November 9, 2021 • 43 mins
Is there really a secret hotspot of paranormal and UFO activity just southeast of Ballard, Utah? Join Ben and Matt as they explore the fact (and fiction) surrounding the bizarre Sherman Ranch.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So uh, it might be dating ourselves here a little
bit on this week's classic episode, But I can't read
the title without hearing the old Andy Rooney thing. You know,
what's the deal with? In this case, it's what's the
deal with skin Walker Ranch? Well, it's the worst ranch
you can buy. I mean, there's Newman's Own, so many
(00:20):
other choices, the make it home ranch. Also, the story
of ranch as a condiment is fascinating. I know way
too much about it. It's supposed to be buttermilk, but
that's that's not the ranch we're talking about today. Oh no,
you're right, you're right, you're right. This is the one
with all the UFOs. So let's let's put on our
skin suits and dive right into it. From UFOs two,
(00:43):
ghosts and government cover ups. History is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to know. So welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt and I'm Ben, and we are
joined as always by our super producer Noll, the A
(01:03):
T Alien Brown, Oh yeah, the A T Alien little
outcasting here this uh, this afternoon, So ladies and gentlemen,
today we are going all the way out to Utah.
As many of you know, we're located here in Atlanta, Georgia.
And the reason we're going out to Utah is because
there are some things that happen when you're out in
(01:24):
a large open area like many of the places in Utah,
that you you might see something in the sky, you
might see something that you don't really see on the
ground that you can't explain. But that's the reason we're
going out there, because there is one particular place that
that some of these things tend to happen. Ben And
we've been getting lots and lots of people on Twitter,
(01:46):
on Facebook all over the place saying, you guys have
to cover this location, right. Yeah, We've checked out a
lot of the YouTube comments. I've seen this stuff on
Facebook and Twitter asking us to cover something that is
legally known as the Sherman Ranch. As Matt said, it
is located in a place called Unitalk County, about four
(02:07):
hundred and eighty acres of ranch Land, a little bit
southeast of a place called Ballard, Utah. But you perhaps
know it better by it's more famous internet moniker skin
Walker Ranch. Oh. Yeah, and out here there are all
kinds of alleged things that happened, from cattle mutilations to
(02:29):
UFO sightings of various kinds, lights in the sky, sometimes
stuff that happens closer to the ground. Sure you'll also
hear You'll also hear other anecdotes about so called sensing
a present, telepathic intrusions, Poulter Gey stuff again, all anecdotal.
But before we dive into that. Oh, and that's what
(02:51):
we're doing, by the way, lads of gentleman spoiler alert,
we're looking at some of the fact and fiction here. Now, Matt,
you like you hate this stuff? No, no, I do
not hate this stuff. I just want it to be
real and I want someone to capture something and when
it's just a human being. Most of the research I've
done on this, you've done the bulk of it. But
a lot of the research I've done in this it's
(03:12):
just a person talking to another person like this and
telling a story about what they've experienced. Okay, Well, I
didn't mean to pigeonhole you by saying you hate it. No, no, no,
I certainly don't hate it. I I really like the
ideas it. It hurts me intellectually when someone is trying
to convince me so hard that this thing happened, but
(03:35):
they have absolutely zero empirical evidence or yeah, zero zero
universally accepted evan Okay, probably a good way to qualify that.
So that's what we're gonna do today, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to catch you up on a little bit
of one oh one about Skinwalker Ranch or the real name,
the Sherman Ranch, and then we're ultimately going to end
(03:55):
on asking you the same questions and maybe, if we're lucky,
somebody in or round Ballard, Utah will give us the
skinny these stuff. They don't want you to know about
this location. So let's look at the history, Matt the Uh.
The history of this, at least as far as the
paper trail goes, is relatively recent in comparison to other,
(04:17):
um you know, so called hot spots for this kind
of activity. The first documented reports about the Sherman Ranch
are found in a publication called the Utah Desert News.
It's out of Salt Lake City. This was written by
a guy named Zack van ike In or E. Y. C.
K Uh not no relation to David around nineteen nine six.
(04:37):
And that wasn't the only time it was mentioned. That's right.
So we were out here, you know, exploring the Olympics
that year, and out there on the other side, there's
some crazy stuff going down at the Sherman Ranch. Now,
this was later mentioned in Las Vegas Mercury. This was
also mentioned several times by George and App. I believe
Georgian and App as a person who wrote in the Mercury. Yeah,
(04:59):
he was a coast of show that I personally really enjoy.
I don't know about you called Coast to Coast, a
m which we have mentioned briefly before on this on
this show. So yeah, the uh, this guy doesn't just
write a couple of things. He really digs in and
makes this uh something identifiable with him, which, as will learn,
(05:22):
is going to be important later. However, if you are
to believe the unofficial histories of I think there's a
retired school teacher and then there's a retired military official
of some sort. Uh. If you're to believe their stories,
then reports of cattle mutilation in this area, this rough
area go back for decades at least, and allegedly, or
(05:47):
at least we'll see how much of this is true. Allegedly,
these stories tie into something much much older. That's right,
the legend of skinwalkers. This is really cool stuff here.
This is kind of this is the stuff that you
are really interested in, right, this because this falls into
the folklore area where you've got Native American groups who
(06:12):
believe that there is this thing called a skin walker,
which is essentially a shape changer. There are a lot
of different types of these. We've talked about like anthropy
a lot in past episodes about werewolves. Um, this is
kind of kind of similar to that, with a couple
important differences. One of the biggest ones is that the
skin walker can choose to change shape rather than having
(06:35):
the moon kind of affect their change, right, so the
full moon doesn't have anything to do with it. Skin
Walker just goes okay, it's time change. Uh. Skin walker
can also change into any animal given whatever circumstances they
find themselves in, such as, Uh, let's say they've got
the pelt of a wolf, just to use the like
(06:56):
anthropy example, they can then change into the wolf. That
then you can use any other interchangeable animal there, a
bear even sure. Yeah, and this this is a common
across various different uh Native American groups. In Navajo folklore,
for instance, which is where this pops up most often,
or at least in the In the modern West, this
(07:18):
is most strongly associated with Navajo. A skin walker is
a kind of which known as a ye no joshi.
The idea here is similar to some European folklore regarding
lican thropes, because lican thropes in the older medieval stuff
and then uh, well, you can listen to the entire
(07:38):
episode we've done on like n therapy, but quick and
dirty version for you here. As sometimes in different periods
of the past, people who were thought of as werewolves
were also thought of as which is It's kind of
like the old analogy about puzzles and mazes, because not
all puzzles are mazes, but all mazes is our puzzles.
(08:01):
So not all witches are skin walkers, which is a
kind of which, but all skin walkers are witches. So
most of these which is, are men, and they gain
their powers through some kind of dark act. Women can
also be these witches, but only childless women, at least
only childless women can be this sort of which, And
(08:23):
some of these dark acts would be the murder of
a blood relative that's pretty heinous, breaking some kind of
serious cultural taboo or parts participating in some kind of
perversion of these Navajo traditional rituals. Right, this would be
the cultural equivalent of celebrating a black Mass or going
to uh A, which is Sabbath. The The one of
(08:46):
the differences here between the skin walker and the modern
interpretation of the like and throat is that this is
not a situation where someone could accidentally become a skin
walker because they were bitten by skin walker. This is
a conscious decision, or this is the direct consequence of
(09:06):
doing something unholy. The ones who murder a blood relative,
a child, parent, a sibling, they are the ones who
would get the most, who would become the most powerful.
And some versions of this, as we said, are found
in many Native American cultures, not just the Navajo. The
Aztec have the now all uh it's a human being
(09:28):
able to transform into an animal physically or spiritually. And
then there's the Chilean Chilean or Argentinean chun chon. Now
that's the folklore background of what a skin walker is.
