This Paranormal Life - #031 The Disappearance of Travis Walton

Episode Date: October 17, 2017

7 Men enter the frosty Arizona woods and only 6 return - Could this be the result of extraterrestrial interference? Or something much, much more sinister... It's time for Rory and Kit to #INVESTIGATESupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do radiators actually give off radiation? Is the Golden Gate Bridge actually made of silver? All these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life! Welcome to the podcast. I will be your host for today, Rory Powers, joined by my paranormal- What about me? Okay, sorry, sir, please just wait one more second. Okay, what about me? Joined by my rude little host, Kit Greer.

I've become a goblin since you last saw me. Welcome to the podcast. If this is your first time, what we do is every single week, we investigate a brand new paranormal story, creature, tale, and come to a conclusion within the hour, deciding whether or not it is in fact the truth. That's right. It's not easy. We make it look easy.

That's right. We make it look like we're a couple of hacks in a living room, sitting down, spouting nonsense into a couple of microphones. But there's years of research behind us. There's a reason why this is an audio-only format, because our faces are weathered and old um we've aged extremely prematurely yeah yeah you ever seen benjamin button yeah i was born old a baby but old i don't know how that works wait was he born a baby but old he was or did he pop

out a man he what did he pop out an old man? Did the woman just explode? Like, how is that happening? We're getting off topic here. We've covered a lot. But look, let me give you a taste for it. I've got a little synopsis written out. Please do.

There's like the blurb. Set a mood. Okay. Okay. It's 7.30, November 5th, 1975. Police Chief Chuck Ellison gets a panicked phone call from a man reporting a missing person. Now, presumably this isn't the first time Chief Ellison has gotten a missing person's report, but this is different because the man says he needs to meet with Ellison immediately.

Because Ellison wants to blow this thing off, really. Like, he wants to be home in like 15 person yeah yeah i think i'm about to be a missing person from my office you're a terrible police chief tell you what i'll i'll i'll meet you in half an hour if you bring six packs of lucky strike all right and half a bottle of Jack Daniels. No, you don't understand. There's been a merger. Yeah, I'm about to murder this corona at about 10 past. Is that a surfboard in your office?

What kind of police chief is this? So reluctant to work. Ellison gets in his car and drives to a nearby shopping center to meet with the caller. When he arrives, he finds a group of men, some crying, some in shock just sitting there pale as ghosts. Now these men were part of a logging crew who had been working that night out in the woods before they called in about the missing person. Ellison finally gets one of the men to talk,

and he explains what happened that night. That their friend, Travis Walton, wasn't just missing. He'd been abducted. Whoa. Whoa. They used the A word. The A word. And let me just, as you said, these guys were logging.

These ain't no, like, you know, fancy pants Silicon Valley, like, up in the clouds guys. Absolutely. these are men of the earth hard trustworthy people trustworthy let's hang on to that word trustworthy men doing hard trustworthy they probably have freaking phds for all we yeah probably smart as hell that's not what that means you know that right i got a phd yeah but a real what you said or what it really means i know what a phd means you think you know what it means let's say it on three okay right one two three a hog pretty huge dinkus so we're on the same page touche one of the reasons i wanted to investigate this story is because it's not just a great paranormal story yes it's actually a really great mystery as well it unravels in a really romantic way there's so much going on that you're just ripping your hair out trying to find

the answer you're really selling this to me i think our listeners are in for a treat here i i honestly think this podcast could be the next serial i think this is serial right now i'm gonna be seriallying serialing this episode like i'm because i'm gonna be serial serialing serialing yeah you know it's gonna be you know a bit more serious tone gentle voices guitar npr voices i i don't want you to think that you you can't interrupt so please do interrupt but also just don't talk over me at any given point okay so so it's okay just to make it no that's fine again feel free to interrupt but just don't talk just don't say anything don't don't talk over you no i just i want this to be an open zone i know just just

just as straightforward okay yeah but if you could just please... No problem, bro. Stop talking over me. So, what's going to be... You need to shut the f*** up, man. Whoa. Sorry, I lost my cool. I don't know if they do that in serial.

