Travis Walton

The Travis Walton UFO Abduction Case
By Geoff Price

On November 5th, 1975, one of the more persistently controversial UFO events in history took place in northeastern Arizona. A work team consisting of seven individuals reported encountering a reflective, luminous object the shape of a flattened disc hovering close to their truck on a remote dirt road in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. According to the crew, one of their members, Travis Walton, exited the truck and approached the object on foot, at which time he was allegedly struck by a brilliant bluish light or flash and hurled to the ground some distance away. In fear, the other crew members fled the scene, returning after a short period of time to find no trace of the UFO, or of Walton. The driver of the truck was Mike Rogers, the crew foreman and a personal friend of Walton's. While fleeing the scene, Rogers reported looking back and seeing a luminous object lift out of the forest and speed rapidly toward the horizon. He, along with the other five witnesses, would eventually be subjected to polygraph (lie detection) examinations regarding the event, the successful outcomes of which catapulted the case into the national spotlight.

Walton turned up five days later, confused and distraught but with fleeting memories of alien and exotic human entities. He was also subsequently subjected to a number of controversial polygraph examinations. As the first seriously investigated UFO event to involve the disappearance of an individual in conjunction with a UFO sighting, the Walton incident put the honesty of UFO claimants, as well as the validity of lie detection evidence, squarely in the spotlight. A total of thirteen polygraph examinations have been conducted in association with the case, tests which have been the subject of considerable discussion and acrimonious debate.