As we continue our our delve into what the skin
walker ranches, we're going to find that it isn't necessarily
related to this. In particular, but there are there are
(09:52):
things relating to aliens also that will come into this
extra terrestrials and possibly this idea that there is is
some kind of supernatural entity that exists somewhere on this land,
you know. Uh spoiler alert slight spoiler alert. I love
that you said that you went out and said extraterrestrials
(10:13):
are aliens because, as we'll find, that's something that the researchers, Uh,
that was one of their big pet peeves. But I
think it's I think it's fair to say that the
vast majority of people who were following the developing story
did believe it was extraterrestrial well related exactly. It was
one of their big pet piece. But it gets into
(10:33):
some of the things that a couple other characters were
about to find out, gets into the future worlds that
they get involved with. So let's continue on here, sure, Okay. So,
as we said, the ranch was brought to the public
eye largely due to the efforts of this journalist named
George Knapp, who was then host of a radio show
called Coast to Coast AM, which is us a great
(10:56):
listen if you get a chance, it's really great. You
you might recognize the named George Nori currently or Art
Bell for the host of that show George and app
is pretty great. He I think he hosts on the
weekends or a couple of Sundays every once in a while.
And uh, as he reported on the bizarre alleged occurrences
(11:16):
from this ranch, the publicity caught the attention of an
entrepreneur named Robert Bigelow, who you might also recognize as
the founder of a company called Bigelow Aerospace. Interesting. Bigelow Aerospace,
they they specialize in trying to create these uh, not
really ruins, but capsules where humans can do things in space,
(11:40):
right along with Richard Branson and to a lesser degree,
Ellen musk that he's one of the people push he's
one of the big parts, or at least big Low
Airspace was one of the big parts of the privatized
space exploration industry. Pretty interesting there. So Bigelow this ranch
in and he hired another gentleman named Calm m kellagher
(12:05):
who was a molecular biologist, and he brought him on
to head up the team of PhD s who are
going to investigate this place. He uh, he called the
group the National Institute for discovery, science or needs. Here's
what they did. The group monitored the ranch for twenty
four hours a day and they were scouting for unusual
(12:26):
phenomenon or anomalies. According to Kellagher, and this is as
told by Brian Dunning from SKEP Toyd. They never came
back with any incontrovertible physical evidence. Well, they collected a
lot of They collected a lot of video and some audio,
but as we know, that stuff can be a little
(12:47):
bit like a Rorschach test. They did, however, see occasional
cattle mutilations and floating lights. And let's let's take a
second to address this because a lot of you guys
out there probably wondering why I just said no physical
evidence and then mentioned cattle mutilations. And the problem here
is really one of interpretation. To people who believe that
(13:10):
mutilations must be some sort of proof of the paranormal
or a cryptid or you know, a human being change
in shape and eating cattle, Uh, that is sort of
looking for an answer. One expects a confirmation bias. But
to people who consider themselves skeptics, whether they actually are
(13:31):
or not, which is an important distinction. Uh, these these
attacks are within the bounds of normal predation, meaning that
a a regular predator common in the area might attack,
or another scavenger might have eaten the corpse. I'd like
even if they died of natural causes. The places where
(13:53):
cattle mutilation or evidence of cattle mutilation is shown is
usually in the face and or the hind quarters, right.
And this is somethinging that I think on Discovery Channel
we were there, we discussed this several times about how
that's those are the entrances to the soft tissues in cattle.
You're not going to go through the tough outer skin. Uh,
if you're let's say, I don't know, insects that are
(14:15):
eating away at a carcass, or even vultures eating way
to carcass, or a fox, anything of that nature. Even
micro microbes, they're attacking those two ends right right, And
I'd like to do h We'll see if I get
to but I'd like to do an episode on cattle
mutilations in the future because it's a pretty interesting topic,
especially when you get to the people who study different
(14:40):
types of ways that cattle are attacked, which is which
is fascinating but very grizzly. So that's what they were
looking at. They were primarily looking for unexplained phenomenon or anomalies.
They were not looking for someone changing shape and a
tacking human beings. Yeah, that's why I kind of mentioned
(15:04):
at the beginning that the skin Walker Ranch doesn't really
seem to have that much to do with the folklore
side of what a skin walker is um really beyond
the name. M Yeah, and critics will allege this was
largely a market employ to call it the skin Walker
Ranch rather than the Sherman ranching. And sure, there's a
(15:24):
there's inarguably, uh a vivid image captured there right the
book you know Nap, George Nap and Colem Kellaher went
on to publish a book called Hunt for the skin Walker,
but this focused mainly on UFO sightings, not on any
supposed supernatural being. And really, again, a UFO is not
(15:48):
does not necessitate an alien, It simply means unidentified. You
can read some great quotes with Kelleher saying that what
they're trying to do is turn as many unidentified sightings
into identify at objects, which I thought was fair. But also,
you know, you can read criticism of the way needs
The National Institute for Discovery Science conducted their research. Maybe
(16:10):
that's a story for another day. I would say, if
you're interested in some of their studies and some of
the reports they put out, Ben, you sent me a
link to the way back machine to their website, and
if you're interested, I recommend going to archive dot org
using that way back machine and checking out needs. Right. Yeah,
the way back machine is a super useful tool, especially
(16:31):
for websites that are no longer active. Spoiler alert needs
is one of them. Uh. This this also is a
good time for us to mention other, um, other alleged things.
George Knapp has come out before and said that the
family that was living there before Robert Bigelow purchased the
(16:51):
property were they moved within just like thirty months of
living there because of heightened paranormal activity. And we're talking
about stuff like going home, putting groceries up in the kitchen,
walking out for a second, and then walking hearing a
tremendous crash, walking back to see everything thrown away from
(17:13):
the out of the cabinets, right and crockery broken whatnot.
So let's go and look closer though, at the criticism
or the response for these claims. Sure, So the first
big one with that with the family dealing with you know,
lots of paranormal activity. Um. We there is no record
(17:36):
of the family actually saying this, right, well, at least
according to what I could find, there was not anything
from the sherman's going on record and saying that. There's
plenty of other people saying they said that, but I
wasn't able to find anything that was clearly them saying
something like that went down. I would love to hear
(17:58):
back from anybody who has a link. You can find
me on the conspiracy stuff Facebook and Twitter. And I'm
sure it really didn't hurt that Mr Bigelow showed up
and was like, Hey, I really like to buy a ranch.
Here's lots of money, right yeah. And and they have
never also, to be fair, they've never come out and
(18:18):
said there was nothing like that. We're just in the money, um,
which is understandable, but they have not said that. So
the concept of skin walkers explored in or earlier like
Enthrapy episode, which again is I don't know how you feel, Matt,
but it is one that I thought we did a
pretty good job on. Uh. There there is a genuine
(18:39):
clinical condition, a genuine clinical like anthrapy, in which people
do believe they're transforming to an into an animal, and
sometimes it's because some cultural transgression, breaking a taboo, feeling guilty.
But as we mentioned that earlier show, uh, because you
believe that you are transforming into a creature does not
(19:00):
mean that you physically are transforming new creature. It can
make you a more dangerous person, but a person nonetheless.
So we we came up with some speculative answers for
why these sort of skinwalker like can therapy where jaguar
and other kind of myths came from. Right Oh yeah.
One of the big ones was looking at and a
(19:22):
person that was doing things that were so horrible you
couldn't attribute or it was very difficult to attribute those
actions to a human being. So the thought was that
perhaps there is something else going on here. This isn't
just a man killing his family or killing eight families
or something like that. This must be some kind of
(19:43):
wolf spirit or animal spirit embodying this human. So it
may just be that serial killers that this was attributed
to them back in the day, or even just someone
who went on a rampage one time. Right yeah. One
of the cases that we look at. One of the
most famous aces in that kind of literature is that
of a fellow named Peter Stump. Uh. And Peter Stump
(20:06):
was confessed to numerous crimes, many of which sound a
little bit exaggerated to be honest. Is so we do
know that while he was in carcerat, despite eventually being
executed for the crime of licand Troup, he never managed
to change into a wolf, despite the phases of the
(20:26):
moon that went you know, went around during his incarceration.
So we we know that pretty much the not just
uh skeptics or people who confuse themselves for skeptics, but
pretty much everybody admits that no one has seen a
person transformed into an animal, uh, besides on the big
(20:48):
screen or screen right right. So then in along comes
this gentleman named James Randy that we've discussed several times
on this show. Uh. He gave Robert Bigelow one of
his self made Pegasus Awards. You may be familiar with these. Um,
it's it's kind of an insult, right, Yeah, it's kind
(21:10):
of like a Darwin Award, which I believe Randy gives.
