Mike Rogers "Confesses" to the Hoax

 

When I learned that Mike Rogers had passed, I put a short note up on this blog. It wasn’t so much an obituary as a notice that he was gone. I shared some of my interactions with him which I believed to be of interest, but drew no real conclusions about the validity of some of the things he’d said in the past.

Mike Rogers. Photo Courtesy of Mike Rogers.

Charlie Wiser posted a comment to that article that said:

Mike Rogers' daughter took his confession on his death bed - he confessed (for the second time) to hoaxing the TW sighting with Travis, confirming his role at the fire tower (the UFO) - he was to stop at a certain viewing point for Travis to get out, then generate panic in the truck and drive away fast after the zapping, to leave the impression Travis was abducted. Given the various changes and contradictions in their stories over the years in response to skeptical pushback, this version fits the actual facts.

Mike also confessed to the first part of the Phoenix Lights (V-shape) in which he was so interested for the past 20 years. If we read his "speculation" as confession - a lightweight wire-and-plastic construction lifted by helium, with DEFINITELY!! exactly 7 lights no matter what people reported, released near Prescott that traveled with the wind speed and direction to Casa Grand - we might solve that part of the sighting. He agrees the second part was flares.

Before I announced on Coast-to-Coast AM that Rogers was gone, I had read the comment. I told the executive producer about it with the caveat that I had not had a chance to vet the information and I wasn’t comfortable mentioning the hoax claim. I did know about some of the acrimony between Travis Walton and Mike Rogers and I knew they had put it behind them. So, I just made the announcement about Rogers’s passing on air and let it go at that.

Travis Walton at the Roswell UFO Festival.

Now I have the other side of the story, which has done nothing to resolve the issue, but does give us, well, a different perspective. André Skondras posted the following that is relevant:

Somewhere In The Skies podcaster Ryan Sprague shared Jennifer Stein’s response regarding Mike Rogers’ alleged deathbed confession about the Travis Walton case. Stein has a wonderful documentary called “Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton.”

“I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to tamper with Mike’s final statements. I do not believe he made any kind of deathbed confession, because filmmaker Patrick James visited him three days before his passing and got a completely different story directly from Mike. Patrick James, an Arizona filmmaker, will be releasing a documentary about the Walton case soon.

‘If this were truly a final statement, why didn’t his daughter post the audio? Why just a text, and then take it down? A lot of things don’t add up. I don’t believe it’s a legitimate post. I suspect it’s Charlie Wiser trying one last time to convince the world that the Walton case is a hoax. I find this behavior sad and disrespectful. I had very nice, respectful texts with Mike Rogers in the weeks before he passed, and he never mentioned any of this.’”

[https://youtube.com/.../UgkxJkWlurO32s0SAlrY...](https://youtube.com/.../UgkxJkWlurO32s0SAlrY...)

Full interview:

[https://www.youtube.com/live/iNo6BqnzY2Q...](https://www.youtube.com/live/iNo6BqnzY2Q...)

[https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/2036941617685553567?s=43](https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/2036941617685553567?s=43)

But to repudiate this information, Wiser published the following to the comments of the previous post. “His daughter published a summary of it on Quora - she says it was recorded. She's deleted the post now but a screenshot is on my Twitter. She's currently deciding how best to release the information.”

Although this is evidence that she posted it, that she has since deleted is currently significant. That she said that there was a recording is also significant, as is the fact that the information is no longer available to us. Without that recording, we aren’t left with much evidence expect the apparent fact that she did post it.

I confess that I’m confused by all this and it is something that happens far too often in the UFO field. I can’t count the number of times that I have run into this sort of thing. Two completely different points of view proving that a certain case is a hoax and the other underscoring the importance and validity of the event. Just look at the rumors, half-truths and outright lies that surround the Roswell crash case.

On the other hand, it is often important that we have all the information about a case, a report, a statement that illustrates the conflict so that we might come to a conclusion that fits our belief structure. This means that some who know that there is no alien visitation believe any UFO sighting that isn’t a mistaken view of natural world phenomena about us is a hoax. On the other side are the true believers who accept any story about alien visitation no matter how outlandish that claim might be.

I try to fall in the middle of that continuum because I don’t know that alien visitation is impossible but that I would like some stronger evidence proving that visitation. Here is an example of what I mean because there are two camps. Either Walton was abducted by aliens or he invented the tale with some help.

I could argue either side of the debate because the published information. Philip Klass’s attack on the case is filled with holes, but there are contradictions in Walton’s story as well. There are Roger’s statements that no one saw Walton abducted because they had driven off. So, where was he for those five days? It is a case of I just don’t know.

But the point here is that the tale of a “deathbed confession” by Rogers doesn’t seem to be accurate. That, of course, leaves us right where we were when we entered the debate. Logic suggests it must be a hoax given the problems of interstellar travel and some of the best evidence suggests that Walton was “taken.” To draw a proper conclusion, we simply need more and better information.

Mike Rogers Has Died

 Mike Rogers, who was the leader of the logging crew that included Travis Walton, died on February 6, 2026. He became something of a controversial character in the tale, often accompanying Walton to various UFO conventions, appeared with him on several documentaries, and was a featured character in the movie about the abduction, Fire in the Sky. He eventually said that no one saw Walton abducted, but seemed to believe that was what happened.

He was a gifted artist and many of the drawings and paintings of the Walton case were the work of Rogers. He was also somewhat hot headed and sometimes saw conspiracy where none existed. When I interviewed him for my X-Zone radio show and podcast, there was a glitch in the taping which he believed was our attempt to sensor some of the things he said. It was just a glitch which arose out of the complications of creating a show with the host in Iowa, the guest in Arizona and the producer in Canada. Sometimes the Internet did not cooperate and sometimes mistakes were made.

Rogers's interpretation of the Walton aliens. Used with
permission of Mike Rogers.

During that interview, Rogers said that the Phoenix Lights were not the important sightings. He, among others in widely spread parts of Arizona and southern Nevada had seen a large, triangular object that traveled across most of Arizona. He provided a detailed description of that UFO, but the lights seen over Phoenix dominated the news media reporting of the events that night.

As we discussed the Walton abduction, I told him I thought it was a little chicken that he and the others left Walton behind. True, they did return, but that was after Walton disappeared. That is, of course, why no one saw Walton abducted, but they did see him hit with that beam of light.

On March 19, 2021, Mike Rogers in a Facebook post wrote, "I, Michael H. Rogers, being of sound and rational mind, do hereby give notice that I am no longer to be considered a witness to Travis C. Walton's supposed abduction of November 5, 1975.”

That set off a firestorm of controversy. After that, Rogers told me that he not only hadn’t seen Walton abducted, but that he had been saying that for years. It was only in 2021, that people noticed. Given that discussion, I wasn’t sure exactly what Rogers was saying but note that it doesn’t bode well for the Walton tale.

To make matters worse, a couple of days later, Rogers told movie producer Ryan Gordon, " We were talking about creating a UFO hoax, okay? I don't know how the UFO got there. But I remember... when I was driving the truck and he jumped out; it was all deliberate. It was all a staged thing, okay? He ran up there and there was something about the UFO not being real, although it looked real.’”

Rogers and Walton later reconciled and Rogers issued a statement retracting his confession but the damage was done. And there was the important point that Rogers said that no one saw the abduction and that, of course, included Rogers.

I am told by others that Rogers liked to carve, built furniture and had a silly side. I had heard that he wasn’t well these last few months, and am surprised that word of his passing is nearly six weeks old. He was 78