Fire in the Sky | Dark Mysteries
Hometown Ghost Stories
The episode delves into the infamous 1975 disappearance of logger Travis Walton in Arizona, exploring the details of his alleged UFO abducti
Key takeaways
- Travis Walton vanished for five days in November 1975 after being struck by a beam of light from a hovering craft.
- The crew members, led by Mike Rogers, underwent polygraph tests that largely cleared them of foul play.
Main topics
- Travis Walton disappearance
- UFO sightings and abduction
Notable quotes
Is it aliens? Could be.
Conclusion
The episode leaves the mystery unresolved, weighing the possibility of
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) I'm John Grylls from Creepy, and Speaker 2 (0:02) I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Speaker 4 (0:12) Welcome in, ladies and gentlemen, to Hometown Ghost Stories Dark Mysteries. I'm Jesse Wilkins, and today we have another mystery for you in which is dark, and it deals with a missing person case and his friends and co-workers. Well, they had a story, but the locals started sniffing around and thinking that maybe they were responsible for his disappearance in the first place. Let's get to the bottom of what happened with Mr. Walton. Speaker 4 (0:50) Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Hometown Ghost Stories Dark Mysteries, where I think I just spoiled the ending with the intro. Is it aliens? Could be. You know, I like talking about this stuff. You do. I Speaker 2 (1:05) do. I'm Jesse Wilkins, joined as always by Rob Coakley. Hello, Rob. I am ready to get into this story that may or may not have aliens in it. Yep. And we're also joined by Dave, who Speaker 4 (1:16) also Speaker 2 (1:16) may or may not have Speaker 4 (1:17) aliens in them. Speaker 3 (1:20) There better be some aliens in the story. Speaker 4 (1:22) There might be. But who knows? Because it is a dark mystery. Speaker 3 (1:32) More. More intros. How many Speaker 4 (1:35) more can you do? Let's go back to 1975, and this story may not be suitable for children. Speaker 1 (1:43) Hometown Ghost Stories contains serious and often distressing events and is not intended for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised. Speaker 2 (1:55) Is this what you do? You play all these just because you see how upset I get? Speaker 3 (2:01) Yes. I think you should find one more just to make sure that everybody has tuned out by the time you start telling the story. Speaker 4 (2:08) We'll save all of them for the end of the show. This. Speaker 3 (2:12) Don't do it. Too good Speaker 4 (2:13) of a story for me not to get into. Anyways, this is back in November of 1975. Speaker 4 (2:23) You had a man named Travis Walton, and he was working as a U.S. Forest timber thinner. Speaker 3 (2:30) Cut trees down, right? Yeah. Speaker 4 (2:32) Yeah. Timber thinner. He had a timber thinning contract under crew chief Mike Rogers, who was also his close friend and later became his brother-in-law. This was a seven-man crew. You had Rogers, Walton, Allen, Dallas. Dwayne Smith, John Gulette, Kenneth Peterson, and Steve Pierce. So they had this job and they were running behind schedule. So they were working late to meet this deadline that was looming. And they had to clear some trees. They had to thin out the forest, some say. Speaker 3 (3:10) And you do that because why? Speaker 4 (3:15) Well, you clear out space for buildings or. Because you hate the environment. There's many reasons to do this. Speaker 3 (3:22) Maybe I feel like forest thinning. Just doesn't sound like you're clearing out like a big open area. It sounds like you're just making it less dense. Speaker 4 (3:30) You're going, you're teaching the trees how to exercise. Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:33) Yeah. Do you think anyone ever became like a logger? Cause you're like, I just hate the earth so much. Speaker 4 (3:41) These trees suck. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Anyways. So on the evening of November 5th, after sunset, the men were driving home and Rogers pickup when they spotted a bright glow through the trees. So they're looking at this thing and some of them were like disinterested in it. And some of them were like, what is that? And they had some suspicions. They were like, oh, maybe it's a forest fire. And one of them pointed out, well, he's like, well, if there was a forest fire, we would see smoke and we don't see smoke. And then they're like, all right, well, let's go check it out. And so they approached the clearing and saw, you know, as they're getting closer, they're like, oh man, that's like, that's like a UFO. It's something flying. It's got these lights. and uh they described the undercarriage of it to be like extremely like advanced machinery and had this really elaborate um build out with all these different