ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER by Bill Barry

The true story of a UFO kidnapping ... the ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER! Author Bill Barry delivers a credulous account of Travis Walton's 1975 UFO abduction, released the same year as Walton's own The Walton Experience. Barry primes his book with heady quotes from giants like Twain and Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and John Milton, and brackets Walton's supposed saucer snatching with the groundbreaking Voyager probes launched in 1977, cutting edge developments pushing the boundaries of the unknown.

The man himself, Travis Walton

Unfortunately, the saga itself is looking thin as tissue paper 40+ years on, and Barry's attempts at downplaying any critical appraisal read as very clumsy. Say what you will about arch-skeptic Philip J. Klass, for example, but Barry's retort that Klass is the "real UFO buff" because he has the temerity to write skeptically on Walton's story instead of just accepting the tale comes across as weak, as does sniping about Klass's financial motivations for writing on UFOs in some feeble tit-for-tat against accusations of Walton and crew boss Mike Rogers' possible hoaxing for National Enquirer prize money. 

The Walton story has come back into the limelight recently due to a startling admission of hoaxing by Mike Rogers, which Rogers has since retracted! The critically minded UFO website Three-Dollar Kit features an in-depth reexamination of the Walton case which lays out some very convincing motivations for an abduction hoax committed by Walton and Rogers, with the other crew members as unwitting accomplices. It's worth noting that several "pro-UFO" researchers such as Karl Pflock, Raymond Fowler, and the group NICAP were doubtful of the case from the start and this isn't a simplistic split between so-called skeptics and believers. But as Barry presents things anyone doubting the ultimate encounter is either blinkered, mendacious, or just small minded - after all, isn't the universe enormous and unknowable? This is a time capsule presentation of the UFO mystery akin to In Search Of ... where answers are just around the corner and doubters need to get out of the way! Barry brings in cattle mutilations and fellow abductee Charles Moody for some more period flavor. It's an impressive edifice of mystery, provided you don't look too close ...

This book was owned by Mary Taylor.

Pocket Books, 1978