Page 81 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper March/April 2018 Edition

The Travis Walton Abduction Case 81

The Travis Walton

Abduction Case: Fact,

Fiction Or Psychosis?

You be the Judge & Jury

Continued from Page 80

The next thing he knew, Travis was
lying on his back on the highway just outside
Heber, 10 miles from the place where he had
seen the light in the woods. In the darkness he
saw ...one of those round craft hovering about
four feet over the highway. It was hovering there
for just a second. I looked up just as a light went
out, like a hatch closing, or just a light going out.
A white light just went off on the bottom of it.
The craft was dark, and it wasn’t giving off any
light at all.
Travis ran to the gas station and tried the
first of three phones. It didn’t work, and he
panicked. Maybe all of them were out of order.
But he got through on the second, and his encountered in the period just after he recovered More important to ufologists were the
brother-in-law Grant Neff answered. consciousness. Unlike Walton, Moody described new polygraph tests Walton, Rogers, and Allen
communication via telepathy between himself Dalis underwent on February 1, 1993. They
WALTON AND THE ABDUCTION and the beings. Moody was to that the ship he happened through the insistence of a skeptical
PHENOMENON had boarded “was not their main craft, but only ufologist, Jerry Black. Walton and the others
By 1975 ufologists had collected and one used for observing... Their main craft was initially felt - based on their experience with the
investigated a small number of abduction about four hundreds of miles above the earth.” first - that another test would be pointless. In due
reports. The first case to come to their attention Furthermore, these beings worked in course, however, they changed their minds. Cy
was the Hill abduction case, a 1961 close cooperation with our terrestrial races - though Gilson test Dalis (whom neither Walton nor and
Moody, unlike Walton, reported encountering no Rogers had seen in years) and judged him
encounter whose abduction aspect, subsequently
recovered through hypnosis, first saw print in representatives of these. “truthful when he answered these relevant
1965 and the following year became the subject Entities like these were known to questions” having to do with whether he had
of a best-selling book. At the time of the Walton ufologists prior to the Moody and Walton seen a UFO on November 5, 1975, and whether
disappearance, John G. Fuller’s The Interrupted reports, but as abduction cases proliferated in he conspired to perpetrate a hoax. Dalis affirmed
Journey was the only full-length treatment of an the years ahead, they would become staples of the first and denied the second. Gilson was also
abduction episode. The next, Coral and Jim close encounter lore.So would reports of on convinced that Walton and Rogers were telling
Lorenzens Abducted! would not be published board encounters with human like or near- the truth when they responded affirmatively to
until1977. human beings associated with smaller entities. questions about seeing the UFO and negativity
to those about staging a hoax.
On October 20th, 1975, NBC television
broadcast a docudrama, The UFO Incident, on CONTINUING CONTROVERSY To promote the film, Walton and Rogers
the Hill case. Klass and other critics would make The Walton Case was the subject of two made the rounds of the talk shows. On March 12
much of this. Travis insisted neither he nor any paperback books published in 1978. In Ultimate 1993, the day the movie was released, the two
other witnesses had seen the show. In any event, Encounter, a journalist’s investigation into the appeared on CNN’s Larry King Show in a fierce
there is not much similarity between the Hill’s tangled affair, author Bill Barry found Klass’s debate with Klass, who at one point lost his
story and Walton’s. There is, moreover, not a and other critics’ charges to be without merit, temper and called Rogers a “god-damned liar.”
great deal of similarity between Walton’s and and he concluded to all appearances Travis and Prior to their appearance and unknown to
any other abduction narrative that would have the others were telling the truth as they saw it. In the larger public, a bizarre episode had unfolded.
been known to him from the UFO literature as of Travis’s own book, The Walton Experience, told It began with a phone call to Walton from a man
November 1975. the story from his perspective and defended who identified himself as an independent
What Jim and Coral Lorenzen found himself against the would-be debunkers. It is witness to the November 5 1975 encounter. The
particularly fascinating, however, was the worth mentioning that Travis, not a ghostwriter, stranger, then allegedly an Army Intelligence
curious fact that at the time the Walton story was indeed the author. Though not college- officer, said he and his wife had been hunting in
broke, they were working on an abduction educated, Travis was and is highly intelligent the area when they saw the craft and witnessed
investigation Walton could have known nothing and articulate. the beam. Later, he asserted, he told his superior
about. The Claimant, Air Force Sgt. Charles The witnesses went their own ways. officer about the UFO but was directed to keep
Moody, reported a close encounter on August Travis remained in snowflake and married Mike silent unless the crew were about to be convicted
13, 1975, in the New Mexico desert that became Roger’s sister Dana, with whom he had four of murder.
known as the Moody Abduction Case. APRO’s children. He kept a low profile. His UFO story The man had details generally right and
investigation began the following month and did not expand in the telling; he claimed no sounded “genuine,” in Walton’s estimation. He
continued for some months. In a letter Moody further memories of what happened to him notified Torme, and soon afterwards Paramount
wrote the Lorenzens early in November 1975, during those five days. He emerged into public - without notifying Walton - flew the informant
he described the UFO’s occupants in this way: view in 1993, when Fire in the Sky, a Paramount to Los Angeles to interview him. On March 11,
The beings were about five feet tall and Picture feature film based on his book, appeared 1993, in Phoenix, Cy Gilson administered a
very much like us except their heads were larger in theaters, to modest success, mixed reviews, polygraph test in which the man was asked two
and hairless, their ears very small, eyes a little and ufologists’ complaints about its inaccuracies series of questions. The first concerned the
larger than ours, nose small, and the mouth had and exaggerations. The film starred D.B. sighting and his claim to having a high security
very thin lips. Sweeny as Travis and Robert Patrick as Mike clearance.
Moody’s entities were to all intents and Rogers; Robert Lieberman directed from a script
purposes identical to the ones Walton allegedly by Tracy Tormer. (Continued on Page 83)