and may contain mature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.
I'd like to get to the bottom of whether and may contain mature subject matter.
there really is a cave system beneath this ranch.
TRAVIS: This is the hole you was talking about?
THOMAS: Yeah. We're gonna fill it with water
and put some dye in it.
TRAVIS: It's draining quickly. You guys need to get out there
and start looking for this stuff.
I don't see any green water.
We saw 45,000 gallons of water disappear.
It must be going somewhere rapidly.
Yeah, I think that it's time that we need
to get below the ground.
Every time that someone
does a major digging on this property,
then bad things happen.
You guys should take a look at Kaleb's phone.
I don't have any control over it.
It just goes right past my passcode.
Something here is crying out for help.
KALEB: Or is it giving us a warning?
TRAVIS: A little more than eight hours
after digging down at the pit, this rectangular-shaped object
instantly vanished.
It was right there. Something yellow and goldish color.
That scared the (bleep) out of me.
NARRATOR: There is a ranch in Northern Utah.
It is considered the epicenter
of the strangest and most disturbing phenomena on Earth:
animal mutilations,
bizarre UFO sightings
and unusual energies that have proven harmful to humans.
For 20 years, the federal government
tried to find answers and failed.
Now a new team of dedicated scientists,
researchers and experts has taken over.
They are determined to solve the mystery and reveal...
...The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.
BRANDON (over phone): Hey, Dragon. What's going on?
BRYANT: We had some crazy stuff go down
that we all want to share with you.
Hey, Brandon. It's Travis, uh, and, uh, Kaleb
and the other guys j-- are just gonna jump in
as we go through the story.
But just after dark,
-Kaleb actually heard something in the bushes. -Mm-hmm.
Like, uh, very near to us,
and it startled him enough that he jumped up.
-Kaleb you want to...? -I drew my pistol out
and I turned on-- the flashlight on,
and I started looking-- going in the direction
of where I was hearing this, and it was behind
that old trailer and the-the canal bank there.
TRAVIS: Right as we got even with the trailer,
uh, there was something that was rectangular-shaped,
and it was shimmering yellowish-orange,
and when Kaleb shined his light on it,
it instantly vanished.
It didn't run off through the weeds,
it didn't fly off, it didn't go through the ground,
it didn't get in the creek.
It just, I mean, just-- suddenly it was there
and suddenly it wasn't.
KALEB: Yeah.
TRAVIS: There was this unmistakable
rectangular-shaped object
that was-- may have been about two
to two and a half feet in length,
and maybe a foot or so in height.
And as Kaleb brings his pistol fully on the target,
it's like the light comes back at us
like it was off of a mirror.
And then the thing instantly vanished.
I find it interesting that an object could be
that close, right inside,
close here to the command center,
where we've got so many cameras, and we didn't pick anything up.
It was scary as hell.
And while we were walking back to the command center,
I say, "Okay, guys, I'm going to go ahead
and turn my video off." Within seconds
of me saying that, something flies across the sky
uh, the southern-- looking due south,
over the command center porch.
And something flies across the sky, and I'm like,
"Oh, my God, did y'all see that?"
ERIK: Yeah, we, uh,
looking-looking to the south,
uh, from the east field, we caught several frames
of this thing streaking across the sky.
TRAVIS: At first glance you might think
it's a-a meteorite or a shooting star.
Erik and I looked at it closely,
and it kind of has a different trajectory.
It's going more... almost perfectly horizontal,
uh, as opposed to coming down like a meteorite does
when it's, when it's on a trajectory impact course
with the Earth.
Maybe that's a telltale sign that it's not a meteorite.
ERIK: Sure.
Well, I would say that we need to emphasize
on finding out a way to get more data
on whatever this terrestrial ground phenomena was,
that we saw.
If it's a thing in a suit, we need to know that.
If it's a, uh, some Mother Nature phenomenon,
we need to know that.
So, it could have been something that was humanoid,
but we didn't see any arms, legs, head, nothing.
All we saw was a rectangular,
shimmering yellow-orange-ish phenomenon.
All we can say is
we felt in fear.
We felt threatened, we felt we were in danger,
and that's what we got to think about.
I think we've always suspected
that we're being monitored.
You know, happening upon strange objects and phenomena
really speaks to the fact that we're not alone
on this ranch.
-BRYANT: Ok, we'll do it. -All right.
All right, thanks, Brandon. We'll talk to you soon.
BRYANT: Yeah, so, I'm anxious to get you to meet Travis.