I reckon they cut that shit out. I think they do, actually. This is me setting up the episode. Yes, sir. A group of men enter the frosty Arizona woods, and one man does not return. Could this be the result of extraterrestrial interference or something much, much more sinister? What's more sinister than extraterrestrial? Again, could you not interrupt?

Okay, dude. What's more sinister than what? Murder? Than extraterrestrial intervention. Oh, yeah, I see that. That's actually pretty freaking sinister. Now that I read it, yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah.

Again, please let me see real. Okay, got it. From TPL and GG Easy, this is the disappearance of Travis Walton. Play the music there. serial music david no don't actually don't play that we will get sued don't play the don't do the serial music let's start our journey the year is 1975 it's wednesday november 5th in the wintry town of snowflake arizona it's real. Not a real plant. Definitely real.

A group of men who had been contracted to work in the woods as loggers, essentially, were out in the cold Arizona forest. Among these men were Rogers and Walton, two best friends who had known each other for years along with them was other crew members called ken peterson john goulette steve pierce alan dallas and dwayne smith repeat them back to me please that's a lot of names repeat repeat them back to me i want to make sure you're getting all this if you're trying to drive home how real this is and the town the name of the town i'm just imagining these like burly uh loggers from the midwest and it's like you know

nancy i think i'm gonna be gone all winter well chuck offered me a job up in snowflake arizona i thought you were uh logging in cupcake this weekend no snowflake this year it does sound like a place you would make up to just get away from the wife and kids yeah it's like where are you working this week i'm working in looks out the window snowflake town and what are you going to be doing looks at the fireplace log king he's washing up at the same time it's like gonna be a splash mountain this weekend so the job that they were doing out there Was huge It was one of the biggest contracts they'd ever been given Oh boy

Which unfortunately meant the project was delayed Meaning the men would usually have to work From 6am to sunset Every day to try and catch up Jesus Christ That's a lot of work That's a lot of hard Honest trustworthy work

So onmber 5th the sun was setting after a hard honest truthful day of logging the men packed up their gear and hopped into roger's truck for the long drive back to snowflake people don't live like this this is this is a bug this sounds like a children's book, but you just gotta stick with me, okay? It's just my childlike voice that's selling it that way. And my elvish ears. My long blonde hair.

Yes, I am cosplaying an elf. And your three foot five stature, sir. You've shrunk since I've last seen you. I know it's a real place. You're just gonna have to trust me. I'm a paranormal investigator. You think I'd make shit up? I only do it for cashola.

Or to sell a book or a novel or a podcast. But I haven't got a book deal yet. And this podcast doesn't make podcash. So it would all be factual information today. pod cash so it'll all be factual information today they're dry the day that you see rory wearing a rolex is the day that he's made up some heavy duty shit i feel like you're tainting my serialling with your your poison so we're kind of dragging it zip it if you could hush shut it but feel free to chip in at any given moment. They're driving down from the foresty roads when all of a sudden they see a bright light coming from behind a hill in front of them.

Okay. Strange. Probably a car. Could be anything. In front of the hill? A big car. A giant flying car with aliens in it. You've gone.

He's lost it. Foreign aliens. It's a goddamn Mexican plane. I knew we should have built the wall. It won't help. I meant the sky wall. Wouldn't stop aliens. I mean the space wall.

Who is this guy? I want a little box. Who is this character? Just to live in a box who is this character just put me in a coffin this sounds like a racist paranormal conspiracist the worst person that could exist ever exist

so Rogers driving the car he takes it down the path following the light. And it wasn't long before they found the source. Rogers stopped the car. Hovering over their heads was a gigantic, mechanic, silver disc shining brightly in the night sky. What? We're not messing around here, people. What?

