On November 5th, 1975, a group of lumberjacks were leaving a wood cutting job in the White Mountains of northeastern Arizona. It was dusk and they suddenly became aware of a bright light shining in the trees near the edge of the roadway. They could see a disc hovering in the air. Travis Walton, a large "macho type" who wasn't afraid of anything, got out of the truck to investigate. The last his friends saw him was after a blue beam shot out of the disc knocking Travis backwards several feet onto the forest floor. The other crew members logically assumed he was dead and that they were next. Terrified, they left him lying there. Minutes later, the crew returned to look for him; there was no sign of either Travis or the UFO.

Reporting their missing friend to the local sheriff, Marlin Gillespie, the remaining crew members soon found themselves suspected of murdering their best friend and concocting a seemingly preposterous story to cover their tracks. After several days of an exhaustive manhunt with dogs, horses, and even helicopters, the remaining lumberjacks agreed to take lie detector tests to prove their innocence. They passed the test with flying colors, and were recently retested using much more sophisticated equipment with the same results. Cy Gilson, the polygraph examiner with the Arizona Department of Public Safety who administered the test, says, "I think we can be fairly certain that this incident occurred, that they're not lying; what they claimed happened did happen, and that it's not a hoax." Sheriff Gillespie says, "One man might fool a lie detector test, but all of them could not." Quoting the head of the American polygraph Association — "The odds against six people fooling a trained examiner on a single issue are over a million to one."

This is the beginning of the Travis Walton story brought to the screen so brilliantly by Tracy Tormé, screenwriter and co-producer of the just released Paramount film, Fire in the Sky. Wanting to do this story for the last ten years, Tracy was very pleased that Travis and his wife were so enthusiastic at their recent preview of the movie; his wife, in fact, was moved to tears at the ending. Travis was amazed at the sensitivity of the film in capturing the emotions he experienced in the aftermath of being returned by the UFO five days later and the effect this event had on his family and the little town of Snowflake, Arizona.

Tracy Tormé will be relating to The Eclectic Viewpoint audience Travis Walton's experience and all the "behind the scenes" stories that go into the production of such a film. He will explain why the abduction scenario was fictionalized. He will give the audience an opportunity to ask questions about not only Fire in the Sky but also Intruders, last year's four hour Emmy nominated CBS mini series about Kathy Davis' abduction experience, for which Tormé also wrote the screenplay and was co producer.

A pioneer of modern abduction research, Tracy Tormé began a close association with Bud Hopkins shortly after the release of Missing Time and appeared with Hopkins on a three hour broadcast of the Larry King Show in 1980. Tracy was also responsible for introducing a completely skeptical David Jacobs to Bud Hopkins and the field of abductions. Being directly involved with the investigation of the Kathy Davis case and present during many of her revelations about her abduction, Tracy decided her story, as told in Bud Hopkins' book Intruders, would be the first in a UFO trilogy that he would write and produce for film.

With Fire in the Sky being the second production of the trilogy, Tormé has just completed the screen play for the last of the series, Jacques Vallee's Messengers of Deception, to be brought to the screen by Universal Studios.

Tracy Tormé has television and motion picture industry credits that are long and varied. Originally a comedy writer for SCTV and later a writer/filmmaker on NBC's Saturday Night Live, Tormé joined the staff of Star Trek — The Next Generation as Executive Story Editor and was soon Creative Consultant, writing six of the show's most popular episodes: Haven, Conspiracy, The Schizoid Man, The Royale, Manhunt and The Big Goodbye, for which he won a Peabody Award. His original screenplay Witching Hour was released as the MGM movie Spellbinder.

Besides Messengers of Deception, Tracy's next project is Storm Riders, a classic western with a unique twist. Storm Riders, an HBO two hour feature, will also be released theatrically across Europe. Other upcoming projects include a remake of Richard Matheson's classic vampire novel I Am Legend for Warner Brothers and two productions for CBS, a ninety minute pilot called Dark City and a four hour mini series titled The Black Whip.

This promises to be an interesting evening as Tracy Tormé relates fascinating stories involved with bringing experiences such as those of Travis Walton and Kathy Davis to the screen.