High Strange - Pale Blue Dot

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

What is really going with these UFOs? Host, Payne Lindsey unpacks the latest developments in military UAP sightings, explores the infamous Roswell case, and meets a man named Travis Walton, who’s story undoubtedly tops them all. Want more? Our High Strange music playlist is now available exclusively on Apple Music. Visit the link in our show notes or go to apple.co/highstrangeplaylist  To access our book list, go to apple.co/highstrangebooks  To find us in Apple Maps, go to apple.co/highstrangeguide For ad-free listening and bonus content, subscribe to Tenderfoot+ now! Members get all episodes ad-free plus bonus content throughout the season. Sign up at apple.co/highstrange. For Spotify, Google, and other Android users, visit tenderfootplus.com. Follow along on social and the web: @highstrange on Instagram @highstrange on TikTok highstrange.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are whenever we need it, download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or'll also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season. For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode. Do you mind if I toss this mic on you? Could you just state your name?

I'm Travis Walton. Today is January 29th. How long is it been now? 45 years. 45 years and three months. But some things don't change, you know. Let's hear. Some things about it haven't gotten any easier at all. I wish that this had never happened. It's not been a good thing for my life, for my family,

in some ways they didn't even see the real me, you know. This morning I woke up, had breakfast and some coffee, shower, then went to my office. I had a few Zoom calls, a quick lunch, did some scrolling on TikTok and Instagram, sent a few emails, and some more emails. First shot of the day. Left my office. Went to my local neighborhood bar. I love a good gin martini. A phone call, another email, another email. Time to eat dinner and go to sleep.

Okay, I think you get it. We all have a version of this, a routine, a pattern, our habits, whatever it is. We all have shit to do, more than enough to worry about. Jobs, relationships, politics, religion, COVID, whatever the next version of COVID is, an endless amount of things to keep our minds busy. Life can feel like a hamster wheel, doing the things we know until we get too tired and fall asleep. That sounded depressing. My point is, it's almost by default that we as humans remain focused on what's right in front of us. And for the most part, we have to.

But if you ever just stop, stop and step outside and just look at the sky. Sometimes all the things in our daily lives suddenly feel incredibly small. And maybe that's a good thing. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Our planet is a loomly spec in the great, enveloping cosmic dark, the pale blue dot. This is the voice of the late Carl Sagan, renowned astronomer and astrophysicist.

Famously describe the earth as a pale blue dot. He put our tiny existence into perspective, artfully explaining not only our responsibility to each other, but also to our planet. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. Everyone you love, everyone you know, that's home, that's us.

Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of. Like it or not, for the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more cleanly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot. The only home we've ever known. My name is Payne Lindsay. And for the last five years or so, I've spent my career making true crime podcasts

and investigating cold cases. Ever since I was a kid, gazing up at the stars was something I loved to do, wondering what else could be out there, or if there was anything at all. Well, scientifically speaking, the likelihood of intelligent life existing somewhere else in the universe, at this point, is almost certain. Space is literally so big that it makes our numeric system look stupid trying to explain it.

Example, we live in the Milky Way, Venus, Earth, Mars, you know the rest. There are over 100 billion more planets in the same galaxy, and beyond the Milky Way, it's believed that there are likely 10 trillion more galaxies, so doing the math, that brings us to a whopping one-septillion number of planets in the universe. That's a one with 24 zeros after it. What are the odds were just so damn lucky? One and sep-tillion I guess. But even if science supports the idea of extraterrestrial life, we here on Earth have an incredibly hard time grappling with it.

Hoaxes, pseudoscience, attention-seeking people, it's all clearly muddy the waters. And I get it. Little green men are fun. They look cool in a t-shirt or a mug from a gift shop. But what's the real deal here? Very quietly over the last two years, the conversation surrounding UFOs has started to slowly shift. Navy pilots have come forward with video evidence. Aircraft maneuvering in ways that defy our current understanding of the laws of physics.

