopened from the middle and brought them into ahallway six feet wide and eight feet high. Theywalkedsome 80 feet past a number of closed double doors.tiWhen do we get to go home?'' Travis wanted toknow. tdW here are we going now?'' As usual hiscompanion acted as if he had not heard him.

They finally came to another pair of doors at the endof the hallway. As they slid silently open, Travis sawtwo men and a woman sitting in the room. They weredressed like his companion and even bore a familysort of resemblance to him. Like him they weregood-looking and perfectly featured. The woman,who appeared to be wearing no makeup, wore herla ztir l ta lzë; e1' tlz atlj tl lt, 11 le :1 tli tl.

High .i/zrtzzàgtzzœl: Walton Abduction Cmse

The three were not wearing helmets, which gaveTravis false encotuxgemenr. %çWould somebody pleasetell me where l am?'' he asked desperately. Thebeings only looked at him with pleasant expressionson their faces, and the helmeted man sat him down ina chair before leaving through another door, entening a corridor, and departing to the right.

As Travis continued to talk the woman and one ofthe men stepped over to him one on each side andtook him by his arms to a nearby table. Thoughinitially cooperative, Tmvis grew less so when herealized that they were notgoing to tell him anything.He shouted at them but they continuecl to look onhim with the same silent, kindly look which amount-ed to a small, toothless grin. Even as he struggled, thebeings managed to force him on his back. Once hewas down, he noticed that the woman had in herhand sometbing that ç'looked Bke one of those clear,soft-plastic oxygen masks, only there were no tubesconnected to it. The only thing attached to it was asmall, black, golfball-sized sphere.'' She placed itover his mouth and nose and as Travis prepared torip kt off bis face, he lost consciousness.

The next thing he knew, Travis was lying on his backon the highwayjust outside Heber 10 miles from theplace where he had seen the light in the woods. In thedarkness he saw

selling book. At the time of the Walton disappear-ance,lohn G. Fuller's The fzlj:mtyfpdw/bumey was theonly full-length treatment of an abduction episode.The next, Coral andlim Lorenzen's Abductedh wouldnot be published until 1977.

On October 20, 1975, NBC television broadcast adocudrama, The UFO fzzcftfepz, on the Hill case. Klassand other critics would make much of this. Travisinsisted neither he norany other witness had seen theshow. In any event, tbere is not much similaritybetween the Hills's story and W alton's. There ismoreover, not a great deal of similarity betweenWalton's and any otller ahduction narrative thatwould have been known to him from the UFO litera-ture as of November 1975.

What Jim and Coral Lorenzen found particularlyfascinating, however, was the curious fact that at thetime the Walton story broke they were working onan abduction investigation Walton could have knownnothing about. The claimant, Air Force Sgt. CharlesMoodys reported a dose encounter on August l3,1975, in the New Mexico desert (see Moody Abduc-tion Case). APRO'S investigationbegan the followingmonth and continued for some rnonths. In a letterMoody wrote the Lorenzens early in November hedescribed the UFO's occupants in this way:

one of those round craft hovering about fourfeet over the highway. It was hovering there forjust a second. I looked up just as a light wentout, like a hatch closing, orjustalight going out.A white lightjust went off on the bottom of it.The craff was dark and it wasn't giving off anylight at a11 lBarry, op. t*.).

Travis ran to the gas station and tried the first of threephones. It didn't work, and he panicked. Maybe a1l ofthem were out of order. But he got through on thesecond, and his brothenin-law Grant Neff answered.

Wcl/cr?z and #z: c&fucfït?zz # . By 1975 ufologistshad collected and investigated a small number ofabduction reports. The first case to come to theirattention wmq the Hill abduction case, a 1961 doseencounter whose abduction aspect subsequently re-covered through hypnosis, tirst saw print in l965andthe following year became the subject of a best-

Entities like these were unknown to ufolop'sts priorto the Moody and Walton reports, but as abduction

The beings were about tive feet tall and verymuch like us except their heads were iarger andhairless their ears ven, small eyes a little largerthan ours, nose smallt j and the mouth had vel'ythin Iips ELorenzen and Lorenzen, 1977).

Moody's entities were to all intents and purposesidentical to the ones Walton allegedly encountered inthe period just after he recovered consciousness.Unlike W alton, Moody described communicationstvia telepathy) betwecn himself and the beings. Moodywas told that the ship he had boarded tiwa.s not theirmain craft, but only one used for observing . . . theirmain craft was about four hundred of our milesabove the earth.'' Furthermore these beings workedin cooperation with other extraterrestrial races-though Moody, unlike Walton, reported encounter-ing no representatives of these.

