Obscure Occurrences : Abducted by Aliens || The Travis Walton Story

Struck by a beam of light

 In 1975, 22-year-old Travis was a logger who worked with six other men to clear trees for contract in his hometown of Snowflake, Arizona and on November 5^th 1975, Mike Rogers the head of the crew, was given a contract to clear out 1,200 acres plot of land in the Sitgreaves National Forest. So, the crew along with Travis headed to this spot and worked for three full days to complete the assigned task. After finishing their work, they packed all their stuff, kept it in their truck and started driving to the main road to get off the forest.

 The crew was really happy that their task was complete and, on their way back they were making light-hearted jokes about what they would be doing that night. As they kept driving down the road maintaining a cheerful atmosphere, they all noticed a bright light in the forested area on their right side. Coincidentally, the moon was also on their right side and they told themselves that it could be the moonlight. But as they kept driving, they had to take a turn and the moon was now not in the side of this light in the forest. One of the crew members thought it was a forest fire but Mike Rogers, who was driving the truck denied it saying there was no smoke.

 Travis being an adrenaline junkie, started requesting Mike to drive to this place in the forest to check what was this light. Although Mike was not completely convinced, he agreed to what Travis said as it sounded interesting and started driving through a little access road that led to this area of the forest. As they kept driving through this access road, they saw a clearing from where this light was getting emitted and they were awe-struck by what they saw.

 They saw a disc-shaped aircraft which was hovering almost 100 feet off the ground. It had multiple panels of light on its underside and it stood steady without any horizontal or vertical movement as it hovered. This aircraft had extremely impressive engineering that appeared to be unreal. As the other members of the crew kept gazing at this marvel, Travis jumped out of the truck and started walking towards this aircraft slowly whilst admiring it all the way. In an interview, Travis said that he had mixed emotions of fear and fascination while he walked towards the aircraft. As Travis started going too close to this aircraft, the other members of the crew started shouting, asking him to come back as they had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen.

 Travis, however, did not listen to their yells and walked towards the aircraft until he got directly under it. As he kept admiring the engineering beauty of the aircraft’s underside, it slowly started to spin making a loud mechanical sound. With the yells of the crew members getting louder and louder, Travis knew that he had to get back to the truck but he just wanted to look at the aircraft for a few more seconds. When he finally decided to turn back and return to the truck, a sudden beam of light came out of the aircraft and struck Travis. As if he was hit by lightning, Travis was thrown 20 feet away. Although all these may sound ridiculous, all of them went through polygraph tests separately and they said the exact same things and cleared the tests.

Travis' Disappearance

 Mike Rogers and the remaining members were petrified seeing this and decided to leave the place at once convincing themselves that Travis was already dead. After driving for a few minutes, Mike changed his mind and decided to go back and get Travis. He told the other members to get out of the truck and wait for him while he would go back and got Travis. After what they had seen, the other members of the crew decided to stick together and told Mike that they would also be accompanying him. So, Mike along with the other crew members started driving to the aircraft site but by the time they reached this site, the aircraft had already gone and Travis was missing. The fact that Travis was nowhere to be found made Mike break into tears as he felt guilty for abandoning him.

Police Investigation

 After literally scanning the area that Travis was thrown into, the crew decided to reach out to the police and ask them for help but when the police heard their UFO story, they started suspecting the crew. The police initially thought that the six men were drunk or high on drugs but when they figured out that Travis was indeed missing, they concluded that the crew killed him and they were using the UFO to save themselves. According to Sheriff Gillespie who was the one overall in charge, the six crew members looked extremely shaken up and he thought that they were trying to create a hoax to cover up a crime.

 Sheriff Gillespie and Sheriff Kopplin organized a thorough search in the part of the forest where Travis went missing. Despite using multiple canine units and helicopters, the police were not able to find Travis and the suspicion about the crew members became stronger. So, Sheriff Gillespie walked over to Mike and the remaining members of the crew and told them that if they confessed the location of Travis’ body, they would go easy on them but they stood firm on their claims of UFO involvement. With the pressure mounting up, the crew was really worried about Travis and what would be going through as people were not believing their claims.

Three Men in Red

 One day during the search, Mike and the other crew members saw three masked men scanning the area with what looked like metal detectors. Mike was so naïve that he thought the police were bringing in paranormal investigators to help them. So, Mike walked up to them and asked one of the three masked men what they were scanning for and he told radiation. Mike was sure that they would have been subjected to radiation when the spaceship hit Travis and he asked this masked man to scan him and the other members with his equipment. When this man scanned them, his equipment did not detect any radiation.