Congress is meeting about it. NASA has joined the search. If there's ever been a time to look at this subject a little more seriously, this is probably right now. UFOs on radar harassing a US Navy warship off the California coast. This Navy video showing the pilot's reaction to the strange aerial encounter, what pilots described as aircraft that flew in a manner that defied physics. It's a rotating, it's a rotating, like, I have a whole fleet, I love looking at the FF. The UAPs are unexplained aerial phenomena.

That's what the military calls them. Physical evidence of off-world vehicles not made on this earth. No wings, rotors, or detectable exhausts, unable to track where they came from or where they disappeared too. We have multiple telegrammatory now that I've sighted on it. Oh my God, I hope that the plane caught you. This place please be a plane. Oh, please.

Why would you hire me right here this year? In sure, there's no wide eyed alien saying, take me to your leader here. But there is a record number of strange sightings in the sky throughout the entire world that no country on Earth has been able to rationally explain yet. This question, are we alone, has been an everlasting drive throughout human history? If we could just shake it all down, cut through all the nonsense, if we could dissect all the real evidence we have today with an open mind and a healthy amount of skepticism, what might we actually find? Because I think

learning the truth about anything is supremely important. Part of evolving is simply opening your mind to possibility. But the ultimate challenge in this way of thinking still remains. We all have shit to do. And even if we found all the answers, it's not going to change my life today or the responsibilities I have tomorrow. But maybe it's a big enough question worth leaving them a not-ne of my daily routine and just attempt to answer. I'm stepping off the hamster wheel because I know it'll be right there waiting

for me if I ever decide to come back. All you have to do is listen. Welcome to high Do you believe in UFOs? Applying the correct definition to the word UFO, that question doesn't make any sense. What they're really saying when they ask do you believe in UFOs, is do you believe that we're being visited by extraterrestrials? They're not saying do you believe that there are objects in the sky we can't explain? Two very different things. If you said to somebody, I study UFOs, they laugh. we can't explain. Two very different things. If you said to somebody, I study UFOs, they laugh.

I try to even avoid the word UFO. I study data about objects in the sky that we can't explain. This is Leslie Cain. She studied UFOs for over two decades now, written multiple articles for the New York Times, and made their bestseller list as an author. I did not get into UFOs by any kind of intentional design.

What happened was I was working at a public radio station in Berkeley, California in the 90s. This colleague from France sent me his report about UFOs that changed everything for me. The report that made it to her desk was titled UFOs that changed everything for me. The report that made it to her desk was titled UFOs and Defense. A scientific study into whether there were any dangers or national security threats related to UFOs. Are there any dangers? Are they a national security issue?

Because these things are up in the skies. It was a 90-page study written by admirals, generals, a chief of police, scientists, authoritative people who weren't going to be making up stories. They interviewed all these pilots and they looked at data from around the world, and they drew the conclusion that the best hypothesis to explain the cases they studied, the most valid logical rational explanation for this is that these are visitors from somewhere else. I couldn't believe it that generals and admirals and police officers would say that. These were all qualified experts. From extremely varied backgrounds,

scientists, pilots, technical directors, police chiefs, admirals, Air Force generals, the kinds of people you'd probably listen to. As a journalist, to me it was like, oh my god, this is huge. The biggest story there is. Completely blew my mind. Even if there's a small chance that we are being visited by something from another world, isn't that like a massive story it was to me. I tried to pitch a story to a lot of editors, pitch the story to them and I learned nobody wants to hear about this topic. The papers were afraid of taking the risk

that they would be laughed at. UFOs were completely stigmatized, considered to be a joke basically. The stigmatization around UFOs has been an enormous obstacle. This is Brian Bender, Senior correspondent for Politico, who covers national security. No one wants to be the UFO guy. I too do not want to be the UFO guy, and trust me, I mean it when I say that. I feel like the conspiracy rabbit hole surrounding this topic is a dark slippery slope.

