The Buffalo Ranch Encounters

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The U.S.

state of Colorado possesses a colorful history of strange and inexplicable incidents.

From the San Luis Valley to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, many residents have reported bizarre phenomena including strange lights and cattle mutilations.

In this episode, we will hear the accounts of one man who spent almost a decade in charge of a buffalo ranch on which he would almost lose his sanity.

The day had been long and arduous, and it was well past midnight by the time Jeff Sailors retired to his bed.

He'd spent the afternoon and early evening constructing a new fence line over on the east side of the property, before returning to the ranch house to carry out some chores which he'd been putting off.

He'd not even had his supper until gone 10pm.

Not that he minded, of course.

He hadn't been in this employment long, but he loved the freedom which came with it and found the beauty of the surrounding landscapes intoxicating.

The summer heat had played its part in zapping his energy, and after such a hard day's toil, sleep found him easily enough.

A faint breeze wafted the curtains as he drifted off into a dreamless slumber, and soon Only his gentle snoring could be heard penetrating the otherwise heavy silence of the the night.

Not ten minutes later, however,

he was violently yanked from his repose by the sound of blaring music, which he recognised almost immediately as the opening riffs of immigrant song by Led Zeppelin.

It was so loud.

that the walls of the house and every pane of glass in each of the windows was vibrating so much that he thought they were going going to shatter.

In a state of confusion and still half dazed from being awoken so suddenly, he hurried to the bottom of the stairs in a semi-stoopor before fully coming to his senses.

In terms of sound equipment, he possessed little more than a small radio, which he kept on a shelf in the kitchen.

It was in no way capable of pumping out so many decibels, and after checking the living room, he found that the TV was also switched off.

It soon became apparent that this cacophony was coming from outside, as if the band itself had struck up a concert in his yard.

Assuming that someone had pulled up in front of the house blasting their car radio, He furiously marched over to the front door and grabbed for the handle, but no sooner had he opened it than the music abruptly stopped.

He stepped out onto his front porch and looked from side to side.

It was now deathly quiet.

Save for his own pickup, the ranch yard was empty.

There was no one else in sight.

After examining his own vehicle, He moved off to check the barn and other outbuildings, then looked out over the wide open pastures surrounding the ranch house, but he saw nothing.

Besides his two dogs, he was completely alone.

After a search which lasted no more than half an hour, he returned to his bed not only confused, but completely unnerved.

The music must have originated from somewhere.

But the problem was that he lived right in the middle of a 15,000-acre ranch in a house which was situated a mile and a half from the county road.

Even if someone had managed to get through the three fence lines, all secured with locked gates before even reaching the ranch house, they would have needed a huge rig to even get anywhere near the sound levels he had heard.

It just didn't make any sense.

But then very little about the ranch he was now working on made any sense.

at all.

As individuals go, it would be fair to say that Jeff Sailors has led something of an extraordinary life.

These days, he owns an art gallery in Idaho with his girlfriend Patricia, from which he runs a master horsehair hitching business along with various other crafts.

Born in Colorado, Jeff spent most of his formative years fishing with his grandfather, which went on to develop into an immense appreciation for the great outdoors.

He got into hunting at a young age, and this became a passion, which along with his love of the natural world, would come to define him in later years.

At the age of 18, he moved to Montana, primarily for work, and has spent the past 50 years horsebacking through wilderness as far north as the Canadian border all the way down to New Mexico, leaving hoofprints in some of the most amazing wildlands the US has to offer.

During that time, he has survived two bear attacks, fended off a near-mauling from an angry buffalo, been hit by lightning twice, and has appeared in films with some of Hollywood's most high-profile legends.

He also spent a decade working on a sprawling 15,000-acre ranch, managing over 1,200 buffalo.

And it was during his time here that he would experience some of the strangest occurrences of his life, which would disturb him to his very core.

When Jeff first took on the role of ranch foreman, he had heard whispers within the local community of bizarre happenings, not just on the property he was looking after, but also on those of his neighbours.

He had paid them little mind.

as he had never believed in anything resembling what the rumours seemed to suggest.

But within the first few months of moving into the ranch house, he would have his first glimpse of things to come.