I know that we're glad that you'd be willing to come out
and show us some of the stuff you found because, as you know,
it's a vast piece of property,
and trying to cover all that area
can be a little bit daunting.
Glad to contribute to the team,
and really excited to meet Travis.
BRANDON: I thought it was important that we bring in Ryan Skinner,
who has spent years researching
not only the landscape of Skinwalker Ranch
but the surrounding area.
And he's documented in great detail aspects of the property.
RYAN: As a result of exploring out here
was I became very familiar with these mesas and hillsides.
I'd have to say the strangest event that occurred to me was
I was out on the ranch, a ball of light came up
over one of these hillsides
and started coming directly towards me.
And immediately, a feeling of terror
unlike anything I've ever felt in my life before.
I dropped everything I had, my expensive camera,
all of my equipment, and started running back to the camp,
and this thing is now trailing me.
It was real, so I couldn't deny, I couldn't--
No matter how many times I went back in my head,
I couldn't rationalize it away. It really did happen.
I hope to give any kind of help and input I can,
and I want to help solve this mystery with the team.
-I think I know you two. -ERIK: Ryan.
-THOMAS: Hey, Ryan. -Hey.
-Good to see you again. -Tom, nice seeing you again.
-ERIK: Good to see you again. -Erik, what's going on man?
-Hey, man. Travis Taylor. -Travis, nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you. -What's up, guys? -ERIK: What's up, Dragon?
THOMAS: So, Ryan what are you gonna show us?
RYAN: I came across this, uh, location.
Uh, it's up here on the mesa.
It might give us some direction as to what's behind all this.
-Oh. Okay. -THOMAS: Well, let's grab the UTV
-and let's head up. -Okay. Sounds good.
RYAN: To me what's exciting is the location of it.
You know, it just stood out,
and maybe it's gonna jump out to you guys as well.
You see that big large rock over there?
-That's where we're gonna aim for. -THOMAS: Okay.
TRAVIS: So, it's on which ridge?
RYAN: To the left of this big rock.
Right there, there's kind of those white...
-Shapes. -Oh, you-- the little squiggle lines and stuff?
-Is that what you're talking about? Huh. -RYAN: Right. Yep.
RYAN: I came out here a few years ago
and we did come across a pictograph
that I couldn't interpret.
I have no idea what it meant, but it really stood out
compared to the other rocks.
TRAVIS: This stuff is loose, y'all. Be careful.
RYAN: I believe the ancient people were aware
of whatever's happening to us right now.
They left us clues through their rock art
and I hope the team and myself can contribute to that mystery
in finding out some answers.
TRAVIS: Guys, y'all got to get up here and see this.
THOMAS: Last summer we had a cow that died.
No predators have touched this, which is highly unusual.
Never seen one of those.
JANILEE: The eyes,
the back end of the cow were cut out.
-You witnessed this with your own eyes? -Yeah.
TRAVIS: How'd you find this, Ryan?
RYAN: I've been walking all throughout these cliffs
and looking at every-- every rock face, looking for something
just like this, and this one jumped out.
We're halfway up the mesa on the northeastern corner
of Skinwalker Ranch,
and Ryan Skinner, a person with a long history here,
has just shown us a really interesting petroglyph
on a rock face that none of us have ever seen before.
It looks like it may even be
a-all the way over there.
It looks like there might be a line there.
-Are you talking this right here? -Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-TRAVIS: That right there is where I'm thinking. -Oh.
It pokes out-- I can't tell if it's the rock
or if that continues on, but it's possible.
Hey, guys. You know what I think this is?
I think that's the Big Dipper.
This is either Cassiopeia
-or Draco. -ERIK: Oh, wow.
TRAVIS: Dating back centuries, this entire region
was inhabited by indigenous people
of the Navajo and the Ute tribes.
They were known to create rock art such as petroglyphs
which are carved, and pictographs, which are painted.
Now, these kinds of rock art were typically used
to either report something
or to tell a story about aspects of their heritage.
Now, I've been studying outer space
for more than 35 years, and I can't help but notice
that some of these markings in this feature look a lot like
possible depictions of constellations to me.
We all know the Big Dipper.
But Draco was a dragon or a serpent creature
in Greek mythology.
So, I'm wondering, if that's what this is,
who carved this and just what were they trying to convey?
I don't know which one this is,
but I think it could be a star map.
If that's north-- Look, look at this.
-There's the mesa, huh? -It's the mesa. Look at that.
This, if you look here and you trace all this like this,
that looks just like the mesa, don't it?
