Tales from Skinwalker Ranch - Part Two

after being tormented to the point of mental breakdown the sherman family had nowhere to turn they were stuck on a property that was haunted by something that went beyond their understanding and to make matters worse they were facing financial ruin fortunately someone had heard their cry for help [Music] in march 1996 at around the same time that the sherman family were considering leaving the ranch billionaire real estate developer robert bigelow was busy putting together an organization that would come to be known as the national institute for discovery science or nids for short it was an

ambitious undertaking and one which was unprecedented a well-funded highly qualified state-of-the-art equipped team of scientists that could deploy anywhere in the country at a moment's notice and investigate events of high strangeness never before had a scientific organization been formed with such significant funding in order to bring systematic analysis and scrutiny to what was essentially paranormal and supernatural research these specialized individuals were no fly-by-night dropouts who didn't quite make the cut in their respective fields of study these were phd professors qualified in subjects ranging from biochemistry and psychology to astrophysics and veterinary science bigelow was careful

to recruit any candidates with a skeptical frame of mind field investigators that would always look for rational explanations first and foremost and leave pseudoscience at the door in addition he also assembled the world-class advisory board the members of which were handpicked from a wide array of disciplines this group would evaluate evidence gathered by the field team's activities all in all nids would comprise more than 25 members the majority of which were from the scientific community but would also include security personnel recruited from former military circles two of the most prominent members of the scientific team

were physicist eric davis and biochemist col kelleher kelleher would go on to document both the sherman's and nid's experiences in his book hunt for the skinwalker which he wrote in collaboration with george knapp shortly after neds was formed they heard echoes in the press regarding a small ranch in the north of utah which was apparently being visited by ufos on a regular basis terry sherman had reluctantly approached the local newspaper at the beginning of the year to report the strange happenings on his property almost as a cry for help he had long held the suspicion

that the majority of the activity was somehow related to secretive military technology he did not believe in extraterrestrials or any of the tales regarding native american folklore and he hoped that by bringing attention to the phenomena whoever was perpetuating it might back off in the summer of 1996 bigelow called a meeting to discuss the case in many ways the ranch presented a tantalizing opportunity a laboratory out in the field away from prying eyes that could study a wide variety of phenomena that was occurring on a regular basis and was of the precise nature for which

the organization was formed the prospect seemed too good to pass up within a matter of weeks the nid's team had met with the sherman family and after hearing their unbelievable experiences expressed their interest in purchasing the property from them whilst gwen and the children were desperate to move and would have been happy never to have set foot on the ranch again terry was a proud man and he was not quite ready to leave he was infuriated at being run off his own land especially as he still didn't know what was behind the phenomena however he

had to do what was best for his family and grudgingly agreed although he did offer to become ranch manager for the ninth team he was keen to see how their investigation would progress and what answers they might find if only to get some closure from the ordeal he and his family had suffered over the last two years as nitz was a team of scientists used to working in lab conditions and didn't know the first thing about running a ranch they happily accepted his offer along with the property they also purchased livestock to keep his bait

and terry also housed some of his own cattle there for the same purpose by september that year nids had moved their observation trailer and mobile laboratory onto the property the field team consisted of four scientists and a group of assistant investigators who were stationed at the ranch permanently around the clock the field team's role was to collect and analyze evidence and then presented him monthly meetings to the advisory board the first thing the team did when they arrived was run a battery of tests the phenomena described by the sherman family was far too varied and

bizarre to pin down to any one explanation and their initial thoughts were that there was possibly a psychological or environmental angle to consider were the sherman simply lying for attention had terry and his family been suffering from a mass delusion were there plants on the land which emitted spores with hallucinogenic properties was the family's water supply being contaminated did the ranch have areas with intense electromagnetic fields were there any instances of very low or ultra-low frequencies otherwise known as infrasound were there any fault lines running across the property creating a situation of mild tectonic or

seismic stress which is thought to cause light anomalies and visual hallucinations the short answer to all of these questions was a resounding no although it would take longer to answer some of these queries than others especially regarding psychological factors despite this aside from a few strange lights seen in the sky the remainder of 1996 would be uneventful and the nid's field team were initially doubtful of some of the more bizarre stories they had been told but all that would change in the coming year in essence the longer the nid's team spent on the ranch the