I don't know too much about it, but it's not
a good thing to win. It. It's like a Razzie
or Darwin Award. Razzies are for terrible movies. Darwin is
for people who are unfortunate enough to die and what
could be seen as a stupid way. So yeah, he
gave Big a little one of these for buying the
(21:31):
ranch Um, which he said was absolutely useless. Yeah, he
he said that it was a useless study. You may
recognize Randy, that's R and D I instead of why.
You may recognize him from the thing we mentioned much earlier.
I mean, he's he's a man of great standing, so
you probably if you're listening to this show, you've heard
(21:52):
of him before. But he also famously had a a
running content us or I guess challenge where he said
if someone could present claims or provable things of any
any kind of paranormal, psychic or supernatural events of anything
from a ghost to claravoyance or telepathy, he would give
(22:15):
them one million dollars. That study is currently no longer running,
which you know is is kind of a bummer, but
I get it. It's probably expensive to maintain it. Uh.
For the record, according to him, no one ever beat it. Uh.
Some of his critics said that it was um unfair,
but also you know, I also I have I have
(22:39):
not signed up where nor do I know anyone who has,
so I don't know what the actual processes, but apparently
it's very transparent and you can check some of that
out on his various websites. Yeah, you can find videos
as well, all over the internets of people attempting and
failing to to do that. Um. To be fair, I
(22:59):
I in previous episodes, I really held James Randy up
in this light that he was this beacon of truth
and like things that I really enjoyed. But I don't know.
The more of these videos I watched, I'm I'm a
little nervous saying this, but I feel like maybe he's
kind of a jerk. Well, I guess the best way,
(23:21):
the most fair way to say something like that is
that uh, human beings right, emotional creatures and being creatures
that are wont to classify the world into an US
versus them. Uh. People can readily become antagonistic toward anything
(23:44):
that they see as different. And I understand I completely
agree with on on a personal level, And guys, is
just my opinion. I completely agree with someone who wants
to remove the danger of a con artist to Charlotte
ten or a swindler from from the world. Because it's
true that that people have been taken advantage of numerous
(24:07):
times by someone claiming to speak with the dead, and
the dead just happened to want you to give them money, right,
that that does happen. However, as anybody who has taken
a psychology course ever, or maybe read a book, or
maybe really listen to someone once or twice, has anybody
(24:29):
who has ever done one of those three things knows
the way to persuade people. If you really care, if
you really give enough of a well ware family shows,
I'll say crap. If it matters to you that someone
sees a truth right or someone sees an error of
the ways, then there has to be an amount of
empathy involved. There's a reason that yelling at people, bullying them,
(24:52):
calling them names never gets them to say, oh, you
have been rude enough to me or abuse me enough
that I think you are right, and Star Trek the
next generation is better or whatever. I know, Like, it
doesn't really matter what the actual content of the of
the argument process is, because it's about the process, not
about the content. That being said, I think it's done
(25:14):
the world a great service. I think it is an
unfortunate error, however, on the part of a lot of
other people who like me, are are fans of some
of this guy's work. It's just an unfortunate and just
tragic error to use the excuse that people believe in
something you don't believe in, especially if it's wrong and
(25:36):
you could help them, to use as an excuse to
bully someone or or to mock them, you know, Like I,
I don't go to someone who believes something that I
think is um foolish, especially if they're not hurting anybody,
to yell at them or to deride them. So that
(25:56):
my some some part of my neural mechan is UM
gets a little bit of a high off of persecuting
the other. That's a sad thing. And you know, I'd
love to hear what you think about this, listeners, because
ultimately the emphasis should be on finding the truth, not
making people feel like garbage. Yeah, that's a rant. Sorry,
(26:19):
that's a rant. And I and I don't want people to,
you know, vilify James Randy. I've never met him personally,
And again, I think that saving innocent people from someone
who would take advantage of them is a noble thing
to do. But that's so far away. That's that's very
(26:40):
little to do with the biggest awards, which we we
had to include because it's it's a pretty it's a
pretty funny pun. And I'd love to see other people
who are other organizations who are rewarded this. I wonder
what his criteria is. But like we said earlier, one
of the other things that they studied here at the
ranch were these glowing lights that kept being reported, and
(27:03):
there are numerous attempts to explain this phenomenal what the
heck is going on there? Most of these were hinging
on some of the more mundane explanations, like an aircraft
that would be going by with lights that are flashing,
or some kind of gas um. You know, we've heard
a lot of these things before. Yeah, meteorological phenomenon. Yeah,
(27:25):
it's it's weird because you'll you will hear these reports
of glowing orbs, right, that's something that frequently happens, and
these have been explained before. Is I mean to paraphrase
Beauty and the Beasts, it's a tail as old as time.
Reports of will of the WHISP go back decades and
decades and decades and centuries. Well, the fact of the
(27:49):
matter is that as far as mainstream science goes, including
in many cases the team at NEEDS that was investigating this,
there are there is a wealth of possible explanations for
these things, none of which are necessarily extra terrestrial. And
(28:10):
and these guys have said before and the interviews that
they weren't necessarily out to find finger quotes or air
quotes aliens. They were they were trying to find some
sort of explanation for this. But no one has come
up with an instance of one of these alleged glowing
lights that could not be explained by something else, or
(28:34):
even more importantly, that could be explained by something outside
of the bounds of regular science, which you know, makes
me wish that Jonathan we're here, because this is one
of his favorite hobby horses to ride, right, Yeah, he
would get on this horse and oh man, you wouldn't
see him again for a week. Right. So you know,
I love that you point out it could be airplanes
(28:56):
in the distance, because that that tells uh, that tells
us something interesting and that we go into in our
video series that also came out this week, which was great.
You mentioned at the top, Matt that it was interesting
to you that Bigelow was investigating this stuff and also
(29:16):
founding an aerospace company. Oh yeah, an aerospace company out
there near Las Vegas, which I don't know. He's at
least interested in going to space, right, and if if
he wants to do more research in that realm and
he wants to take human beings eventually to space, I
(29:37):
don't know. He I'm I'm interested in this gentleman's uh
that maybe the things that he wouldn't release to the press,
that he wouldn't give out an official press release, some
of his beliefs. I want to sit down with this
dude and and talk to him one day. I'm not
a millionaire, so I don't know that's ever gonna happen,
but uh, one can dream, Yeah, who knows, One can
(29:58):
always dream? Right? I want to take it a step further.
This is something we talked about, you and I have
talked about numerous times off the air, which is that
many many of the UFO reports from a few decades
earlier turned out to be top secret aircraft that the
US was testing, and for that time they were doing
(30:22):
phenomenal things that were just far beyond easily a decade
beyond public technology. We're talking about craft that could fly
across the United States in less than half the time
that would take a normal or a publicly known aircraft.
So it's completely possible that some of these things that
(30:45):
are being seen are actually aircraft being tested, you know.
Oh yeah, And especially in the late nineties, like that man,
the tech was. We may not even know some of
the things that were being developed at that time. I mean,
on a sleep, we we may not know yet, right
like when everybody found out that stealth helicopters exist because
(31:06):
one crashed. Wait what yeah, So, so it's completely possible.
Just because there isn't any evidence at this point that
it's something supernatural doesn't mean that there is not um,
there's not secrecy of foot you know what I mean.
And at this point, if we sum it up, if
(31:26):
we sum up skin Walker Ranch, then as near as
we could find, it seems that the investigations of needs,
which disbanded, uh, the investigations of Needs bore little in
the way of inarguable evidence, at least in the case
of Sherman or skin Walker Ranch. And like I said, earlier.
You're gonna hear anecdotes. If you just type in skin
(31:48):
Walker Ranch into any search bar, you're gonna find all
kinds of fun anecdotes that make me. It takes me
back to my X Files days where I just want
to go, oh, man, I love this, this is so cool.
Hopefully there's some kind of shred of evidence that I
can hang my beliefs on. But you're really not going
to find it. They didn't. They didn't find any kind
(32:08):
of body or unidentified animal they could explain these the
cattle mutilations that they were looking into. Um, and really
they didn't make any video that would satisfactorily show some
kind of this inexplicable light that they kept talking about
that would just it's just it's it's so disappointing to me. Ben, Yeah,
(32:29):
I get it. And there's a quote that I'd like
to pull from an A M A and ask me anything.