One evening, his girlfriend was staying over with him.

They had gone to bed at around 10 p.m.

when what had otherwise been a calm spring night suddenly turned into a violent maelstrom.

Out of nowhere, fierce winds began to rip at the exterior walls of the house.

Support beams creaked under the tumult.

Picture frames rattled off their hooks and fell to the floor.

The whole house shook as it was being pummeled by what Jeff could only assume was an incoming tornado.

Fully aware that there was no basement, he got his girlfriend out of bed and ran to the nearest closet.

After two or three minutes, the sound reached a crescendo, and Jeff was certain that he was about to meet his maker, when everything suddenly stopped.

Almost as if someone had flicked a switch, the wind had cut out, the rain and thunder had ceased, and the house was now still and silent.

Exiting the closet, he stepped over fallen paintings and moose antlers which had come away from the walls.

and gingerly made his way downstairs.

Stepping out onto his front porch, he looked up to see every star in the sky, with not a single cloud in sight and no hint of even a slight breeze on the night air.

Thoroughly unnerved, he went back inside to clear up the mess and hopefully get some sleep.

But the next day, things would get even weirder.

At first light, he took a walk around the yard and noticed that the ground was completely scoured.

The house sat in the middle of a four-acre enclosure, which had an autogate at each end.

Once a week, Buffalo would run through it and churn up all the ground to the point where Jeff could easily see the tyre tracks of anyone who happened to drive through.

Walking over to the nearest auto gate, He could see his girlfriend's tyre tracks on the other side, made as she had arrived the night before.

But the ground on the side where he was standing was scoured clean.

Upon further investigation, he found a 400-foot circle around the ranch house which was at the dead centre, and all the ground within that circle had been blown clean, as if no one had set foot inside the ranch yard for years.

Needless to say, Jeff began to pay more attention to the stories after that, and it wouldn't be long before he was being awoken by loud rock music or torrents of tropical bird calls outside his house, which seemed to have no source.

It was on the morning after just such an incident that he would experience one of the most eerie events since coming to live and work on the ranch.

Jeff had been out on the property until the early hours, fruitlessly trying to get a bearing on the source of these strange bird calls, when he had finally given up and retired to bed.

Waking up early the next morning, he had traped downstairs to make a pot of coffee in preparation for the day's work.

But as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he was greeted by a sight which took his breath away.

On the floor in front of him were the entire contents of his fridge, laid out in a perfect six-foot triangular formation.

At the time, Jeff had two dogs, an Australian shepherd named Muna, who had once saved him from a buffalo mauling, and a small blue healer pup, which he was looking after for a colleague.

Muna in particular was well adapted to life on a ranch.

and when anyone would turn off the county road, which was a mile and a half away, he would begin to bark and whine and let Jeff know that somebody was coming.

And yet neither of the dogs had made a sound throughout the night to indicate that anyone had entered the ranch house itself.

When Jeff tried to let them out to do their business, they flat out refused to walk across the kitchen floor, so he had to instead take them through the living room to get to the front door.

Outside, Jeff looked for tracks and any indication that there might have been an intruder, but found nothing.

The triangle would become a prominent feature in many of the strange goings-on at the ranch.

On one occasion, the ranch manager, who lived about a mile away from Jeff in a huge 5,000 square foot house, called him in the early hours of the morning saying that he had woken up to find that every single light in the entire property had been turned on, including the lamps next to his bed.

Jeff agreed to meet up with him at first light, but as he went to set off as morning broke, he found silverware from his kitchen drawer, a knife, a fork and a spoon, laid out in a triangular formation just outside the threshold of his front door.

He found more triangles made using his silverware at the entrance to every outbuilding in his yard, and later discovered that the exact same phenomenon had occurred at the ranch manager's house.

But whilst these occurrences were strange and intriguing, they would soon take on more sinister connotations when the livestock on the ranch began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In March, about two months after Jeff had moved onto the property, He would discover the remains of a male buffalo not far from the ranch house yard.

He had heard the stories about the mutilations before he even took on the role and had just assumed that it was the work of predators or malicious actions taken against the ranch owner by possible competitors.

