https://www.kjzz.org/the-show/2025-07-03/his-arizona-ufo-abduction-story-became-legend-after-50-years-hes-sick-of-attempts-to-debunk-it
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106912/
His Arizona UFO abduction story became legend. After 50 years, he's sick of attempts to debunk it
July 3, 2025 at 12:50 PM MST
Arizona was the site of one of the most famous reported UFO abductions.
In 1975, Travis Walton was working on a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, on the Mogollon Rim, near the tiny town of Heber-Overgaard, in the central part of the state.
According to Walton, who was 22 at the time, on the night of Nov. 5, encountered the blinding light of a UFO in a clearing in the forest.
The other members of the logging crew said they fled the scene in terror to go get help, and when they came back, Walton was gone.
Walton was missing for days. And then, around midnight on Nov. 12, the phone rang at Walton’s sister’s house. It was him — and he said he’d been abducted by aliens.
Walton’s story became national news — and he was interviewed extensively by, among others, Jim Lorenzen. Lorenzen later gave an interview about his conversation with Walton.
“Well, I was struck by the fact that he said these beings didn’t look quite human. He described them precisely the way another person who described them, who had a similar experience.
Now, this case has not been published anywhere and nothing like this case has been published anywhere. So, it’s something Travis could not have read anywhere,” Lorenzen said.
Walton ended up writing a book, which was later adapted into a film called “Fire in the Sky.” And while numerous questions have been raised about the veracity of the story Walton and his fellow loggers, he’s never wavered.
In 2015, filmmaker Jennifer Stein made a documentary about Walton that she hoped would counter the attempts to debunk Walton’s account. For the last few years, they’ve been traveling the country giving talks.
Walton and Stein joined The Show to talk about what it’s like to stick to a story that so many people simultaneously want to believe and disprove. Walton said he’s a little sick of it.
Conversation highlights
TRAVIS WALTON: Well, you know, it's continually having to prove myself and, you know, it wasn't anything that I could have foreseen and desired as a part of my life.
SAM DINGMAN: Jennifer, how did you first become interested in Travis' story?
JENNIFER STEIN: Well, I knew Travis' story, but when I finally got to meet him and I realized how genuine he was. I realized nobody had ever bothered to do a decent documentary about his case.
There was “Fire in the Sky,” Paramount Pictures film that really kind of told the story, but changed it and made it, you know, a horror scary, scary, story, especially the onboard craft experiences that Travis had.
And it really didn't legitimize any of what these boys had been through. And I had my own UFO encounter as well. So, I had a lot of respect for what they've been through, and for the ridicule they'd been through. And I just felt somebody really needed to tell their story.
DINGMAN: Travis, if I'm not mistaken, one of the things that must be difficult in terms of giving people the story they might want about this is, as I understand it from Jennifer's film, your memories of what actually happened, there's not that much to them, right?
I mean, you have a memory of being up in this craft, you have a memory of seeing this figure in a helmet. But, it seems like that's kind of all there is to it, right? It’s not like there’s enough content for a feature-length —
WALTON: I was unconscious or dead, most of those days. As far as the overall picture, you have seven people testifying and staying by their story for all these years.
And, if you had seven people testifying that they had witnessed a murder, I mean, even without polygraph tests, you would have an extremely airtight case.
But, only because it involves this particular subject, that people continue to try to find cracks in it, which they don't.
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