Tales From Skinwalker Ranch - Part Three

32m
In parts one and two, we explored the instances of high strangeness at Skinwalker Ranch, which were made famous by the reported experiences of the Sherman family during the mid-90s. But who owned the ranch before them? And did they experience anything out of the ordinary? In this episode, we go back in time to the early days of this paranormal Disneyland and take a look at events which occurred long before it gained its wider notoriety.

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Transcript

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In parts one and two,

We explored the instances of high strangeness at Skinwalker Ranch, which were made famous by the reported experiences of the Sherman family during the mid-90s.

But who owned the ranch before them, and did they experience anything out of the ordinary?

In this episode, we go back in time to the early days of this paranormal Disneyland and take a look at events which occurred long before it gained its wider notoriety.

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Outside the window, Kenneth Myers could see that the snow was now falling in a blizzard, as gale-forced winds cast the heavy snowflakes into a sideways maelstrom, sticking to everything they touched.

It was the worst winter the region had seen in over a decade.

The incoming storm had brought with it a thick blanket of fog, reducing visibility to just 15 feet as the dimness of the twilight hours began to close in.

He tensed under a shudder as a sudden cold draught brushed at the nape of his neck.

Instinctively, he leaned forward and threw another log onto the labouring fire before him, yet another offering to the gods of light and warmth.

His wife had been preparing a pot of coffee in the kitchen, and was just bringing it through to the parlour when there was a knock at the front door.

The pair stared at each other in stunned silence, the same question resting upon each other's lips.

The children were all inside and accounted for.

Their closest neighbour was two miles away, and they themselves lived right in the middle of a 512-acre ranch over a mile from the nearest county road.

down a mud track which was now buried under a foot of snow.

Just who the hell would be visiting them at this time and in such ungodly weather.

Myers rose from his seat and made his way over to the front door.

He glanced back at his wife in confusion before opening it and was greeted with a most unexpected sight.

Standing about 10 feet away from the threshold was a tall man in a long black coat.

On top of his head, he wore a dark hat.

His feet were sunk into the snow, and he held a lantern down at his side as snowflakes swirled around him in a frenzy.

His features were in shadow, and his voice was almost lost to the wind.

He apologised for disturbing the man and his family, saying that he was with the Sheriff's Department and had just come by to check on their well-being in this harsh weather.

Myers affirmed that they needed no assistance and then questioned the stranger on how he had arrived at his house.

He couldn't see any vehicles parked nearby.

Oh, we have ways and means, said the man, who exchanged a few more pleasantries before turning and going on his way, punching forward against the driving snow.

Myers was just about to close the door when his wife scolded him for not, at least, offering the man some coffee.

Mumbling profanities to himself as he stooped to put on his boots, he then went out into the storm after the stranger.

The cold bit at his exposed skin as he followed the man's footprints.

Up ahead he caught a glimpse of the stranger's silhouette just disappearing into a bank of fog.

He quickened his pace, hoping to catch up to him, but was momentarily startled by a bright flash which came out of nowhere.

His first instinct was to look up, thinking it must have been one of those rare occurrences of snow thunder he had heard about, but never before witnessed.

All he could see were more snowflakes circling above his head in a quasi-vortex, before recollecting himself and continuing to follow the footprints.

But as he reached the inner fence line which surrounded the Meyers homestead, he slowed down, his face a picture of confusion.

The footprints seemed to stop abruptly at the boundary of the ranch house yard, with no sign of the stranger or any other tracks leading away.

It was as if the man had simply vanished into thin air whilst in mid-stride.

Myers glanced about himself in resignation.

He was shocked but not surprised.

Things like this happened all the time on this ranch.

Looking towards the sky, he said, God damn this place to hell.

before trudging back towards his home and warmth.

In 2005, following the publication of Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, many skeptics descended upon their work to ridicule and dismiss the stories put forward by both the Sherman family and the NIDS investigation team.

