The vast North American wilderness
is home to evil forces
thought only to exist in nightmares...
Aaaaah!
But the terrible creatures that roam here
are all too real.
Some blood-chilling horrors that stalk the forest
are birthed in its darkest corners.
Go, go, go, go!
Others... Travis!
Quit playing around, man. Get back here.
Are just visiting.
Ah! Travis!
The last thing I remember was this numbing shock.
Aaaaah!
Stunning sort of a feeling, very powerful.
Stay away from me!
I was just outta my mind with fear,
just screamin' the whole time.
I'll tear it apart!
I'll kill you!
It was like a silent horror film.
Then everything went black.
Aaaaah!
November 5, 1975.
I mark time by that, you know?
It marked the end of my life, as I knew it,
and the beginning of life
as I have been forced to accept it.
I realize that I can't escape it.
The highest point of this remote forest
sits at 7,000 feet above sea level
and is known as the Mogollon Rim.
Loggers have worked that area for many years
and so have stories to tell
of strange beings that stalk this land.
A lot of other people had seen things.
I had heard stories, from other loggers, of creatures.
They called it the Mogollon monster,
named after the Mogollon Rim area.
This guy was with a crew.
He looked over and he saw this creature
rise up from behind a log,
look right at him,
turned, and walked away.
And he was adamant that what he'd seen was no other animal
you would encounter in these woods.
There were stories in the newspaper
about cattle mutilation, ritualistic-looking.
The oldest mutilation recorded was in the 1600s.
There was 100 sheep
that mysteriously had their innards removed
without any flaw to their skin or their fleece.
Tonight, Travis Walton and his crew
are driving down an old logging road,
heading home after a long day of work on the fabled rim.
It's hard, sweaty, dirty work,
and you really wanna hit the shower at the end of a day.
- Smoke? - Nah.
- Come on. - Nah.
Suit yourself.
The road we were drivin' on was really rough
and, you know, it was just, you know,
more of a track than a road and you'd really have
to slow down and pick your way across it,
just to keep from scraping the underside of the truck.
We were 15 miles from the nearest town.
And, now, Travis senses
they're not the only ones on this deserted road.
Hey.
You guys see that?
What the heck is that?
I don't know.
The first thing I recall seeing
was just some little glimmers of light through the trees.
You just normally don't encounter any kinda light
in the forest at night.
It's usually pretty pitch-black.
You think... you think maybe
a plane went down or...?
- A plane? - Well, I don't know.
It was such a remote area that, to even encounter
another vehicle was not that common.
It wasn't fitting in with any of the casual explanations
that, you know, immediately came to mind.
Could this be the Moon?
No, the Moon's over here.
Could this be, you know,
somebody camping there, deer season, or whatever?
But the light was coming from higher
than where ground level would be.
The closer we got, there was a break in the trees ahead,
to where some of this light was shining across the road.
What is that?
I have no idea.
It was definitely somethin' out of the ordinary.
Just drive, man.
Unh.
- Travis. - What are you...?
Travis, what...
Travis, what are you doin'?
Travis.
Travis! - Okay.
I'm fine, Mike!
Leave me alone!
My action was pretty alarming to the rest of the crew.
- What is he doing? - I don't know.
Travis!
Travis, come on!
Damn it.
Tra-Travis!
Travis, get back here!
I was just awestruck, just astonished.
It was just sort of frightening
and beautiful, at the same time.
The closer I got, the more I became aware
of the sound it was making.
Travis!
Come on!
It was a fairly strange mixture of really high
and really low tones that went off the range
of human hearing on the high and the low end.
Something's not right, man!
You gotta get back to the truck!
I had a slowly growing awareness of the danger I was in.
It was a clearly defined, metallic,
shiny object giving off light and energy
and it was a very imposing sight
and, no doubt about it,
this is a spaceship.
The same thing that draws aliens to our planet
is the same thing that draws us to others:
exploration, curiosity, sustainability of life.
That's why we go.
It would make sense as to why they're visiting here.
Travis!
Quit playing around, man. Get back here.
The crew were swearin' at me, callin' me crazy,
you know, tellin' me to get back in the truck.
And...
I wish I had.
What happened next was so unexpected.
It's been theorized that aliens prefer remote areas
because they don't wanna attract attention.
Whatever it is that they're doing,
they would wanna do that in a less-populated area.