We're diving straight in here. It is minute. We're in like the early stages of this podcast and you're telling me that there is a saucer in snowflake arizona in the trustworthy town of snowflake best kept on 2013 2015 at this point rogers has stopped the truck and the men are all just staring at it it's like they're hypnotized i mean for real that's when walton gets out of the truck he starts walking towards the disc like he's in a trance you know it's weird the other men start yelling at him to come back and come back but he doesn't stop he just keeps walking towards the disc wow he continues to approach it until he's directly underneath it just looking up at it in awe i mean

it must be the most incredible thing you've ever seen he's not high take me with you i swear to god i'm out here logging 12 hours a day i'm losing my mind the ship takes off in fear no this is the silence of of Walter just being like, You know, guys, I didn't really mean any of that stuff. Whenever I said I hated everyone around me. And then they're like, Oh, it looks like the ship actually just stopped over there. Oh, shit!

Boss, wait, wait! He's gone. So he's just standing there Looking up at the object And that's when the ship Begins to make a humming noise Like a large turbine You can feel it You can feel it in the air

At this point the other men Start panicking They start screaming for Walton To step away But he doesn't He's just looking up at it Until The ship begins to wobble

Gently from side to side right this is when walton slowly begins to step away from the disc the wobbling is where we drew the line the disc i could take the lights i could take the humming i can take the wobble hell no are you shitting me you know what else wobbles a rattlesnake. They like to wobble and they're poisonous as shit. They don't wobble. They wobble very quickly. Sir. I believe the Latin name for the rattlesnake is actually wobblus wobblus.

I'll actually look it up. I have an encyclopedia of snake books. Don't look it up. I will wobble so hard on you if you touch that book. As Walton slowly begins to step away from the disc, a beam of blue light shoots down and strikes his body, blasting him backwards through the air. Like a laser beam?

Is that what's happening? Essentially, until he just lays there limply on the ground oh shit again so i'm this is the story that they are telling yeah to ellison who has met them that night the night of the missing person then his body begins to rise upwards towards the ship just like anti-grav just starts floating up yeah i guess let's pause right there what do you what are you thinking so far this is uh fantastical far-fetched exactly frankly uh ridiculous preposterous right um but also true and i really want you to hone it hone in on that well think think about this okay so i mean this is a story it sounds ludicrous

yeah but this police chief has met with a group of what five six men all with the exact same story crying white as ghosts in absolute panic yeah insisting that this is what they all just witnessed like so let's just like put ourselves in this situation exactly you're the police officer what is your first thought because you and like bearing in mind you're no like go on you're no like uh you know head in the claws police officer you've just you've been dealing with cold hard facts since day one of police academy yeah so like i'm thinking if i was mr ellison is that the gentleman ellison yes i'd be thinking these logging boys probably cracked walton over the head with a shovel and now they're trying to cover up their trails with some flimsy ufo case is that what they're bringing to me right now it does seem a little weird if you had murdered a man to go straight

to aliens not like there was an accident or he just wandered off or we lost him in a blizzard straight to we legit saw him get blasted by a beam and taken on board a spaceship yeah i don't know i don't know i know what you mean it's not uh it's not intuitive yeah people do crazy things yeah that's a really bad excuse for any of this also in my other podcast people do crazy things it's more just me audio vlogging myself uh stealing shit around london it's usually topped and tailed not so much by podcast advertisements as me uh railing crack live on the episode we're gonna i i think actually you have a little demo here of episode one so uh you can you can check it out here

so i'm in uh i'm in the the city of lond London today in the new shopping mall. We're just outside the jewellery store here, so I'm just going to approach it and look nonchalant. Hello, sir. Can I help you there? Yeah. Oh, hi. I was looking for a new watch for my wife. Could you possibly take off the scarf, sir? I can't really see your face. No, my wife is scared of my own mouth, so I have to wear it all the time. Could you look over there for a second, please?

What's over there? Jeez! Grab his shit! Grab his shit! Welcome to People Do Crazy Things! Welcome to episode one of People Do Crazy Shit! Someone stop that man! Oh, they nicked me!