It didn't matter that the NIDS team members were highly qualified scientists who initially went into the project as skeptics.

All that mattered was that they hadn't presented any video evidence that anything out of the ordinary was occurring on the ranch.

And this was a perfectly valid observation, but one which has become misconstrued over the years.

Many people believe that the NIDS team failed to collect any evidence whatsoever, when in actual fact they did,

most of which is still kept under lock and key by Robert Bigelow.

Some of the footage they recorded has escaped into the public domain, however, which can be seen in the TV documentary, Hunt for the Skinwalker.

Even so, critics of their work were scathing in their dismissal, and one in particular, by the name of Robert Schaefer, bent the truth somewhat to discredit the Sherman family's accounts.

As part of his reasoning, he made the assertion that the family who lived on the ranch before the Shermans had not experienced any strange phenomena in the entire period they had resided there.

But this is not strictly accurate.

In fact, it's not even close to the truth.

Before the Shermans bought the ranch in 1994, it was owned by the Myers family.

Kenneth and Edith Myers acquired the ranch 60 years earlier in 1934, and whilst they themselves remained silent about their own experiences, close friends and acquaintances from the surrounding area have since come forward to relate what members of the Myers family had told them during their tenure.

What follows is a select few of these accounts.

In the second season of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, a TV documentary series focused on unraveling the mysteries of the property, a friend of the Myers family, Chris Porritt, appeared as a guest to relate his experiences on the ranch.

Porritt was a deputy sheriff for Uinter County, who became close friends with Kenneth Myers through their mutual fascination with horses.

Oftentimes, he would be called out to the ranch because of missing or mutilated cattle.

During his appearance on the show, he was questioned about the locks and chains, which the Shermans reported finding on all the doors, windows and cupboards inside the ranch house when they first moved in.

Porritt related how Kenneth Myers had confided to him that everything was locked down because he would get visitors, who carried out what he described as alien activity, that things would go missing or turn up dead, including his cattle.

On one occasion, the deputy sheriff was called to an incident which had occurred just 200 feet from the main homestead.

Two Black Angus cows lay almost symmetrically on the ground.

with their heads pointing towards an irrigation ditch.

All the reproductive organs had been removed and were lying in a heap behind each animal.

Their heads were still attached to their bodies, but the skull and neck bones had been removed from inside the flesh.

There was no blood whatsoever.

Porritt had no doubt that the cows had died where they lay.

Behind them was a cigar-shaped depression in the long grass.

which was measured and found to be approximately 23 feet long end to end.

The lawmen personally believed that this might have been caused by something landing in the field behind the cows.

Another incident, which almost mirrored an event the Shermans would experience many years later, also occurred under Myers' ownership.

The deputy sheriff was once again called out to the property because the rancher believed that three of his heifers had either escaped or been stolen.

Porrett arrived just after sunrise, and both he and Myers set out on horseback with the intention of searching the entire acreage.

By 5pm that day, they had covered the whole ranch and hadn't found a single track.

The heifers were gone, or so it seemed.

Upon arrival back at the ranch house, Myers had already resigned himself to an expensive loss.

He unsaddled his horse and headed over to a small shed in the yard.

Moments later, he shouted over to the deputy, saying that he couldn't get the shed doors open.

With the combined strength of both men, they were able to push the wooden panels in just enough so that Porrick could get his head through and see what was blocking access.

To his utter bewilderment, he saw that it was the three missing heifers.

They were all lying on their side, one stacked on top of the other.

Myers didn't believe his friend until he looked inside for himself, and as soon as he saw the cows, he thought they were dead.

However, Porret was sure they were still alive, as he had seen mucus draining from their noses, meaning they were still breathing.

He told the rancher to fetch a glass of water, and to reach in and pour it over the head of the nearest cow.

Myers did as he was instructed, and all of a sudden, all three cows sprung into life, panicking and almost kicking the small shed to pieces.