However, he would come to discover some very strange factors in each instance of this phenomenon.

Throughout the years he was there, Jeff would realize that these cattle mutilations always began in March and ran through to October, with nothing occurring during the winter months.

In each case, the carcass in question would always be left in a bizarre fashion.

If the buffalo was female, there would be an elliptical cut on the underside of the abdomen, one side of which looked as though it had been carried out with surgical precision, whilst the other was always ragged and burned.

Many of the internal organs would be removed, but there was never any trace of blood.

In every case, the cow would be pregnant, and the calf would always be removed from the uterus and left resting upon the mother's body.

What happened to the male buffaloes was even more difficult to explain.

In these cases, the penis would always be missing.

But the manner in which it had been severed was a complete mystery.

The penis of a male buffalo is about three feet long and is covered by a sheath of skin which encases its entire length.

Whenever these mutilations occurred, the penis was always cut right at the base near the scrotum before being removed, but the outer sheath remained and was somehow completely intact.

This means that whoever or whatever was killing the buffalo was somehow able to reach right down down into the sheath in order to make the necessary incision at the base, which was physically impossible to do.

In every single instance, an orange triangle would be imprinted somewhere on the body of the slain buffalo, usually on the head if they were bulls, and on the ribcage and calf if they were female.

Over the nine years that Jeff was ranch foreman, anywhere between 20 and 30 buffalo would be killed each year, resulting in annual losses of up to $50,000.

So it was no surprise when local law enforcement got involved.

During Jeff's tenure, the county sheriff was a man named Wally who was very popular in the local community.

Because of the sheer number of livestock being killed each summer, Wally became a regular visitor to the ranch and would witness some of the most bizarre incidents of his entire career.

One experience proved so disturbing that it resulted in him resigning and vacating his office.

Strange fluorescent orbs had been seen floating in and around the property for many years.

and there was some question over whether these anomalies were responsible for the mutilations.

Both Jeff and Wally had spent many evenings chasing them around the ranch, but the strange lights had always managed to evade their attempts to pursue and capture them.

One evening, Jeff was sitting in his living room reading a book when he received a call over the radio from Wally saying that he had a ride along with him and that he wanted to do a patrol of the property.

Jeff agreed that this was okay.

And about 10 minutes later, he saw the glow of the sheriff's headlights as he drove through the ranch house yard and continue into the acreage beyond.

Much of the ranch was rolling country, and every now and then, he would see flashes of the Jeep's high beams emanating from beyond the horizon as it crested hills and descended into gullies.

But about an hour into the sheriff's patrol, The radio suddenly burst into life, with Wally shouting that he was surrounded and that he was getting the hell out of there.

The transmission then went silent, and Jeff tried several times to raise him again, but it was all to no avail.

He went outside into the yard carrying a fully loaded AK-47,

and after about 10 minutes, saw the glow of the Jeep's headlights fading in and out beyond the distant horizon as it negotiated the terrain.

Finally, as it crested the last hill about 100 yards away, Jeff stood and watched, dumbfounded by what he was witnessing.

As the sheriff drove towards him, he could see six green orbs situated in a semicircle surrounding the rear of the jeep.

Wally had two pistols, one in each hand.

and he was firing at his pursuers out of both sides of the vehicle whilst his ride-along coward in the passenger footwell.

As the sheriff reached the autogate where Jeff was standing, the two orbs at the sides of the jeep suddenly blinked out of existence, followed by the next two, and then finally, the back two.

Wally continued driving all the way to the county road without even looking back at Jeff, who was now standing in the darkness of the ranch house yard completely alone and entirely shaken by what he had just witnessed.

Five days later, the sheriff turned in his badge.

During the course of these strange events, the ranch would be visited by a number of individuals claiming to work for different federal agencies, perhaps the most notable of which was the FBI.

On one occasion, Several federal agents stayed on the property, communicating with a fixed-wing aircraft which flew high-altitude circuits across the entire region.

For the most part, these agents kept to themselves, but after speaking to them for a time, Jeff managed to get one of the younger recruits to open up.

The young man ended up saying something which suggested that the FBI knew a lot more about the situation than they were letting on.