It starts with just wanting to know what this thing is. Then the next thing you know you're analyzing Egyptian pyramids searching for clues from aliens. It's not a career builder. It's not a career builder. It's not a career builder. It's, you know, it's a tinfoil hot-wearing. Do I want to be considered that person? There's a journalist in Washington covering national security. For the first 20 years of my career, UFOs never came of it all. I mean, it was just wasn't a topic that people talked about. It didn't mean that there weren't people out in the world talking about it.

It just was never a topic that as a reporter covering the Pentagon, you ever really came across. If I come to my editors and say I want to write about UFOs, you know, they're going to roll their eyes, and I'm not going to be taking very seriously. Summer of 2017, I got a call from a source of mind. He said, hey, I think I might have a good story if you're interested. There's this guy. He's in the Pentagon. He's a career intelligence officer.

And he's been working on UFOs. First of all, I was like, UFOs? The Pentagon's studying UFOs in modern day. So it was intriguing to me, but at the same time, I was like, I don? The Pentagon's studying UFOs in modern day. So it was intriguing to me, but at the same time, I was like, I don't know that that's a political story. There's this guy. He's about to leave the government, and he's leaving quite frustrated, but he's ready to go public with this.

So I met him. I also did some vetting of him, like is he who he says he is, and what is his background? And he was very clear to me in the beginning that he was very credible and started digging a little further, peeling back the onion layer. And it turned out the program that he was working on, and the Pentagon that was researching UFO sightings, was actually initiated by Senator Harry Reid from Nevada. Got some of his fellow senators to put $22 million

into the budget, a senior politician who wants the Pentagon to study UFOs and made it happen. I mean, I'm a Pentagon reporter and I cover Washington. We have a senator who's got $22 million bucks out of the taxpayers, sent it to this office over at the Pentagon and now they're looking into UFOs and now the guy who's been doing it says I've learned all these really interesting things and nobody seems to care. That immediately rang a bell in my head that it's not just a UFO story, it's also a political

story. If the government was using taxpayer dollars to fund a secret UFO research program, it was just the hook he needed to publish a story. Simultaneously, unbeknownst to each other, Leslie Kaine was chipping away at the same story. Because of the years of reporting I'd done on this, I got to know some of the sort of key inside players. One of them invited me in October of 2017 to a meeting with a man named Luis Elizondo. A Lu Elizondo.

That anonymous source from the Pentagon, who claimed to have run the UFO Research Program, was a man named Lu Elizondo. And he didn't just have an interesting story to tell. He had evidence to support it. Lu Elizondo was preparing to come out of the government in trying to pitch this story to mainstream media. I went to this meeting with Luis Olizando and three other people I knew. At that meeting I was shown these incredible documents, and then I was also shown these

three videos. I was going against the wind. The winds are hunting, flying out the west. Oh, baby. It's a rotating. So you were sitting by guy. The winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high, the winds are high And all the journalism I'd done, nothing came close to this. The implications of this were huge. The government was taken this seriously. The government had invested resources into studying UFOs, which meant they're real.

I brought it to the editors at the New York Times, showed them everything. There is something real that's unexplained. They were going at the New York Times, showed them everything. There is something real that's unexplained. They were going to the New York Times. I think they talked to the Washington Post. I went to my editors and went, can we run it? So it was some eye-rolling, a little bit, in the newsroom. There are real physical objects in the sky that demonstrate extraordinary technology beyond the capability

of what we have. What is that? How do they do that? How are they flying that way? No sense from any of the radar that there's an engine. It's not giving off any heat. Going from the surface of the ocean to 70,000 feet in a couple seconds, which would make any aircraft we know blow up. We really want this story out, but we're not even sure the mainstream media will bite.