Thread that that George Nepp participated in on Reddit. This
this response when when he was asked why I can't
exactly remember, but I think he was asked about skim
Walker Ranch when his experiences were like because he went
(32:52):
there numerous times, right, and he was asked about um
in some very polite way about evidence lack thereof, and
he said that he felt at times there was some
sort of intelligence that seemed aware of things, was one
step ahead of everybody. And if and this is a
huge gargangeline purple Mountains of Majesty's size, if there is
(33:16):
something bizarre foot at skim Walker Ranch, it has yet
to be proven, unless, of course, there's something. I guess
the ranch or whatever powers behind it don't want us
to know that idea of an intelligent being that is
doing all of these things. It's behind the mutilations, it's
(33:37):
behind the lights. I love it. The kid in me
loves it. And one day, hopefully it will be proven
by the third wave of researchers that go and stay
at the Sherman Ranch one day perhaps. So, what what
do you think about these stories about skim Walker Ranch?
(33:57):
Is this just a bunch of who he is? There's
something genuinely strange and disturbing going on, And I know
these Uh, I know this will probably be a bit
of a divisive topic for us, uh Because I I
think this stuff is fascinating and I love seeing there
is some sort of explanation and if you have to speculate,
(34:19):
that's fine to let us know what you think it
could possibly be. Uh. If you all are like me, um,
profoundly disappointed that people don't actually turn into animals, whether
whether through some horrible transgression or some dark right, then uh,
let me know about that too. We can both complain
(34:41):
together online. You can find me on Facebook. I do
the Facebook and I do the Twitter here, uh, and
you can see a lot of stories I find that
don't typically make it onto the air or on the news.
Matt and I are both into uncaught serial killers. And
just for an example, one of recent stories that we
posted we're recording this uh involves a possible uncaught serial
(35:06):
killer in a small town in Ohio. So do visit
us at Facebook dot com forward slash conspiracy stuff to
check that out. And I, oh, we been that freaking
sound is back again. You can only mean one thing.
It must be our movement with Noll. Hello, hey, hey,
(35:27):
know how's it going? Man? That's going okay? How are
you guys doing all right? Doing alright? Uh? So the
question for you and you might have some questions to uh,
if you could just at will transform into an animal,
any animal? What would what would it be? Oh any
any um? I guess we should qualify any non fictional
(35:50):
fictional animals. So no like dragons, which is clearly the
best one. No final fantasy summons. You know my answer
my surprise, you ben, because you you know about me
that I hate and slash I'm terrified of birds. But
that just seems like the most obvious go to thing
because it would be no for transportation alone, I wouldn't
(36:12):
have to book flights anymore. You could just you know,
turn into an eagle and go to the keys or whatever.
You know, be some pretty long flights though, I know,
but you get eased to it, right, I guess yeah,
I guess it depends on what kind of bird you
would be, Like would you be a migratory bird? Would
you be a frigate bird? I believe they're the ones
that can stay in air for days at a time.
But yeah, one of those. But they're terrible on the ground. Yeah,
(36:32):
they're pretty bad. Well, you don't have to be a
bird in the grow you turn back into it a
person that well what about you met? Oh gosh, I
would I would probably go with small, small fox. The
small fox, Yeah, just a tiny, little fox. It's cool, man,
I just want to make videos. I would set up
a camera, turn into small fox, make a little fox
sounds for the video, like turn back into human, stop
(36:56):
the recording, and then upload it to YouTube. Take over YouTube.
That would be great. I gotta watch out for those
old rich dudes on horseback wearing the red coats. Okay,
it makes me think of invisible. Yes. So I don't
know what which one I would be. It's such a
such a big choice. I guess would be kind of
(37:19):
cool to be a whale, but I don't know. I
don't know if I have the voice for it. Uh.
I asked my asked my girlfriend recently, and without hesitation,
she was like a house cat turn into a cat.
I said, what would you do? And she said I
would learn secrets, which is which is a great answer,
(37:40):
but I completely don't understand that, and it makes me
not trust cat. Would you do as a as a whale?
As a whale? I don't like, just hang out, swim
around and I guess talk trash or like probably, man,
if you're gonna go whale, go full whale, don't go
eight and a half yards, you know, I don't know, man, more,
I think about it, the more whale seems like a
(38:01):
lame answer. Maybe I don't know a bird would be cool.
I always you know you know this about about me? Guys,
Like I've gone through period where I really want to
befriend corvid's like crows or ravens, because they're so very
intelligent and you can teach them to recognize you and
they'll teach their young to recognize you. Um, but I
(38:21):
think I just want to hang with them. I want
to be like they're token human. I don't wanna You
don't think they would pick on you like I feel
like crows would just hate me. Why is that, man,
you're really good with I mean, you're good with people.
I assume it goes to birds just because I'm not.
I don't know, I'm not a chrome man. I think
they would just they would drag on me all they'd
write jokes. Well there because you know there's some kind
(38:43):
of bill berr crow or raven and he's the one
that I would end up hanging out with. The bilber
just write on me all day. So so no, you
would be an eagle. Huh. You know I had to
give us some more thought. That's just the first thing
that comes to mind. Like I said, just if I'm
being purely functional about my skin walking, yeah, I feel
like flight would be a little bit better than than
(39:04):
swimming to and and whales are incredibly intelligent, but you know,
you're kind of limited in what you can do. You're
also a pretty big target, you know. Oh that's right. Yeah.
Did you know Japan is going to unilaterally begin it's
whaling program again? So maybe poor timing on my part
(39:25):
too soon? All right, well, you know what, let's check
back in next week unless unless you've got anything I
just did. The one thing that I guess I was
thinking about is do you guys both read or watch
the Game of Thrones? The see Oh yeah, yeah, there's
the skin changers or whatever in that show, and and
I guess it's not they're not exactly transforming, but they're
(39:45):
sort of inhabiting, you know, the totem creatures. I just
kind of felt like there had to be a parallel
between the terms skin changer and yeah, yeah, that would
be you know, that would be at least an influence.
Pretty cool. I don't know what be better to have
an animal that like you, inhabit the body of or
would be better to change into one, because if you
(40:06):
think about it, the drawback to that kind of thing
is you always end up naked at the end. That's true.
That does seem really inconvenient. I think the vulnerabilities of
changing into an animal, especially if it's a much smaller animal,
I think that's dangerous. So being able to warp into one,
but then you leave your physical body, you know, if
it's unattended, someone could always you know, that exercise. Maybe
(40:30):
I should stick with the ocean so that we have
this whole land air sea thing going on for like
Superhero true a whale and eagle in a tiny fox. Yeah,
I'm still I'm not sold on whale. Maybe just a
sharp oh an octopus? Oh man, those things are cool.
We are pretty cool. I don't know. I don't know.
That's a little bit love crafty and okay, guys, so
(40:53):
let us know. I guess in addition, what kind of
animal you would want to transform into. We're just curious.
We're just no one's no one's getting graded. We're not
gonna be We're not gonna read your email or I
won't read your tweet or your Facebook and think that's
a dumb animal or whatever. Because, let's face it, a
whale was kind of out there. It's not the most practical. Yeah,
(41:14):
and he's he's kidding the fox. Come on, let we
we will not judge you at all. Very interested though,
because that that really is a childhood thing, right, the
idea of being embodying an animal. Oh yeah, absolutely from
people have animals with which they identify on a spiritual
(41:37):
level to righte um, a certain spirit animal and maybe
a totem of some sort that people worship. Uh so, yeah,
i'd be I'd be interested to hear about that. Oh
what about a spider if he's changed into a spider? Yeah, Okay,
One time, this is I don't know if I ever
told you this, and I don't know if it's the
(41:57):
right with how to say it on air. But just
one more thing. One time I had this like recurring
dream where I cut myself in instead of blood, I
would like bleat spiders. Lord, and I found out that
I was actually a massive spiders that had like stolen
someone's skin and just thought I was a human being.