They nicked me! Oh, oh, oh! For one and only episode! The jeweler runs up to your bleeding out body jesus people really do do crazy things all right so at this point we've come full circle see what i'm doing here i'm serialling i'm trying to serial us you keep using that i mean i think the more you use that word to describe it it's kind of like you can't use a the word to describe a word this is a cereal i think the more you say it's serialing it makes it less like cereal i would say brunch then perhaps so confused about what cereal is not a meal really so we're back at where our story started it's 7 30 november

5th approximately an hour after the abduction and one of the men calls the police chief to report that one of the logging crew is missing police chief ellison meets the crew that night at a nearby shopping center as we said to hear happened, they tell him the whole story. Now, as we discussed, Ellison was obviously skeptical. But he said later on, quote unquote, if they were acting, they were awfully good at it. Now, Ellison really doesn't know what to do about this. I mean, what would you do?

What can you do? Either he's been abducted and he's gone, or they've murdered him, and you now need to, by yourself, place all of these men under arrest. Yep. He eventually notifies his superior, passing the blame,

like the hack that he is. I'm telling you, he's trying to get off, go surfing. Hit some of those sweet, sweet snowflake waves. Gnarly snowflake wavesake waves snowflake is known for i love the irony of snowflake being known for its golden sandy beaches and roasting hot summers probably gets pretty cold around here not really nope in a weird that ice lands green and green lands ice wow we've never seen a drop of snow in 200 years. It's actually named for its lack of snow.

It's a more ironic thing. Anyway, don't go down to town no stab. Because it gets pretty violent. Safest city in the Midwest. Do you mean that nope literally no metaphorically also no i'm sorry to inform you you've been missold this travel package now give me your keys. This is the first guy you meet when you go to Snowflake. We use opposites to keep our spirits up.

Because it is so a blistering hot here in Snowflake. We've gone mad. Blisteringly hot. Alright, so he notifies his superior, Sheriff Malling Gillespie, who after hearing the story from Ellison, says to keep the crew there. Obviously something doesn't seem right about the situation. Smart. It's smart.

That's why he's the superior That's right So Gillespie arrives and interviews the men And they tell him the exact same story that they just told Ellison And afterwards, Rogers, who was driving the truck at the time Insists that they go back out into the woods that night And look for Walton Interesting

Yeah Now, this takes a bit of convincing Because obviously it's late and the men are shook up. Eventually Rogers and a few of the other men and police officers head back out into the woods to look for Walton. Yeah. A few of the other men were apparently too upset to help in the hunt so they just went back to Snowflake to relay the information of what happened to Walton to presumably his loved ones and family. Slackers. Yeah, cowards.

Slackers and cowards. Slackers and cowards. So the crew that went out to look for him reached the woods and began searching, scouting the area for any trace of Walton or what had happened. But after hours of searching, they turn up completely empty-handed. No sign of Walton, but also no physical evidence at all of anything from the crew's story. I'm so surprised that you said that, Rory.

There was no ship debris? There were no alien eggs in the woods? What? It is kind of, again, coming back to the point of view of these police officers, interesting position to be in. Being taken back to the scene of the crime, kind of. But also, again, you're not really sure about these guys, so you're kind of, you're like, am I just being led astray?

I'm sure there's a lot of, like, kind of double-guessing in your head. It's tough. And this is why I'm trying to serial from both sides. So the officers at the scene start to get a little bit on edge yeah right you got this group of men out here who claim their friend just disappeared with no evidence to back it up yeah if walton was still out here lost in the woods with the temperature at this time of the year it wouldn't belong before he had hypothermia. So he's not lasting long out here by himself in any condition. Yes, understood.

By the morning of November 6th, the entire area where Walton had gone missing had been searched by volunteers and officials. Still, there was no trace of him anywhere. I'll tell you where they didn't search. Up. Up. Two letters tell you where they didn't search. Up. Up. Two letters for you. Up. Y'all want to know where Walton went? Yeah, if you have any information.

Points. Points straight up. Can you please speak that for the record for this recording? Straight up. Maybe to a slight angle, but mostly up. Some things men will never know what angle he departed this earth but we do know he went up the velocity also unknown but direction up

looking into the night sky every one of them little twinkly stars up there A lost soul That's not how it works right I think it is Anyway you guys wanna buy some weed We are literally police Shit man I didn't see that I was too busy looking up The whole time he doesn't see anyone

Then walks away Hits a tree. Damn it. Damn it. This is some good loud. He's going to be dead tomorrow. We should look for him now. Still, there was no trace of him anywhere.