We had decided we were going to go with it. We ran the first story the same day that the New York Times did. In 2017, both Politico and the New York Times ran stories about UFOs witnessed by military pilots. Physical aircraft captured on radar and video, maneuvering in ways that force the pass our current technology. When the stories published, the Pentagon responded, confirming they were real. Now after a series of unusual encounters by Navy jets,

like this one in 2017, showing an F-18 Super Hornet encountering an unidentified object, the Navy has decided it needs to codify how its sailors and pilots record such unexplained events in case these flying objects are, in fact, some kind of advanced aircraft. The US Navy and Pentagon are trying to destigmatize reporting what they call unexplained aerial phenomena. For the first time in American history, there was physical video evidence of an unidentified flying object captured by the military that the government itself acknowledged to be real,

not just real, but that they don't know what they are. Alongside these Navy videos, Brian and Leslie's stories unearthed the top secret Pentagon program that had been studying these things for years. The Pentagon office that was created in 2007 was called the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program. The acronym was ATIP. Very innocuous sounding name. Obviously, there's no UFOs in that name at all. And I think that was on purpose. It was sort of hiding in plain sight. Recent report by The New York Times

unveiled the existence of a real-life ex-files department. Secret UFO program has just been revealed. Millions of dollars to look into UFO sightings. It's a five-year secret government program to investigate mysterious flying objects. It was set up to basically look at UFOs as we think of them, so you know, call them whatever you will, flying saucers. In interviewing pilots or other military personnel that were reporting these sightings, 34 studies they commissioned.

They hired smart people at different universities, scientists to do basically theoretical studies. So in other words, if the craft is doing this, it's exhibiting these properties, how might that work? What kind of propulsion system might you need to be able to do that? Interviewing some of the witnesses participants, chronicling what happened and when it happened, that was the primary role of the ATIP office. ATIP spent a lot of time on a particular case involving the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its support ships carrying the most sophisticated sensor systems in the world had several interactions with AAVs

that is anomalous aerial vehicles. So imagine it's like a normal day if there is such a thing for the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier sailing off the Southern California coast. F-18's fighter planes take off from the deck, doing drills, doing their normal practice runs, flown by some experienced pilots who are not just right out of flight school, Lieutenant commanders had been in for a decade or more. They're reporting that they're seeing with their own eyes, also picking up on the F-18's camera. These tiktok-shaped vehicles, many of them, flying it enormously high speeds, speeds that they can't even

really begin to keep up with them, if they wanted to. It was so advanced, it rendered US capabilities ineffective. It showed velocities far greater than anything known to exist. Numerous vehicles basically stalked the aircraft carrier for days. And by stalked, I mean pilots are flying off the aircraft carrier doing their drills and these tic-tacs are just flying circles around them. They could turn itself invisible, both to radar and the human eye. Undetectable and unchallenged. And at one point, the F-18 pilots are supposed to rendezvous some 60 miles away as part of their daily exercise.

They find out that the Tic Tacs, they just saw, they're already there. The Tic Tacs went from where they were 60 miles in a couple seconds to the predetermined rendezvous point. So the question was, well, how do they even know that's where we're going? Not only the pilots themselves reporting it, but a Navy cruiser with a massive radar on it, also picking up these tic-dac shaped vehicles on its radar. For multiple vantage points over multiple days, they're seeing these things that they can't explain. This became a big deal within the Navy.

Got reported up to chain and nobody really could explain it. That became one of the main cases that the AITIP program went back and tried to unpack and tried to explain. Is there any way we could understand how those things could be doing them? And maybe if we did, we could maybe get a little further down the road of explaining where they're coming from, and who owns owns them is somebody in them. If that's a bad guy who has that technology, we're in big trouble. They're talking with us.

The first 10 accounts from military personnel aboard the USS Nimitz were compelling. And if all their claims were true, then the implications were massive. But there was still one huge problem. Nobody cares. Nobody's listening. There's this sort of human nature, if we can't really come up with good answers. It's like, I don't want to go there. There's no easy answers. I don't know what to tell you. They were captivating news stories, but that's it. The only question that really mattered was still unanswered.

What the hell are these things? Not everybody is on fire about wanting to know more about UFOs. Are we alone in the universe? What does this mean? Why are they here? It's something that most people don't have the time and energy to think about. It's absolutely understandable to me. People are making living, raising their kids.

