Skinwalker Ranch
Skinwalker Ranch (also called Sherman Ranch, Utah Skinwalker Ranch, or, during the Robert Bigelow period, the Utah Ranch) is an approximately 512-acre property southeast of Ballard, Utah, in the Uinta Basin, long regarded as a center of reported anomalous phenomena including unidentified aerial phenomena, cattle mutilation, poltergeist activity, and sightings of large unidentified animals. The Ute and Navajo communities of the basin regard the ridge running the length of the property as a cursed ground associated with the skin-walker (yee naaldlooshii), a shape-shifting entity from Navajo tradition. The ranch is the subject of the 2005 book Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and investigative journalist George Knapp, the 2021 book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon by James Lacatski, Kelleher and Knapp, and the History Channel television series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch (2020–present).
History
Early ownership (pre-1994)
The property was homesteaded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; by the 1940s the Myers family — Kenneth and Edith Myers — ranched there for decades until their deaths in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Uinta Basin itself has been a focus of sustained UAP reporting since at least the late 1970s, when the Deseret News published articles on recurring sightings across the region.
Sherman family period (1994–1996)
In 1994 Terry and Gwen Sherman acquired the property with the intention of raising cattle. Shortly after moving in, the Shermans reportedly were overwhelmed by cattle mutilation events, poltergeist-like activity, and UFO sightings on a regular basis. Their accounts allegedly included vanishing and mutilated cattle, sightings of unidentified orbs, and large animals with piercing red eyes. Their experiences attracted the attention of journalist Zach Van Eyck of the Deseret News, who wrote several articles confirming that he found the Shermans credible, and of investigative journalist George Knapp of Las Vegas television station KLAS-TV, whose 1996 reporting brought the ranch to a wider public audience.
NIDS period (1996–2016)
The Deseret News coverage came to the attention of Robert Bigelow, who had established the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) in North Las Vegas, Nevada as a private program for investigating anomalous phenomena including UAP and cattle mutilation. Bigelow flew in with Colonel John Alexander, purchased the property from the Shermans for a reported $200,000, and briefly kept the Shermans on to assist with the transition. NIDS scientists secured the property, erected three observation towers incorporating baited animal pens as biosensors, and launched a 24-hour investigation that continued for years.
In 2005, NIDS biochemist Colm Kelleher and Knapp published Hunt for the Skinwalker, the primary public account of the NIDS investigation and the events of the Bigelow period. The book was reportedly read in 2007 by Defense Intelligence Agency senior official James Lacatski, who subsequently visited the ranch and, according to later reporting, had a personal anomalous experience there. Lacatski's subsequent advocacy within the Pentagon is widely credited with helping senators Harry Reid, Ted Stevens, and Daniel Inouye secure roughly $22 million in Department of Defense appropriations to study unidentified aerial phenomena through the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP), with Bigelow Aerospace holding the research contract and the ranch at the center of the study.
Luis Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), has stated that colleagues working on AATIP and the Skinwalker phenomenon were "very convinced" that events at the ranch "probably need further explanation," and that the data gathered during the Bigelow period was "absolutely compelling." Elizondo has noted that Bigelow did not share the NIDS/AAWSAP research files with subsequent owners, possibly because the data was proprietary to the U.S. government under that program.
Former CIA officer Jim Semivan, who served on the advisory board of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, described the phenomena documented by Kelleher and Knapp as genuine, noting that "from everybody I know that have been there and done that, including some people that were not mentioned in the book... it's a pretty serious place and a lot of serious things happen there." Bigelow ceased active investigation around 2013, reportedly having come to associate the ranch with negative personal events affecting his family.
Brandon Fugal period (2016–present)
In 2016 Brandon Fugal, a Utah real estate developer and chairman of Colliers International in the Intermountain West, purchased the ranch from Bigelow via his company Adamantium Real Estate LLC for a reported $500,000. Bigelow declined to pass on his prior research files, and Fugal's team began their investigation effectively from square one. Six months after acquiring the property, Fugal says he had a personal UAP encounter witnessed by multiple people simultaneously, which he says transformed him from skeptic to "experiencer."