Travis Walton and his coworkers
are driving down a deserted logging road...
I don't like this, man.
Just keep driving. What... What?
When he feels compelled to leave them
and walk toward the mysterious light.
Come on, man.
Travis, come on, man!
This was the quintessential disc shape,
two pie pans put lip-to-lip with a dome on top,
a saucer shape.
What do we do?
Travis!
They call to me to get back in the truck,
using some rather colorful language.
Come on, man! Get back to the truck!
I was just taking this in with astonishment,
but, you know, the crew guys, they said it looked to them like
I was under outside control.
Don't get closer, man! Come on!
This thing was giving off light,
but the surface itself was like glass,
like it was all one surface.
The sound was so high that, when you turn your head,
you can't really be sure of the direction it's coming from;
and the low end was something you like feel in your body
as much as hear with your ear.
Oh, man.
Oh! Agh!
Travis!
It suddenly got louder.
Aah!
Aah! Agh.
Travis!
Aah!
Aa-aah!
Travis!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I just dove for cover
and I jumped into a crouch behind this log.
- Travis! - And the crew was
- Travis! - Yellin', swearin, at me
to get back in the truck
because they wanted to just get the hell outta there.
It's not funny, man. Get back to the car.
And I quickly decided to run for the truck.
Travis, come on! Hurry!
Get back here!
So, when I stood up,
that triggered some kind of a discharge.
Oh! Travis!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!
Whatever it was, there was a blast of energy
that came out of the bottom of that craft.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!
It felt like...
Kind of like I'd been hit.
If you've ever been tackled, blindsided,
when you didn't see it comin',
at the same time, feeling quite a bit like an electric shock.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!
It was so violent, it threw me through the air,
some of them said 10 feet, some of them said 20 feet,
but, when my body hit the ground,
they said it was like a sack of meat,
like there wasn't a bone in my body.
Oh.
And the guys said
they could feel the vibration in the truck.
Just go, go.
They were certain it had killed me.
He's dead. He's dead. No!
He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.
The last thing I remember was this sense of brightness,
but it was almost immediately I was unconscious.
A numbing sort of a shock,
a stunning sort of a feeling, very powerful.
Fearing for their lives,
Travis's coworkers get out of there as fast as they can.
I think the crew did the smartest thing.
If they saw somebody get killed, why should they risk their lives
to save somebody they believe is already dead?
I mean, it was so violent
and so obvious to them that it had killed me
that I don't blame them for takin' off.
They are the lucky ones.
For Travis, the horror is only just beginning.
Compelled to investigate a UFO in the remote forest,
Travis Walton ignores his friends' pleas
to return to the truck and pays the price.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!
Aaaaaaaaaaah! - Travis!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!
The intensity of the fear that I was experiencing
right before I was hit,
you know, did have me really
thinking just about how foolish what I had done really was.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!
I didn't really have time to reflect on the implications
of what was happening.
Aaaaaaaaah!
Aaaaaaah!
He's dead. Travis!
He's dead. He's dead. No!
He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.
His colleagues barely escape the same fate.
When the crew got a little better grip on themselves,
they were really, you know,
having a really frantic discussion about what to do.
We gotta go back.
We gotta go back for him. Aggh!
Mike said to the crew, "Look, we gotta go back,"
and they were gonna stay together
and so they all went back.
His greatest fear was what my body was gonna look like
because of the violence of that blast.
Was I even gonna be in one piece?
It was such a powerful thing.
You see him?
Travis.
Travis!
Footprints, footprints.
They were able to locate the spot.
Travis!
Mike could see where my footprints
had gone up towards this craft,
so they knew they were in the right spot,
but they yelled, with the hope that
maybe I would just, you know, have been nearby
and maybe, you know, recovered from being stunned
and could, you know, come to their calls.
But that wasn't happening.
They debated whether to go to the authorities
and some of them did not want to involve the authorities
'cause they felt like "Nobody's gonna believe.
This is incredible. Nobody's gonna believe this."
They have no idea just how far away Travis actually is.
When I first regained consciousness,
I was in a lotta pain.
I was disoriented.
I really didn't know where I was.
I was on a raised surface
'cause the ceiling was close to me.
But, even though there was a light there,
wasn't all that bright, it hurt to open my eyes
and look at the light.
And my vision was blurry
and I felt, above all,
like I was suffocating. I couldn't breathe.
I kept breathing hard and it hurt.