It was trippy, man, that happened inside your head? Yeah,
(42:19):
well it was a dream. It's not real. I'm a person,
oh man, that is that's horrifying. Yeah, well, uh, speaking
to Fantastic Segways, it's I guess it's time for us
to head out. Huh. That's it, and that's the end
of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or
questions about this episode, you can get into contact with
(42:41):
us in a number of different ways. One of the
best is to give us a call our numbers one, eight, three, three,
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
they don't want you to know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
(43:02):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
So uh, it might be dating ourselves here a little
bit on this week's classic episode, But I can't read
the title without hearing the old Andy Rooney thing. You know,
what's the deal with? In this case, it's what's the
deal with skin Walker Ranch? Well, it's the worst ranch
you can buy. I mean, there's Newman's Own, so many
(00:20):
other choices, the make it home ranch. Also, the story
of ranch as a condiment is fascinating. I know way
too much about it. It's supposed to be buttermilk, but
that's that's not the ranch we're talking about today. Oh no,
you're right, you're right, you're right. This is the one
with all the UFOs. So let's let's put on our
skin suits and dive right into it. From UFOs two,
(00:43):
ghosts and government cover ups. History is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to know. So welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt and I'm Ben, and we are
joined as always by our super producer Noll, the A
(01:03):
T Alien Brown, Oh yeah, the A T Alien little
outcasting here this uh, this afternoon, So ladies and gentlemen,
today we are going all the way out to Utah.
As many of you know, we're located here in Atlanta, Georgia.
And the reason we're going out to Utah is because
there are some things that happen when you're out in
(01:24):
a large open area like many of the places in Utah,
that you you might see something in the sky, you
might see something that you don't really see on the
ground that you can't explain. But that's the reason we're
going out there, because there is one particular place that
that some of these things tend to happen. Ben And
we've been getting lots and lots of people on Twitter,
(01:46):
on Facebook all over the place saying, you guys have
to cover this location, right. Yeah, We've checked out a
lot of the YouTube comments. I've seen this stuff on
Facebook and Twitter asking us to cover something that is
legally known as the Sherman Ranch. As Matt said, it
is located in a place called Unitalk County, about four
(02:07):
hundred and eighty acres of ranch Land, a little bit
southeast of a place called Ballard, Utah. But you perhaps
know it better by it's more famous internet moniker skin
Walker Ranch. Oh. Yeah, and out here there are all
kinds of alleged things that happened, from cattle mutilations to
(02:29):
UFO sightings of various kinds, lights in the sky, sometimes
stuff that happens closer to the ground. Sure you'll also
hear You'll also hear other anecdotes about so called sensing
a present, telepathic intrusions, Poulter Gey stuff again, all anecdotal.
But before we dive into that. Oh, and that's what
(02:51):
we're doing, by the way, lads of gentleman spoiler alert,
we're looking at some of the fact and fiction here. Now, Matt,
you like you hate this stuff? No, no, I do
not hate this stuff. I just want it to be
real and I want someone to capture something and when
it's just a human being. Most of the research I've
done on this, you've done the bulk of it. But
a lot of the research I've done in this it's
(03:12):
just a person talking to another person like this and
telling a story about what they've experienced. Okay, Well, I
didn't mean to pigeonhole you by saying you hate it. No, no, no,
I certainly don't hate it. I I really like the
ideas it. It hurts me intellectually when someone is trying
to convince me so hard that this thing happened, but
(03:35):
they have absolutely zero empirical evidence or yeah, zero zero
universally accepted evan Okay, probably a good way to qualify that.
So that's what we're gonna do today, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to catch you up on a little bit
of one oh one about Skinwalker Ranch or the real name,
the Sherman Ranch, and then we're ultimately going to end
(03:55):
on asking you the same questions and maybe, if we're lucky,
somebody in or round Ballard, Utah will give us the
skinny these stuff. They don't want you to know about
this location. So let's look at the history, Matt the Uh.
The history of this, at least as far as the
paper trail goes, is relatively recent in comparison to other,
(04:17):
um you know, so called hot spots for this kind
of activity. The first documented reports about the Sherman Ranch
are found in a publication called the Utah Desert News.
It's out of Salt Lake City. This was written by
a guy named Zack van ike In or E. Y. C.
K Uh not no relation to David around nineteen nine six.
(04:37):
And that wasn't the only time it was mentioned. That's right.
So we were out here, you know, exploring the Olympics
that year, and out there on the other side, there's
some crazy stuff going down at the Sherman Ranch. Now,
this was later mentioned in Las Vegas Mercury. This was
also mentioned several times by George and App. I believe
Georgian and App as a person who wrote in the Mercury. Yeah,
(04:59):
he was a coast of show that I personally really enjoy.
I don't know about you called Coast to Coast, a
m which we have mentioned briefly before on this on
this show. So yeah, the uh, this guy doesn't just
write a couple of things. He really digs in and
makes this uh something identifiable with him, which, as will learn,
(05:22):
is going to be important later. However, if you are
to believe the unofficial histories of I think there's a
retired school teacher and then there's a retired military official
of some sort. Uh. If you're to believe their stories,
then reports of cattle mutilation in this area, this rough
area go back for decades at least, and allegedly, or
(05:47):
at least we'll see how much of this is true. Allegedly,
these stories tie into something much much older. That's right,
the legend of skinwalkers. This is really cool stuff here.
This is kind of this is the stuff that you
are really interested in, right, this because this falls into
the folklore area where you've got Native American groups who
(06:12):
believe that there is this thing called a skin walker,
which is essentially a shape changer. There are a lot
of different types of these. We've talked about like anthropy
a lot in past episodes about werewolves. Um, this is
kind of kind of similar to that, with a couple
important differences. One of the biggest ones is that the
skin walker can choose to change shape rather than having
(06:35):
the moon kind of affect their change, right, so the
full moon doesn't have anything to do with it. Skin
Walker just goes okay, it's time change. Uh. Skin walker
can also change into any animal given whatever circumstances they
find themselves in, such as, Uh, let's say they've got
the pelt of a wolf, just to use the like
(06:56):
anthropy example, they can then change into the wolf. That
then you can use any other interchangeable animal there, a
bear even sure. Yeah, and this this is a common
across various different uh Native American groups. In Navajo folklore,
for instance, which is where this pops up most often,
or at least in the In the modern West, this
(07:18):
is most strongly associated with Navajo. A skin walker is
a kind of which known as a ye no joshi.
The idea here is similar to some European folklore regarding
lican thropes, because lican thropes in the older medieval stuff
and then uh, well, you can listen to the entire
(07:38):
episode we've done on like n therapy, but quick and
dirty version for you here. As sometimes in different periods
of the past, people who were thought of as werewolves
were also thought of as which is It's kind of
like the old analogy about puzzles and mazes, because not
all puzzles are mazes, but all mazes is our puzzles.
(08:01):
So not all witches are skin walkers, which is a
kind of which, but all skin walkers are witches. So
most of these which is, are men, and they gain
their powers through some kind of dark act. Women can
also be these witches, but only childless women, at least
only childless women can be this sort of which, And
(08:23):
some of these dark acts would be the murder of
a blood relative that's pretty heinous, breaking some kind of
serious cultural taboo or parts participating in some kind of
perversion of these Navajo traditional rituals. Right, this would be
the cultural equivalent of celebrating a black Mass or going
to uh A, which is Sabbath. The The one of
(08:46):
the differences here between the skin walker and the modern
interpretation of the like and throat is that this is
not a situation where someone could accidentally become a skin
walker because they were bitten by skin walker. This is
a conscious decision, or this is the direct consequence of
(09:06):
doing something unholy. The ones who murder a blood relative,
a child, parent, a sibling, they are the ones who
would get the most, who would become the most powerful.
And some versions of this, as we said, are found
in many Native American cultures, not just the Navajo. The
Aztec have the now all uh it's a human being
(09:28):
able to transform into an animal physically or spiritually. And
then there's the Chilean Chilean or Argentinean chun chon. Now
that's the folklore background of what a skin walker is.
As we continue our our delve into what the skin
walker ranches, we're going to find that it isn't necessarily
related to this. In particular, but there are there are
(09:52):
things relating to aliens also that will come into this
extra terrestrials and possibly this idea that there is is
some kind of supernatural entity that exists somewhere on this land,
you know. Uh spoiler alert slight spoiler alert. I love
that you said that you went out and said extraterrestrials
(10:13):
are aliens because, as we'll find, that's something that the researchers, Uh,
that was one of their big pet peeves. But I
think it's I think it's fair to say that the
vast majority of people who were following the developing story
did believe it was extraterrestrial well related exactly. It was
one of their big pet piece. But it gets into
(10:33):
some of the things that a couple other characters were
about to find out, gets into the future worlds that
they get involved with. So let's continue on here, sure, Okay. So,
as we said, the ranch was brought to the public
eye largely due to the efforts of this journalist named
George Knapp, who was then host of a radio show
called Coast to Coast AM, which is us a great
(10:56):
listen if you get a chance, it's really great. You
you might recognize the named George Nori currently or Art
Bell for the host of that show George and app
is pretty great. He I think he hosts on the
weekends or a couple of Sundays every once in a while.
