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Hi, Chris
Although this particular forum is really meant to be about the Roswell Slides Hoax, I see we have now been sidetracked into consideration of the Travis Walton case. Oh, well – I’ll tell you what I think of that although it doesn’t mean to say I’m a total UFO atheist like the late Phil Klass!
Like you I was once prepared to believe that the Travis Walton abduction story from November 1975 might be the real deal unlike so many other tales of alien contact over the last sixty years. I met Travis Walton at a UFO conference in Florida in 1997 and bought his book “Fire in the Sky”. That tells his version of his alleged alien abduction but it leaves out much of what happened before and after the event.
In particular there is no mention of the fact that the National Enquirer newspaper –famous for its sensational and often highly dubious stories-- had offered tens of thousands of dollars to anybody who could positively prove that aliens had visited our planet - in the knowledge that exclusive rights could be worth millions. Travis and his brother Duane were well aware of this and I think their motive in concocting the abduction hoax was to collect this prize money which they certainly succeeded in doing. For an account of what went on at the time and the attempts by both the National Enquirer and APRO (the leading UFO research group, Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) to take control of this case and cover up polygraph test failures by Walton and other members of his logging crew, see:-
The Selling of the Travis Walton "Abduction" Story
It looks as if all seven members of Walton’s logging team must have been aware this was a hoax but went along with it to cash in on the prize money. It has been suggested by some that Walton and his brother and/or his friend Mike Rogers may have put on some sort of a stunt involving a bright fake UFO in the forest to deceive the other members of the team but that seems unlikely to me. In any case the National Enquirer paid Walton $2,500 and the other members of the crew split a check for a further $2,500. The total $5,000 was quite a bit of money in 1975 and the Enquirer’s UFO reporter Bob Pratt flew to Arizona to deliver these prize money checks. Travis Walton and other members of the team made a trip with Bob out to where the abduction had supposedly taken place and some of the money was spent on liquor with which the loggers noisily celebrated their win.
A recurring aspect of some of the tales of alien contact or abduction like this is that the abductee --and maybe other witnesses-- subsequently undergo polygraph tests. Usually they will claim that they passed such tests even if they failed or else produced inconclusive results. In this case the fact that Travis Walton had flunked a polygraph examination, paid for by the National Enquirer, and administered by the most experienced lie detector expert in the state of Arizona, John McCarthy, was completely concealed. John McCarthy concluded that Walton was practising "gross deception." APRO (which was promoting Walton's story) and the National Enquirer both concealed this embarrassing fact. Walton later passed a different polygraph test (for which he had adequate time to prepare), but failed a later one on the 2008 TV show Moment of Truth. In reality, if someone is anticipating taking a polygraph exam, and practices for it, they have a very good chance of fooling the examiner.
Travis Walton in his book
Fire in the Sky never admits that he failed any of the polygraph tests and he makes no mention of the National Enquirer or their offer of prize money which he and his team won for their “proof” that aliens were visiting our planet. To my mind this is more than an oversight: it’s a deliberate attempt to hide the truth. When I met Travis again recently and expressed these misgivings he airily dismissed my criticism and said that his brother was the one who had dealt with the National Enquirer at the time and he had had no prior knowledge of the $5,000 prize. I suggest this is not true.
Yet again a sensational claim of alien contact looks very much like a carefully thought out hoax. Maybe one should not be too surprised since the many dozens of claims of alien contact starting in the 1950s have never produced any solid evidence for it and one could say that we have simply been dealt hoax after hoax after hoax. Here we go again in 2015 with the bogus Roswell Slides.....
However, your belief that they believe is no consolation... Haha. As I am not yet that cynical, we'll agree to disagree about this particular event. #DontStopBelievin
