Travis Walton abduction

Dusk, November 5, 1975. Seven members of a logging crew led by Mike Rogers were driving out of a work site on the Mogollon Rim. A bright light showed through the trees. Then a hovering glowing disc. Travis Walton left the truck and walked underneath it. The crew said a beam of blue-green light shot from the craft and knocked him back. Rogers drove away in panic. The crew returned minutes later. Walton and the craft were gone.

The crew reported the disappearance to the sheriff. A multi-day search found nothing. Suspicion fell on the crew that they had killed Walton and invented the story. Five days later, Walton called from a phone booth in Heber. He recalled waking in a room with three short beings with large eyes. He recalled fleeing, encountering a human-looking figure, and then waking on a road with the craft departing above him. He believed only hours had passed.

The crew took polygraph tests arranged by the sheriff. Five passed and one was inconclusive. Walton failed a first test arranged by the National Enquirer, which was initially concealed, and passed later tests. Skeptics, notably Philip Klass, argued the crew fabricated the event to invoke an 'act of God' clause on a behind-schedule Forest Service contract. Walton and the crew have maintained their account for decades.

The 1978 book The Walton Experience was adapted as Fire in the Sky (1993), which considerably embellished the abduction scenes. The case is the best-known multiple-witness abduction claim.