By Dave Maxwell

Alamo’s Senior Citizens Center was the focal point of the annual UFO conference sponsored by Ike Bishop.

About 40-50 people attended the conference this year, which included a rather unusual guest speaker. Travis Walton, of Snowflake, Arizona, 175 miles northeast of Phoenix, spoke to the attendees Sunday afternoon. Walton, who claims to have been abducted by aliens in 1975, had a movie made about his story in 1993, Fire in the Sky, which remains the most well documented alleged case of alien abduction on record.

He was at the Alamo conference, not only to speak of his experience, but also to promote an updated edition of his book of the same name, which he says, “clears up the inaccuracies and mistakes put into the movie version, but also answers point-by-point rebuttal of every theory the skeptics ever came up with.”

Bishop said he invited Walton to come to the conference in Alamo because, “he’s a hot commodity right now in terms of conferences and lectures. It’s just as important to him now as it was then.”

Walton took time following the conference to talk with THE RECORD and said he knew the Alamo conference was small, but enjoyable.

He said his case is the best documented case because, “There has been no other case where there has been so much research, so much scientific evidence where people can go and verify these things for themselves.”

He reiterated the importance of, “not judging anything without checking the facts first. You really need to do your own research and you’re not really going to get the straight story from just one source. You really need to look at a variety of sources to get a feel for what you can rely on. Emerson wrote, ‘Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance,’ and that really sums up my whole approach to UFO-ology.”

Walton admits he does not always want to talk about his experience and hasn’t for a number of years since the movie was released in 1993. But now, with the release of an updated book, he is speaking about it again. “It was something I found very hard to do. I’m not anybody that liked to speak in front of a group. I have never sought out an interview in my life, it’s always been somebody came to me.”

Walton says he feels fortunate that the aliens have not returned and sought him out again, and even if they did, he probably would not tell anybody about it.

He added, “I get complimented with having come forth with this, but I had no choice. It was a worldwide news story (in 1975), before I was ever returned. All I’ve done was deal with the situation as it came, and I hesitate to comment on other cases, if I haven’t studied it.”

Walton does have a website. www.traviswalton.com, and invited people to visit the website if they have an interest.

See the UFO Casebook case file The Travis Walton Abduction.