It does, it actually has a lot of the similarities,
even the shape.
TRAVIS: Now we have to be very careful
not to jump to conclusions, but suddenly,
I'm noticing that it looks almost like someone
carved a map of the mesa in this rock art.
Now, if that's what this is, the question is why?
Look here. There's two spots.
Does that two spots
look like a familiar place if this is the mesa?
BRYANT: Oh, w-- the spot where we had the beam
-that came up by the homestead area? -Yeah.
When we shined the laser at the mesa,
that's right where we were with the laser.
-THOMAS: You ready? -TRAVIS: Yep.
TRAVIS: Last summer, we were investigating a phenomenon
that has been reported where
parts of the mesa supposedly become illuminated.
We started by shining a laser beam at it
to see what would happen.
-There it is. -Wait, is that--- There's two.
TRAVIS: Look.
Do that again.
THOMAS: How is it doing that?
TRAVIS: That is so weird.
Then, almost immediately afterwards,
we all witnessed a strange glowing
across the top of the ridge.
Hey guys, we just noticed on the screen here a second ago,
do you see the glow, the flicker?
TRAVIS: Yeah, it's flickering.
It's just really strange to me to see something eerily similar
possibly being depicted in this rock art.
Is it because whoever made this long ago
experienced the same thing?
I-I feel like I have to ask.
So, when you happened across this, Ryan,
what jumped out to you?
What d-- How did you interpret this thing?
Uh, the triangle jumped out to me a little bit.
The Shermans
on the west side of the property would see a portal open up,
and these miniature triangles would come out
of the portal and go over the property.
♪ ♪
BRANDON: The Sherman family
bought the property in the early '90s.
It was their dream to really farm and ranch on the property
and-and really raise prized cattle.
The Shermans quickly found out, unfortunately,
that, uh, they were not alone.
The Sherman family reported all sorts of strangeness.
Anything from experiences with giant wolf-type creatures
to their prized cattle showing up mutilated.
They unfortunately got chased off of this ground
by the paranormal activity
shortly after they took possession of the ranch.
When Ryan said the Shermans actually believed
they saw portals open on the ranch
and strange illuminated objects suddenly appear,
that immediately made me think
of what Kaleb and I saw the other night.
Now, it wasn't a triangle,
but it was definitely an oddly shaped, illuminated phenomenon
that I have no scientific explanation for.
I can't say for sure that there's a connection
between what this rock art is meant to convey
and what we saw the other night,
but it does mean we have to keep investigating and figure it out.
I wonder if there's a way to date these things.
It could have been 10,000 years ago,
could have been 400 years ago.
But somebody drew that on there.
ERIK: That suggests to me we should get
a glyph expert out here to have a look at this.
Yeah. Yeah, you don't need a physicist up here
telling you how they did this. You need a...
you-you need an archaeologist or whoever does
glyphs for a living. Uh...
Ryan, this is cool, dude. I appreciate it.
-So... -It's enlightening to me, so...
-BRYANT: I agree. Let's get out of here. -Let's go.
♪ ♪
-Morning, guys. -Hello, hello.
This is Dr. Dean Taylor.
TRAVIS: While we were arranging for a petroglyph expert
to come out to the ranch
to examine the rock art on the mesa,
Thomas headed up an important investigation
related to one of the most bizarre things
we encountered last year.
Thomas Winterton.
We decided to call in a veterinarian
with the Utah Department of Agriculture,
uh, Dr. Dean Taylor.
Last summer, we had a cow that died
from rapid-onset, stress-induced pneumonia.
TRAVIS: What in the world?
There's no cat tracks. There's no...
s-sign of struggle.
-KANDUS: Middle of the day. -It's just dead.
-(flies buzzing) -It's hard to kill a cow.
-THOMAS: Look at this. Feel-feel my phone. -BRYANT: Look at this.
It's going vibrate to mute, vibrate to mute like crazy.
Holy crap.
Given the history of reported cattle mutilations
on Skinwalker Ranch,
we were all put on edge when this otherwise normal cow
just dropped dead.
And as soon as we started to investigate it,
Thomas Winterton's phone started glitching
like it was being hacked.
-The meter's going nuts. -Over there.
TRAVIS: And out of nowhere,
we started getting meter readings
for really high levels of radiation all around us.
13, 14. We're at 15. 16.
THOMAS: The day after the cow died last year,
we were reviewing some of the footage
and we noticed this object up in the sky.
ERIK: The cow is right here.