 Confused by this, Mike asked this man to scan their hard hats and the moment he did it, the indicator in his equipment went all the way to full. But why did this happen? The crew members were not wearing the same clothes they were wearing when Travis went missing but their hard hats were still in their truck when the aircraft fired a beam of light on Travis. Mike doubted that these hats were exposed to the aircraft’s radiation and the indicator on the masked man’s equipment confirmed their exposure.

 This man in red called the other two guys and asked them to scan the helmets and even their equipment indicated the same. Strangely, after seeing this, the three started walking away from the crew despite Mike shouting for them to stop and disappeared into the forest. Seeing them walk away, Mike immediately went to Sheriff Gillespie and asked him who those three men were but, the Sheriff told him that he did not know them.

Travis Comes Back

 With Travis not being found after 3 days of intense searching, the locals started to turn on the six crew members thinking that they had killed him and to cover it up, fabricated the UFO story. Their story, however, became an incredibly viral story and media outlets were flocking to Snowflake, Arizona. The pressure of releasing more details kept mounting on the Sheriff’s department and this changed the situation of the crew members from bad to worse. Sheriff Gillespie put them under a lie-detector test and one by one they were grilled with questions for two hours and it turned out that they were indeed telling the truth. Sheriff Gillespie was astounded by the results of the test and he found himself completely lost in the investigation but he gave a sigh of relief when Travis returned 5 days after his disappearance.

 After 5 days after his disappearance, Travis’ brother received a call from a man claiming to be Travis. This man on the phone asked him to come over to a rest stop in Snowflake, Arizona. When he drove to this rest stop, he found Travis in a really bad state. He looked completely dehydrated and drained out of energy. When asked how he ended up there, Travis said that he was bought back to his consciousness by a bright light over him. When he slowly opened his eyes, he saw the aircraft that struck him with a light beam, hovering straight over him.

 According to him, the aircraft ascended into the sky and it went away. The moment it flew away, he found himself in the middle of a road covered with darkness. He felt completely drained of energy and understood that if he doesn’t get help, he might die. So, mustering all his strength he started walking down the unknown road which led him to a rest stop. This rest stop had a phone and using that phone he called his brother asking him to come and pick him up.

 Travis was completely shocked when he heard from his brother that he had been missing for 5 days as all he could remember then was being struck by a light beam from the UFO. Travis was taken to a hospital by his brother and the doctors confirmed that despite looking tired and sick, he did not have any physical wounds other than a syringe mark on his arm. It appeared to be a mark from using drugs but the drug reports came out to be negative. After returning back to his home from the hospital, Travis started getting multiple calls from the media and the Sheriff's department asking him to open up but he seemed to be in a state of shock as if he had been through a really bad trauma. Because of this mental state, he was not able to remember what he went through for those 5 days.

Story of Abduction

 When his memory finally settled down, he started having flashes of what happened to him during those 5 days in his mind and he finally opened up. According to him, after being struck by the light beam from that UFO, Travis woke up in the middle of a few doctors. They were wearing white coats and had facial coverings. With him going in and out of consciousness, he saw an orange light around him and he firmly believed that he was saved by the other crew members and admitted to a hospital where he was being treated. In a lucid state, he saw a rectangular-shaped object placed on his chest. One of these doctors wearing the white coat was doing something on this object.

 Seeing that Travis had opened his eyes, this doctor slowly leaned into Travis to get a closer look. Travis was caught off guard by what he saw and he understood that he was not in a hospital and the people around him were not doctors. When this figure in a white coat got close to him, Travis noticed that it was nothing like a human. It had a grey long head with slitted eyes and it stood 4 feet high. Scared to death, he jumped off the bed he was placed in, pulled off all the chords that were connected to his half-naked body and started running away from this group of unknown creatures as fast as he could.

 As he ran, he noticed what appeared to be a man in an astronaut suit. This man was in a trance and did not respond to anything Travis said but he grabbed Travis by hand and led him to a hangar where multiple aircraft that looked similar to the one that struck him with a light beam, were kept. After walking for a few minutes, he reached a place where three other men in astronaut suits were present. They forced him onto a bed and placed a gas mask on his face which made him fall unconscious. When he gained back consciousness, he found himself in the middle of a road.

 Travis’ story of abduction gained international traction and despite multiple lie-detector tests in a span of 40 years, the narrative has never changed.