Walton Abduction Case High Strangeness

cases proliferated in the years ahead, they wouldbecome staples of close-encounter lore. So wouldreports of onboard encounters with Numattlike ornear-human beings mssociated with smaller entities(Bullard, @. cit. ).Continuéng controveîsy.-l'be Walton case was the sub-ject of two paperback books published in 1978. l14Vflf-sdefncounlcrajournlist's investipation into thetangled affair, author Bill Balz'y found Klass's andother critics' charges to be without merit and heconcluded that to a11 appearances Travis and tlleothers were telling the truth as they saw it. Travis'sown book, The I'FJJ//Z/ Expericnce, told thc story fromhis perspective and defended himself against tb.ewould-be debunkers. It is worth mentioning thatTravis, not a ghostwriter was indeed the author.Though not college-educated Travis was and isintelligent and articulate.

The witnesses went their own ways. Travis remainetlin Snowflake &nd married Mike Rogers's sister Dana,with whom he had four children. He kept a lowprofile. His UFO storz did not expand in the telling;he claimed no further memories of what happened tohim during tlaose five days. He reemerged into publicvkew in March 1993 when Fire @/1 the us'ày, a reaturcfilm based on his book appeared in the theaters tomodest success, mixed reNiews alld ufologiscs' com-plaints about its inaccuracies (Drasin, 1993;Johnson1993). The lilm stan-ed D. B. Sweeney as Travis axldRobert Patrick as Mike Rogers; Robert Liebermandirected from a script by Tracy Tormé. To promotcthe Glm Walton and Rogers made the rounds of thetalk shows. On March 12 the day the movic wagreleased the two appeared on CNN'S LartylGngshou?in a tierce debate with Klass who at one point lost histemper ancl called Rogers a 'Igoddamned liar.''

More difticult to rationalize however, is the absenceof any bruises on Travis's body even when the beamslammed his right shoulder into a collision with as hewrites in his book txthe hard rocky earth of theridgetop.'' If there is anything suspicious to be foundin the stonr, one finds it here- as well as in thecoincidence of Duane and Travis's having talkedabout boarding a UFO prior to the latter's %factually''doing so.

choice but to insist that a heretofore-undetectedhoax scheme underlies the claim.

Nearly all of the available circumstantial evidencewould lead one ro the conclusion that Walton, hisfamily, and tl'le logging crew are not hoaxers. If thereis cornpelling evidence to tlàe contranr, it has yet toemerge-which is not to say of course that it couldnever emerge. In the end Kla-ss's case rests on a singledubious polygraph result and a mass of lurid butapparently bascless speculations. Should the Waltonepisode turn out to be a hoax we may be consdenttlàat it will not be the kind of hoax Klass says it was. lnthe end Itlass's reckless and emotional attacks haveonly done damage to tlle skeptical case. As long as itremains f/lc skeptical c.ase there is no skeptical case.

To be sustained the critics' argument needs to berebuilt from the ground up. It would start with threesmall details, or at least two of them. The least ofthem is the absence of Travis's Gngerprints on any ofthe phones at the Heber gas station. This absencet'nay be explainable as an oversight hy countt'y com asthey fumbled about in the early-morning cold anddark; in any event, nobody disputes that someon,ecalled the Neffs around midnight on November 10from a Heber phone b00th and nobody has pro-posed a candidate other than Travis.

'T'wo decades later what are we to make of the W altoncase?

ln the end how one views the Waltott controversydepends on how one feels about UFOs in general andalien-abduction claims in particular. lf one believes itis possible tbat UFOs ex-ist as piloted extraterrestrialvehicles one can accept that-fravls W alton boarded aspacecraft and interacted with its occupants. If onebelieves such things are not possible, one ilas little

Against this anthill of small but disturbing detai' ls ofcourse, stands a mountain of circumstantial evidencewhich so far evcn the most committed debunkershave been unable to topple. In its t'ive decades ufologyhas seen its share of hoaxers and Travis W alton toevenz appearance a modest and decent man acts likenone of them. If his story is a fabrication it is amongthe rnost skillfully and intricately executed in UFOhistory. If it is not, then its implications--for all ofus- are extraordinary indeed.