And uh, as he reported on the bizarre alleged occurrences
(11:16):
from this ranch, the publicity caught the attention of an
entrepreneur named Robert Bigelow, who you might also recognize as
the founder of a company called Bigelow Aerospace. Interesting. Bigelow Aerospace,
they they specialize in trying to create these uh, not
really ruins, but capsules where humans can do things in space,
(11:40):
right along with Richard Branson and to a lesser degree,
Ellen musk that he's one of the people push he's
one of the big parts, or at least big Low
Airspace was one of the big parts of the privatized
space exploration industry. Pretty interesting there. So Bigelow this ranch
in and he hired another gentleman named Calm m kellagher
(12:05):
who was a molecular biologist, and he brought him on
to head up the team of PhD s who are
going to investigate this place. He uh, he called the
group the National Institute for discovery, science or needs. Here's
what they did. The group monitored the ranch for twenty
four hours a day and they were scouting for unusual
(12:26):
phenomenon or anomalies. According to Kellagher, and this is as
told by Brian Dunning from SKEP Toyd. They never came
back with any incontrovertible physical evidence. Well, they collected a
lot of They collected a lot of video and some audio,
but as we know, that stuff can be a little
(12:47):
bit like a Rorschach test. They did, however, see occasional
cattle mutilations and floating lights. And let's let's take a
second to address this because a lot of you guys
out there probably wondering why I just said no physical
evidence and then mentioned cattle mutilations. And the problem here
is really one of interpretation. To people who believe that
(13:10):
mutilations must be some sort of proof of the paranormal
or a cryptid or you know, a human being change
in shape and eating cattle, Uh, that is sort of
looking for an answer. One expects a confirmation bias. But
to people who consider themselves skeptics, whether they actually are
(13:31):
or not, which is an important distinction. Uh, these these
attacks are within the bounds of normal predation, meaning that
a a regular predator common in the area might attack,
or another scavenger might have eaten the corpse. I'd like
even if they died of natural causes. The places where
(13:53):
cattle mutilation or evidence of cattle mutilation is shown is
usually in the face and or the hind quarters, right.
And this is somethinging that I think on Discovery Channel
we were there, we discussed this several times about how
that's those are the entrances to the soft tissues in cattle.
You're not going to go through the tough outer skin. Uh,
if you're let's say, I don't know, insects that are
(14:15):
eating away at a carcass, or even vultures eating way
to carcass, or a fox, anything of that nature. Even
micro microbes, they're attacking those two ends right right, And
I'd like to do h We'll see if I get
to but I'd like to do an episode on cattle
mutilations in the future because it's a pretty interesting topic,
especially when you get to the people who study different
(14:40):
types of ways that cattle are attacked, which is which
is fascinating but very grizzly. So that's what they were
looking at. They were primarily looking for unexplained phenomenon or anomalies.
They were not looking for someone changing shape and a
tacking human beings. Yeah, that's why I kind of mentioned
(15:04):
at the beginning that the skin Walker Ranch doesn't really
seem to have that much to do with the folklore
side of what a skin walker is um really beyond
the name. M Yeah, and critics will allege this was
largely a market employ to call it the skin Walker
Ranch rather than the Sherman ranching. And sure, there's a
(15:24):
there's inarguably, uh a vivid image captured there right the
book you know Nap, George Nap and Colem Kellaher went
on to publish a book called Hunt for the skin Walker,
but this focused mainly on UFO sightings, not on any
supposed supernatural being. And really, again, a UFO is not
(15:48):
does not necessitate an alien, It simply means unidentified. You
can read some great quotes with Kelleher saying that what
they're trying to do is turn as many unidentified sightings
into identify at objects, which I thought was fair. But also,
you know, you can read criticism of the way needs
The National Institute for Discovery Science conducted their research. Maybe
(16:10):
that's a story for another day. I would say, if
you're interested in some of their studies and some of
the reports they put out, Ben, you sent me a
link to the way back machine to their website, and
if you're interested, I recommend going to archive dot org
using that way back machine and checking out needs. Right. Yeah,
the way back machine is a super useful tool, especially
(16:31):
for websites that are no longer active. Spoiler alert needs
is one of them. Uh. This this also is a
good time for us to mention other, um, other alleged things.
George Knapp has come out before and said that the
family that was living there before Robert Bigelow purchased the
(16:51):
property were they moved within just like thirty months of
living there because of heightened paranormal activity. And we're talking
about stuff like going home, putting groceries up in the kitchen,
walking out for a second, and then walking hearing a
tremendous crash, walking back to see everything thrown away from
(17:13):
the out of the cabinets, right and crockery broken whatnot.
So let's go and look closer though, at the criticism
or the response for these claims. Sure, So the first
big one with that with the family dealing with you know,
lots of paranormal activity. Um. We there is no record
(17:36):
of the family actually saying this, right, well, at least
according to what I could find, there was not anything
from the sherman's going on record and saying that. There's
plenty of other people saying they said that, but I
wasn't able to find anything that was clearly them saying
something like that went down. I would love to hear
(17:58):
back from anybody who has a link. You can find
me on the conspiracy stuff Facebook and Twitter. And I'm
sure it really didn't hurt that Mr Bigelow showed up
and was like, Hey, I really like to buy a ranch.
Here's lots of money, right yeah. And and they have
never also, to be fair, they've never come out and
(18:18):
said there was nothing like that. We're just in the money, um,
which is understandable, but they have not said that. So
the concept of skin walkers explored in or earlier like
Enthrapy episode, which again is I don't know how you feel, Matt,
but it is one that I thought we did a
pretty good job on. Uh. There there is a genuine
(18:39):
clinical condition, a genuine clinical like anthrapy, in which people
do believe they're transforming to an into an animal, and
sometimes it's because some cultural transgression, breaking a taboo, feeling guilty.
But as we mentioned that earlier show, uh, because you
believe that you are transforming into a creature does not
(19:00):
mean that you physically are transforming new creature. It can
make you a more dangerous person, but a person nonetheless.
So we we came up with some speculative answers for
why these sort of skinwalker like can therapy where jaguar
and other kind of myths came from. Right Oh yeah.
One of the big ones was looking at and a
(19:22):
person that was doing things that were so horrible you
couldn't attribute or it was very difficult to attribute those
actions to a human being. So the thought was that
perhaps there is something else going on here. This isn't
just a man killing his family or killing eight families
or something like that. This must be some kind of
(19:43):
wolf spirit or animal spirit embodying this human. So it
may just be that serial killers that this was attributed
to them back in the day, or even just someone
who went on a rampage one time. Right yeah. One
of the cases that we look at. One of the
most famous aces in that kind of literature is that
of a fellow named Peter Stump. Uh. And Peter Stump
(20:06):
was confessed to numerous crimes, many of which sound a
little bit exaggerated to be honest. Is so we do
know that while he was in carcerat, despite eventually being
executed for the crime of licand Troup, he never managed
to change into a wolf, despite the phases of the
(20:26):
moon that went you know, went around during his incarceration.
So we we know that pretty much the not just
uh skeptics or people who confuse themselves for skeptics, but
pretty much everybody admits that no one has seen a
person transformed into an animal, uh, besides on the big
(20:48):
screen or screen right right. So then in along comes
this gentleman named James Randy that we've discussed several times
on this show. Uh. He gave Robert Bigelow one of
his self made Pegasus Awards. You may be familiar with these. Um,
it's it's kind of an insult, right, Yeah, it's kind
(21:10):
of like a Darwin Award, which I believe Randy gives.
I don't know too much about it, but it's not
a good thing to win. It. It's like a Razzie
or Darwin Award. Razzies are for terrible movies. Darwin is
for people who are unfortunate enough to die and what
could be seen as a stupid way. So yeah, he
gave Big a little one of these for buying the
(21:31):
ranch Um, which he said was absolutely useless. Yeah, he
he said that it was a useless study. You may
recognize Randy, that's R and D I instead of why.
You may recognize him from the thing we mentioned much earlier.
I mean, he's he's a man of great standing, so
you probably if you're listening to this show, you've heard
(21:52):
of him before. But he also famously had a a
running content us or I guess challenge where he said
if someone could present claims or provable things of any
any kind of paranormal, psychic or supernatural events of anything
from a ghost to claravoyance or telepathy, he would give
(22:15):
them one million dollars. That study is currently no longer running,
which you know is is kind of a bummer, but
I get it. It's probably expensive to maintain it. Uh.
For the record, according to him, no one ever beat it. Uh.
Some of his critics said that it was um unfair,
but also you know, I also I have I have
(22:39):
not signed up where nor do I know anyone who has,
so I don't know what the actual processes, but apparently
it's very transparent and you can check some of that
out on his various websites. Yeah, you can find videos
as well, all over the internets of people attempting and
failing to to do that. Um. To be fair, I
(22:59):
I in previous episodes, I really held James Randy up
in this light that he was this beacon of truth
and like things that I really enjoyed. But I don't know.
The more of these videos I watched, I'm I'm a
little nervous saying this, but I feel like maybe he's
kind of a jerk. Well, I guess the best way,
(23:21):
the most fair way to say something like that is
that uh, human beings right, emotional creatures and being creatures
that are wont to classify the world into an US
versus them. Uh. People can readily become antagonistic toward anything
(23:44):
that they see as different. And I understand I completely
agree with on on a personal level, And guys, is
just my opinion. I completely agree with someone who wants
to remove the danger of a con artist to Charlotte
ten or a swindler from from the world. Because it's
true that that people have been taken advantage of numerous
(24:07):
times by someone claiming to speak with the dead, and
the dead just happened to want you to give them money, right,
that that does happen. However, as anybody who has taken
a psychology course ever, or maybe read a book, or
maybe really listen to someone once or twice, has anybody
(24:29):
who has ever done one of those three things knows
the way to persuade people. If you really care, if
you really give enough of a well ware family shows,
I'll say crap. If it matters to you that someone
sees a truth right or someone sees an error of
the ways, then there has to be an amount of
empathy involved. There's a reason that yelling at people, bullying them,
(24:52):
calling them names never gets them to say, oh, you
have been rude enough to me or abuse me enough
that I think you are right, and Star Trek the
next generation is better or whatever. I know, Like, it
doesn't really matter what the actual content of the of
the argument process is, because it's about the process, not
about the content. That being said, I think it's done
(25:14):
the world a great service. I think it is an
unfortunate error, however, on the part of a lot of
other people who like me, are are fans of some
of this guy's work. It's just an unfortunate and just
tragic error to use the excuse that people believe in
something you don't believe in, especially if it's wrong and
(25:36):
you could help them, to use as an excuse to
bully someone or or to mock them, you know, Like I,
I don't go to someone who believes something that I
think is um foolish, especially if they're not hurting anybody,
to yell at them or to deride them. So that
(25:56):
my some some part of my neural mechan is UM
gets a little bit of a high off of persecuting
the other. That's a sad thing. And you know, I'd
love to hear what you think about this, listeners, because
ultimately the emphasis should be on finding the truth, not
making people feel like garbage. Yeah, that's a rant. Sorry,
(26:19):
that's a rant. And I and I don't want people to,
you know, vilify James Randy. I've never met him personally,
And again, I think that saving innocent people from someone
who would take advantage of them is a noble thing
to do. But that's so far away. That's that's very
(26:40):
little to do with the biggest awards, which we we
had to include because it's it's a pretty it's a
pretty funny pun. And I'd love to see other people
who are other organizations who are rewarded this. I wonder
what his criteria is. But like we said earlier, one
of the other things that they studied here at the
ranch were these glowing lights that kept being reported, and
(27:03):
there are numerous attempts to explain this phenomenal what the
heck is going on there? Most of these were hinging
on some of the more mundane explanations, like an aircraft
that would be going by with lights that are flashing,
or some kind of gas um. You know, we've heard
a lot of these things before. Yeah, meteorological phenomenon. Yeah,
(27:25):
it's it's weird because you'll you will hear these reports
of glowing orbs, right, that's something that frequently happens, and
these have been explained before. Is I mean to paraphrase
Beauty and the Beasts, it's a tail as old as time.
Reports of will of the WHISP go back decades and
decades and decades and centuries. Well, the fact of the
(27:49):
matter is that as far as mainstream science goes, including
in many cases the team at NEEDS that was investigating this,
there are there is a wealth of possible explanations for
these things, none of which are necessarily extra terrestrial. And
(28:10):
and these guys have said before and the interviews that
they weren't necessarily out to find finger quotes or air
quotes aliens. They were they were trying to find some
sort of explanation for this. But no one has come
up with an instance of one of these alleged glowing
lights that could not be explained by something else, or
(28:34):
even more importantly, that could be explained by something outside
of the bounds of regular science, which you know, makes
me wish that Jonathan we're here, because this is one
of his favorite hobby horses to ride, right, Yeah, he
would get on this horse and oh man, you wouldn't
see him again for a week. Right. So you know,
I love that you point out it could be airplanes
(28:56):
in the distance, because that that tells uh, that tells
us something interesting and that we go into in our
video series that also came out this week, which was great.
You mentioned at the top, Matt that it was interesting
to you that Bigelow was investigating this stuff and also
(29:16):
founding an aerospace company. Oh yeah, an aerospace company out
there near Las Vegas, which I don't know. He's at
least interested in going to space, right, and if if
he wants to do more research in that realm and
he wants to take human beings eventually to space, I
(29:37):
don't know. He I'm I'm interested in this gentleman's uh
that maybe the things that he wouldn't release to the press,
that he wouldn't give out an official press release, some
of his beliefs. I want to sit down with this
dude and and talk to him one day. I'm not
a millionaire, so I don't know that's ever gonna happen,
but uh, one can dream, Yeah, who knows, One can
(29:58):
always dream? Right? I want to take it a step further.
This is something we talked about, you and I have
talked about numerous times off the air, which is that
many many of the UFO reports from a few decades
earlier turned out to be top secret aircraft that the
US was testing, and for that time they were doing
(30:22):
phenomenal things that were just far beyond easily a decade
beyond public technology. We're talking about craft that could fly
across the United States in less than half the time
that would take a normal or a publicly known aircraft.
So it's completely possible that some of these things that
(30:45):
are being seen are actually aircraft being tested, you know.
Oh yeah, And especially in the late nineties, like that man,
the tech was. We may not even know some of
the things that were being developed at that time. I mean,
on a sleep, we we may not know yet, right
like when everybody found out that stealth helicopters exist because
(31:06):
one crashed. Wait what yeah, So, so it's completely possible.
Just because there isn't any evidence at this point that
it's something supernatural doesn't mean that there is not um,
there's not secrecy of foot you know what I mean.
And at this point, if we sum it up, if
(31:26):
we sum up skin Walker Ranch, then as near as
we could find, it seems that the investigations of needs,
which disbanded, uh, the investigations of Needs bore little in
the way of inarguable evidence, at least in the case
of Sherman or skin Walker Ranch. And like I said, earlier.
You're gonna hear anecdotes. If you just type in skin
(31:48):
Walker Ranch into any search bar, you're gonna find all
kinds of fun anecdotes that make me. It takes me
back to my X Files days where I just want
to go, oh, man, I love this, this is so cool.
Hopefully there's some kind of shred of evidence that I
can hang my beliefs on. But you're really not going
to find it. They didn't. They didn't find any kind
(32:08):
of body or unidentified animal they could explain these the
cattle mutilations that they were looking into. Um, and really
they didn't make any video that would satisfactorily show some
kind of this inexplicable light that they kept talking about
that would just it's just it's it's so disappointing to me. Ben, Yeah,
(32:29):
I get it. And there's a quote that I'd like
to pull from an A M A and ask me anything.