I felt something was very wrong inside.
I felt mortally wounded, in a serious, serious way,
like "Something's wrong here."
And I could hear the sounds of movement around me
and I just thought, "Well, they took me to the hospital and,
you know, these are the doctors."
Doctor.
But he quickly realizes he is not in a hospital.
Hello.
I knew there was something lyin' across my chest.
I could hardly move.
This suffocating feeling, I think,
was most of where the panic came from.
I could make out the faces of what I thought were the doctors,
but when I could finally focus,
I could see I was lookin' into the face of this creature.
And, boom, I knew where I was then.
I was taken aboard the spaceship.
Get away from me!
That just freaked me out.
I just instantly had a shot of adrenaline that,
it brought me the rest of the way awake
and I was in fight-or-flight kind of a mode.
Help!
I was in total panic, total hysteria.
Help!
Travis.
Travis left his colleagues in their truck
and walked towards a spaceship.
There are multiple accounts of the same thing
from people from all over the world,
people that do not know each other,
do not live in the same cultures,
and they're all looking up.
They're all seeing things in the sky,
so it would be naive of us
to think that we're alone in the universe.
Aaaaaaah! Travis!
Aaaaaaah!
Now, he has been abducted and is surrounded by aliens.
Help!
Get away from me!
-The feeling of feeling trapped, -Help.
The feeling of unknown, in terms of
what's gonna happen to me, am I dying, you know,
what are these creatures gonna do to me?
Help.
No one can hear his screams.
His coworkers rush to the police.
Please, you gotta believe us.
But they don't buy the story.
It's exactly what the loggers feared.
It took our friend.
The emotional impact was still fresh in their faces
and, you know, some of 'em were still cryin'.
The sheriff knew something really serious had happened...
Is that so?
Yeah. It's the truth.
What, what, you don't...
You don't think we had something to do with it?
But he began to suspect that they had murdered me,
that there had been some kind of a fight out there...
Tell me the truth. No, we didn't do anything.
It wasn't me. It... It wasn't us.
And that this was just the craziest cover story
for a disappearance of a man.
You know what?
Why don't we just go to the station
and let the lie detector find out?
No, we were telling the truth!
I swear to you! I know. I know. Okay.
We're gonna go find out.
Meanwhile, Travis is fighting for his life.
The overwhelming impression, at the time,
was one of total fear, total threat.
I needed to move and move quickly
and it wasn't working very well.
Ah.
The pain I felt was centered in my head and chest
and it seemed to be a little bit associated
with the need to breathe,
the impaired ability to get oxygen.
And, when my arm contacted this... being,
it felt much lighter and softer than I expected.
They were pursuing me.
They were reaching for me.
Help!
Get away from me!
He gets himself off the table, but the danger only escalates.
I was just basically just outta my mind with fear,
just screamin' the whole time.
Get away from me!
No!
Just screamin' in fear.
- Stay away! - And it seemed to work.
No! No, okay, stay away!
I backed up and I bumped into a shelf
with some instruments laid out there.
I just grabbed the biggest thing I could find
and started flailing through the air...
No! I said stay away!
Screaming threats to keep 'em from coming any closer.
I'll tear you apart!
It doesn't work for long.
Go back!
Stay away.
I'll kill you.
Stay back!
Ah!
I'll kill you!
They stopped, and then this stare.
Just momentarily, they were all three starin' at me
and they had huge eyes,
so, I felt this penetrating gaze that just...
It just gave me a real squirmy feeling in my head.
I've had... over 40 years to think about
why they look the way they look
and why I reacted the way I reacted.
People claim that they have the ability to control people,
mind control, telepathy,
that maybe that's what that stare was doing.
But, for whatever reason, that stare, that gaze,
I felt very uncomfortable and that was the focus
of my nightmares in the aftermath.
It's been theorized that aliens possess the technology
to use telekinesis or mind control.
If an alien race is able to control the mind,
they would be able to control our thoughts.
Aah!
They put this mask on my face.
It's just like an oxygen mask.
You had some kinda gas that they were givin' me.
It didn't hurt.
I just blacked out real quickly.
Go back! Stay away!
Travis has been abducted by aliens...
Stay back! Ah! Stay back!
And his feeble attempt at escape has failed.
Aah!
The Native Americans had a long tradition of interaction
with what they called the Sky People,
going back so far as to be depicted
in these rock drawings, petroglyphs.
