The Walton Xperience

The Walton Xperience is a photographic project that reinterprets the story of The Travis Walton Experience (the book), and more precisely, Fire in the Sky (the film), which recounts the alien abduction of Travis in 1975 in the Apache–Sitgreaves National Forests near Heber in Arizona.

"Chance makes a plaything of a man's life."

Seneca. (First Century A.D)

"Come back in the truck Travis, you'll gonna be an asshole!"

The Walton experience & his Space Travel.

"I looked at the vague but reassuring forms of the doctors around me. Abruptly my vision cleared. The sudden horror of what I saw rocked me as I realized I was definitely not in a hospital. I was looking square into the face of a horrible creature... with huge, luminous brown eyes the size of quarters! I looked frantically around me. There were three of them! Hysteria overcame me instantly."

"Welcome home Travis, glad to see you again !"

The Story

On November 5, 1975 near Snowflake, Arizona, logger Travis Walton, becomes the victim of an alien abduction. Walton and his co-workers; Mike Rogers, Allan Dallis, David Whitlock, Greg Hayes and Bobby Cogdill; are engaged in forestry operations under a business contract to clear a wilderness area. After completing a day’s work, the men come across what appears to be an unidentified flying object on their drive home. Curious to learn more about the spectacle, Walton steps out of their vehicle, but is struck by a beam of light from the phenomenon. Fearing Walton was possibly killed after the encounter, the others leave the scene in horror. Rogers decides to make a trip back to the spot of the confrontation to pick up Walton, but he is nowhere to be found. Upon making their way back to the local town to report the incident, the loggers are greeted with skepticism, as they relate what sounds like an outrageous story to Sheriff Blake Davis and Lieutenant Frank Watters. They are suspected of foul play despite no apparent motive or knowledge as to Walton’s whereabouts.

After interviewing the men, Lieutenant Watters deduces that tensions had arisen between Walton and Dallis, substantiated by a wound on Dallis’s hand from a previous altercation between the two, leading him to believe there might be a murder investigation on the way. The Lieutenant also discovers a tabloid newspaper with headlines surrounding aliens in the seat of their truck, hinting there is a strong possibility they used the article to help concoct their story. Meanwhile, Sheriff Davis encourages the men to take a polygraph examination to which they agree and appear to pass; however, Dallis’s test comes out inconclusive. The men are still accused of murder and are being threatened by Travis’s Brother Dan Walton.

Five days later, Walton is found alive at a gas station, naked, dehydrated and incoherent. During a welcome home party thrown by his friends and family, Walton suffers a paranoid delusion as he recounts a flashback of the abduction by the extraterrestrials aboard the UFO. In his hallucination, Walton wakes up in a cocoon like setting attempting to escape his captivity in a suspended weightless environment. After discovering that he is not sedated or unconscious, the aliens drag him through a series of corridors to be subsequently experimented on against his will. Stripping him to his underwear and then covering him with a rubber like sheet, which eventually pins him to an examination table, the aliens subject him to an extremely painful examination in which he is forced to endure an optical probe.

While briefly interviewing Walton, Lieutenant Watters continues to express his doubts on his abduction as merely an elaborate hoax. He notes Walton’s new found celebrity status after his popularity increased by tabloids attempting to profit from his tale. The film culminates with a denouement between Walton and Rogers, with the UFO mystery essentially unresolved. The closing titles of the film inform the viewer that in February 1993, the loggers agreed to resubmit to an additional polygraph examination which they passed, corroborating their innocence.