Alien Abduction, Travis Walton

The story begins on an ordinary day. A seven-man logging crew packs up after hours of hard work in the Apache Sitgrives National Forest. It was this typical day of working hard out there.

We worked up until the sun started going down. And by the time we got all loaded up and ready to go, it was getting fairly dark. The tight-knit crew begins the rough 30-mile drive back home to Snowflake, Arizona.

Foreman Mike Rogers is behind the wheel when the men notice something strange. We hadn't gone very far. I mean, maybe a quarter of a mile.

The guys started seeing a light through the trees. There was a bright light over to the right of us, and we couldn't really tell what it was. I at first thought it was the moon.

I turned, I look over the other way, and there's the moon, you know? Could it be a hunter's campfire, an airplane crash? The answer is even more terrifying.

Right when you come around that bend, it just hits you all at once. It was just like a saucer just setting in the air, not moving. It was softly glowing, like from the inside out.

22-year-old Travis Walton in the passenger seat startles everyone. Before Mike even stopped, he was in the passenger seat. He was in the passenger seat, and he was in the passenger seat.

Before Mike even stopped, Travis had had that door open and was getting out. Travis took off in a fairly brisk walk up towards it, and he stood there for just a few seconds, and this thing started making noise. It was shocking, very shocking.

I heard this noise, and I go, oh, crap. I felt this rumble, you know, in the steering wheel. That spooked me.

Here we go, man. Come on, get back in here. You're all terrifying.

And all of a sudden, this blue light came out. The woods lit up like a bluey screen. It zapped him in the chest.

He flies back about 15 feet, at least. His body bounces off the ground. Mike turns on the pickup and takes off.

It was a blind panic, white knuckles. We went down the road about a quarter of a mile, and then I hit the brakes. And the guys in the truck were saying, what are you stopping for?

That thing could be chasing us, you know? And I said, we left Travis back there. So we had to go back.

That's when I became hysterical, basically. Right there. Exactly.

We don't know what it was. We had to go back and get him. While we were outside of the truck, we saw a flash.

Now, I assumed it was that craft. Just in a street, just like that. Everybody got their courage back, so we saw it take off.

Couldn't leave Travis out there. You just don't leave a guy behind. We went back very slow.

We walked around the perimeter, looking in the bushes and that, and see if it maybe crawled off. Travis! But he was nowhere to be found.

That's when Mike, he kind of, you know, he kind of fell down to the ground and kind of lost it. I broke down. I broke down because Travis wasn't there.

He was my best friend. He was my best friend, and he was my best friend. Guilt ridden, terrified, and in way over their heads, the crew members decide to call law enforcement for help.

We all got back in the truck, and we left. And that was a very, very emotional trip. All right, let's go call him.

There's this phone substation as we get coming off the dirt road. We called Sheriff's Department. The first officer arriving on scene is Navajo County Sheriff's Deputy Chuck Ellison.

They were obviously very upset, and I tried to get just as close to each one of them as I could to see if I could detect odors of marijuana or alcohol. I didn't detect any. Sensing something amiss, Ellison talks to each member of the crew, starting with Foreman Mike Rogers.

Mike, he was the boss, you know. He called shots, said how things go, where are you going to go, you know, and all that. The missing man, Travis Walton, dated Mike's sister, Dana.

Also on the crew is Mike's brother in law, John Goulette. John's the kind of person that gets along with everybody. I've known Travis for a long, long time.

I met him as a teenager when I came up there to stay with Katie and Mike. Goulette brought two other friends onto the crew, Dwayne Smith and Alan Dallas. Alan Dallas was, I might say, the black sheep of the crew.

He was a character. He was, you know, he had his run-ins with the law and that, you know. Rounding out the crew are 26-year-old Kenny Peterson and 17-year-old Steve Pierce.

I was the gopher, you know, because I was the youngest. When the frightened crew members tell Deputy Ellison that Travis was attacked by a UFO, Ellison calls in his superior, Sheriff Marlon Gillespie. Marlon Gillespie was my father.

He was the sheriff of Navajo County for many years. At the time that the incident occurred, they called my father out to involve him and other deputies. Sheriff Gillespie showed up, and we told him what happened, and he was looking around for beer bottles and stuff, because he didn't really believe our story.

He thought that these men saw something. That part, he believed because he said they were scared, but he wasn't sure were they scared because of what they had done, or were they really scared because of what they believed that Travis had been taken by a UFO. He looked at Mike, he says, you've got to go back, and I want two volunteers to come back with me.

The other three, I want you to go back to Snowflake and don't leave town. Mike Rogers, Allen Dallas, and Kenny Peterson lead the sheriff and his deputies to the site. There's no trace of Travis or the alleged craft.

I could not see a skid mark of any kind, like as if some kind of aircraft had touched on the ground. I could not see a footprint of any kind. I couldn't detect any odors.

I didn't see any burns, and I said, well, we may as well leave because he's not here. Without industrial lighting equipment or a huge force of officers, the small town sheriff's hands are tied. You'll have to wait until morning to launch a search party to find out if Travis Walton is injured, dead.

Or is it possible that he was abducted by aliens?