BWBS Ep:155 Skin Walker Ranch

In this episode, we travel to the remote Uintah Basin of northeastern Utah to investigate one of the most intensively studied paranormal locations on Earth: Skinwalker Ranch. This 512-acre property has been the site of documented UFO encounters, cattle mutilations, shapeshifting creatures, and phenomena so bizarre that even the United States government spent $22 million trying to understand it.

Our story begins with the ancient warnings of the Ute tribe, who have forbidden their people from setting foot on this land for generations. 

We explore the legend of the Navajo skinwalkers—malevolent witches said to be capable of transforming into animals—and the territorial conflict that allegedly led to a curse being placed on this remote stretch of Utah high desert.

At the heart of the narrative is the Sherman family, who purchased the ranch in 1994 expecting to build a quiet life raising cattle. What they found instead was eighteen months of relentless terror. We detail their first encounter with an enormous wolf that couldn’t be killed despite being shot multiple times at point-blank range. We examine the systematic mutilation of their cattle, animals discovered with surgical-precision wounds and not a single drop of blood. We recount the night their three dogs were incinerated by a glowing blue orb, reduced to greasy black lumps in seconds.

The investigation deepens when billionaire Robert Bigelow buys the property in 1996 and deploys PhD-level scientists through the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). A disturbing pattern emerges: the phenomena seem to anticipate the researchers’ movements and deliberately evade documentation. We describe the March 1997 encounter in which investigators witnessed a massive creature with glowing yellow eyes perched in a tree, and a dog-headed beast on the ground below—both vanishing after being fired upon. We revisit the August 1997 portal sighting, where a ring of orange light opened in midair and a dark humanoid figure stepped through before the doorway snapped shut.Perhaps most disturbing is our exploration of the Hitchhiker Effect, a phenomenon in which the horrors of Skinwalker Ranch appear to follow visitors home.

Researchers, their family members, and even their neighbors reported identical paranormal events hundreds of miles from the property. We examine the physical toll linked to these experiences, including chronic blood diseases, neurological symptoms, and radiation exposure that left some investigators permanently harmed.From there, we move into the halls of government. Defense Intelligence Agency scientist James Lacatski’s visit to the ranch helped spark a $22 million Pentagon program known as AAWSAP.

We reveal how U.S. Senator Harry Reid secured funding to study the unexplained, and how the 2017 New York Times exposé pushed UFOs into mainstream discourse.We conclude with the modern era under owner Brandon Fugal, whose History Channel series has documented six seasons of anomalies including UAP sightings, radiation spikes, GPS interference, and the discovery of a massive metallic anomaly buried deep beneath the ranch. We examine what investigators have found in the area known as the Triangle, where rockets are deflected by invisible forces and LIDAR imaging suggests structures that don’t appear in visible light.Throughout this episode, we stay committed to factual accuracy while delivering the high-strangeness our listeners expect. Every incident described has been reported by credible witnesses, and many were investigated by government-linked teams.

We present skeptical perspectives alongside extraordinary claims, letting you decide what may be happening in that remote corner of Utah.This episode runs approximately one hour and draws from the original Deseret News reporting (1996), Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon by Kelleher, Knapp, and James Lacatski, interviews with Brandon Fugal and Dr. Travis Taylor, and documentation from the NIDS and AAWSAP investigations.Content Warning: This episode includes descriptions of animal deaths and mutilations, psychological distress, and unexplained medical phenomena. Listener discretion is advised.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps us keep bringing you the strange, the unexplained, and the terrifying stories that live just beyond the edge of what we think we know about our world.

For more content from Paranormal World Productions, visit our website and follow us on social media. And remember: some places on this Earth are not meant for us. Some doors are not meant to be opened. And some lands watch back.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,

(00:22):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,

(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
There's a stretch of high desert in northeastern Utah where
the rules don't apply, where the laws of physics seem

(01:08):
to buckle and bend, where something ancient and unknowable has
taken up residence and it does not appreciate visitors. If
you drive east from Salt Lake City, past the small
towns that dot the Wasatch Mountains, you'll eventually descend into
a vast depression known as the Uinta basin. It's a

(01:28):
lonely place, the kind of place where the nearest neighbor
might be a mile away, where cell service becomes a
distant memory, and where the night sky reveals itself in
all its terrible, infinite glory. The Ute people have lived
in this basin for seven hundred years. They know every canyon,
every mesa, every dry wash that cuts through the red rock.

(01:52):
But there's one place they won't go, one piece of
land they've avoided for generations, a cursed stretch of sagebrush
and pasture that sits at the foot of a ridge
they call the path of the Skinwalker. The white settlers
who came later didn't listen to the warnings. They never do.
They saw cheap land and good grazing, a place to

(02:13):
build a life away from the noise of civilization. What
they found instead was something that defied explanation, something that
watched them from the darkness, something that followed them home.
This is the story of Skinwalker Ranch, five hundred and
twelve acres of the most intensively studied paranormal real estate

(02:34):
on planet Earth. A place where UFOs hover in silent menace,
where cattle are carved with surgical precision, where shadowy figures
emerge from tears in reality itself a place that has
destroyed families, baffled scientists, attracted the attention of billionaires and
Pentagon officials, and continues to defy every rational explanation we

(02:56):
throw at it. Over the next hour, we're going to
take you inside this nightmare. We'll meet the family that
fled in terror after just eighteen months, will follow the
scientists who watched in disbelief as their equipment was systematically
destroyed by an intelligence they couldn't see. We'll examine the evidence,
the encounters, and the deeply unsettling phenomenon known as the

(03:19):
hitchhiker effect, where the horrors of the ranch follow visitors
home like a paranormal infection. What you're about to hear
is not fiction. Every incident will describe has been documented,
witnessed by multiple credible observers, and in many cases, investigated
by agencies of the United States government. The names are real,

(03:40):
the terror was real, and whatever lurks on that ranch
in the Utah High Desert, it's still there. So turn
off your lights, lock your doors, and whatever you do,
don't look out the window, because out there in the
darkness something might be looking back. Long before the first
European explorers set foot in the Juina Basin, this land