Fugal assembled a multidisciplinary investigative team including plasma physicist Eric Bardd, principal investigator Jim Morse, anthropologist Candace Lindy, and security director Brian Arnold, and in 2020 began a documentary series for the History Channel titled The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch (2020–present). The former Bigelow team reportedly characterized the phenomena at the ranch as a "precognitive, sentient, non-human intelligence." Prior to publicly launching the series, Fugal was briefed by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the ranch's history and the prior government-funded research. Fugal states he has never personally profited from the ranch, directing proceeds instead to charitable causes. Under Fugal the property has been secured by a perimeter fence, barbed wire, and a continuous live-stream camera network.
Reported phenomena
| Phenomenon | Period | Description |
|---|---|---|
| UAP/UFO sightings | Fugal (post-2016) | Over 40 professionals reportedly witnessed a UAP simultaneously appearing above the property during a 200-drone experiment, accompanied by rapid battery depletion and GPS anomalies across all drone systems.[26] |
| Cattle mutilation | Sherman (1994–1996); Fugal (post-2016) | The Sherman family's cattle were reportedly subject to mutilation events; during the Fugal period, a dead cow allegedly showed no predator or scavenger activity over more than a year, confirmed by the Utah State Veterinarian.[27] |
| Electromagnetic / GPS anomalies | Fugal (post-2016) | The "triangle" area is associated with persistent GPS malfunction, altimeter errors, and deflection of objects including rockets and drone payloads off an invisible anomaly.[28] |
| Underground anomalies | Fugal (post-2016) | Ground-penetrating radar and drilling on the central mesa reportedly located a subsurface metallic anomaly that disabled drilling equipment; the site has not yet been excavated.[29] |
| Trans-medium UAP | Fugal (post-2016) | GoPro video allegedly captured a UAP descending from the sky into the east field, then exiting through the mesa.[30] |
| Poltergeist activity | Sherman (1994–1996); NIDS (1996–2013) | Poltergeist-like disturbances reported by the Sherman family and investigated by NIDS researchers.[13] |
Government and intelligence community assessments
Luis Elizondo, who oversaw AATIP and had access to the research conducted during the NIDS/AAWSAP period, has characterized the activity at the ranch as warranting serious further inquiry, stating that "there are some very strange things that occur on that facility, on that ranch" and that the evidence gathered was "absolutely compelling." Elizondo has also disclosed that Skinwalker Ranch was not the only such monitored property, stating: "there was more than one ranch — people don't know that — there are other facilities."
Tom DeLonge and Jim Semivan of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science have described Skinwalker Ranch as uniquely significant because it represents a convergence of normally disparate anomalous categories — UAP sightings, cattle mutilation, poltergeist activity, and encounters with unidentified entities — occurring simultaneously at one location, documented by government personnel, PhD scientists, and longtime residents across decades, suggesting it offers a "potential pathway" to understanding the common mechanism behind phenomena usually studied in isolation.
AAWSAP and Skinwalkers at the Pentagon
The 2021 book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon by James Lacatski, Colm Kelleher, and George Knapp is the first insider account of AAWSAP and frames the ranch as the central field site of the program. The book describes AAWSAP personnel investigating reports of orbs, mutilations, physiological effects on investigators and their family members, and alleged "hitchhiker effect" phenomena following investigators home from the ranch, and frames the program as the U.S. government's most sustained modern paranormal research effort.
