Turkey Sprs, AZ abduction report — November 5, 1975

On November 5, 1975, Travis Walton was working with six other men on a tree-thinning contract near Turkey Springs in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. As the crew drove out after work, they reported seeing a luminous object among the trees. Walton left the truck and approached it. His companions said that a bright discharge struck him and threw him backward; they fled, then returned to find him gone. Walton’s own subsequent account began with awakening in an unfamiliar room. At first he thought he was in a hospital, but he then distinguished three short, large-eyed figures around him. Frightened and weak, he pushed at them and moved away. He described leaving that room and encountering a taller, human-looking figure wearing a helmet. He said that the figure led him through another area to a room containing additional human-looking people. They did not answer his questions. A woman placed a mask over his face, after which he lost awareness again. Walton did not describe a continuous memory of the entire period he was absent. Late on November 10, he reported regaining awareness beside a highway near Heber and seeing an object depart. Shortly after midnight he called his sister’s home from a public telephone, asking his family to collect him. Five days had passed since the forest incident. The crew’s roadside observations, the search during his absence, and Walton’s later account of the interior sequence are different parts of this case’s chronology.