I can't help but also notice that there's...
something happening here.
-TRAVIS: Yo. Whoa. Look at that. -Yeah, there it is. Right there.
BRANDON: The cow reacted
the moment that that object appeared.
THOMAS: I was sitting here this whole time
just thinking it was a bird.
But you watch that real-time-- I mean, that's fast.
Yeah, there's no bird moving that fast.
Not at a thousand feet per second.
I have no idea what that is.
Cows die.
-It's part of ranching, unfortunately. -Right.
But the predators come in
and scavenge it almost immediately.
And we have this particular cow that died last year.
-Okay. -Uh, but the strange thing is
we took the cow out to a remote part of the property
and, uh, it sat there untouched for almost a year.
Okay. Yeah, that is unusual.
-KALEB: Mm-hmm. -'Cause there should be coyotes and...
KALEB: We've got a lot of different predators out here
-that... -Should clean that up.
-Yeah. -THOMAS: Well, I'll tell you what,
I'll have you jump in this red UTV
-and, uh, we'll head out. -DEAN: Okay.
-All right. Sounds good. -All right.
THOMAS: There's something there in this cow
that's making it undesirable.
And, uh, the birds haven't touched it.
The predators haven't touched it.
So, hopefully, with Dr. Taylor coming out,
we'll be able to get to the bottom of it.
We try to find a remote place that's out of the way, and...
and then the predators usually come in and take care of it.
But, uh, in this case,
as you can see, the predators haven't done their job.
No, they haven't touched it.
Yeah, that is unusual.
You can see that nothing's been pulling
at that. You'd see teeth marks.
There's something about that carcass that I don't like.
Snakes represents two different worlds.
So it's a guardian to the portals.
The portal is a window into the supernatural.
haven't done their job. THOMs
DEAN: No, they haven't touched it.
You can see that nothing's been pulling at that.
You'd see teeth marks.
Yeah.
Because this cow hasn't been touched for a year,
we decided to call in Dr. Dean Taylor.
So, hopefully, we'll be able
to get to the bottom and identify why it is
that-that, uh, these predators haven't wanted to eat this cow.
DEAN: Even if there's still quite a bit of the carcass left,
you'll still find loose rib bones.
But the bones are laying right where you dropped them.
Had the predators just come in and-and did
what they usually do, which is pick it over clean
-and, within a week, you can't tell that she was here, right? -Right.
-And scatter the bones all over. -Had they done that,
then it would have been case closed.
But nothing touched her.
KALEB: She-she was perfect...
perfectly fine, as-as far as we knew,
-up to that point. -DEAN: Okay.
Did any other cows get sick after?
-No. -No. In fact, they were all at the other end of the field.
Ignition.
Last year, shortly before
this cow dropped dead near the command center,
we were launching rockets,
attempting to measure some electromagnetic anomalies
we detected high above the ranch.
SEGALA: Look at the cows.
-BRYANT: Never seen that before. -(mooing)
TRAVIS: Suddenly, the cows all began bunching up.
Clearly, they were spooked.
And then something even stranger happened.
-Look, look, look, look! -What is that?
TRAVIS: We saw two different unidentified objects
suddenly appear over the ranch.
They made incredible aerodynamic moves
and then they just disappeared.
It's gone.
TRAVIS: Not long after,
this cow died right in the same area
and at the same time
as another UFO appeared right above it in the sky.
So now that nothing has touched this carcass since,
I'm wondering if all these events are related in some way,
including what we saw the other night.
DEAN: The thing that doesn't really fit
is the sudden death.
There's not...
that many things that would cause that cow to be good
in the morning and dead in the afternoon.
Even if it was a rapid death from pneumonia,
I would expect that cow to be standing off, uh,
open-mouth breathing, uh, coughing.
With pneumonia, usually, you're gonna have
a pretty clear indication that that's the case.
TOM: Now, what about specifically
a cow that doesn't...
you know, decompose right or...?
Never seen one of those.
-I'll be honest. -KANDUS: So, the effect of an acute pneumonia
-wouldn't be the reason... -No.
-something wouldn't eat this cow. -No.
In fact, predators probably would seek them out.
-Yeah. -And-and that was another one of 'em, was--
-that I noticed-- was no insects. -Yeah.
DEAN: There's something about that carcass
that I don't like.
All of the entrails, uh,
are still with-- inside the body cavity,
and I don't know what would cause animals
not to touch this cow in a year's time.