At this point, the police are keeping their eyes on the loggers who were present when Walton disappeared. They're starting to believe this entire story could possibly be to cover up a homicide. And at this point, that's the only logical explanation. Maybe it was done in a fit of rage. They've almost convinced themselves that it was an accident. Or they've led them to a place they know he won't be

so they can look like they're helping to search for the body. They're also one of the only people in society who are, outside of horror movies, allowed to wield chainsaws. Yeah. And axes. Yeah. And those are pretty deece murder weapons, I would say.

They're pretty up there. I mean, they're definitely... Katana number one, obviously. So samurais would definitely be better at murdering, but I think the samurai was kind of laid off a long time ago in terms of modern day jobs pretty up there so rogers and sheriff coplin go back to snowflake to tell walton's mother what's happened oh jesus yeah anyway roger tells her what's happened and you, you're assuming that she's going to be shocked and heartbroken at this news.

But instead, she simply asks, I guess I'll give her an old woman voice. Has anyone except the police and eyewitnesses heard about this story? It's a weird response. Interesting. Yeah. Like, you've just been told your son was abducted by aliens yeah most likely by the man who has murdered your son if he hasn't been abducted and your response is does anybody else know oh is he just up again should be back any minute which i don't know it's weird i guess maybe

for the sake of your family and the legacy of your son, maybe you don't want that to be a public thing. So you're like, does anyone else know about this? Because this is weird. I think it's a weird response. It's an extremely weird response. I mean, your brain would just not go there. Yeah.

You'd just be distraught. So Walton's mother wants to make sure that this story doesn't spread too far. Yeah. That's absolutely what happens. By Saturday, the tale of Walton's abduction has spread internationally. The town of Snowflake is filled with news reporters, tourists, and paranormal investigators. I'm just imagining. She's like, does anyone else know about this?

I would like to keep this on the down low. And the police officer is just remembering back to about half an hour previous across a PA system across the town at 2 a.m. There is a man presumed abducted by alien graves. Stay in your homes. I cannot stress this enough. They will return for us all. Thank cannot stress this enough. They will return for us all. Thank you, goodnight.

But at the minute, they've only returned for Travis Walton who lives at 83 Snowflake Lane, Cleveland Town. Their family would like privacy at this time. So all of

these people have now come to Snowflake trying to figure out what happened to Walton trying to crack this mystery so one of the visitors was Fred

never said this name before okay Silvanus Silvanus he is a I'm gonna call him Fred that's easier his name

his first name is Fred I'm not making up a name for... I'm gonna call him Fred. That's easier. His first name's Fred. I'm not making up a name for him. I'm gonna call him Joe. You call everyone Joe. Shut up, Joe! He's a UFO investigator who arrived in Snowflake and began interviewing the various loggers who were there when Walton disappeared. Okay, cool. Now, Fred was obviously trying to gather information about the events that took place so that he could possibly build a time frame in his mind of what happened that night what happened to travis walton understood now the little details were important here for example this i'm gonna serial a bit here again did any of the crew have any personal problems with walton

of course was there any tension between workers prior to the disappearance? I mean, really questions that the police should have been asking. Yeah, but they wanted to hang ten in the golden beaches of Snowflake. We're talking chief and goddamn constable on the same board. Yeah. Turns out there was tension. Oh. One of the workers, Alan Dallas, allegedly had a nasty temper and had come close to fighting other members of the crew on numerous occasions.

Oh. Suspect number one. Dwayne Smith was known for his inexperience that often put the rest of the crew at risk. Okay. Suspect number two. Okay. Suspect number two. And while they were good friends,

it's important to note that Walton actually dated Roger's sister, Dana. That's what I'm saying. So already we're seeing possible motives for the crew to be involved in the disappearance. It's not looking good for the crew at this point. They all have something that could be a reason behind Walton's disappearance. Although the dating Mrs. Dana, They all have something that could be a reason behind Walton's disappearance. Although the dating Mrs. Dana, I feel like that one's kind of tenuous. I mean, is that really grounds to kill someone?