They don't have the luxury of the time to contemplate these kinds of things. This is a paradigm-shifting thing. That gets to the point of the stigma changing. Just in the last couple years, there is more willingness to come forward. But that's not because the Pentagon decided that one day beat more transparent. It's because members of Congress who control the budget are demanding. They're saying enough is enough. Tell us what you know. And if you don't know anything, go out there and start studying it.

There's so much scar tissue, so much conspiracy theory, so much BS, so difficult. That stigma, were so conditioned to think of the flying saucer in terms of like the Hollywood image. Aliens that came from far away place, and oh, maybe they were here before we were, and it's a very sort of,

almost linear way to look at it. A lot of people, when they think of UFOs they think of Roswell. The whole notion of aliens as opposed to just they're being a phenomenon that we can't explain. That really comes from Roswell initially. People associate UFOs with Roswell. Roswell, New Mexico, headline to Dixies, July 8, 1947. The Army Air Force has announced that a flying disc has been found and is now in the possession of the Army. Lately, afternoon, a bulletin from New Mexico suggested that the widely publicized mystery of the flying saucers may soon be solved. When it comes to UFO mythology and American history, there's arguably one case that stands out,

riddled with speculation and conspiracy theories, now known infamously as the Roswell incident. It goes like this. On July 8, 1947, something crashed in the desert of Roswell, New Mexico. As soon became a national news story, what exactly crashed there has been the topic of intense debate now for over half a century. I'm here to discuss so-called flying saucers. Interest in this problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and

analyze to the best of our ability anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or minutes to the United States. Rosalice had such a grip on the culture, permeated the culture in a way that has probably helped the taboo stay alive. I think it's so fascinating to people because it involved a crash and beings. July 1947, Roswell's Army Air Base, depressurally announcing that the remains of a flying saucer had been found. On the day of the crash, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release,

stating they had recovered a quote, flying disc. The US military quickly withdrew that statement, saying the crash spacecraft was in fact the remains of a weather balloon. The conflicting reports made by the government fuel public suspicion, but it's what happened in the years following that cemented the Roswell incident in UFO lore. A local resident named Glenn Dennis came forward, with a bizarre and much more unnerving narrative. In July of 1947, he was a mortician and received a puzzling phone call from the Air Force. They wanted child science coffins delivered to the air base. How long will it take you to get more?

And I said, how many do you need? And he said, that's not important. How long will it take you to get more? Glendinnis claimed that the crashed object was some form of advanced aircraft. And that three bodies were recovered from the scene. Bodies unlike anything he'd seen before. They definitely weren't.

Jim and the doctors were explaining this that they couldn't be from our planet. They had to be an alien. It had to be something else, but not in our planet. The eyewitness accounts of alien fondies and a cover up by the US government has given birth to the most powerful UFO story in American history, known simply as the Roswell Incident. Most of the cases we have on record are things in the sky, right? It's much easier to stigmatize the idea of a crash-saw serum bodies than it is to stigmatize something that a pilot sees in the sky and picks up on radar.

It's added to this sort of conspiracy element, this sort of sci-fi element to it where UFOs are sort of synonymous with the idea of bodies and aliens. The impact that that's had sort of underlying everything has not been helpful. There were so many witnesses, actual alien bodies, and it was taken away, and it was covered up. They had various explanations for it.

As the years went on, more and more witnesses came forward. I got my hands on some of the declassified sworn affidavits. One from a man named George Roberts, the manager of a local Roswell radio station at the time, states the following, I made an attempt to go out to the crash site and see it for myself, but I was turned back by a military person who said it was a restricted area. The next morning, I got a call from someone in Washington, D.C. The person said, we understand that you have some information, and we want to assure you that if you release it, it's very possible your station's license will be in jeopardy, so we suggest you don't do it. A little weird.

Another affidavit, from a woman named Safo Henderson, refers to comments made by her husband, a high-ranking Air Force pilot station in Roswell at the time. Her statement reads, In 1980, my husband picked up a newspaper at a grocery store. The article described a crash of a UFO outside of Roswell, with the bodies of aliens discovered beside the craft. He pointed to the article and said, I want you to read this, because it's a true story. I'm the pilot who flew the wreckage of the UFO. Again, weird stuff, but who knows?