I think I'd like to take a sample of that hind leg
-right there, where it's-it's still got -THOMAS: Okay.
some covering around it with the skin.
Looking at this animal, there isn't
really anything that is gonna say, "This animal died of this."
So, we're gonna sample what we have available.
-I'm all right there, Doctor? -Yeah. That'll be perfect.
DEAN: So, hopefully, with the lab diagnostics,
we can find something up there
to send us down a path at least.
TOM: Thanks, Dr. Taylor.
-Is this him here? -Yup. -Yeah.
-ERIK: Alan. -Hey.
-Erik, how are you? -Doing great. How are you?
-Good. -Welcome to the ranch.
-Hey. Travis Taylor. -Travis.
TRAVIS: Erik has invited Dr. Alan Garfinkel
to come out to the ranch to examine the petroglyph
that Ryan Skinner showed us
on the side of the mesa a couple of days ago.
Now, we're all hoping that he can shed some light
on whether or not these carved images might be important clues
about the phenomena that we've recently experienced out here.
So, you guys know Alan is an archeologist, anthropologist,
and a petroglyphs expert.
And so we're going to go out and take a look
at some of the things we have on the ranch
-not far from where we stand. -Honored. Love to see them.
I've been working in the field of ethnography
and rock art studies for 40 years.
My efforts and expertise are on the desert west,
specifically the Great Basin,
and about the indigenous people of the Great Basin.
Well, let's show him some adventure, Erik.
Let's see some adventure.
ALAN: I knew there was a lot
of supernatural activities
that have been identified here at the ranch.
And I also understand that part of my responsibilities are
to see how that rock art and see how these images
and those features might have interfingered with this
paranormal or supernatural realm.
So, this is it?
-KANDUS: Yup. Here we are. -ALAN: Okay.
ALAN: Well, look at this place.
We're kind of in an amphitheater here, aren't we?
Check this out.
(clap echoing)
-You hear that echo? -Yeah. Sure.
Yeah. That's one of the reasons that, uh, this area
might have been chosen to have rock art-- because it echoes.
When I approached the location, I immediately noticed
that it was an echo-phonic area.
The echoes would come back to me.
Native people look at that and say, "Ah-ha.
Here is an area of magic, of power, of the supernatural."
-Hmm. -It's part of the archeo-acoustics,
-or acoustic archeology. -I see.
And the stones are talking,
so it's communicating with us.
TRAVIS: It's really interesting to me how Dr. Garfinkel made
the observation that this particular location
may have been chosen because of the acoustics.
But the real question is, could it have been chosen
for something more than that?
We all have our opinion about what that is,
what it means and what it tells.
We'd love to hear what your take on it is without us tainting it.
-Great. Can we wander? -TOM: Absolutely.
Interesting. Wow.
Little bit of eye candy, huh?
So, what I'm looking at is these curves.
This is part of this "desert varnish"
as it's called, this blackened surface,
and it's-it's formed from water,
wind, air, sun,
and it gets darker and darker and darker.
TRAVIS: Then what do they use
to remove it? What is the...
-Is it an acid, or they rub it? -No.
They usually have a quartz hammer stone.
TRAVIS: Ah, okay.
Now can you see pecking happening here?
Yes. You can see if you look very, very closely.
You can see that this has been pecked
and incised into the rock.
But what I'm looking at is these curves.
It's a metaphor for a serpent or a snake.
For the Euto-Aztek people,
hailing from the Aztecs, etcetera,
we're talking about an animal
that is a metaphor or a symbol
of life and death.
Snakes represents two different worlds,
so it's a guardian to the portals.
The portal is a window into the supernatural.
He just took it upon himself to investigate these sightings.
-There's something to this. -JANILEE: The eyes,
the back end of the cow were
-cut out. -You witnessed this with your own eyes?
Yeah, right here at the ranch.
into the supernatural. w
That right there is-is, uh... is very interesting,
and I don't know if you'd say important to our investigation,
but there is a lot of mythos and legend
about portals opening up around here for hundreds of years.
I mean, that's exactly what this is saying.
Native people would produce images like this,
and they would mirror their cosmology.
They'd mirror their worldview.
And so, if they have a belief about a portal,
if they have a belief about the heavens and the Earth,
this could be memorialized in the rock drawing.
TRAVIS: If this glyph really is a depiction
of a portal that was carved by native people a long time ago,
my questions are, why did they believe that?
And could it not only help get us closer
to an explanation of what we're dealing with,
but could it also explain the things
that have frightened people off this ranch
for more than a century?