And when Jeff brazenly confronted him about this remark, he abruptly left the property and never returned.

A week later, two other men arrived, stating that they had come from a university in Michigan and that they were working on behalf of a federal agency.

They had come to take necropsy samples of one of the mutilated buffalo and were a lot more personable than the previous officials.

As it would happen, a female buffalo had been found mutilated just a couple of days before.

Jeff took them out to the ravine where they dumped the carcasses of all the deceased cattle, and when he showed the two scientists the most recent victim, they were incredulous as to how such injuries had been inflicted.

They were also shocked to see the mummified remains of all the other buffalo which had been mutilated over the years.

and questioned why they were not decomposing in the usual manner.

Jeff related that he had spent a large portion of his life around dead animals, being a hunter and working with horses and mules, and that until he came to this ranch, he had never seen a carcass left untouched by carrion or blowfly,

but nothing seemed to want to scavenge from the buffalo that were mutilated.

Slightly unnerved, They took their samples and went on their way, but not before Jeff had asked them to contact him if they found anything unusual.

After a month or so, one of the two scientists did indeed get in touch, and what they said about the results was bewildering to say the least.

Apparently, the blood had crystallized and become toxic, which Jeff knew could only occur naturally in an animal which had been run to death.

So something must have been frightening the buffalo out of their wits before they finally collapsed from heart failure.

The second strange thing was that on the areas where the precision cuts had been made, testing indicated that the hemoglobin had been heated to over 1100 degrees Fahrenheit.

They knew this because something happens to the structure of hemoglobin when it's heated beyond this point.

Jeff asked them if a laser could have been responsible, to which they agreed that it was the only possible explanation.

The problem was that only the US Army had lasers which were capable of generating that kind of heat, and they needed two semi-flatbed trailers to haul something like that out into the field.

Jeff, despite being a seasoned hunter, had never found any signs or tracks on the ranch which would indicate such an undertaking.

In fact, he had never found a single track of anything whatsoever.

Bedtime stories first came across the tale surrounding this strange property when researching more obscure reports of the bizarre happenings at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.

We stumbled upon a small YouTube channel which had been created by Jeff Sailors in order to document his fascinating life spent in the great American outdoors.

We shared correspondence with him on a few occasions, and despite the fact that he has since gone silent and has not updated his channel for more than two years,

his stories remain and have carved out their own space in a small corner of the internet, which is both haunting and fascinating.

Whilst his accounts carry with them a slightly different flavour to the events which occurred just over the border in the Uinta Basin, The phenomena experienced at both properties is fundamentally similar.

Of course, we are fully aware that we are taking his accounts at face value and very much giving him the benefit of the doubt.

After all, Jeff never did name the ranch in any of his videos and seemed reluctant to give even a passing hint regarding its location, aside from saying that it was situated in eastern Colorado.

He simply referred to it as the Buffalo Ranch, which is clearly not its true name.

And while some may see this as a possible sign of deceit, his fondness for the acreage in question is obvious, despite what went on there, and we can only assume that his silence on the matter is born out of an instinct to protect the property itself and its owners.

We wholeheartedly recommend that you visit his channel, which we'll link in the description, and watch not just the videos in which he talks about the ranch, but also his other stories about his time in the American West.

This might give you some insight into his seemingly genuine down-to-earth character.

The way he tells his stories and the body language he displays is highly compelling, as if he is reliving the memories as he recounts them.

And whether you believe him or not, His assertion that the FBI became involved is entirely true.

Archived Freedom of Information reports, which we have also linked in the description, show FBI correspondence in which they discuss the cattle mutilations and other strange phenomena witnessed in Colorado during the 1970s.

They also discuss how Senator Floyd Haskell had pleaded with them to investigate what was going on for the sake of his constituents.

Jeff provided a vital clue in saying that the ranch was situated in eastern Colorado.

and this, coupled with other remarks he made about the landscape and orientation of the property, plus the FBI reports, leads us to believe that it was located in either Elbert or Morgan County.

And this is only reinforced by the fact that there is another ranch nearby, in which even more disturbing events occurred, and which goes by the pseudonym of Clearview.

Join us tomorrow for that story.

Bed times.