Thread that that George Nepp participated in on Reddit. This
this response when when he was asked why I can't
exactly remember, but I think he was asked about skim
Walker Ranch when his experiences were like because he went
(32:52):
there numerous times, right, and he was asked about um
in some very polite way about evidence lack thereof, and
he said that he felt at times there was some
sort of intelligence that seemed aware of things, was one
step ahead of everybody. And if and this is a
huge gargangeline purple Mountains of Majesty's size, if there is
(33:16):
something bizarre foot at skim Walker Ranch, it has yet
to be proven, unless, of course, there's something. I guess
the ranch or whatever powers behind it don't want us
to know that idea of an intelligent being that is
doing all of these things. It's behind the mutilations, it's
(33:37):
behind the lights. I love it. The kid in me
loves it. And one day, hopefully it will be proven
by the third wave of researchers that go and stay
at the Sherman Ranch one day perhaps. So, what what
do you think about these stories about skim Walker Ranch?
(33:57):
Is this just a bunch of who he is? There's
something genuinely strange and disturbing going on, And I know
these Uh, I know this will probably be a bit
of a divisive topic for us, uh Because I I
think this stuff is fascinating and I love seeing there
is some sort of explanation and if you have to speculate,
(34:19):
that's fine to let us know what you think it
could possibly be. Uh. If you all are like me, um,
profoundly disappointed that people don't actually turn into animals, whether
whether through some horrible transgression or some dark right, then uh,
let me know about that too. We can both complain
(34:41):
together online. You can find me on Facebook. I do
the Facebook and I do the Twitter here, uh, and
you can see a lot of stories I find that
don't typically make it onto the air or on the news.
Matt and I are both into uncaught serial killers. And
just for an example, one of recent stories that we
posted we're recording this uh involves a possible uncaught serial
(35:06):
killer in a small town in Ohio. So do visit
us at Facebook dot com forward slash conspiracy stuff to
check that out. And I, oh, we been that freaking
sound is back again. You can only mean one thing.
It must be our movement with Noll. Hello, hey, hey,
(35:27):
know how's it going? Man? That's going okay? How are
you guys doing all right? Doing alright? Uh? So the
question for you and you might have some questions to uh,
if you could just at will transform into an animal,
any animal? What would what would it be? Oh any
any um? I guess we should qualify any non fictional
(35:50):
fictional animals. So no like dragons, which is clearly the
best one. No final fantasy summons. You know my answer
my surprise, you ben, because you you know about me
that I hate and slash I'm terrified of birds. But
that just seems like the most obvious go to thing
because it would be no for transportation alone, I wouldn't
(36:12):
have to book flights anymore. You could just you know,
turn into an eagle and go to the keys or whatever.
You know, be some pretty long flights though, I know,
but you get eased to it, right, I guess yeah,
I guess it depends on what kind of bird you
would be, Like would you be a migratory bird? Would
you be a frigate bird? I believe they're the ones
that can stay in air for days at a time.
But yeah, one of those. But they're terrible on the ground. Yeah,
(36:32):
they're pretty bad. Well, you don't have to be a
bird in the grow you turn back into it a
person that well what about you met? Oh gosh, I
would I would probably go with small, small fox. The
small fox, Yeah, just a tiny, little fox. It's cool, man,
I just want to make videos. I would set up
a camera, turn into small fox, make a little fox
sounds for the video, like turn back into human, stop
(36:56):
the recording, and then upload it to YouTube. Take over YouTube.
That would be great. I gotta watch out for those
old rich dudes on horseback wearing the red coats. Okay,
it makes me think of invisible. Yes. So I don't
know what which one I would be. It's such a
such a big choice. I guess would be kind of
(37:19):
cool to be a whale, but I don't know. I
don't know if I have the voice for it. Uh.
I asked my asked my girlfriend recently, and without hesitation,
she was like a house cat turn into a cat.
I said, what would you do? And she said I
would learn secrets, which is which is a great answer,
(37:40):
but I completely don't understand that, and it makes me
not trust cat. Would you do as a as a whale?
As a whale? I don't like, just hang out, swim
around and I guess talk trash or like probably, man,
if you're gonna go whale, go full whale, don't go
eight and a half yards, you know, I don't know, man, more,
I think about it, the more whale seems like a
(38:01):
lame answer. Maybe I don't know a bird would be cool.
I always you know you know this about about me? Guys,
Like I've gone through period where I really want to
befriend corvid's like crows or ravens, because they're so very
intelligent and you can teach them to recognize you and
they'll teach their young to recognize you. Um, but I
(38:21):
think I just want to hang with them. I want
to be like they're token human. I don't wanna You
don't think they would pick on you like I feel
like crows would just hate me. Why is that, man,
you're really good with I mean, you're good with people.
I assume it goes to birds just because I'm not.
I don't know, I'm not a chrome man. I think
they would just they would drag on me all they'd
write jokes. Well there because you know there's some kind
(38:43):
of bill berr crow or raven and he's the one
that I would end up hanging out with. The bilber
just write on me all day. So so no, you
would be an eagle. Huh. You know I had to
give us some more thought. That's just the first thing
that comes to mind. Like I said, just if I'm
being purely functional about my skin walking, yeah, I feel
like flight would be a little bit better than than
(39:04):
swimming to and and whales are incredibly intelligent, but you know,
you're kind of limited in what you can do. You're
also a pretty big target, you know. Oh that's right. Yeah.
Did you know Japan is going to unilaterally begin it's
whaling program again? So maybe poor timing on my part
(39:25):
too soon? All right, well, you know what, let's check
back in next week unless unless you've got anything I
just did. The one thing that I guess I was
thinking about is do you guys both read or watch
the Game of Thrones? The see Oh yeah, yeah, there's
the skin changers or whatever in that show, and and
I guess it's not they're not exactly transforming, but they're
(39:45):
sort of inhabiting, you know, the totem creatures. I just
kind of felt like there had to be a parallel
between the terms skin changer and yeah, yeah, that would
be you know, that would be at least an influence.
Pretty cool. I don't know what be better to have
an animal that like you, inhabit the body of or
would be better to change into one, because if you
(40:06):
think about it, the drawback to that kind of thing
is you always end up naked at the end. That's true.
That does seem really inconvenient. I think the vulnerabilities of
changing into an animal, especially if it's a much smaller animal,
I think that's dangerous. So being able to warp into one,
but then you leave your physical body, you know, if
it's unattended, someone could always you know, that exercise. Maybe
(40:30):
I should stick with the ocean so that we have
this whole land air sea thing going on for like
Superhero true a whale and eagle in a tiny fox. Yeah,
I'm still I'm not sold on whale. Maybe just a
sharp oh an octopus? Oh man, those things are cool.
We are pretty cool. I don't know. I don't know.
That's a little bit love crafty and okay, guys, so
(40:53):
let us know. I guess in addition, what kind of
animal you would want to transform into. We're just curious.
We're just no one's no one's getting graded. We're not
gonna be We're not gonna read your email or I
won't read your tweet or your Facebook and think that's
a dumb animal or whatever. Because, let's face it, a
whale was kind of out there. It's not the most practical. Yeah,
(41:14):
and he's he's kidding the fox. Come on, let we
we will not judge you at all. Very interested though,
because that that really is a childhood thing, right, the
idea of being embodying an animal. Oh yeah, absolutely from
people have animals with which they identify on a spiritual
(41:37):
level to righte um, a certain spirit animal and maybe
a totem of some sort that people worship. Uh so, yeah,
i'd be I'd be interested to hear about that. Oh
what about a spider if he's changed into a spider? Yeah, Okay,
One time, this is I don't know if I ever
told you this, and I don't know if it's the
(41:57):
right with how to say it on air. But just
one more thing. One time I had this like recurring
dream where I cut myself in instead of blood, I
would like bleat spiders. Lord, and I found out that
I was actually a massive spiders that had like stolen
someone's skin and just thought I was a human being.
It was trippy, man, that happened inside your head? Yeah,
(42:19):
well it was a dream. It's not real. I'm a person,
oh man, that is that's horrifying. Yeah, well, uh, speaking
to Fantastic Segways, it's I guess it's time for us
to head out. Huh. That's it, and that's the end
of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or
questions about this episode, you can get into contact with
(42:41):
us in a number of different ways. One of the
best is to give us a call our numbers one, eight, three, three,
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
they don't want you to know is a production of
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(43:02):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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