The natural feature of the rock
is almost the same shape as the mesa,
and I have hypothesized
that these are star patterns, rising or setting
or what have you, at certain times of the year over the mesa.
Right, there is a thing called "asterisms,"
and so, within the rock art,
within the petroglyphs, they depict
the celestial bodies and the horizon.
And so, very commonly,
there are certain star patterns
and certain stars that would be very significant.
What it actually does align with, and I have looked at it...
-Yeah. Of course. -And you know, I am an astronomer.
-And, uh, this snake pattern at the top... -Yes.
-...looks just like the constellation Draco... -Okay.
-...which is a dragon or a serpent. -There you go.
BRYANT: There are a lot of strange
and interesting things happening on this ranch.
But seeing this pictograph or this petroglyph, and
given all the stories and the history of what have been called
"portals" opening up here at Skinwalker Ranch,
it really has us all taking a step back
and wondering what in the heck really was going on
way back when on this property.
You know, this gives us a lot of things to think about.
We really appreciate you coming out and talking with us.
ALAN: Thank you so much.
TRAVIS: Hey, there's Jim.
He's got somebody with him.
-JIM: Hey, guys. How you doing? -Hey, Jim.
I've got the lovely Hicks family here.
Oh, hey.
While we await the lab results that will hopefully help explain
why the cow carcass on the ranch has gone untouched
by predators for nearly a year,
Jim Morse has brought the family
of Junior Hicks out to meet with us.
I would love for you to come on over and chat
-and get better acquainted. -BRYANT: Okay.
-Yeah, I'd love to. Go to the headquarters? -Yes, sir.
All right, we'll see you there in just a second.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Great. Good to see you.
Sadly, Junior recently passed away,
but he was the preeminent researcher of UFO phenomena
and cattle mutilations right here in the Uinta Basin
for more than 60 years.
And it's our hope that Mr. Hicks' research
might help us going forward as we continue
to investigate the same phenomena.
THOMAS: Junior Hicks was a science teacher here
at one of the local schools and took it upon himself
to start documenting all of these UFO sightings.
Anytime there was any reports,
Junior would drive out there, interview 'em,
collect any evidence that was left behind.
BRANDON: Shortly after purchasing the property,
I had the opportunity to meet with Junior Hicks.
One thing that really piqued my interest was
that Junior had experienced events
on the ranch predating not only the Bigelow investigation,
but also the Shermans.
TOM: Welcome to Skinwalker Ranch.
-Hi there. -Good to see you. Thank you.
BRYANT: Come on up and have a seat.
We loved,
you know, your father and grandfather so much, and so,
we're excited to have you guys here, too.
Sounds amazing. I hate that I never got to meet him.
He loved the area, and he was in... fascinated by the geology
and the terrain, and he just took it upon himself
to, uh, investigate these... the sightings that people had.
And there began to be a lot in the mid-1960s,
and so, over the years,
he just kept a file of, uh, these sightings.
TRAVIS: Well, I noticed that y'all brought a box of stuff.
I was curious of what you might have brought to show us.
-WARD: Sure. -McKAYLEE: You want to look at it?
Something kind of interesting.
Jim-- he asked me to bring documents
to be able to show to the team.
There were a lot of things that I thought were fascinating,
but this one I thought really gave a very broad perspective of
all the data that had ever been recorded
that my grandpa had researched, all in that small folder.
TRAVIS: Yeah, he's even done some statistical analysis on
all the things that people have said they'd seen,
where they are, how big they are, time of day.
WARD: I mean, he just... he wanted
to look at it from a-a scientific approach.
TRAVIS: You know, I don't think
anybody's ever shown data like that before.
ERIK: What a meticulous study he has conducted
for decades.
Material I'd never seen before that attempts to
find some line of reasoning through all the data.
This doesn't exist anywhere in a place where researchers
can go look at it and then start really throwing out
the crackpot stories versus the stories
that, hey, there's something to this.
This is impressive.
TOM: So, maybe we should take all this data
that Junior has done so well
and put it in an actual database,
and we'll be able to pull
and see things in different ways that,
you know, maybe we don't even expect.
BRYANT: Well, let me ask you this.
Did any of you get the opportunity to go with him
and-and meet with individuals or hear any of it firsthand?
Uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we-we... He-he brought us,
and he brought a compass with him, and he says,
"Hey, look at this, watch this."
And we would watch the compass, and it would just go wonky.
It was just...
Nothing made sense on it.
You're saying it was right here on the property?
Yeah, yeah, right here, here in... at the ranch.
-That's important. -And we looked at a cattle mutilation.
What was missing or-or done to the cow?
-It was not an animal. -Not a predator?
-No. -And you witnessed this with your own eyes?
-Yeah. -MCKAYLEE: I'm not exactly sure
necessarily the origin of this photo.
BRYANT: Well, let me ask you this.
Did any of you get the opportunity
to go with him and-and meet with individuals
or hear any of it firsthand?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah. We looked at a cattle mutilation.
TRAVIS: We're meeting with the family
of the late UFO researcher Junior Hicks,
who spent more than 60 years
documenting bizarre phenomena in the Uinta Basin.
But what we didn't know was that members of his family
had their own experiences right here on Skinwalker Ranch.
TRAVIS: Without getting too graphic about it,
I mean, what... what was missing
or-or done to the cow?
Uh, the eyes were-were kind of cut out,
and the back end of the cow
was very, I mean, very precise.
-It was not an animal. -ERIK: Not a predator?
No, no, not-not anything that we would know,
like a wolf or a dog or anything.
You know what I'm saying? Nothing natural.
And you witnessed this with your own eyes?
-Yeah. -That's amazing.
TRAVIS: Although there have been cattle mutilations
going back through history for hundreds of years,
it wasn't until around the 1970s
when enough of them were occurring
that some people in the scientific community
had to start taking it seriously.
In almost all of these cattle mutilation cases,
they find no blood,
and the cows have been mutilated in a way
like it was done with surgical precision
and surgical instruments instead of what you would think
a predator would do,
like a large cat that might tear it apart.
ERIK: Well, everything we've discussed so far
has only piqued my interest
in what else is inside of that box.
MCKAYLEE: So, I'm not exactly sure necessarily
the origin of this photo, but I do know that this is
something connected to the ranch.
-I think I recognize this photo. -Yeah.
He's brought that out before and showed us.
These were rods
that the Bigelow team found out here in this field.
Uh, he actually had the opportunity, though,
to take and try to identify...
He tells the story of trying to cut it.
They weren't able to cut them, they weren't able to melt them,
and Mr. Bigelow ended up taking them, and then...
Junior said that he followed up with Mr. Bigelow,
and Mr. Bigelow said, "Oh, they're nothing,"
and he said, "Well, can we have them back?"
You know, "No."
TRAVIS: In 1996, the Shermans sold Skinwalker Ranch
to billionaire aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow.
He then assembled a team of scientists
who spent the next two decades studying and investigating it
as the National Institute for Discovery Science,
or NIDS.
Bigelow even received financial support
from the federal government.
Much of what they found here has been kept a secret,
but rumors have leaked out
about some pretty disturbing discoveries.
BRANDON: Soon after taking possession
and occupancy of the property, Robert Bigelow's NIDS team
actually started seeing
everything from cattle mutilations
to UFOs to portals that would open up
above the old homesteads.
And those events, I think, underscored
how special this property was as a center of gravity
for paranormal activity.
THOMAS: They found one of those bars.
Junior told of Mr. Bigelow having the team--
-were they on their hands and knees?-- -Yeah, hands and knees.
...hands and knees, crawling through this field here.
BRYANT: And I guess what it was explained to him
was that they thought they were possibly used energy cells
that were dropped by, you know,
some of the UFO phenomena.
Isn't that how you recall
-the story? -That's how he described it.
TRAVIS: Seeing these pictures that the Hicks family brought us
of these rods actually makes me think
of the stories that you hear from the NIDS team
from Bigelow Aerospace
saying that they found metamaterials
here on the ranch.
A metamaterial is something that has specific properties
that change the way light and energy passes through it,
different than normal material.
It does make you wonder.
If Bigelow's actually got them,
and he's got them hidden away somewhere,
could they really be related to UFOs?
And will we find more of them somewhere on the ranch?
BRYANT: Thank you so, so much.
This has been an absolute pleasure, and we're so grateful
that you've come spend some time with us.
-This has been an absolute treat. -TRAVIS: I really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
-Thank you very much. -Yeah, thank you.
JANILEE: We appreciate coming out.
TOM: Hello, Dr. Taylor.
-Can you hear us? -Yeah, I can. Good morning.
KANDUS: Good morning.
I want you to meet Dr. Travis, Taylor.
-Nice to meet you, Dr. Taylor. -You, too.
TRAVIS: Tom and Kandus and I are very eager to hear
Dr. Dean Taylor's analysis of the tissue sample he took
from the cow carcass here on the ranch.