The ancient astronaut theory has been said to be able to go
as far back as Ancient Mesopotamian,
Sumerian, or Babylonian times.
Everyone's been looking up.
There is evidence of sky gods,
people coming from the heavens down below.
It's been around for thousands and thousands of years.
Our ancestors believe we came from the sky
and we haven't stopped looking since.
With no sign
of Travis, police suspect his coworkers have killed him.
Well, what have we here?
Up here! Bring the shovel.
A suspicion that deepens when they discover
what could be a hastily dug grave.
You know, it really doesn't make sense.
Why would anybody make up that kind of a story?
The reason the dogs could not find any trail leading
away from the clearing is because I did not walk
away from the clearing, that I was taken aboard.
There's nothin' here.
While the search for Travis continues,
his terrible ordeal aboard the spaceship
comes to a sudden end.
Aa-aah!
Ah!
When I regained consciousness,
I looked to see where the light was coming from,
but just as I turned to look, the light went out
and then there was a metallic, reflective surface there
that was unlit before it shot up into the sky.
The memory of the panic that I had been experienced
and the face of these strange creatures,
you know, was uppermost in my mind.
Those little pieces of memory, they came back as kinda like
dream fragments, but, even though it was dark,
there was a sense of relief that this was freedom.
I recognized this stretch of road,
been there many, many times,
and I could see the lights of the town down below
and so I just ran in that direction...
tried to get some help.
Help me!
And, if there was anybody in there, they didn't come.
So I ran on down.
I came to some phone booths.
Operator.
And, in this part of the country, at that time,
you could just pick up the phone
and talk to the operator and make a phone call, so,
I didn't even have to put a dime in.
And I made a collect call.
He calls his family,
but he doesn't get the reaction he expects.
Please, you gotta help me.
Who is this?
What do you want?
My family were thinking that I'd been killed.
It's me!
They'd been getting all these prank calls
and they were just fed up with it
and my brother thought this was another one.
But I yelled, "It's me! It really is me!"
and he understood, then,
that this... this was for real.
And so he says, "I'll get your brother and come and getcha."
And I hung up.
I must have collapsed.
Only when he's taken home
does Travis realize how long he's been missing.
I had no idea how much time had gone by.
My brother realized that I was thinking
that this was still the same night, and so he goes,
"Travis, you've been gone for five days,"
and that was such a shock.
I had no idea about the crew going to the sheriff
or this massive manhunt that went on for days.
I just knew what I'd experienced and the trauma of that
and I'd been trying to get it out.
I couldn't finish a sentence.
I was just so racked with fear
and that continued for some time.
He was able to share his actual encounter with me.
His story is incredible.
To date, Travis Walton and the crew
have taken 10 polygraph tests
and have passed every single one
and they all believe that this has happened.
Some say aliens have been visiting this planet
for millennia
and Travis is not the only one who has driven into the woods
and encountered mysterious beings from another world.
Aaaah!
Even looking back on it now,
17, 18 years later,
I can't think of any explanation for what I saw.
I can try and rationalize it every way I can
and nothing can explain what it was I witnessed that night.
I still get a little creeped out, thinking about it.
Aaah!
In 1999, Richard Parks heads out for a camping trip,
thinking it's just going to be a casual getaway
with some buddies.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I never had a feeling or sense about anything
out of the ordinary at that campground before.
It was always just a fun place to go
and hang out with friends and be outdoors.
It had been two years since I had been to the campgrounds
and I had forgotten which turn that I needed to take
to get to the campground.
And so, at one point, I had to pull over and consult my map.
Yeah, I must've missed a turn here somewhere.
All right. Here we go.
This is the spot. Ah!
Told ya I knew where it was.
After we arrived at our destination,
we set up our camp, pitched our tents.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Nothing struck me as odd, until later on that night.
All right, guys. That's it for me.
I'm hittin' this hay.
Good night.
That night, after everyone had retired for the night,
I got up.
I had a strange urge to go walking.
It probably wasn't the brightest idea in the world, to go out,
'cause I don't recall being armed, other than a knife.
I wasn't prepared for what I found
as I hiked up that trail that night.
It did seem like something wanted me to go up the canyon,
like I was probably being drawn.
I'd have to describe it as an uncontrollable restlessness,
the need to go somewhere.
