Travis Walton - Walton's Return

Walton's Return

Just before midnight on Monday, November 10, Grant Neff, who was married to Walton's sister Alison, reportedly answered his home telephone in Taylor, Arizona, a few miles from Snowflake. The caller spoke in a weak voice, "This is Travis. I'm at a phone booth at the Heber gas station, and I need help. Come and get me." Initially, Neff says he thought the caller was another prankster. However, before Neff could hang up the telephone, the caller spoke again, nearly hysterical and screaming, "It's me, Grant ... I'm hurt, and I need help badly. You come and get me." Neff reconsidered the caller's identity: his panic seemed genuine to Neff, so Neff and Duane Walton drove to the gas station.

They reported that they found Walton there, collapsed in the second of three telephone booths. He wore the same clothing as when he had disappeared — still inadequate, the temperature was about 20 °F (−7 °C) — and he seemed thinner and to have not shaved in the time he was absent. On the drive back to Snowflake, Walton seemed afraid, shaken, anxious and repeatedly mumbled on about beings with terrifying eyes. He thought he had been gone only a few hours; when he learned he had been absent nearly a week, he seemed stunned and stopped speaking at all. Duane Walton said he decided not to reveal Walton's return immediately, out of concern for his brother's apparently fragile condition. However, by not notifying authorities, Duane would face charges that he was complicit in a cover-up of evidence he or Walton might not want police to see.

At his mother's house, Walton said he bathed and tried to eat, but was unable to keep from vomiting even after eating mild foods. As Spaulding had suggested, Duane told Walton to keep a sample of his first urination following his return.

Following a tip from a telephone company employee about 2:30 a.m., police learned that someone had called the Neff family from a pay phone at the Heber gas station. Gillespie sent two Deputies to dust the booths for fingerprints, but as near as the deputies could tell in the dark, none of the prints were Walton's. This fact would be noted by critics who thought the entire affair was a prank, while supporters argued that a fingerprint examination carried out in the dark, early morning hours by two sheriffs wielding flashlights was hardly ideal and by no means exhaustive.