more they would come to the terrifying realization that the sherman family was telling the truth [Music] on the 9th of march 1997 terry and gwen discovered the carcass of a black angus calf lying on the grass a little over 100 yards from the homestead gwen selden ventured onto the ranch since the family had moved away but on this day she had been helping terry take some of the animals in the pasture they had tagged this particular calf and then walked 300 yards across the field to tag others which were grazing to the south whilst they

were attending to this task a dog that was with them began to growl its hair stood on end as it looked back towards the ranch house terry and gwen followed its gaze and saw that the mother of the first calf was limping back and forth clearly out of her wits when they ran over to see what was going on they found her calf on the ground its entire abdominal cavity including all of its organs had been removed the only things that remained were its head legs and spinal column with some of the ribcage still intact

it was also missing an ear which looked as if it had been sliced off with an extremely sharp instrument most perplexing of all was that there was not one single drop of blood on the grass around the animal the ear that had been sliced off was a one that they had tagged less than 45 minutes before during that time something had removed more than 60 pounds of meat from this poor animal in broad daylight and in full view of the rancher and his wife though they hadn't seen or heard a thing the ned's veterinarian was

baffled the cuts were clean and precise with no spillage of blood he surmised that no predator that he knew of could have been responsible when asked whether they had noticed anything unusual prior to the incident both terry and gwen reported that they had smelled a heavy musk odor in the area after the vet had taken necropsy samples from the calf the rest of the team began to search for tracks in doing so they happened to pass one of the kennels and saw that the dogs were all huddled inside it should be mentioned at this point

that nids had strategically placed three large observation towers on the property each surrounded by a chain-link fence inside which they housed a number of dogs canines had an uncanny ability to sense when something strange was about to happen so the team used them as biosensors terry remarked how the dogs hadn't ventured out all day in fact they would refuse to leave their shelter for many days after this event and slowly but surely the nid's team would come to understand why something was lurking on the ranch at around 11 pm on the 12th of march the

dogs started howling and barking at something on the far side of the pasture terry and the knits team had been sitting inside the observation trailer at the time but soon piled into a truck and headed towards the disturbance the 4x4 had a bright spotlight fitted to the roof and as they rounded the corner the beam washed over cops of distant cottonwoods in that moment they saw a pair of yellow orbs sitting about 20 feet up in one of the trees it was a huge pair of eyes reflecting the light terry stopped the truck and reached

behind him for his rifle exiting the vehicle he leaned on the open door and took aim through the scope he could see the outline of a huge creature sitting in the tree i'm not gonna let it get another calf he growled it didn't even move as he settled his sights it just sat there staring right back at him the moment the rifle's report echoed across the open pasture the eyes blinked out of existence and the loud thud was heard as whatever it was fell from the branches terry got back into the vehicle and drove towards

the cottonwoods stopping about 40 feet away there was no sign of the huge animal underneath the tree or anywhere else everything was silent as terry and the ned's investigators spread out and entered the tree line they were about five yards apart when terry was heard to shout i see him two more loud shots rang out as the knits team ran towards him they heard a commotion in the branches ahead as something heavy blunted through the thicket moving away from them it had disappeared by the time they reached the rancher it looked like a huge dog

but bipedal he exclaimed after searching for an hour in darkness the team found only two large footprints spaced 20 feet apart from each other they were each 14 inches long and exhibited huge claw indentations the rest of the month passed by without further incident but the dogs and livestock continued to act strange they were on edge and had a haunted look about them almost as if they could sense that there was a predator in the area on the first of april another car vanished without trace no blood or tracks were found it was simply there

one minute and gone the next on the second one of the weirdest and possibly most famous of all events to take place on the ranch would occur it involved four of terry's prized angus bulls which he had temporarily moved back onto the property out of convenience gwen had joined him once again to help out with a few jobs they were in a truck heading from the east side of the ranch over to the west and as they passed the homestead they looked across at the nearby corral and saw their four black angus bulls staring back

at them each one was worth thousands of dollars there was perhaps 12 grams worth of livestock in this quartet alone with the cattle mutilations and disappearances still fresh in their minds gwen remarked to terry how she would be devastated if anything was to happen to those four bulls at the west end of the ranch they repaired a broken fence line and tagged a couple of carves which had been born the previous evening these tasks took them no more than an hour on the way back they rounded the bend in the track heading towards the homestead