A lot of alien-encounter stories
are accompanied by unexplained movements
or unexplained wandering into unfamiliar areas
in the middle of the night.
Suddenly, Richard discovers he's been drawn
into a mysterious part of the woods.
It is common that people are randomly activated
through telekinesis, mind control, or telepathy.
I had probably hiked for about a mile.
The Moon wasn't offering much light.
It was very dark. It was very still.
There didn't seem like there was
even any nightlife going on at all.
I crossed a clearing, off to my left,
of the trees, that allowed me to see down into the canyon
and I noticed, as I was approaching the clearing,
that there was some light down in the canyon.
I wasn't sure what I was seeing.
It wasn't moving. It was just a steady glow,
almost like someone had built a fire in the canyon,
but there was no flickering.
It was just a steady glow.
As I came into full view of the clearing,
there were what appeared to be people down there,
standing in a circle.
There were two pairs, facing each other.
They're wearing dark robes, full length, with hoods.
The beings standing, facing each other
with their arms outstretched above them
to kinda form like a Y-shape with their body.
The thoughts going through my mind as I'm seeing this is
I've stumbled across some form of ritual or another.
Yet, he soon realizes that this is something
even more bizarre and terrifying and that the figures before him
aren't people, but entities not of this world.
The glow that I was seeing,
surrounding their outstretched hands
and then forming a beam stretching above their heads.
It may be some sort of a power or energy source.
It may actually have properties
that is drawing the individual towards it.
Upon approaching them, I didn't feel like
I was in any kind of danger.
I wasn't really scared.
I couldn't see any faces in the hoods.
The glow that they had down there
was illuminating everything they were doing,
but I saw no faces.
Richard feels he is safe, as long as they don't see him.
But they do.
Aaaaaaah!
A mysterious force drew Richard Parks
from his tent to a clearing in a canyon.
It appears as if this gentleman was activated,
or led and lured to a specific spot away from the camp.
And he's been led to where extraterrestrial beings
are performing a strange ritual.
I saw the being's hood tilt up towards me
and, after a moment or two,
all three of the others turned towards me
and that's when I realized that they all knew I was there.
I remember the feeling of danger that overcame me.
Being there, in that situation, with nothing but a blade on me
probably contributed to the feeling of fright
that I had been overcome with upon being noticed.
Their attention was now on me.
But Richard can't seem to find the will to move,
let alone reach for his knife.
I couldn't go anywhere.
If the notion had occurred to me to run, I wasn't able to.
I couldn't really tell if it was them holding me in place
or if it was the fear holding me in place.
It was like a silent horror film.
Aah! Aah!
Aah! Aa-aah!
Aah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Aaah!
Aaaaaaaaaaah!
Then everything went black.
When I woke up that morning, I was partially clothed.
I didn't have my boots on; I didn't have my shirt on,
but I still had my jeans on.
It seemed strange because I didn't remember
taking anything off.
I couldn't remember hiking down the canyon.
I couldn't remember coming back into the campground.
I didn't remember getting into my sleeping bag.
I couldn't remember any part of the trip back.
I felt like the things that I had seen
could've been responsible
for putting me back and making me forget.
But, at the same time, it didn't make sense
because why would I still remember them?
Their hands were like this. This big light.
I had told the two friends that I had come up with
what happened during the night
and we all kinda got thoroughly creeped out by it.
Whether they believed me, or not, it was never apparent,
but it creeped them out enough, and myself,
that we didn't even stick around for breakfast.
We took down our tents, packed up our supplies,
got in the truck, and left.
I look back at what happened that night every once in a while
as I'm flipping through old drawings
and old books that I kept over the years.
Nothing can explain what it was I witnessed that night,
aside from some form of ritual
that I'd stumbled upon.
Those who have encountered beings from out of this world
never forget the experience,
as Travis Walton knows all too well.
The recovery process was very slow
and, you know, every night was a nightmare...
of returning to the vision
of those eyes staring, boring into me.
It slowly... very slowly; it took years.
It was very hard to deal with, very hard to cope with.
Is there any ongoing sort of thing?
Are they gonna come back?
You know, that's a very haunting feeling.
When it comes to alien encounters and experiences,
it's easily comparable to post-traumatic stress.
It's equivalent to a soldier who's come home from war.
It's traumatizing.
This really does happen.
It's real.
And it's been a long, slow process,
adapting to try to make just surviving it
become something more positive, if I can.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah!