Fire in the Sky. The Walton Experience

407 Pages·2016·3.51 MB·English

by  Walton Travis.

"It was many years ago that I got out of a crew truck in the national forest and
ran toward a large glowing object hovering in the darkening Arizona sky. But
when I made that fateful choice to leave the truck, I was leaving behind more
than just my six fellow workmen. I was leaving behind forever all semblance of a
normal life, running headlong toward an experience so overwhelmingly mind-
rending in its effects, so devastating in its aftermath, that my life would never—
could never—be the same again. ”
—Travis Walton
On November 5, 1975 a group of loggers in the mountains of northeastern
Arizona observed a strange, unusually bright light in the sky. One of those men,
Travis Walton, recklessly left the safety of their truck to take a closer look.
Suddenly, as he walked toward the light, Walton was blasted back by a bolt of
mysterious energy.
His companions fled in fear. When they reported an encounter with a UFO—
something they would have considered impossible if they had not witnessed it
themselves—the men were suspected of murder. For five days authorities
mounted a massive manhunt in search of Walton—or his body. Then Walton
reappeared, disoriented and initially unable to tell the whole story of his
terrifying encounter.

Published by Marlowe & Company
632 Broadway, Seventh Floor
New York, New York 10012
“Sons and Daughters” Art Neville/Arthel Neville/Ian Neville/Lorraine
Neville/Ron Cuccia/Malcolm Burn © 1990 Neville Music & Arthelian Music
(BMI) & Neeha Music & Chief Jolly Music (ASCAP) All rights administered by
Irving Music, Inc. (BMI) on behalf of Neville music for the world/Almo Music
Corp. (ASCAP) administered for Chief Jolly Music for the world.
Photographs of D.B. Sweeney and Robert Patrick courtesy of Paramount
Pictures © 1993 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.
All other photographs and illustrations copyright © 1978, 1996 by Mike Rogers.
All rights reserved.
“Fire in the Sky” written by Pete Kozak © 1996. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1979, 1996 by Travis Walton
ISBN 1-56924-840-0
Library of Congress Card Catalog number: 96-075582
Printed in the United States of America
Foreword
by Tracy Torme, Screenwriter/Producer, Fire in the Sky
It was November 5, 1985, and the significance of the date hadn’t escaped me.
As the jetliner descended toward the Valley of the Sun, my mind reeled back, ten
years to the day.
I’d been sitting in the library at Beverly Hills High (in the days before its zip
code became a household word), listening to the radio on headphones,
pretending to study. A five-minute newsbreak interrupted the rock and roll, and
the last item caught my distracted attention. . . .
An Arizona man named Travis Walton was missing—and his coworkers came
up with the craziest excuse for his disappearance: He had been blasted by a ray
of light and taken away by a flying saucer, they said. It was clear from the tone
of the report that no one believed them. Murder was already being mentioned.
The local newsmen threw in the standard line about “little green men” . . . then
the Stones returned with a song about tumbling dice. But I wasn’t listening. I
was thinking about Travis Walton.
Now, ten years later, I was touching down in Phoenix, on my way to
Snowflake, Arizona, and a face-to-face meeting with Travis. As I hurried to
catch a commuter flight, I ran into the pilot, who informed me that his plane was
grounded. There was a storm over the White Mountains, and I was out of luck. I
offered to double the money. No go.
Storm? What storm? I looked up at the cool blue sky in frustration. My time
was limited; I had to be back in L.A. in three days, and I was determined to
reach Snowflake.
So I rented a car—a very special car according to Hertz—a brand-new four-
wheel-drive Peugeot—and I was off to Snowflake. For two hours I headed east
across the desert, enjoying the sunshine and scenery in a way only a city boy
can.
And then it started to snow—in a big way.
As ice, sleet, and snow pelted my little French car I made an interesting
discovery: The windshield wipers didn’t work. I drove on in exasperation,
sticking my head out the window and trying my best to follow the highway, then
glancing back through the mist for the racing flatbed that was sure to run me
down at any moment.
Near the old mining town of Superior, I pulled off the road and waited for the
storm to abate. I thought of Travis and the first time we’d spoken, a few days
earlier. I’d gotten his number from Snowflake Information; I later discovered it
had been unlisted for ten years—he’d just put it back in the phone book a day or
two before I called. I took that as a good omen. The call had been spurred by a
discussion I’d had with producer Robert Strauss a week previous. The Walton
case was so interesting, so spectacular, why hadn’t anyone made a movie about
it? In my preliminary talks with Travis, the answer became clear.
The Travis Walton I knew only by voice seemed extremely suspicious of
anyone from Hollywood. In fact, he seemed suspicious of anyone, period. So I
was journeying to Snowflake for two major reasons: to convince him that I was
sincere in my pledge to make a him that told his story truthfully, and to see for
myself if the case was a hoax. In my mind, the latter wasn’t a deal breaker. If the
Walton incident was an elaborate ruse, I still felt that made for a great story that
could be translated to the screen.
The storm never ended; I arrived in Snowflake three hours later, half amazed
still to be in one piece. Over the course of the next few days and several more
trips to the area, I interviewed Travis and Dana Walton, Mike Rogers, Kenny
Paterson, John Goulette, Allen Dalis, Glen Flake, Marlin Gillespie, etc. I spoke
with believers and disbelievers, well-wishers and scornmongers. In the end there
was only one conclusion I could possibly reach.
The woodsmen had been telling the truth.
Something built by nonhuman hands really did appear on the mountain that
night. A piece of unreality had become all too real and had changed seven young
men’s lives forever. I was amazed by the skeptics’ lack of a reasonable
alternative, and I was impressed by the amount of suffering the incident had
caused the woodsmen.
Six and a half long years later, Fire in the Sky went into production. Why did
it take so long? In the film business, things that should take a week take a month.