(04:02):
had a reputation. The indigenous peoples who called this region
home spoke of powerful forces at work here, forces that
demanded respect, forces that could not be controlled. The Ute
tribe arrived in what is now Utah around the thirteen hundreds,
establishing themselves as the dominant people of the region. They

(04:23):
were fierce warriors, skilled hunters, and deeply connected to the
spiritual dimensions of their land. They understood that certain places
held power, and they understood that some of those places
were not meant for human habitation. The Navajo arrived later
in the early sixteen hundreds, and the relationship between the
two peoples was immediately hostile. According to historian Sondra Jones,

(04:48):
author of Being and Becoming Ute, the Navajo were an
aggressive people who took slaves, including many from the Ute tribe.
This created generations of animosity that would eventually explode into
open con conflict. What happened next depends on who you ask.
Some stories say the Ute, with the help of white
settlers in kit Carson's military campaign, eventually drove the Navajo

(05:11):
from the region. The Navajo were forced on what became
known as the Long Walk, a brutal three hundred mile
march to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where many died. But
before they left, according to local legend, Navajo medicine men
placed a terrible curse on their enemies. They unleashed something
ancient and malevolent onto Ute lands. They released the skin walkers.

(05:36):
In Navajo culture, a skin walker, known as ye nawed Lushi,
which translates roughly to with it he goes on all fours,
is among the most feared entities in existence. These are
not ordinary witches. They are individuals who have committed unspeakable acts,
often the murder of a close family member, in exchange
for supernatural power. They can transform into any an animal

(06:00):
they choose. They can run at impossible speeds, they can
mimic human voices, and they are nearly impossible to kill.
To this day, the Ute people maintain a strict prohibition
against setting foot on what is now called Skinwalker Ranch.
Local researcher Junior Hicks, who spent decades documenting strange phenomena

(06:21):
in the basin, put it simply. The Utes say the
ranch is on the path of the skin Walker. Tribal
members are strictly forbidden from setting foot on the property.
The bad energy there is too strong, the entities that
dwell there are too dangerous. But not everyone listened to
the warnings. The first white settlers arrived in the basin

(06:41):
in the mid eighteen hundreds, and they saw opportunity where
the natives saw danger. One family in particular would come
to own the land that would later become infamous. The
Meyers family homesteaded the property around nineteen oh five, building
a small cluster of buildings at the foot of what
would eventually be called s Walker Ridge. For sixty years,

(07:02):
the Meyers family worked that land. Kenneth and Edith Myers
raised cattle, tended their crops, and lived the quiet life
of ranchers in rural Utah. And here's where the story
gets interesting, because when reporters and investigators later asked the
Meyers family about strange occurrences about UFOs and mutilations and
shape shifting creatures, they said nothing, absolutely nothing. Garth Myers,

(07:29):
who sold the property in nineteen ninety four, explicitly denied
any paranormal activity during his family's decades long ownership. No UFOs,
No cattle mutilations, no mysterious lights, nothing out of the ordinary,
just hard work, quiet nights, and the occasional coyote. But
the ute warnings persisted. Strange lights had been reported in

(07:53):
the skies above the Yuina Basin since the nineteen fifties.
Local science teacher Junior Hicks began doc documenting reports in
the nineteen seventies, eventually cataloging over four hundred separate incidents
of unexplained phenomena in the region. People saw objects that
moved with impossible speed and precision. Cattle died under mysterious circumstances.

(08:16):
Something was happening in this remote corner of Utah, whether
the Meyers family experienced it or not. After the Meyers
moved away in nineteen eighty seven, the ranch sat empty
for seven years. Seven years of wind and silence and
whatever else moved through that land in the darkness. The
buildings began to deteriorate, the fences fell into disrepair, and

(08:39):
the property waited, waited for the family that would finally
tear back the veil and reveal the horrors lurking beneath.
In the summer of nineteen ninety four, Terry and Gwen
Sherman thought they had found paradise. The experienced cattle rancher
and his wife had discovered a four hundred and eighty
acre property in the Yuenta Basin that seemed almost too

(08:59):
good to be true. Remote but accessible, good grazing land,
plenty of water, a perfect place to raise their teenage
son and ten year old daughter, a perfect place to
build the next chapter of their lives. But even before
they signed the papers, there were warning signs. The ranch
had been sitting empty for seven years. That alone was

(09:22):
unusual for prime grazing land, and when the Shermans toured
the property, they noticed something strange. Every door, every window
had been fitted with heavy duty dead bolt locks. Not
just on the outside, mind you, but on the inside
as well. Even the kitchen cabinets had bolts at both
ends of the house. Iron steaks had been driven into

(09:44):
the ground with heavy chains attached, the kind of setup
you'd use for very large, very aggressive guard dogs. What
were the previous owners afraid of? What had they been
trying to keep out? Or what had they been trying
to keep in? The Shermans brushed off these concerns. Rural
properties often had quirky security measures. The previous owners were

(10:08):
probably just cautious. Besides, the land was beautiful, the price
was right, and the family was ready for a fresh start.
They closed the deal and began the process of moving
their belongings onto their new ranch. What happened next would
change their lives forever. On the very first day the
Sherman family took possession of their new property. Before they

(10:30):
had even finished unloading the moving trucks, they encountered something
that defied explanation. Terry Sherman was outside with his father
when they spotted an enormous wolf emerging from the pasture.
Now wolves aren't unheard of in rural Utah, but this
was no ordinary wolf. This creature was massive, easily three

(10:51):
times the size of any wolf Terry had ever seen.
As the two six foot tall men stood there watching,
the beast's shoulder came up to their chests. Its muscular frame,
gray fur, and piercing blue eyes created an intimidating presence.
But what struck them most was its behavior. It showed
no fear, none whatsoever. The enormous animal approached slowly, almost casually,

(11:17):
displaying the confidence of a predator that knows it has
nothing to fear. It allowed the men to pet it.
They could smell it that distinctive wet dog smell, made
stronger by the rain that had fallen earlier that day.
For a few surreal minutes, the sherman stood there, stroking
this impossibly large creature, marveling at its size and its tameness.

(11:39):
Maybe it was someone's pet, they thought, some exotic animal
that had escaped from a private owner. And then the
wolf's demeanor changed. Without warning, it bolted toward the cattle corral,
where the sherman's prize calves were pinned. Before anyone could react,
the creature had seized a calf by the nose and
was trying to drag it through the corral bars. The

(12:00):
animal was immensely strong, its jaws locked on the struggling
calf with a grip that seemed impossible to break. Terry
Sherman grabbed a baseball bat and began beating the wolf,
trying to force it to release the calf. His father
joined in. They struck the animal again and again nothing.
It didn't even flinch. It continued pulling at the calf

(12:22):
as if the men weren't there. Terry ran to retrieve
his three point fifty seven magnum at point blank range.
He fired into the wolf's side. The bullet hit. The
animal should have gone down, but it didn't. It merely paused,
still holding the calf, and slowly turned its head to
look at Terry. For what felt like an eternity, man

(12:44):
and beast stared at each other. The wolf's eyes showed
no pain, no fear, nothing but a cold, calculating intelligence.
Terry fired again and again, five shots from a three
fifty seven magnum pissed at close range. Each bullet should
have been lethal. Each bullet clearly struck home, but the

(13:06):
wolf simply watched It. Eventually released the calf and began
to walk away, not run, walk with the casual gait
of an animal that knows it cannot be harmed. Terry
grabbed his hunting rifle, a much more powerful weapon, and
fired at the retreating creature. The shot hit, still no reaction.

(13:28):
He fired twice more. The wolf continued walking, apparently uninjured,
leaving behind a faint, foul odor like rotting meat. The
men followed the tracks for about a mile. They could
trace the wolf's path through the soft earth, and then
the track simply stopped, not faded, not obscured, stopped, as

(13:51):
if the animal had simply ceased to exist, as if
it had stepped through some invisible doorway and vanished from
our world entirely. Terry returned to the spot where he'd
shot the wolf. He found something that chilled him to
the bone. There was no blood, not a single drop,
just tufts of gray fur and a chunk of flesh

(14:11):
where one bullet had torn through the animal's hide. He
had physical evidence that the bullets had connected, but no
blood and no wolf. This was the Sherman's first day
on their new property, and it would only get worse.
In the weeks and months that followed the wolf incident,
the Sherman family began to realize they hadn't just bought

(14:31):
a ranch. They had bought a front row seat to
something inexplicable, something that operated on a scale and with
a technology far beyond anything they could comprehend. The UFO
sighting started almost immediately, not the distant lights that skeptics
dismiss as satellites or aircraft, but up close encounters with

(14:51):
objects that defied the laws of physics. One night, the
Sherman spotted what they initially took to be a recreational
vehicle parked in one of their passions. Stay tuned for
more backwoods big foot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
It had bright lights and a boxy shape. Curious and
concerned about trespassers, they approached on foot. As they drew closer,

(15:15):
the RV moved away from them, not drove, moved silently
without any visible means of propulsion. When they picked up
their pace, the object suddenly rose fifty feet into the air,
revealing its true nature. It was shaped like a refrigerator,
with a single white light on its front and a

(15:36):
red light on its rear. It made absolutely no sound
as it hung there in the air for a moment,
and then it shot away into the night sky at
impossible speed. This became a pattern. Strange aircraft appeared regularly
over the ranch, displaying flight characteristics that no conventional vehicle
could match. Gwynn Sherman reported an encounter with an object

(15:57):
that looked like a stealth fighter ringed with blinking lights.
It hovered silently just twenty feet above her car before
accelerating away at a velocity that would have killed any
human pilot. But the most commonly observed phenomena were the orbs,
glowing spheres of various sizes and colors that seemed to
have a mind of their own. Large orange circles appeared

(16:21):
over the property on at least twelve separate occasions in
nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety six. Blue spheres darted
around the fields, sometimes hovering near the cattle, sometimes pursuing vehicles,
sometimes simply watching the family go about their daily lives.
These weren't your garden variety unidentified flying objects. They displayed

(16:42):
what can only be described as intelligent behavior. They seemed
to react to the Sherman's movements, anticipating their actions, staying
just out of reach when pursued. On multiple occasions, family
members reported experiencing waves of intense, unnatural fear when these
objects appeared, as if the orbs were projecting some kind
of psychological effect. The blue spheres, in particular, produced a

(17:06):
faint crackling sound like static electricity, and interfered with electrical
systems in the house. Terry Sherman came to believe that
the lights weren't just random visitors. He began to see
patterns connections. When the UFOs appeared. Bad things followed He
became convinced that the mysterious craft were somehow linked to

(17:27):
the other horrors plaguing his ranch, and he was about
to get terrible confirmation of that theory. For a cattle rancher,
there's nothing more devastating than losing your herd. Terry Sherman
had invested his life savings in high quality breeding stock.
These weren't ordinary cows. They were prize animals, carefully selected,

(17:48):
worth thousands of dollars each. They represented his family's future,
and something was killing them. Out Of the approximately eighty
cattle the Shermans owned, they would lose fourteen to mass
sterious deaths during their time on the ranch. But it
wasn't the number that haunted them. It was the manner.
These animals weren't being killed by predators. They were being processed.

(18:12):
The first dead cow appeared with a single peculiar injury,
a perfectly circular hole punched through the center of its
left eyeball. The animal was otherwise untouched, no claw marks,
no bite wounds, just that one precise surgical wound that
had somehow ended its life. The second cow had the
same hole in its eye, plus a six inch circular

(18:35):
cut that had been carved out of its rectum, extending
about an inch into the body cavity. The edges of
the wound were clean, precise, as if made by a
surgeon's scalpel, and there was no blood, not on the cow,
not on the ground, not anywhere. The third cow was
the worst. The Sherman son had seen the animal alive

(18:58):
and healthy just five minutes before he walked to another
part of the ranch, and when he returned, the cow
was dead. In those five minutes, something had killed a
full grown animal and removed a massive amount of tissue.
The wound was six inches wide and eighteen inches deep,
cord out of the cow's rectum and extending deep into
the body cavity. Organs had been removed, and once again,

(19:22):
not a single drop of blood. The precision of these
wounds defied explanation. Terry Sherman had been ranching for decades.
He knew what predator kills looked like. Coyotes tear and rip,
mountain lions leave distinctive marks. Nothing in nature produces wounds
like these, clean, surgical, bloodless. The tissue wasn't torn, It

(19:49):
was cut with something sharper than any blade Terry had
ever seen. At each mutilation site, the Shermans noticed something
else strange chemical odor hung in the air, something acrid
and unidentifiable, and in several cases they found unusual impressions
in the grass, circles of flattened vegetation surrounding the dead animal.

(20:13):
Sometimes they found broken twigs arranged in patterns that seemed deliberate,
as if something had landed or emerged. But perhaps the
most disturbing aspect was the disappearances. Four of the Sherman's
cattle vanished without a trace, literally vanished. In one case,
Terry followed a cow's hoof prints through fresh snow to

(20:34):
the edge of a field. The tracks led to a
spot near some trees, and there they simply stopped. The
cow was gone, no tracks leading away, no sign of
a struggle, just a circle of broken twigs and branches,
and then nothing. Terry Sherman became convinced that his cattle

(20:55):
were being taken not by rustlers, not by predators, by
something that could make a thousand pound animal disappear into
thin air. The phenomena weren't limited to the fields and pastures.
Whatever force had taken up residence on the Sherman ranch
didn't respect the boundaries between outside and inside. It followed

(21:16):
the family into their home. The poultrygeist activity started Subtly.
Objects would move from where they'd been placed. Gwynn Sherman
would unpack groceries, put them in the cabinets, and return
later to find everything neatly repacked in shopping bags. A
hair brush left on the bathroom counter would appear in
the freezer. Tools would vanish from the garage and reappear

(21:39):
in impossible locations. But it escalated. The family began hearing voices,
disembodied sounds that seemed to come from the air itself,
just above their heads. Male voices speaking in a language
none of them could identify, not Spanish, not Ute, not
anything Terry had ever heard in his years living in
rural uth Tall. The voices seemed to be discussing something,

(22:03):
perhaps discussing the family themselves, but the words were incomprehensible,
like listening to a conversation through a wall in a
language that doesn't exist. Shadows moved through the house, dark
shapes that had no source, no explanation. The family would
catch movement in their peripheral vision, turned to look and

(22:25):
find nothing but the feeling of being watched never went away,
the sense that something was always there, just out of sight,
observing waiting. One night, the family discovered something that still
defies explanation. They found four of their full grown bulls
crammed into a small horse trailer. Now, if you know

(22:46):
anything about cattle, you know that getting even one bull
into a trailer is a challenge. These are powerful, stubborn
animals that don't go anywhere they don't want to go.
Getting four of them into a space barely large enough
for one it would be essentially impossible. It would require equipment, manpower,
and a lot of time. But there they were, four

(23:08):
bulls packed together in a locked trailer in what appeared
to be a trance like state. When the Shermans opened
the trailer, the animals snapped back to awareness and immediately
became agitated and confused. No one could explain how they
got there, no one could explain why they were so
docile when found, and no one could explain why something

(23:28):
would go to such lengths for what appeared to be
a bizarre practical joke. The message seemed clear. Whatever controlled
this ranch could do anything it wanted. It could kill
their cattle, it could enter their home. It could manipulate
animals that weighed more than a ton. The Shermans weren't
in control of their property. Something else was May nineteen

(23:52):
ninety six. The Sherman family had been living with the
terror for nearly two years. They'd reported their experiences to
local authorities, only to be met with skepticism or silence.
They'd tried to understand what was happening to them, tried
to find some rational explanation. There was none, and they
were reaching their breaking point. Terry Sherman was outside one

(24:16):
evening with three of his dogs. These were good dogs,
working dogs, the kind of animals a rancher depends on.
They were loyal, they were smart, and they had stayed
by the family side through all the strangeness that had
befallen the ranch. That night, Terry noticed a blue orb
moving through the field near the ranch house. He'd seen

(24:37):
these objects before, they'd become almost commonplace on the property,
But on this night, something prompted him to send the
dogs after it. Maybe he was frustrated, maybe he wanted
to finally confront one of these things. Whatever the reason,
he urged the dogs to give chase. The dogs took off,
running barking furiously, closing the distance between them themselves and

(25:00):
the glowing sphere. The orb seemed to play with them,
dodging and weaving, always staying just out of reach. It
led them away from the house, across the field, toward
a thick stand of brush that bordered the pasture. And
then Terry heard something that would haunt him for the
rest of his life. Three terrible yelps, three cries of agony,

(25:22):
and then silence. He called for his dogs. Nothing. He whistled, shouted,
ran toward the brush where they disappeared. Nothing. The dogs
were simply gone. The next morning, at first light, Terry
went to search for them. What he found was worse
than anything he could have imagined. In the brush where

(25:42):
the dogs had vanished, he discovered three circular patches of vegetation,
each one dried in brittle, as if something had scorched
the earth. In the center of each patch was a greasy,
black lump, a smear of organic matter. That was all
that remained of his dogs. They had him killed. They'd
been incinerated, reduced to ash and grease in the span

(26:04):
of seconds by what by the blue orb that had
led them to their deaths. By something else that lurked
in that brush. Terry would never know, but he knew
in that moment that his family could not stay on
this ranch. This was the final straw. The Shermans had
endured the wolf encounter. They'd endured the cattle mutilations. They'd

(26:27):
endured the poltergeist activity and the UFO sidings, and the
constant oppressive feeling that they were being watched by something inhuman.
But the dogs. The dogs were innocent. The dogs had
trusted them, and now the dogs were dead, killed by
something that seemed to be toying with the family, demonstrating
its power in the cruelest possible way. Within weeks, the

(26:51):
Shermans made a decision. They would sell the ranch. They
would take whatever they could get and leave this cursed
place behind. They didn't care about the money. They cared
about survival. They cared about getting their children away from
whatever malevolent force had made this land its home. The
only question was who would be crazy enough to buy it.

(27:13):
In the summer of nineteen ninety six, the Sherman story
found its way into the local newspaper, The Deseret News,
a Salt Lake City publication, ran a series of articles
detailing the family's terrifying experiences. For most readers, it was
probably just an entertaining piece of weird news. UFOs in
rural Utah, cattle mutilations, a wolf that couldn't be killed,

(27:38):
the stuff of tabloids and late night radio shows. But
for one reader, the story was exactly what he'd been
looking for. Robert Bigelow was a Las Vegas billionaire who
had made his fortune in real estate and the hotel industry.
He owned Budget Suites of America. He was ruthlessly practical
in business. But Robert Bigelow had another passion, a passion

(28:00):
that most of his colleagues probably didn't know about. Robert
Bigelow was obsessed with the paranormal. Just one year earlier,
in nineteen ninety five, Bigelow had founded the National Institute
for Discovery Science, known as NIDS. This wasn't some amateur
ghost hunting club. NIDS was staffed with PhD level scientists,

(28:22):
former military officers, intelligence professionals, and serious researchers. Bigelow was
pouring millions of dollars into the scientific study of phenomena
that mainstream science refused to touch. UFOs, cattle mutilations, reports
of strange creatures. He wanted hard data, he wanted evidence,

(28:45):
and when he read about the Sherman ranch, he knew
he'd found the perfect laboratory. Within three months of the
newspaper story appearing, Bigelow had purchased the ranch from the
Shermans for two hundred thousand dollars. It was a fraction
of what the property was worth, but the Shermans didn't care.
They wanted out. They wanted to put as much distance

(29:05):
as possible between themselves and whatever haunted that land. Terry
Sherman agreed to stay on as a caretaker to help
the new researchers navigate the property and share his experiences,
but his family, his family was gone. Bigelow wasted no time.
He assembled a team of investigators and scientists, led by

(29:25):
biochemist Column Kelleher, and set up round the clock surveillance
of the property, state of the art cameras, motion sensors,
infrared detection equipment, night vision scopes. If something was happening
on this ranch, Bigelow was determined to capture it on tape.
He was determined to prove once and for all that

(29:45):
the phenomena were real. What he got instead was a
frustrating lesson in the nature of whatever inhabited Skinwalker Ranch
because the phenomena didn't stop, but they became almost impossible
to document. Une for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories, we'll be
back after these messages. The Knids team expected to encounter

(30:08):
unusual phenomena. That was the whole point of their presence.
What they didn't expect was the way those phenomena seemed
to respond to their investigations. It was as if something
new they were watching and it didn't want to be caught.
The researchers witnessed the same glowing orbs the Shermans had reported,
they saw strange lights in the sky. They found evidence

(30:31):
of cattle mutilations that matched the pattern the family had described,
But every time they tried to capture definitive evidence, something
went wrong. Cameras would malfunction at critical moments. Equipment that
had been working perfectly would suddenly fail. Video that should
have captured extraordinary events would turn out blank or corrupted.

(30:52):
It was as if the phenomena had the ability to
anticipate where the researchers would be looking and make sure
nothing useful was recorded. But the equipment failures went beyond
simple malfunctions. On multiple occasions, NIDS researchers arrived at their
stations to find their equipment had been physically destroyed. Cameras
had been smashed, wires had been ripped out. In some cases,

(31:16):
sophisticated electronic devices had been literally shredded, as if torn
apart by something with enormous strength and complete contempt for
human technology. Retired Army Colonel John Alexander, who served as
a consultant to NIDS, would later describe what they were
dealing with as a precognitive sentient intelligence. In other words,

(31:37):
something that could see the future, something that knew what
the researchers were going to do before they did it,
and something that was actively working to prevent them from
gathering evidence. This was a troubling realization because if the
phenomena were intelligent, if they could anticipate human actions, then
this wasn't just a strange place. This was a place

(31:59):
that was played with them. March twelfth, nineteen ninety seven,
A cold night on the ranch. The knid's team had
been conducting surveillance for months now, logging countless hours of
observation with frustratingly little to show for it. But on
this night, they were about to have one of the
most disturbing encounters in the ranch's documented history. The ranch

(32:20):
dogs were the first to notice. They began barking frantically,
their attention fixed on a large cottonwood tree near the
ranch house. Something was there, something they could sense but
couldn't quite see. Terry Sherman, who was still living on
the property as a caretaker, grabbed his hunting rifle and
drove toward the tree. Two NIDS researchers followed in another vehicle.

(32:44):
As they approached, their headlights illuminated the branches, and there,
approximately twenty feet off the ground, they saw it. A
pair of enormous eyes, yellowish reptilian unblinking. The eyes were
set about three feet apart, suggesting a head of massive proportions.

(33:06):
The creature, whatever it was, lay motionless in the branches,
watching them with a cold alien intelligence. But that wasn't all.
At the base of the tree, the researcher spotted a
second figure. This one was on the ground, huge and hairy,
with massively muscled front legs and a head that resembled
a dog. It crouched there in the darkness as if

(33:28):
guarding the tree, as if protecting whatever lurked in the
branches above. Terry Sherman, an experienced marksman, raised his rifle
and fired at the creature on the ground from forty yards.
The animal or whatever it was, seemed to simply vanish.
One moment it was there, the next gone. He then

(33:49):
fired at the thing in the tree. He heard the bullet,
connect heard a heavy thud as something fell from the
branches into the snow below. All three men rushed to investigate.
They searched the area thoroughly, looking for a body, looking
for blood, looking for any sign of the creatures they
had just seen. They found nothing. No wounded animal, no trail, nothing,

(34:14):
just a single bizarre footprint in the snow beneath the tree.
The print was like nothing any of them had ever seen.
It was oval shaped, about six inches in diameter and
deeply pressed into the snow, suggesting tremendous weight. At the
rear of the print were two sharp claw marks that
extended several inches further into the ground. It looked almost

(34:36):
like the footprint of an enormous raptor, a prehistoric bird
of prey, but huge and from a very heavy creature.
Colin Kelleher, the lead NID scientist would later write about
this encounter in detail. He was a trained biochemist, a
man of science, someone who approached the world through evidence
and logic, and he couldn't explain what he had seen.

(35:00):
None of them could. The creatures had appeared, demonstrated their presence,
allowed themselves to be fired upon, and then they simply vanished.
August twenty fifth, nineteen ninety seven. A warm, clear night,
the kind of night when you can see every star
in the sky. Two NIDS investigators, one of them identified

(35:22):
in reports only as Jim, were conducting surveillance near a
bluff that overlooked one of the ranch's pastures. They'd been
watching for hours, recording nothing unusual. When Jim decided to
do something unconventional. He climbed down from the bluff and
walked into the middle of the pasture. There he sat
in the grass and began to meditate. It was a

(35:42):
technique he'd used before in paranormal investigations, something about quieting
the mind opening oneself to the environment seemed to occasionally
trigger activity. He didn't understand why it worked, but sometimes
it did. Nothing happened for four hours as Jim sat
in that field and nothing happened. At around two thirty

(36:04):
in the morning, the team decided to relocate to another
part of the ranch. They began packing up their equipment,
and then Terry Sherman, who was assisting with the surveillance,
saw something. A light appeared in the darkness, not a UFO,
not a glowing orb, something different. It started as a
small point of orange illumination, hovering about a mile away,

(36:28):
perhaps fifty feet off the ground, and then it began
to expand. The light grew larger, stretching and widening until
it formed what Terry could only describe as a tunnel
or a doorway, a ring of brilliant orange light, perhaps
six feet in diameter, suspended in mid air, and through
that ring, Terry could see somewhere else. The landscape visible

(36:52):
through the portal was different from the landscape surrounding it,
a different place or perhaps a different time. One of
the other researchers, a man named Chad Deetkon, was looking
through night vision equipment at the same moment, but he
saw nothing. Whatever Terry was witnessing, it wasn't visible through
electronic enhancement. It was only visible to the naked eye.

(37:17):
And then something emerged from the light. A figure, dark, humanoid, massive.
It stepped through the portal or crawled through, it was
hard to tell, and began moving toward them. The researchers
were frozen. Terry Sherman, this big, strapping cowboy, who had
faced down supernatural wolves and endured years of terror, was

(37:41):
trembling with fear, an unnatural fear, the kind that seems
to be projected from outside, forced upon you by something
that wants you to be afraid. And then, as suddenly
as it had appeared, the portal snapped shut, like someone
turning off a light switch. The orange dring collapsed in
on itself and was gone. The dark figure gone, the

(38:07):
glimpse of that other place gone. They rushed to the
spot where the portal had been found nothing no marks
on the ground, no residual energy, nothing to prove that
reality had just torn itself open in front of them.
Chad Deekin had tried to photograph the event, but when
he developed the film, it showed nothing, just darkness, just

(38:32):
empty night. Terry Sherman had always suspected that his ranch
contained some kind of doorway. He'd seen things emerge from
nowhere and vanish into nothing. He'd watched tracks simply stop
in the middle of a field. But now he had confirmation.
Skinwalker Ranch wasn't just haunted. It was a threshold, a
crossing point, a place where our world met something else.

(38:56):
The Knid's investigation continued for years. Research came and went,
hundreds of hours of surveillance were logged, Strange events were witnessed,
but definitive proof remained elusive. The phenomena seemed to dance
just beyond the reach of scientific documentation, revealing enough to terrify,
but never enough to prove. But something else was happening,

(39:20):
something the researchers hadn't anticipated, something that would eventually be
recognized as perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Skinwalker
Ranch mystery. The phenomena weren't staying on the ranch. They
were following people home. The researchers began calling it the
hitchhiker effect, and it worked like a virus. It started

(39:42):
with the people who visited the ranch. Scientists who spent
time investigating the property began reporting strange occurrences at their
own homes hundreds of miles away. They would see the
same glowing orbs that haunted the Utah property. Objects in
their houses would move, They would hear voices, feel watched.

(40:03):
Some reported seeing dark figures in their peripheral vision, the
same shadowy entities that had been documented on the ranch.
And then it spread. Family members who had never set
foot on Skinwalker Ranch began experiencing phenomena. Spouses, children, neighbors,
people who had only heard about the ranch second hand

(40:24):
were suddenly reporting encounters that matched the documented pattern. It
was as if exposure to the ranch, even indirect exposure,
opened some kind of door, and once that door was opened,
it couldn't be closed. Colin Kelleher, the lead NID scientist,
would compare the effect to an infection. Something on the
ranch was capable of attaching itself to visitors, following them,

(40:48):
and then jumping to new hosts, the paranormal equivalent of
a contagious disease. One family, given the pseudonym Axelrod in
official reports, became particularly affected. A military officer who had
visited the ranch began experiencing phenomena at his home. Orbes
appeared in his house. His pet dog vanished through multiple

(41:10):
locked doors, only to be found whimpering outside the next morning.
Objects moved, electronics malfunctioned. And then his children began seeing things, creatures, entities,
the same kinds of beings that had been reported at
the ranch. The phenomena weren't limited to the Axelrod household.

(41:31):
Neighbors who had never heard of Skinwalker Ranch began reporting
identical experiences. It was as if the effect was spreading
through the community, jumping from person to person, house to house,
a paranormal epidemic with no apparent cure. Even Robert Bigelow
himself wasn't immune. The billionaire who had purchased the ranch,

(41:52):
who had approached the investigation with all the resources and
skepticism of a successful businessman, began experiencing strange phenomena in
his own home. The ranch had touched him, and now
it wouldn't let go. The hitchhiker effect wasn't just psychological.
People were getting hurt. Researchers who spent time on the

(42:14):
ranch began reporting unexplained medical issues. One investigator developed a
chronic blood disease after repeated visits. Others experienced acute neurological symptoms, headaches, disorientation,
episodes that resembled seizures. The ranch's influence seemed capable of
affecting not just the mind, but the body itself. During

(42:36):
one investigation, team members discovered anomalist radiation readings around the property,
not consistently elevated levels, but spikes, sharp increases that would
appear suddenly and then vanish. One researcher who was exposed
to these spikes developed symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. His
health never fully recovered. Doctor Jim Sigala, who would later

(43:00):
work on Brandon Fugel's investigation team, addressed the phenomenon directly.
Over the past five years, he said, referring to his
time with the research, we have seen a higher rate
of the hitchhiker syndrome. Symptoms experienced by people range from
acute neurological injuries to chronic blood disease. Those who have
told us that they have brought home a souvenir often

(43:21):
have some type of illness, as well as family members.
The implications were staggering. Whatever inhabited Skinwalker Ranch wasn't content
to stay there. It was actively reaching out, attaching itself
to visitors and causing real measurable harm. The ranch wasn't
just a location. It was a source, a point of

(43:42):
origin for something that wanted to spread. In two thousand
and five, Colin Kelleher and investigative journalist George Napp published
a book about the NIDS investigation, Hunt for the Skinwalker.
Science Confronts the Unexplained at a remote ranch in Utah,
told the story of the Sherman family's ordeal and the
scientific team's subsequent research. It was a compelling read, full

(44:06):
of dramatic encounters and unexplained phenomena, but it might have
remained just another book on paranormal curiosities if it hadn't
landed in the hands of a particular reader. Doctor James
Lakatski was a rocket scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
He had a PhD in physics and decades of experience
working on classified programs. He was exactly the kind of

(44:29):
person you'd expect to dismiss stories of UFOs and cattle
mutilations as fantasy. But Lakatski read Hunt for the skin
Walker and he was amazed. In two thousand and seven,
Lakatski contacted Robert Bigelow and requested permission to visit the ranch.
Bigelow agreed, and during that visit something happened that would

(44:50):
set in motion one of the most controversial government programs
in recent history. According to later reports, Lakatski experienced something
paranormal during his visit. Hey tuned for more backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. In the kitchen of
the ranch house, he had a spontaneous vision. A strange

(45:11):
tubular shape appeared before him. Bigelow, who was present, didn't
see anything, but whatever Lakotsky experienced convinced him that the
phenomena were real, and he believed the Department of Defense
needed to investigate. Lakotsky reached out to someone who could
make things happen. US Senator Harry Reid of Nevada had

(45:32):
known Robert Bigelow for years. The two were friends. Reid
had even attended Knid's board meetings and developed his own
interest in UFO phenomena. When Lakotski approached him with a
proposal to fund government research into the ranch and related anomalies,
Reid was receptive. Working with Senators Ted Stevens of Alaska

(45:52):
and Daniel Enoe of Hawaii, Reid managed to insert a
provision into the two thousand and eight Department of Defense budget.
The provision allocated twenty two million dollars to a program
that would study unidentified aerial phenomena and related subjects. The
Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program, known as AWE SAP

(46:13):
was born, and who received the contract to conduct this
research Robert Bigelow's company Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, the
same man who owned Skinwalker Ranch, the same man who
had been investigating paranormal phenomena for over a decade. The
United States government was now officially in the business of

(46:33):
studying the unexplained. The AWSAP program ran from two thousand
and eight to twenty ten. During that time, researchers conducted
extensive investigations at Skinwalker Ranch and examined UFO reports from
across the country. They analyzed the now famous Navy videos
showing objects that moved in ways no known aircraft could match.

(46:55):
They compiled reports on the hitchhiker effect. They documented the
strange FUNA doomena that seemed to follow investigators home from
the ranch. But the program was controversial from the start.
Some within the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned whether taxpayer money
should be spent on what they considered fringe science. Others
worried about the reputation of the military being associated with

(47:17):
stories of werewolves and portals to other dimensions. When the
initial funding ran out, the program was not renewed. The
story might have ended there, but in December twenty seventeen,
The New York Times published an explosive article revealing the
existence of AWE SAP and its successor programs. The public
learned for the first time that the US government had

(47:39):
been seriously investigating UFOs. The article included footage from Navy
pilots showing objects that defied known physics, and suddenly what
had been the domain of conspiracy theorists and late night
radio shows became legitimate news. In twenty twenty one, a
book titled skin Walkers of the Pentagon was published detail

(48:00):
the AWE SAP investigation. Written by Colin Kelleher, George Knapp,
and James Lakatski himself, it revealed the full scope of
the government's interest in Skinwalker Ranch. The book documented how
military personnel who visited the ranch experienced the hitchhiker effect,
how the phenomena seemed to spread through their families, how

(48:21):
careers were affected and lives were disrupted by encounters with
something that defied all rational explanation. The government had taken
Skinwalker Ranch seriously, and they had learned what the Shermans
and the Knid's team and everyone else who had spent
time on that property already knew. Whatever was happening there
was real. It was dangerous, and it didn't care about

(48:44):
military ranks or security clearances. It touched everyone who came
near it. In twenty sixteen, Robert Bigelow decided to sell.
After two decades of ownership, countless investigations, and millions of
dollars spent on research that had produced in intriguing but
inconclusive results, the billionaire was ready to move on. He

(49:05):
found a buyer in Brandon Fugel, a Utah real estate
mogul and tech investor who had been fascinated by stories
of the ranch for years. Fugle paid approximately five hundred
thousand dollars for the property, a significant sum, but far
less than the land was theoretically worth. He immediately implemented
new security measures. Roads leading to the ranch were blocked,

(49:28):
the perimeter was reinforced with cameras and barbed wire. Warning
signs were posted throughout. No one was getting onto Skinwalker
Ranch without permission, But Fugal wasn't interested in keeping secrets
he was interested in getting answers, and in twenty twenty,
he made a decision that would bring Skinwalker Ranch into
the global spotlight. He invited the History Channel to document

(49:51):
his investigation. The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch premiered on March
thirty first, twenty twenty. The show followed Fugel and his
team of investigators, including astrophysicist doctor Travis Taylor and principal
investigator Eric Bard, as they conducted experiments and documented anomalies
on the property. Unlike previous research efforts, everything would be filmed,

(50:15):
everything would be shared with the public. Fugal's motto became disclosure.
If there was something on this ranch, the world deserved
to know. What Fugal's team has documented over six seasons
of the show reads like a catalog of the impossible
UAPs appearing on camera, sometimes multiple objects moving in formation equipment,

(50:37):
malfunctions that defy explanation, radiation spikes in areas that should
have normal background levels, GPS signals behaving erratically as if
something is interfering with the satellites themselves. One of the
most compelling discoveries involved what the team calls the Triangle,
an area of the ranch where anomalous activity seems concentrated.

