I read Travis Walton's account of his supposed abduction by aliens which formed the basis of the Fire in the Sky film. Travis was from Snowflake, Arizona and came from an LDS background.

A lot of people have doubted his account, including people who believe in alien abduction.

Anyway, I was wondering if any of you had heard Mormon reactions to the story or knew anyone from Travis' ward/stake who had an inside track.

No bad jokes please.

Never heard of him before. Sounds like a sensationalized story from what I could see on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Walton_UFO_incident

He certainly made bank off of his claims -- a book, a movie, and a number of TV appearances.

Perhaps he was attempting a First Vision remake.

Change the "personages" to aliens, cast himself as a modern day Joseph Smith, and a plot twist where he cashes in on his story rather than starting a new religion.

The closest I can come to this post, is from the neighborhood in which I was raised. There, a man insisted he had been taken-up to heaven (in a flying saucer?), which (to the rest of us) was highly unlikely. He wrote a book concerning his experience.

Oh yeah, wasn't there once a woman in the church who made this claim? (She also wrote a bk reg. same.)

To be fair, I do not think he was ever a TBM and still is not. There were 6 witnesses in the car that saw him beamed/zapped. He does not ever talk about Mormonism, he just had the misfortune of being born in snowflake

I disagree Frankie, I've read the book Fire in the Sky and he has quite explicit that he has an LDS background. Now I've no idea how far that goes and he might be a Jack Mormon, but it certainly appears from what I read that his family are LDS and that he attended for at least a while. (No idea whether he held callings, a TR etc)

We could all learn from this exchange between Travis Walton and frankie.

First, Travis introduces the topic and makes some general observations like, (i) some people believe in aliens, (ii) some of those people don't believe Travis, (iii) Travis has an LDS background, and (iv) that Travis came from Snowflake, AZ.

(i) obviously true
(ii) totally believable
(iii) obviously true
(iv) obviously true

Then, Travis asks if anybody has heard mormon reactions to the story, emphasis on people from Travis' ward/stake.

Enter frankie.

frankie then asserts that Travis was never a TBM. This is probably true, but Travis never said he was. He only said he had an LDS background, which is undisputed.

Then frankie says there were 6 witnesses who saw him get beamed / zapped. Wellllll, that's not true, is it? Not sure on the count, but we have some number of witnesses who "testified" they saw him get beamed / zapped. I mean, Joseph Smith testified he saw Nephi, er, Moroni. I wouldn't go around saying he actually witnessed that personage.

Then frankie dissed Snowflake. I'll leave that one alone.

Interestingly enough, Travis didn't point any of that out. Instead, he disagreed with frankie's assessment that Travis wasn't TBM. And how does he do this? By providing some shred of evidence that Travis Walton was actually TBM? No, of course not. That would make sense. Instead, Travis says he's read the book and that it says Travis has an LDS background. Gosh, don't most of us here?

UFOs are pretty common in the desert south west. Probably a combination of wide open skies, military black ops and clear air. Fault zones such as those in California or the Rockies also produce Earth Lights from geological activity.

There is a woman in our ward who says she saw a proper flying saucer in Italy once.

I know a guy who would call in UFOs with his mind. Not LDS. He lived far out enough for his dogs to catch and trip out on Sonoran Desert toads. He was disgusted at their habit, so I doubt he was a psychonaut himself.

This site probably gives the most likely explanation for the Travis Walton case: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4094

I had a septoid. The doctor had to lance it. I couldn't sit down for weeks.

Travis was brought up LDS but his family were semi-active. He left as an adult.