Well, I think it's worth noting. It's important information in this case. I think it's something to flag up. It is worth saying that Rogers and Walton had been friends for years yeah years and years yeah so aside from the possibility that rogers didn't like walton dating his sister and wanted him gone or maybe walton wasn't treating her right you know it's weird it's it's hard but it's important information to nail down uh in this serial um one thing this is really interesting one thing that fred also found troubling was the contract that the crew had been working now remember what i said at the start of the story

rogers and his workers were massively behind schedule okay they've been working from 6 a.m to sunset every day at the rate they were, they were never going to finish in the contracted time. Now, because of Walton's disappearance and the days of searching that follow, Rogers and his men were unable to complete the contract with the Forest Service. The disappearance had completely shifted the focus from them failing to complete the project. Interesting. Yeah. And as I said, this was the biggest contract they'd ever landed before. They'd been working with the Forest Service for years, and all of a sudden they can't fill this contract,

and as it approaches the deadline, one of the crew disappears and derails everything. That's definite motive. If you've got someone in the logging crew that you do not like, and you need to find a way out of this, you get the whole town out into the woods making work impossible for you yeah i mean it but yeah absolutely it's kind of funny though to think of a time i think everyone who's listening can think of a time in their careers when they've been really pushed to the wire yeah project on a deadline on some

some sort of report um i'd like to know by a show of hands how many people considered faking their you sir yes my hand is raised i didn't assume you're talking of murder though no oh i'll slowly drop that sheriff get in here no he admitted to it but i was gonna say how many people have considered faking their own death to get to get out of a project well i guess like faking your own death requires a huge change in your life yeah whereas this is just a huge change permanently in someone else's very permanently so let's rephrase that you've got a huge report due you and a colleague um you kill the colleague yeah to take the heat off the report that was due yeah like when you're thinking about a school project this is this is a contract possibly worth hundreds of thousands

of pounds but i mean what happens if you renege on a contract i mean i guess that that it discredits your firm i suppose which could be a financial uh sort of suicide exactly well this is it now you know if they ever want to work with the forest service which i assume i don't know how many services there are in the forest yeah i'm assuming one and it's them it's like dot com and if you're a logger you should have the forest on your side i think that's logger 101 that's true there's there's a limited number of trees out there okay people really are and we need to cut more of them down frankly so these are the questions we have to ask ourselves could walton have been murdered by his own crew either for personal reasons or to cover up their work problems. And if they did, why such an elaborate story?

Absolutely. That's what I'm wondering. It's weird. It's just, it's a lot confusing. So it didn't take long before there were growing suspicions among the community and the police that it seemed like the rest of the loggers had been involved with Walton's disappearance. Okay. Okay.

It obviously seemed much more likely that walton had just been killed brutally on purpose or by accident that he was abducted by aliens yeah at this point the believability of your alibi really that's where the rubber hits the road it's got to be you've got to have a believable alibi and they kind of kind of fluffed it on that one i think well at least they're maybe they're like hey solidarity though that'll that'll show them we'll all say it's an alien it's like i guess yeah i you could try it yeah it's gonna be their word against our word well what about their word against six words yeah and then the police chief shows up and

it's just like i told you aliens do we believe them chief i don't know there are six of them they could beat us up so rogers and the rest of his crew are brought to the arizona department of public safety and administered a polygraph test we're getting some science behind this thing debatable but yeah some sort of machine anyway exactly uh now this would hopefully prove once and for all that the story told by the crew is real or it's false could you please uh for the for the listeners at home the the dumb dumbs who don't who don't know what a what a what a poly what do you call it polygraph yeah i mean i'm i'm familiar with them but for the people

aren't right if you could just you know it is but i'll say it and then you'll tell me if i know what it is yeah yeah yeah yeah a polygraph is the technical term for a lie detection test uh-huh the test was administered by sy gibson who honestly just got straight to the point. He asked these questions. I don't know why he's German, but I'm going to make him German. Have you or any of the crew ever caused any harm to Mr. Walton? Do you know that Mr. Walton's body is buried? Did you see a UFO the night Mr. Walton disappeared? Now, obviously, all of the men denied hurting or knowing who had hurt Walton.