No matter how you look at this Roswell event, it's weird. I'm not going to say that I know, but it's completely conceivable to me that it was something extra trust you would crash there. I don't know what happened at Roswell, and I think anybody who says they do 100% know doesn't know either. Or they're dead. I think something happened here. There was clearly a government reaction. There's no way in hell the thing that fell was made by human hands. So the mistrile is on out in Roswell,

that creepy new Mexico town. And major Marcel, what could it you tell us about Roswell? But there's a professor of Avilob at Harvard who's now running something called the Galileo Project, institution at Harvard. It has real money now to study UFOs. But Avilob at Harvard says that we almost have to throw out everything else they came before. So difficult, especially all these years later, to separate what's fact, what's fiction.

Let's just start doing some real-do diligence, using all the technologies and capabilities we have in the government, out of the government, wherever, and maybe we can at least get a little bit further down the road. When you talk about Rodswell and you talk about all of these cases in history, I think what it doesn't account for is the magnitude of the lack of institutional knowledge within the government. There's enough mystery around it, enough things that don't add up, that tell me that whatever the answer is, number one, it's probably not one answer there could be multiple answers multiple truths it's probably something that we're not even thinking about maybe we're kind of scratching at it a

little bit I've come to believe that whatever the government does still have in terms of juicy little secrets about UFOs they're not keeping it secret out of knowledge. They're keeping it secret out of ignorance. They don't want to come forward and say, there's all these things we've seen, and we have no friggin clue what they own. There are things out there, we've seen them, we've studied them, and we don't know there. When I was a kid growing up, I can vividly remember seeing tabloid magazines about UFO encounters and alien abductions at the grocery store checkout line. They looked eerie, covered in weird

grainy photos of flying saucers and alien autopsies. My mom never let me get them, rightfully so. They were too scary for an eight-year-old, and she probably knew they were all full of shit. This concept of alien abduction has been around for decades. Many people over the years have come forward with haunting tales of being taken aboard a spaceship against their will in the middle of the night. Just scan the internet. There's plenty of them, most of which in my opinion have no merit. But since 2017, a wealth of government documents regarding UFOs have continued to be

declassified. Some of them include things you'd only expect to find in science fiction. Thousands of previously classified documents regarding UFOs have now been things you'd only expect to find in science fiction. Thousands of previously classified documents regarding UFOs have now been released to the public. The shocking details from this 1500 page report. Some of the stories include alien abductions, electrical paralysis, and even sexual encounters. From abductions have perceived time loss, the report says humans have been injured from exposure. even sexual encounters. I'm a person who has spent most of his podcasting career investigating unsolved murders and disappearances, dealing with facts, physical evidence.

There's no room for fringe science. But while working on this show, I found one case in particular that's so strange, trying to rationally explain it, feels next to impossible. In 1975, seven men encountered something unexplainable in the mountains of Snowflake, Arizona, at managed to get my hands on a ton of archival tape. There were seven men out there about three days ago, they were all coming back just after darn. They saw this bright, bright light that looked to all seveners, and like a saucer, some identified oxygen.

Before they actually stopped their cuck, Travis jumped out of the car and ran up underneath this thing if you can imagine. They are witnessed a blue, blueish light that projected from the bottom of this craft whatever it was and at that time it hit here, he croupled and fell. They were terrified until they started their vehicle out, that drove the other way on that railroad for several miles until they regained their wit. Now what was that man's name again who's missing? The man's name missing is Travis, Ralph at W-A-L-T-O-N. An intense search for Travis Walton proceeded for three days, dogs and helicopters. They were unable to find him or any signs of where he was.