and their hearts suddenly skipped to beat the four black angus bulls were no longer in the corral terry jumped out of the vehicle in a panic and ran over to the enclosure the gates were still locked but the bulls were nowhere to be seen he couldn't believe his eyes next to the corral was an old trailer which hadn't been used in years terry happened to jump up onto a feeding trough and look in through one of the skylights and to his utter amazement saw all four bulls standing silently crammed into the tiny space they seemed

to be in some sort of trance therein here he shouted to his wife and as he did the bulls woke up from whatever hypnotic state they were in they seemed to suddenly realize where they were and began to panic kicking and thrashing wildly inside the narrow trailer in the end one of the back doors was kicked off and all four balls ran out into the sunlight it took terry and his wife two hours of gentle cajoling to get them back into the corral when the nids team inspected the trailer they did so in a state

of mild disbelief it would have taken hours to get just one of those angry bulls into such a confined space let alone four in fact there was no way four balls would ever entertain the idea of sharing such a small trailer with one another the only entrance into the trailer from the corral was through a door which was wired shut the knits team found old cobwebs strewn across the inside door panel and frame proving that this entrance hadn't been opened in a very long time this was baffling as there was no other way the bulls

could have gotten into the trailer from the cattle pen upon further investigation they found that the bars of the corral had somehow been highly magnetized an anomaly which dissipated over time this prompted the nid's team to scan for magnetic fields across the entire property sometime later that month calm kelleher was investigating some strange tracks which had been found on the south side of the ranch when an overpowering scent of musk came over him it was an odd smell being stationed on the property for a number of months already he had become accustomed to the various

odors of fauna and wildlife but this was different about 50 yards away he could see his teammate picking his way through some russian olives but couldn't attribute the strange smell to anything suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and a chill run down his spine something was close by he couldn't see it but he could feel its presence it was watching him putting it down to his imagination he gritted his teeth and continued with the task at hand gradually the feeling subsided and the muscoda receded when he spoke to his

teammate an hour or so later he too reported that he'd felt as if he was being watched and had also picked up on the strange scent he also mentioned that his field compass had acted up pointing towards the direction where the scent was strongest and only returning to normal after the odour had dissipated these magnetic interferences were the first vague pattern that the investigators had seen over the course of the year more strange events would take place which for the nids team would remove any lingering doubt they held over the high strangeness occurring on the

ranch in early june colin kelleher and eric davis were on one of their regular stakeouts in front of the dilapidated middle homestead one of the most notorious hotspots on the property they were looking out over an open field towards some trees eric was scanning the distance with a pair of night vision goggles whilst calm was taking long exposure shots of the night sky suddenly the dogs that were with them began to yelp and cower behind their legs at the same time eric took a sharp breath and said jesus there's something in the trees over there

a huge black thing calm could not see anything but then he didn't have the luxury of night vision goggles so instead began focusing his camera on the trees it's big i'm not sure if it's in the trees or behind the trees eric continued it's moving north kong continued taking shots when his teammate suddenly announced it's got me it's saying we are watching you eric kept muttering jesus christ over and over as if he was experiencing some inner turmoil until finally he said that the object was moving away when the ordeal was over colm asked eric

what had happened and he replied that he didn't know it was almost as if the thing in the trees had taken control of his mind on the way back to the observation trailer calm made note of how jumpy his colleague seemed and wondered if he was more disturbed by his experience than he was letting on over the course of the summer the nid's team would play cat and mouse with the infamous orbs of light which appeared regularly all over the property but they always seemed one step ahead only appearing for brief moments and leading investigators

on while goose chases from one end of the ranch to the other as they tried to photograph these strange anomalies in august two team members would have one of the most frightening experiences it was around 3 30 am and they were on top of the ridge looking down towards the notorious middle homestead again only one of them had a pair of infrared binoculars whilst the other looked after various scientific instruments and sensors they had been standing up on the ridge for about three hours and we're about to move on to another location when mike the

investigator with the binoculars suddenly noticed a light appear in a pasture about 150 feet below bizarrely his colleague jim could only see a dull illumination yet through the infrared goggles it appeared as bright as the moon it was hovering about three feet off the ground and mike was talking about how it seemed to be growing in size when he stopped abruptly and said it's not a light it's a tunnel i can see through to the other side jim asked his colleague if he could take a look but mike was transfixed on the strange phenomenon there's

something in the tunnel he exclaimed it's crawling out to mike sutter disbelief he could see a huge black featureless figure crawling on its elbows and knees from the other side of the tunnel he then witnessed it climb out of the tunnel and run up the side of the ridge moving faster than was humanly possible both investigators heard the shale crunch under its feet as it ran past them about 30 feet away before it disappeared into the darkness immediately afterwards they were greeted by a terrifyingly eerie silence as an odd musky odor hung in the night

air in many ways the things that the nids team witnessed were every bit as frightening bizarre and inexplicable as the activity the sherman family had experienced they saw the same orbs of light zipping through fields and tree lines metallic ufos hovering over the property strange creatures and portal-like anomalies they witnessed firsthand the devastating cattle mutilations they experienced the poltergeist-like activity strange odors magnetic fields heard the noises underground and many other things besides but by mid-1998 the activity had started to decline and it would remain that way for many years afterwards until the team finally pulled

the plug and left the property in 2004 they had not succeeded in explaining what was occurring but for the time being at least they had succeeded in putting an end to the strange activity on the ranch even if this was not the outcome they had hoped for there is a common belief amongst skeptics that the nids team failed to gather any supporting evidence and in some ways this is true but not entirely accurate they did succeed in recording some of the anomalies on film in fact so did terry sherman when he owned the ranch and

some of this can be seen in jeremy corbell's documentary hunt for the skinwalker which is based on colin kelleher's and george knapp's work of the same name most of this video evidence was rejected by the nid's advisory board as the majority of the recordings took place at night and captured the most common phenomenon which was the orbs of light unfortunately due to the darkness these recordings only depicted what looked like in distinct points of light in the night sky or off in the distance and were pretty mundane the point the ned's team made in the

aftermath of their investigation was that whatever was haunting the ranch did not like the intrusion it did not want to be investigated it was always one step ahead and seemed to be completely in control equipment would inexplicably fail at the most inopportune times the phenomena seemed to know when the team was waiting for something to happen and when something did happen it would occur just outside their camera's field of view and would be far too brief to record in any case the activity was nearly always one of a kind and it rarely if ever repeated

itself and if it did it would be in a completely different place to where their cameras were trained it was extremely frustrating for those involved in the investigation and robert bigelow himself would go on to describe the phenomena as a precognitive sentient intelligence despite all this there are hundreds of well-documented eyewitness accounts not just from the nids team but also from neighbours residents of the uinta basin and people who have visited the ranch since out of curiosity skinwalker ranch is a rich tapestry of strange occurrences far too bizarre and unbelievable for many people to accept

but if there is any truth to the claims and if there are explanations out there what could they be first of all let's address the elephant in the room could the whole thing have been an elaborate hoax were the shermans faking the phenomena to offload a property which had in fact turned out to be a financial disaster they had lost a lot of cattle and were on the verge of bankruptcy after all but why invent such fantastical stories surely this would only damage their reputation and ultimately devalue the land not only this but ufos and

strange creatures had been seen and reported in the region for centuries and neighbours of the shermans reported similar activity on their ranches this somewhat suggests that the phenomena was not unique to skinwalker ranch and by extension not the product of the sherman's imaginations they could not have invented hundreds of years worth of experiences add in the fact that robert bigelow was convinced enough to purchase the property as well as invest millions in a decade-long study and that the phenomena was also witnessed by the investigative team who as it happens were phd professors and initially skeptical

some skeptics have argued that the whole thing was created by george knapp and robert bigelow in the hopes of turning the ranch into a supernatural tourist spot but one this hasn't happened in fact bigelow held on to and protected the property for 20 years and the only thing he changed in that time was the front gate two consider again the accounts of the locals which stretched back for centuries these experiences were there long before bigelow nap or even the shermans had anything to do with the ranch so if not a hoax what else could have

been occurring were visitors to the ranch suffering some sort of mass delusion it is not impossible but highly unlikely given the sheer amount of people involved as already mentioned nids carried out a battery of tests to rule out any environmental factors and they found no common thread in the psychological profiling of people they talked to and even themselves which would point to mass delusion not only that but in many cases physical evidence was left behind be it footprints mutilated cattle vaporized dugs and detectable magnetic fields amongst many other things these physical signs were not imagined

perhaps the most popular theory amongst people who believe the phenomena to be real is that the ranch was the scene of extraterrestrial visitation whilst it's true that many ufos strange craft and creatures were seen anything that was left behind by the phenomena and later studied by the nids team yielded only terrestrial signatures this does not entirely rule out the involvement of extraterrestrials but it certainly points in other directions for instance could there be any truth to native american legends regarding skinwalkers after all the utes firmly believed that the navajo put a curse on their lands

after the latter was pushed out of northeastern utah many of the things witnessed on the ranch do seem to fit in with how native americans describe skinwalkers but certainly not all of the phenomena can be attributed to these particular entities another widely considered possibility is that the military was somehow responsible for the strange occurrences terry sherman certainly seemed to think so it is indeed plausible that the military used the secluded ranch to test out advanced and secretive technologies with the residents becoming unwitting guinea pigs in experiments involving psychological warfare interestingly the nid's advisory board contacted

a number of remote viewers and asked them to examine the property whilst controversial remote viewing was studied by the cia for over 30 years and in many cases the results of these studies were astounding the first remote viewer had no information about the ranch or any knowledge of what had taken place there yet he was able to produce an almost exact sketch of its layout including the three homesteads the creek the canal and the ridge he pinpointed an area on the southwestern part of the property stating that there was an energy field there which he

described as disturbing another remote viewer stated that the second homestead where some of the most disturbing phenomena took place was the site of weird energy vortices the third remote viewer was asked to describe what happened during the daylight mutilation of the calf he got the impression that it was carried out by a drone of interdimensional nature and that it had some connection to the military another remote viewing exercise conducted by multiple people described the ranch as the site of a military operation three of the five participants independently perceived an underground base and a large network

of electronic equipment and wires that had been embedded in the ground others saw navy personnel in dark sunglasses and sporting navy tattoos reporting that much of the activity was taking place outdoors and at night and was somehow linked to an aircraft carrier another of the group perceived humanoid figures who spoke in a strange language and were seen to be working alongside human beings whilst it's true that the military could have been involved there are problems with this suggestion what of the strange creatures that were seen or the orbs of light that could affect human emotions

what about the portal-like structures or the fact that the phenomena stretches back to a time before the us military was even conceived unless there are other intelligences involved which have since invited collaboration with human beings and the military-industrial complex overall it was said that all remote viewers came away from the task with feelings of dread darkness and death and a notion that whatever is taking place at the ranch is inherently evil others have described the property as an interdimensional gateway where entities of all kinds have the ability to drop into our reality at will and

leave just as quickly some have even suggested that maybe all paranormal and supernatural phenomena reported all over the world from cryptids and aliens to poltergeists and ufos all come from the same place we see fleeting glimpses of them when they choose to show themselves to us but then there are certain epicenters where all of these phenomena leak through on mass and maybe skinwalker ranch is just one of those hot spots whatever it is that haunts the property it is clearly intelligent but its agenda remains unclear it was certainly able to differentiate between animals and humans

as no person who stepped foot on the ranch was ever harmed on the other hand countless cats dogs cattle and even wildlife were mutilated indiscriminately but it is no worse than what we have done to animals ourselves the intelligence behind the activity did seem to enjoy tormenting the shermans and later than its investigators at times it seemed able to read people's minds and listen in on private conversations such as when gwen mentioned to terry the possibility of losing the bulls it acted on that information without hesitation much like a trickster or prankster would do at

times it seemed almost omnipotent more than 20 years later the shermans have closed the book on their ordeal they moved to idaho and started a new life accepting that they would probably never know what it was that destroyed their dreams so completely robert bigelow held onto the ranch for many years afterwards the activity was sporadic throughout the noughties but never quite reached the peak experienced in the mid to late 90s he sold the property to adamantium real estate in 2016 on the condition that research would continue almost immediately after the sale went through the activity

experienced a huge spike ufos have since been photographed directly over the homestead in jeremy corbell's documentary hunt for the skinwalker he happened to ask the new owner what he says to people who doubt the phenomena is real his answer was simple you're delusional whatever the case may be only time will tell if there is any truth to the tales from skinwalker ranch [Music] bedtime stories