And every time we said, “Could we please have twenty million dollars to make
this movie?” . . . someone with twenty million dollars said no.
It was my sad duty to report to Travis all the roadblocks and false alarms we
experienced during those years. I encouraged him to maintain the hope and
expectation that our film would eventually be made. Travis hung in there with us
until we finally hit pay dirt. As the film was produced, shot, and edited, I could
sense his growing excitement, as well as the satisfaction he felt at finally having
the opportunity to have a large, nationwide audience vicariously relive his
experience. I know this book will enlighten and amaze the reader, just as the
story of the Walton Seven first captivated me, half my lifetime ago.
Travis Walton has changed since the time I first met him. His qualities of
quiet truthfulness and deep introspective thinking are still the same, but the chip
on his shoulder has evaporated. He holds his head high now, confronts his critics
directly and readily accepts the fact that there are some who will always
disbelieve. He is a family man of quality, at peace with himself and his
experience. I’m proud to call him my friend.
Preface
Context
To perceive is to suffer.
—Aristotle
It was many years ago that I got out of a crew truck in the national forest and
ran toward a large glowing object hovering in the darkening Arizona sky. But
when I made that fateful choice to leave the truck, I was leaving behind more
than just my six fellow workmen. I was leaving behind forever all semblance of
a normal life, running headlong toward an experience so overwhelmingly mind-
rending in its effects, so devastating in its aftermath, that my life would never—
could never—be the same again.
Nothing in this naive country boy’s life up to that moment could have
prepared me for what followed. But what I didn’t know then, I think I know
now. It’s been a real education! And with this new book I try to share those
insights. When I first wrote The Walton Experience (Berkley Books, 1978), the
book which Paramount Pictures’ movie, Fire in the Sky, is based on, I stated my
desire that the book put the reader where we were when it happened. My hope
was that if people could vicariously live it—somehow actually experience it as if
they were there in my stead—perhaps they could take a more open-minded and
objective approach to their evaluation of it all.
However, nothing approaches the goal of allowing people to live someone
else’s experience nearly so well as a movie. I think most people knew better than
to expect a documentary, and although some dramatic license was exercised, I
believe that the movie succeeded in conveying the emotional essence of what we
went through. Public response to the film fulfilled all reasonable expectations of
all reasonable expectations of its makers. And it satisfied my goal of imparting
my experience on the gut level, so I feel free now in this updating to emphasize
other areas. I provide an accurate, undramatized chronicle of events, and I
account for the main departures that the film took from what actually happened.
I try to satisfy the interest which so many people have expressed concerning
why, after all this time, I finally consented to a movie being made, and what the
process of its creation was like.
One of the most neglected areas in the earlier book was the controversy
surrounding the whole episode, the attacks by people who for various reasons
felt compelled to try to deny that it had ever really happened. Many of those
attacks were so ridiculously baseless that I naively believed a cursory rebuttal
would be sufficient. I thought those inclined to doubt could easily be pointed in a
direction that would lead them to discover there was no truth in the alleged
scenarios which had me or my coworkers hallucinating on drugs, creating a
hoax, suddenly becoming psychotic, etc. I wrote as if all these claims could be as
easily refuted as the charge that the report was a cover story for a gory chainsaw
murder.
I could not have been more mistaken. The onslaught not only did not go away,
it grew. Refuted claims were continuously resurrected and, like a child’s game of
gossip, became more embellished with each telling.
Therefore I devote my greatest efforts here to critical analysis of the myriad
attempts to explain away what was otherwise recognized as the most spectacular,
best-documented UFO incident ever.
Another emphasis in this book is the context in which this incredible event
occurred. People need to know more about the prior lives of the people involved
and the community in which it happened in order to understand its impact and
aftermath. And the years of the aftermath are a story unto themselves, a story so
excruciating that my memories of what I have lived through because of some
people’s reaction to what happened are a hell which nearly overshadows the
experience itself.
Take a sleepy little Western town steeped in conservative, traditional values.
Drop into its midst an event so shocking, so anomalous, that by its very nature it
challenged conventional beliefs and attitudes, at the same time being impossible
to dismiss, demanding to be confronted. That, pardner, was the makings of some
serious turmoil.
The UFO incident caused me to come in contact, directly or indirectly, with
many people from all over the world whom I otherwise would never have known
anything about. It so happened that most of them came from the larger cities. In
many of those people I detected the attitude that it was good that this event
occurred in such a place. If anything could make a bunch of hicks wake up and
smell the coffee, make them realize “there are more things in heaven and earth”
than allowed for in their pantheon of dear illusions, it was this sort of event; it
was just what these close-minded rubes needed to shake up their smug
orthodoxy, to pull their blinders off so they might also begin to see a little more
of the modern world outside their little corn-row rut.
Perhaps. But I believe their attitude is metrocentric, their own dear illusion
that small towns are backward and cities are populated solely with hip,
sophisticated, open-minded people with a much more accurate picture of “the
real world.”
I have news for them. I’ve seen both sides and I can tell you that rural
communities have no corner on tunnel vision. Admittedly, these mountain
communities are somewhat more homogeneous in their views, but there is far