After they told their astounding story to the police, they came under suspicion of murder. Travis was missing for five days as people searched the woods for him. There is no doubt Travis Walton believes he is telling the truth about what he experienced. On November 5th, 1975, seven men who were part of a logging crew deep in the mountains of Arizona claimed to have encountered a flying saucer. One man, by the name of Travis Walton, ran towards it to get a closer look and was struck by some sort of beam emitted from the craft. And then, he was gone.

He was literally a missing person for five days. For decades now, these men have stuck to their stories. The man who claims he was abducted, Travis Walton, is now in his late 60s, apparently still living in the small town of Snowflake, Arizona. After some searching, I finally found them on Facebook, told them about the podcast, and he eventually agreed to meet with me in person to tell his story. So he rented an Airbnb in the mountains of Snowflake and hit the road. We landed in Phoenix and drove three hours into the mountains, set up our microphones

and some film cameras to record the interview, and waited for him to arrive. But about an hour and a half after our scheduled interview time, I was getting a little worried, and he hadn't responded to my last three texts. So I tried to call him. Give me a little test. Check one, two, three. You want me to draw on it?

Yeah, why not? I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to.

I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to.

I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. Out of the blue, an old truck pulled into the driveway. I peeked through the blinds and it was him. I was about to open the door and greet him, but I paused and stopped myself. He was sitting in the driveway, with his car off, just staring out the window. He seemed anxious, or like he was contemplating something. 10 full minutes passed, and he was still sitting there, same position. Is he having second thoughts? Is

he prepping his story? If this really happened to him, then it must have been traumatic. I was still very skeptical of all this. I sat on the couch doing in my own thoughts. And then... How long has it been? 45 years. 25 years and three months. Some things don't change, you know. Some things about it haven't gotten any easier at all. I wish that this had never happened. It's not been a good thing for my life, for my family.

In some ways they don't even see the real me, you know. The area we were working on was a logging contract. Our job was to come in after the loggers and clean up the damage trees and thin out the overgrowth. It was really kind of a forest restoration project we were doing. We did some thinning but then we were doing fuel break that day. Pretty long day. When it was getting dark time to head home, we're 30 miles from home so it's a bit of a drive. We loaded up all our equipment into the back of the truck there.

It's a double cap truck. There was room for all seven of the crew in one vehicle, four in the back, three in the front. We were headed home. Everybody's tired, so there was various conversations going on in the truck two here, two there like that. As we were bouncing along this little logging trail, I could see a glow through the trees up ahead. Closer we got the more I was thinking that maybe this glow I was thinking was maybe some hunters camped there. I thought maybe the hunters were camped up there on the ridge. The whole

clearing there had this really strange glow to it. Sort of a feel. I don't know maybe there was some kind of electrical charge in the air so I'm just had a really weird vibe to it. It made things you see at work all day look really strange and a strange glow. We got to a point where we were past the thickest part of the growth and we could see the source of this light. Boom, there it was, it was unmistakable. High Strange is an eight-part series released weekly for free every Thursday. I'm like a nine-hup, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, on Twitter and Instagram at painlensy. If you have your own UFO story, email us at tipsathighstrange.com. Highstrange is a production by tenderfoot TV in association with cadence 13,

created hosted and edited by myself, painlensy, executive producers or myself, and Donald Albright, editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner, and myself.ers or myself, and Donald Albright, Editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner, and myself. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, Sound Design Mixing and Mastering by Cooper Skinner, Additional Production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nerny, Meredith Steppen and Sydney Evans. Our cover art is by Polygon. This episode features a song Spascadette by Metro Boomin featuring Gunna, written by Wesley

Tire Glass, Sergio Kitchens, Ville and Tyler Wayne, Alan Ritter, and Jacques Weiss Webster, performed by Metro Boomin featuring Gunna, courtesy of Republic Records, under license from Universal Music Enterprises for Metro Boomin and 300 Entertainment for Gunna. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole team at UTA. The Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, as well as Chris Corquim and the team at Cadence 13. This episode features the song Roswell, performed by Raina Del Sid and Tony Lindgren. Check out the show's website at highstrange.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please help us out by rating and reviewing the podcast

and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening.