Travis Walton - Aftermath

Aftermath

In 1978, Walton published The Walton Experience, in which he outlined his own narrative of the event and its aftermath. The same year, Bill Barry published The Ultimate Encounter, in which he argues that the various debunkers, especially Klass, did not make persuasive cases and that Walton and others alleging similar experiences related events more or less as they believed they had happened.

Matheson argues that Walton's book makes a few fundamental errors that severely harm his case. While Walton "proclaims self-righteously" that he intends only to relate events and not "interpret" them, Matheson writes, "the reader will see almost immediately that large sections of the book are nothing more than highly speculative, purely imaginative recreations on his part". (Matheson, 109) For example, after he is knocked unconscious by the blue beam, Walton offers precise, novelistic dialogue describing the conversations of his fellow crew workers after they drove away in a panic. Yet Walton never mentions whether he is paraphrasing their words based on what they related to him, if he interviewed the others to determine who said what, or if he simply assumed what they said. Matheson argues that this represents a "lack of concern for literal accuracy that the reader cannot help but suspect is characteristic of the entire work". (Matheson, 110)

After the initial furor subsided, Walton remained in Snowflake and eventually became the foreman at a lumber mill; he married Dana Rogers and they had several children. Beyond the film based on his encounter, Walton has occasionally appeared at UFO conventions or on television specials.