As three people who are actually living here right now,
day in and day out, we're more than simply curious
as to any explanation he can give us
as to why no predators have touched this carcass
in nearly a year.
So, uh, I understand you have the results of this...
-strange cow that we have on our south end of our property. -I do.
With that animal being dead that long, there's...
there is gonna be limited sampling.
So the things that became pertinent history to me
were the fact that this animal was untouched by predators.
So I found that unusual.
I had a conversation with the lab,
and he indicated that certain types
of poisons would cause predators
to stay away from those carcasses.
Luckily, those are the things that we could test for
with these samples, so we tested this animal for arsenic,
cadmium, lead and then selenium.
So, when we ran these samples, though,
all of these samples, they were negative.
TRAVIS: The fact that all toxicology reports
came back negative, it means this cow didn't die
for any mundane reasons, like accidentally eating poison.
So what killed it?
Why other animals refuse to go near it
still remains a big mystery.
-This is, uh... -So, we're into the lungs.
Lungs and heart.
So, you're not seeing anything that shows disease or...?
Just the lungs.
TRAVIS: Last year, immediately after the cow died,
we had a vet perform a necropsy on it
to try and determine the cause of death.
We got a lot of consolidation of the lungs right here.
Most of this black color is postmortem pooling of the blood.
It's very, very possible
that it is stress-induced pneumonia.
Cows, when they get stressed,
stress will bring on pneumonia.
You know, we measured around the cow
right after it died-- it had to be less than an hour
-after it died. -Mm-hmm.
High electric field measurements
and high magnetic field measurements.
And that's one of the things we thought that it
might have been electrical exposure,
uh, that could have, uh,
caused whatever, you know, killed the cow.
But have you ever seen anything like that,
or heard weird stories out here
in the Uinta Basin where, you know, people claim something
rapidly killed their cows, or anything along that order?
Yeah, I've heard the stories, but I don't...
I don't personally know, um,
how that would affect the... the animal.
With the electricity, they'd probably have, uh,
petechia and microhemorrhages
that you could see throughout the body.
I asked the lab, also, about radiation,
and they didn't feel like that would chase predators off
by doing that.
So, I've told clients my whole life that
sometimes a negative answer is still information.
We still have ruled out things.
-Yeah. -Even though in this particular case,
given the length, the time that this animal was dead,
uh, a definitive diagnosis why this animal died can't be given.
TOM: Yeah, thanks, Dr. Taylor.
We'll be in touch if anything happens out here.
TRAVIS: All right, nice to meet you.
-Thank you very much. -Yeah, you, too.
-Have a good day. -KANDUS: See you later. -All right, bye-bye.
KANDUS: It's still crazy that
even this veterinary can't really say for sure
what he thinks killed this cow
-or why predators did not eat it. -Yeah, why it's still out there
and nothing's touching it, and there's,
you know, dead deer carcasses that have just been gone,
like, you know, instantly, almost.
TOM: Well, we got a lot of information.
Most of it is non-information,
but that still tells us something.
Actually, uh, knowing sometimes what the...
the answer isn't
at least helps us look for different
-possible answers. -Right.
TRAVIS: Another mystery to figure out.
I was really skeptical when I heard
all the crazy, bizarre stories that people told
about Skinwalker Ranch.
Now I have to admit that I have my own.
I can't deny what Kaleb and I saw the other night.
How is it connected to what happened to that cow?
And what does the petroglyph have to do with it?
Could it be a key clue that might help reveal the truth?
THOMAS: You know, thing with petroglyphs
is it's a big guess.
Nobody knows exactly what story those are telling.
But to find that on the ranch adds mystery to:
who was it that put it there?
What is it trying to tell us?
What's the story that they were trying to leave?
BRANDON: One of the reasons why I acquired the ranch
in the first place was due to the mystery,
due to, you know, the nature of the claims
that were associated with the property.
I want to get some answers.
I want to better understand
what is causing the phenomenon
that have not only occurred under our watch,
but for decades if not millennia.
-You got the trackers? -Got the trackers.
Each cow we put on the place
becomes a biosensor.
Animals seem to have that sixth sense.
Of all these phenomena that happened when you were here,
-what do you think it is? -It's a portal.
Have you ever tried to open up a portal?
That I haven't done, but we're gonna give it a shot tonight.
Ah, yeah!
THOMAS: Oh, there's a light down in those trees.
Got eyes of something over here! Hey, hey, hey, right here!
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