More than 40 years after experiencing the inexplicable in Heber, Ariz., Travis Walton is still sharing his tale of survival.
Many who have crossed paths with the abductee ask him how he can stand to talk about those five days after Nov. 5, 1975, when he vanished from his home state and was subjected to a traumatic experience.
“Well, every time I do (tell my story), it takes a little bit of that edge off,” he admitted while standing in a corner at the Toronto Airport Marriott, Sept. 22.
It’s not just him who was affected by the alleged alien abduction. Six of his coworkers witnessed his abduction while driving through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and were interrogated by local law enforcement.
That intensive investigation was led by Navajo County Sheriff, Marlin Gillespie, who thought the six men had killed their colleague.
Five of the six men passed lie-detector tests, and the sixth was inconclusive, according to an Associated Press article, published Nov. 13, 1975.
Walton was at the Toronto Airport Marriott hotel Sept. 21 and 22 to share his story to the Alien Cosmic Expo crowd and admit that there is a “basic reality to these kinds of events”.
Even though he shares his story about being abducted in front of six friends, there is still a current of skepticism running through his body.
“I’m with everybody else in saying it’s not all true. People may have a vivid dream,” he admitted. “In my case, something that was undeniable happened to me in front of my entire forest crew.
“One thing I resort to at a lot of these events, when they share their perspective on things is I ask, ‘How do you know this? What verifiable facts can you point me to?”
He points to the 1993 film starring D.B. Sweeney, Robert Patrick and directed by Robert Lieberman, as an example of Hollywood’s penchant for over-dramatizing events, and placing the emphasis on “invading monsters”.
“I think the effect of that was, in a sense, putting people through the emotional ringer that we had been through.”
If you have six men all share the same story, that a then 22-year-old Walton stepped out of pickup truck to view a saucer-shaped object in the sky. Then a beam of light struck him and they sped off, leaving him behind, then you may just have something.
The film, although lurid in its details, helped to get people talking about what’s beyond our planet’s exosphere.
“I made the point during that time, if you thought there was life outside of earth, you were a kook. Today, if you think we’re alone in the universe, you’re a kook,” he said, with a wink.
He has a keen interest, as he shared the ideas of Stanton Friedman and Michio Kaku, and posited questions about the Drake equation, used to predict the number of civilizations when the first meetings of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) began in 1961.
But most importantly, he encourages everyone to get the facts first.
“Don’t have an opinion first and then find the facts to support it. That’s backwards thinking,” he said. “It will always get you what you started with.”
Photo by Brian Baker/Superstitious Times