They also denied knowing where his body was, but every single member of the crew insisted that they had seen a UFO that night. Okay. The results of the polygraph test concluded that every member of the crew was telling the truth. Okay. So basically, the little polygraph, their heart rates, their sweat in their bra, it was all totally flat.

They were like coolest cucumbers. Coolest cucumbers. The official quote from the report stated, these polygraph examinations prove that these five men did see some object that they believed to be a UFO and that Travis Walton was not injured or murdered by any of these men on that Wednesday. What do you make of that? Because polygraphs are, I believe, no longer admissible in court in most countries yeah i because i think the accuracy rate is 93 is it yeah i thought i believe so oh did see i'm saying that i thought

they were not admissible anymore because they were not deemed to be well i think seven percent is enough of a uh range of error okay that yeah can't. But I'm fairly sure that it is. You can't hang someone. Yeah. You know, on the basis of... Let me check. I do want to know this, like, going forward. It would just be interesting.

It definitely... My last Google search was LeBron James. I just want everyone on the podcast to know that. Second one down. How to play, like, LeBron James. LeBronames workout diet what did lebron eat to get that tall become tall quote unquote lebron james okay so uh proponents will say the test is about 90 accurate critics will say it's about 70 accurate

so it's actually pretty accurate god damn i mean either way yeah i mean obviously 70 accurate still leaves a lot of room for error absolutely yeah yeah 90 to 70 accuracy with the testimony of multiple men all concluding in the exact same way yeah it's true i mean once you start like multiplying those probabilities it's true. I mean, once you start like multiplying those probabilities, it's like you're left with a pretty small chance that they're lying. So after the polygraph test, Sheriff Gillespie made a public announcement that he honestly believed the abduction really happened. Wow. Saying there's no doubt they're telling the truth. This is the 70s people. What do you do at this point? Because you can't. These men have passed the polygraph test,

which at the time was the only way to tell whether someone was lying or telling the truth. They have their, I guess, an alibi that you kind of have to believe them because there's no one else to testify against them. So what do you do? You kind of, they're off the hook. And there's absolutely no evidence. No, they can't find any source. He hasn't turned up anywhere. No. Yeah. You kind of just got to take their fingerprints and they're off the hook there's absolutely no evidence no they can't find any source turned up anywhere no yeah you kind of just gotta take their fingerprints and they're like all right well

unless a body turns up in a river in the next three years yeah i guess like keep an eye on the the crew yeah it's it's not a good situation to be in because you're probably living in this quite close snowflake community with these men who have possibly murdered their friend. So at this point, it's five days after the incident took place. The police have stopped searching for Walton. Because of the crew's testimonies and polygraph exam results, none of them are considered suspects in the disappearance. The investigation is at its end.

Either Walton truly was abducted by aliens, as the men claimed, or Walton's dead and no one can be prosecuted. Flash forward. It's 12.05am on November 10th. Walton's sister is sleeping peacefully with her husband Grant when the phone rings. Now Grant, who is Walton's brother-in-law, wakes up and answers the phone, curious to find out why someone's calling after midnight. Grant answers the phone. Hello? There's a moment of silence until he hears a voice shouting on the other side of the phone.

They brought me back! Travis Walton was alive! Ow! And that's the end of this week's podcast! Oh, dude, you're killing me here. Good googly moogly. Sorry to end on a cliffhanger like that, guys, but... Oh, don't be sorry. This is a crazy story.

It's a good story! This crazy mystery, this insane disappearance. Are you kidding me? Oh, God. God, chills. We got so many things to work out. We got to figure out where he's gone. Why his mom was such a creep.

Yeah, there's so many things. And if you think there's weird stuff happening in this episode, Jesus Christ, we're going up next week. It is going to get so weird and bananas but again like there's a reason why people say this is one of the most interesting alien abductions of all time this is crazy i've never even heard of this this is amazing i know what a like gem to stumble across so i hope you guys enjoyed that episode and um next week we will be back on Tuesday to conclude our story and find out what happened in the disappearance of Travis Walton. Thank you for listening.