light panels and things like that but the one big thing that they noticed is it was just hovering it wasn't moving it was like stuck in the air it was defying gravity if you will you know it was back in 1975 and they were kind of blown away by this thing and they had uh travis was like um He was like the daredevil of the group. They had said that they were driving down the road. I read an account where they drove by a bear. And so he hopped out of the moving vehicle to go chase the bear. Speaker 4 (5:07) So there's a lot of safety hazards in this story built in. Prior Speaker 3 (5:12) to OSHA. Speaker 4 (5:14) Yeah, Speaker 2 (5:15) is this a daredevil or is this a psychopath? Speaker 4 (5:17) Like back before Monster Energy came out, he had the formula. He was drinking it. Yeah. Maybe he created it. Speaker 3 (5:26) He's Speaker 2 (5:26) a Speaker 3 (5:26) bear Speaker 2 (5:26) enthusiast. Speaker 4 (5:27) Is Speaker 2 (5:28) that what this story is? How monster energy got created, Jesse? It's a dark mystery. Are you calling for another intro? Please don't do a monster energy intro. Rob will be gone. Speaker 4 (5:41) Anyway, so they saw this. They described it as roughly, I don't know, it was pretty big. It had this high-pitched buzz to it, and it was about 110 feet away. And it had this... bluish green and also this yellowish light coming out of it. So Walton jumped out and he was just going towards the object. Everyone else was like, just staying back in the truck. Like, dude, here goes a Walton. He's just being a crazy Walt. And again, just real daredevil, but he wanted to see what, yeah, he wanted to see what was up with it. So everybody else like yelling, I'm like, dude, you probably shouldn't go near that thing. And he walked over anyways. He didn't care. He was super curious about it. It's like, well, I'm Speaker 2 (6:20) going Speaker 4 (6:20) to lick it. Speaker 2 (6:21) I'll Speaker 4 (6:21) lick it. Speaker 4 (6:23) Yeah, well, just then there was like a huge bright beam of light that came out of this object and just zapped him and like launched him 20 feet. And everyone's like, we got to go. He's dead. And they didn't even check on him. They just got in the truck and left. They were like, oh, bye. Bye, Walton. We told you not to do it. You did it. It reported that they said that the ray struck him in the chest and threw him backwards through the air. I read one report that said it launched him about 20 feet. So, yeah, they were just like, well, he's dead. And they drove off. And then as they're driving away, they're like, you know, Speaker 3 (6:59) like... Speaker 4 (7:02) maybe Speaker 3 (7:02) we should have checked on him. Speaker 4 (7:06) Maybe he's not dead. I don't know. But apparently it didn't look good. And so eventually they stopped the truck and they all look at each other. They just agreed as a group, we should probably go back. We would want someone to come back for us if we got struck by a giant beam of light from a UFO. Speaker 3 (7:25) And Speaker 4 (7:26) one other note was before the thing struck him, It finally started to move. So it started spinning slowly before that light beam came out. It was like they noticed him there and then shot him with a laser. Speaker 4 (7:39) Anyway, so they returned. It was only a few minutes that they were gone. So they drove away, realized that they were being dicks, and then they just turned around and came back. But when they came back, there was no UFO anymore. It was gone. And there was also absolutely no trace of a body, no tracks of where he would have ran off to. He was just gone. And so was the UFO. Speaker 2 (8:02) I think the little bear was laughing when he got shocked. The bear's just off in the distance. Speaker 4 (8:08) Maybe there's a possibility. Maybe he got shocked and then the bear was like, now I'll eat him. Now he doesn't scare me anymore. Speaker 3 (8:15) Or maybe Speaker 4 (8:16) it Speaker 3 (8:17) was the bear in the UFO. Speaker 4 (8:19) Oh. Speaker 4 (8:21) He made it back to his vessel. Barefo. So eventually the crew, like they didn't have to do. Speaker 2 (8:29) Winced at me over there. It hurt me. It's a bear flying object, Dave. Okay. Speaker 4 (8:37) I think it would just be a UFB. An unidentified flying bear. Well, Speaker 2 (8:43) we've identified that it's a bear. It Speaker 3 (8:45) was a bear flying object. Speaker 4 (8:46) It's just a flying bear. Speaker 3 (8:48) It's an IFB. An identified flying bear. We can move on. Speaker 4 (8:53) Yeah, we probably should. Speaker 4 (8:58) You know, they search around. They yell out his name. They go through the forest. They're like, dude, where is this guy? Because he's not dead. He got up and left or something. But the spaceship was gone as well. And they straight up just couldn't find him. So eventually they're like, well, what do we