Into the Sky

The Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona is remote enough that in November 1975, a logging crew could work for days without seeing another vehicle. Travis Walton and six of his crew members — employed by contractor Mike Rogers — were wrapping up a long day of cutting when they saw it: a bright glowing disc hovering above a clearing in the trees.

Most of the men told Rogers to drive away. Travis Walton got out of the truck.

What followed was witnessed by six men. Walton approached the craft. A beam of blue-green light hit him and threw him violently backward. The crew panicked and fled. When Rogers stopped the truck and turned back, both Walton and the craft were gone.

The crew went to the sheriff. The immediate assumption was murder — that the men had killed Walton and invented the story. Investigators separated the witnesses and questioned them for hours. Then they were polygraphed. Five of the six men passed definitively. The sixth showed signs of extreme anxiety — consistent with fear, not deception.

Walton was missing for five days. He reappeared on November 10th, disoriented and physically depleted, calling his family from a phone booth in Heber. He had lost eleven pounds. He could not account for the time.

His account, told first to family and then to investigators, described regaining consciousness on what appeared to be an examination table. Three beings with large heads and enormous eyes stood over him. He panicked and fought them off. A human-looking figure in a helmet led him to another room. He was placed in a pod-like device and lost consciousness again.

The case attracted immediate national attention. The National Enquirer awarded it the prize for the best documented UFO report of the year. APRO investigators interviewed all seven men. Researchers from multiple organizations attempted to find inconsistencies in their accounts and failed.

What Travis Walton describes is terrifying. What makes the case scientifically interesting is what it doesn't rely on: it does not depend on one person's memory, one person's word, or one person's psychological state. Six men saw the event that began it. All six had the same story. Five of six passed polygraphs under professional administration.

Mike Rogers, the crew foreman, has never stopped believing what he saw. He was the last one in the truck and the first one who turned back. "I saw Travis get hit," he has said in dozens of interviews over fifty years. "I know what I saw."

The 1993 film Fire in the Sky dramatized the events, though Walton has always maintained the film took considerable liberties with the details of what happened aboard the craft. His book of the same name remains the most complete account.