(51:00):
Experiments conducted at the triangle have produced extraordinary results. Rockets
launched into the air above this zone have been deflected
by invisible forces. GPS canisters dropped from helicopters have behaved
as if bouncing off something that isn't there. Light oar
imaging has revealed structures in the sky that don't appear
in visible light. The team discovered what appears to be

(51:23):
a massive dome shaped anomaly buried beneath the ranch. Ground
penetrating radar and other sensors have detected something large and
metallic deep underground. What it is, where it came from,
and what connection it has to the phenomena above ground
remain mysteries. Perhaps most remarkably, the show has documented phenomena

(51:44):
that seem to respond to investigation. When the team launches experiments,
things happen. UAPs appear on Q energy reading spike. It's
as if whatever inhabits the ranch is watching and occasionally
choosing to reveal itself. The team has also experienced the

(52:06):
darker side of the ranch. Multiple researchers have been hospitalized
with injuries that defy conventional explanation. Brandon Fugel himself has
spoken about team members suffering acute medical episodes on the property.
People have been seriously harmed, he said in one interview.
Anyone who enters the perimeter of the property is required

(52:26):
to sign a liability waiver. They have to acknowledge the
risks associated with being involved with the subject property. This
isn't a safe place. It never was, and the phenomena
show no signs of stopping. After three decades of investigation,
millions of dollars in research funding, and the attention of

(52:46):
government agencies, billionaires and scientists from around the world, we
still don't know what's happening at Skinwalker Ranch. The theories
are as varied as the phenomena themselves. Some believe the
ranch sits on top of an interdimensional portal, a thin
spot in reality where our world overlaps with somewhere else.
Others suggest extraterrestrial involvement, that the property is of interest

(53:11):
to non human intelligences who have been visiting Earth for centuries. Still,
others point to the Native American legends, arguing that ancient
spiritual forces, skin Walkers, and other entities continue to inhabit
this cursed land. Some scientists have proposed more prosaic explanations.
Geological activity in the Yuenta basin might produce unusual electromagnetic effects.

(53:35):
The human brain, when exposed to certain frequencies, can hallucinate
ball lightning could account for some of the glowing orbs,
but none of these explanations can account for the totality
of what's been documented. The cattle mutilations, the physical evidence,
the hitchhiker effect that follows people home, the way phenomena

(53:57):
seem to respond intelligently to investigation. Skeptics argue that the
whole thing is an elaborate hoax, or at best, a
case of mass delusion. They point out that the Meyers family,
who owned the property for sixty years before the Shermans,
reported nothing unusual. They note that NIDS, despite years of research,

(54:18):
never published peer reviewed findings. They suggest that the History
Channel show is entertainment, not science, but the skeptical explanations
struggle with some inconvenient facts. Multiple independent witnesses have reported
similar phenomena over decades. The Shermans, who sold the ranch
for less than they paid and fled in obvious terror,

(54:39):
had no financial motive to invent their story. Military and
intelligence personnel have experienced the hitchhiker effect firsthand, and the
phenomena continue year after year, captured on increasingly sophisticated equipment.
Something is happening at Skinwalker Ranch. That much is undeniable.

(55:00):
The question is not whether the phenomena are real. The
question is what they mean. As I sit here recording
these words, Skinwalker Ranch continues to operate under Brandon Fugal's ownership.
The History Channel show is entering its seventh season. New
experiments are being conducted, new discoveries are being made. The

(55:21):
mystery deepens with each passing year. The Ute people still
won't go near the property. Their elders maintain the same
warnings they've passed down for generations. That land is cursed,
that land is dangerous, stay away. Terry Sherman, who lived
through horrors most of us can barely imagine, eventually moved

(55:42):
on with his life. But the twenty miles he put
between himself and the ranch probably wasn't enough. Nothing is
ever enough. The hitchhiker effect doesn't care about distance. It follows,
it attaches, it spreads. This continue to debate what's happening
in that remote corner of Utah? Are we dealing with

(56:05):
extraterrestrial visitors, interdimensional beings, ancient spiritual forces that predate human civilization,
or something so far beyond our understanding that we don't
even have words for it yet. The honest answer is
that we don't know. After all the research, all the investigation,
all the money and technology and human effort that's been

(56:27):
poured into understanding Skinwalker Ranch, we are left with more
questions than answers. The phenomena continue, the explanations elude us.
But perhaps that's the point. Perhaps whatever inhabits that Ranch
doesn't want to be understood. Perhaps it enjoys the fear,
the confusion, the desperate human attempt to make sense of

(56:49):
something that exists beyond the boundaries of sense. Perhaps, as
some researchers have suggested, we're dealing with the trickster intelligence,
something that reveals itself just enough to terrify, but never
enough to be captured or proven. What we can say
with certainty is this Skinwalker Ranch is real. The phenomena

(57:09):
documented there are real. People have been hurt, animals have
been killed, families have been torn apart, and whatever force
is responsible for these events, it's still there, watching, waiting,
perhaps listening to these very words. If you ever find
yourself driving through northeastern Utah, if you ever feel the

(57:32):
urge to take that turn off the highway toward the
Juenta Basin, if you ever think about approaching that guarded
gate and asking to see the famous ranch, don't trust me.
Trust the ute elders who have warned against this place
for generations. Trust the Sherman family who fled in terror.
Trust the scientists who dedicated their careers to understanding something

(57:56):
that refused to be understood. Some places on this earth
are not meant for us. Some doors are not meant
to be opened. And some lands, some lands, watch back.
I'll see you next time if you're brave enough to
tune in DI never do