The 9 Most Convincing Alien Abduction Stories In Modern History

Published October 7, 2020
Updated January 21, 2024

When Travis Walton Was Abducted And Probed For Five Days

Travis Walton Newspaper Headlines

National EnquirerA newspaper headline details Walton’s five-day disappearance, which he attributes to an alien abduction.

On Nov. 5, 1975, Travis Walton was purportedly abducted — and didn’t return for five whole days. When he did, he had quite the explanation for his disappearance.

Dismissed as a mentally unstable liar, Walton chronicled his alleged alien stories in The Walton Experience three years later, which was adapted into the science-fiction classic Fire In The Sky.

Walton’s abduction began after a long day’s work in Sitegreaves National Forest near Herber, Arizona. Walton and his six-man group of loggers were returning home when they allegedly spotted a shiny disc spanning 40 feet in diameter hovering in the sky above them.

“It was a metallic, glowing disc, making some very strange sounds,” he recalled. “The closer I got to it, the more scared we all got and they were swearing at me to get away from there, and when I got up close, it suddenly got louder and started to move.”

Walton then claimed that “non-human” beings abducted him and experimented on him until he fought them off. He has maintained this claim for 45 years. But as the beings purportedly poked and prodded at him on a kind of table, five days elapsed on Earth where Walton was officially declared missing — and his coworkers became suspects.

“I became conscious inside the craft. And I believed I was in the hospital,” said Walton. “I was in a lot of pain. And as I became more conscious, I looked around and I saw alien beings and I just panicked.”

Travis Walton With Logging Gear

Travis WaltonTravis Walton’s book about the incident was adapted into 1993’s alien abduction classic Fire In The Sky.

“They were much smaller than me, and I think that’s the reason they gave up,” he said, adding that he hit one of them. “Once they found out they couldn’t control me, they split. I was absolutely terrified.”

Meanwhile, Walton’s colleagues were questioned by authorities, and when Walton miraculously reappeared, a full-scale investigation was launched that included polygraphs, psychological evaluations, and physical examinations.

“For five days, the authorities thought he’d been murdered by his co-workers, and then he was returned,” said ufologist Jim Ledwith. “All of the co-workers who were there, who saw the spacecraft, they all took polygraph tests, and they all passed, except for one, and that one was inconclusive.”

In the end, the Walton case remains as inconclusive as all of these alien abduction stories do. Curiously, however, later research conducted at the site of Walton’s abduction showed an unusual growth rate in the trees where the craft had allegedly hovered.

The trees near the site were found to be producing wood fiber at a rate 36 times greater than they had in decades before.

author
Marco Margaritoff
author
A former staff writer for All That’s Interesting, Marco Margaritoff holds dual Bachelor's degrees from Pace University and a Master's in journalism from New York University. He has published work at People, VICE, Complex, and serves as a staff reporter at HuffPost.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.