E-Mail: zbutler@ou.edu

[As told by Mike Rogers]

It was the morning of Wednesday, November 5th, 1975. It was just your ordinary day. I picked the crew up early in the morning and we were making our way to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest here in Arizona. I was awarded the Turkey Springs thinning contract from the Forest Service because I came in with the lowest bid that still allowed for a somewhat profitable margin for my crew and I. It was my highest contract I had ever been awarded in my nine years of bidding out contracts. I was only twenty-eight, the oldest of my crew, but had learned the hard way how to go about getting contracts while avoiding the “tricky pitfalls” of the forest clearing business.

We pulled up to the Turkey Springs area and started to unload the gear from my old ’65 International pickup truck. Today, Allen Dalis, John Goulette, and Travis Walton were going to be running the saws while Dwayne Smith, Kenneth Peterson, and Steve Pierce were on piling duties behind the cutters. I was scouting ahead and marking the trees that needed to be cut.

It was a long day. There were a few close calls between fallen trees and the crew, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Finally, six o’clock rolled around and Travis yelled that it was quitting time as I was picking up and repiling a little ways down the hill. All saws stopped and everyone made their way back to the pickup to pile in for the drive home. By the time we all got situated the watch on my arm read 6:10 PM. Barring and breakdowns or accidents, we should be home by 7:30.

We sat in our usual places. Smokers in the back, non-smokers in the front. Even though it was a cool night, we had the windows down in order to cool ourselves off from the work earlier in the day. The International made its way over the water-bars, but the truck kept bottoming out on its springs, which the guys loved to tease me about.

The guys were carrying on about the decrepit shape the truck was in when I noticed that Travis, who was riding shotgun, was saying nothing and staring out his passenger side window. Just then, the rest of the guys went silent, and they too were staring out the window at what I could only think was a large fire or possibly headlights from someone hunting earlier in the day.

As we continued driving up the road toward whatever this brightness was, we could catch glimpses of it through branches and clearings in the forest. A couple of the guys in the back exclaimed as this object, which was now clearly not a fire nor headlights from a truck, seemed to wash across the road some forty yards ahead of us. From my seat I couldn’t get a good look at what it was without leaning over the wheel and looking up, but the rest of the guys were straining their necks out the windows to get a clearer look at whatever this was in the sky.

I had shut off the engine now and we were all sitting there spellbound at what we were seeing before us. The men on the left side were leaning over in order to get a better look at whatever this thing was. We were transfixed for what seemed like an eternity just staring at the sight of this massive golden disk hovering what looked like twenty feet off the ground. It just stayed there without making a sound. Without a word of warning, Travis up and got out of the truck and started toward the hovering ship.

We started to yell at him, asking him what he was doing and that he should get back into the truck. He just shook his head and kept walking towards the object. It looked like he just wanted to get a closer look at what we were all seeing. I still can’t understand why on Earth he’d want to though.

At one point he looked back at us while we were screaming at him, and I thought he might race back to the truck, but instead he turned and kept walking towards the towering object until he was about six feet from being directly under the machine. He was bathed in this yellowish, orange aura that seemed to emanate from the craft itself. He stood there just staring up at the object. Hands out stretched.

All of a sudden, the craft started to spin in its place. It sort of resembled a top wobbling as it spun. A very low, barely audible sound could now be heard coming from the ship as it floated there wobbling. The guys and I kept yelling at Travis to get back into the truck when a bright, blue-green ray shot from the craft as Travis started to duck. The force of the blow lift his body off the ground and hurled him backward through the air ten feet. He landed with a thud on the rocky earth of the ridgetop and remained motionless.

By this time the rest of the guys were yelling and screaming that they had gotten Travis and that we needed to get out of there. I couldn’t agree more as I fumbled with the keys in the ignition. When I finally got the pickup started I pounded the gas and we flew over the top of the ridge and continued steadfast down the other side. The truck was only going 35 miles per hour down the rocky trail, but that was a feat in and of itself given the terrain that we were covering.

I kept asking the guys if the thing was following us, but never heard any replies as they were just staring out the back window. As I went over a large water-bar, the jolt seemed to bring me out of the shock that I was in. I realized that if we were to get out of here I needed to slow down or the truck would not make it. I had taken the wrong approach to a water-bar in the road and was forced to stop the truck and back up and make another run at it when I stopped and looked back and said that I didn’t think it was after us.

We sat there for awhile arguing with each other on whether or not Travis was dead and if we should go back to see when we saw the outline of a camper-pickup pass us on the road. The guys were yelling at me to catch up to it and get help when something caught the corner of my eye. I saw what looked like a golden disk raise itself vertically and then shoot off at an unbelievable speed. I yelled to see if the rest saw what I saw, but they didn’t.

We finally decided on going back and looking for Travis after some serious contemplation. When we got back to the site we were hesitant to get out and leave the glow of the headlights, but we finally gave in. We searched everywhere, but Travis could not be found.

We ended up having to go back and tell the authorities what we saw and about the disappearance of Travis. We were scrutinized and made fun of for days. We had to undergo lie detector tests because officials believed we had killed Travis and were using this story as a cover up.

When it seemed all was lost, Travis’s brother-in-law, Grant, got a call late one night from someone claiming to be Travis. He went and picked up Duane and they decided to go and see who this person was who was claming to be Travis. They pulled up to some phone booths in Heber, Arizona, where the call came from, and found Travis slumped over in the phone booth five days after he had been reported missing. All he would do is repeat, “They were awful….They were awful…..They were awful….”

Commentary

Image of Flying Saucer by Michael H. Rogers (1996)
Image of Escape in Truck by Michael H. Rogers (1996)