Alternative explanations
Greer's covert operations assessment
Steven Greer, founder of the Disclosure Project, has argued that at least some of the phenomena documented at Skinwalker Ranch are the product of classified human electromagnetic technology rather than genuine extraterrestrial or paranormal activity. Greer has characterized the ranch as a site "taken over by those elements with Bigelow and Colonel Alexander long before the current owner," where covert operatives "set up all kinds of weird stuff." Greer distinguishes between innate extradimensional phenomena — which he does not dispute occur at such locations — and human-induced phenomena generated through classified electromagnetic technology that can "pop out of another dimension an object or a being that comes into 3D and not a hologram, physically runs around the lab." Greer has stated: "There was an innate phenomenon there. I don't think it was extraterrestrial, and a bunch of guys operating with Robert Bigelow and the intelligence community set up some electronics that ran the rancher off." He maintains that the same apparatus could manufacture Skinwalker-type phenomena through "normal electric wires... power lines that they can put a signal down, and all of a sudden some creepy thing happens." Fugal and his team have rejected this interpretation, pointing to the presence of independent multi-disciplinary scientists, the Utah State Veterinarian's documented findings, and continuous live-stream camera coverage as ruling out manufactured phenomena.
Sheaffer and Randi commentary
Writer Robert Sheaffer has contended that the phenomena reported at Skinwalker Ranch are "almost certainly illusory," arguing that NIDS itself produced no substantiating physical evidence despite years of investigation. In 1996 James Randi designated Bigelow recipient of a tongue-in-cheek Pigasus Award for funding what Randi characterized as "the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal or occult" claim.
Native American cultural context
The ridge running the length of the property has been referred to as Skinwalker Ridge by the local Ute community for a long time. According to Fugal, the Navajo cursed the property as a result of historical conflict between the Navajo tribe, the Ute tribe, and the federal government; this curse and the associated lore prompted the Bigelow team to rename the property Skinwalker Ranch, a name that had previously not been widely used. The Uinta Basin has also been independently documented for UAP activity: retired teacher and electrician Joseph "Junior" Hicks spent 70 years cataloguing UAP sightings across the basin, and his files are regarded by Fugal's team as a key documentary record alongside the NIDS archives.
Popular culture
The ranch has been depicted in multiple documentaries and dramatizations. It is the subject of the 2005 Kelleher–Knapp book Hunt for the Skinwalker and the 2021 Lacatski–Kelleher–Knapp book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. A 2013 feature film, Skinwalker Ranch (also released as Skinwalkers: The Hunt), dramatized a fictionalized investigation. The property has been the focus of the History Channel series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch since 2020, produced by Prometheus Entertainment (creator of Ancient Aliens and The Curse of Oak Island) under president Kevin Burns, and has spawned a spinoff, Beyond Skinwalker Ranch. The ranch has also been referenced in episodes of Ancient Aliens and in the television drama Project Blue Book. In 2022 Porcupine Tree released the song "Herd Culling" on their album Closure/Continuation, the lyrics of which were reportedly inspired by accounts of cattle mutilations at Skinwalker Ranch.
History Channel documentary series
In 2020, Brandon Fugal agreed to a documentary series for the History Channel — The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch — on the condition that nothing could be faked, manipulated, or contrived: "Number one condition, if I were to consider this, number one, it has to be true. Nothing can be faked, manipulated, or contrived. I have no interest in being part of some ghost-hunters-type effort with a bunch of guys tripping over themselves in the dark with night vision. This has to be true and I have to have final cut." The History Channel recommended physicist and engineer Travis Taylor, who holds two PhDs in physics and multiple master's degrees and had previously worked with NASA and Army Intelligence on classified programs, as the series' lead scientist to challenge the investigative team. It was later revealed during the series that Taylor had also served on the Pentagon's UAP Task Force, a fact he had kept confidential during filming. The series became the number one program on the History Channel and spawned a second spinoff series.
See also
References
Source ratings:
(Color-coding) (
[1 Wikipedia-grade]
·
[2 Questionable]
·
[3 Reporting/Analysis]
·
[4 Speculative/Hearsay]
·
[5 Ungrounded]
). (To change source ratings,
edit this page
.)