Once the two men had managed to get the doors open, the cows ran out into the yard and were soon back with the main herd.

Porret later stated that it was one of the strangest things he had ever seen, and that the cows had seemed like they were drugged.

much like the four angus bulls which the Shermans found in one of their trailers.

He questioned just who on earth could have drugged three cows and stacked them one on top of the other inside a small tool shed.

Perhaps one of the more disturbing things to have occurred on the property involved a young ranch hand by the name of Jimmy Spears.

Jimmy was a drifter who had come to the ranch in 1975 looking for work, and Myers had taken him on.

By all accounts, he was a hard worker who showed up on time each morning and never put a foot wrong.

On a bright summer morning, Myers sent the youngster to mend the fence lines in the southwest corner of the acreage, as the herd had broken through them the night before.

The rancher had told his young charge to go along and do what he could, saying that he would join him later in the day as he had other, more pressing things to attend to.

Jimmy went on his way and simply vanished.

When Myers went to check on him at around one o'clock in the afternoon, he saw that some of the fence posts had been reset and that Jimmy's tools were lying nearby, but the young man was nowhere to be seen.

He assumed that he'd gone off to answer a call of nature or take a refreshment break, but the minutes ticked by and Jimmy did not return.

It was assumed, at least for a time, that the youngster had been spooked by something and had simply walked off the job.

But three days later, he was found shambling along the mud road in the northwest of the property, dazed, confused, and clearly dehydrated.

When he was informed that he had been missing for three days, he became visibly distraught, saying he had no recollection of where he had been.

He said that one minute he was working on the fence lines, and the next, he was waking up in a stupor behind the old abandoned homestead.

Eventually, Jimmy had to move on from this employment and was glad to do so because of a recurring nightmare.

He said that every night, he would dream that he was buried alive beneath Homestead 2.

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Instances of missing time are not uncommon on the ranch.

And one story, which was related during an interview with George Knapp, is particularly unnerving.

We are not certain if the young woman involved in this account was Maya's daughter or an extended family member, as we can no no longer find the specific episode of Coast to Coast which featured this discussion.

In any case, the account came from a neighbour of the Meyers family who was good friends with the female relative in question.

The two young women had been out in Rooswald and were returning to the ranch at around 11pm.

They were just approaching the main gate when they were startled by red and blue flashing lights behind them.

Thinking it was a police cruiser stopping them for a DUI check, the neighbour pulled over and waited for the officer to approach her window.

However, in the next instant, it was morning.

The sun was just breaking over the eastern horizon, and the two women found themselves sitting in the car on top of the mesa, overlooking the ranch from the north.

The fact that the car was situated in such a fashion was nigh on impossible.

There are no vehicle tracks leading up there from the ranch itself, and the rugged, undulating surface of the mesa makes it wholly unsuitable for smaller cars with standard suspension.

There was no way they could have made it across such terrain without damaging the undercarriage or axles.

Suffice it to say that the vehicle had to be retrieved on a flatbed trailer, towed by a tractor.

To this day, the two women have no idea what happened to them during the intervening six hours.

The Mesa is one of the few areas of the ranch which was historically always left unsecured.

Up until recently, there were no fence lines or gates to be found in that area.

On a winter's day in 1981, a young man by the name of Roland McCook was hunting rabbits and raccoons on top of the mesa with one of his friends.

By the afternoon, a heavy snowstorm had rolled in, and as the boys were two or three miles from home, they decided to run down a small trail leading into Skinwalker Ranch and seek shelter in one of the buildings of the abandoned homestead.

Homestead 2, as it is otherwise known, is one of the most foreboding places on the entire property.

It was originally used by the Myers family, and this is where they had their encounter with the man in black, who who knocked on their door in the harsh winter of 1948.

It is one of the most active paranormal hotspots on the ranch, and this is supposedly why Kenneth Myers abandoned it and built the new homestead over on the east side of the acreage.

It has since stood derelict for over 70 years.

When the two friends stumbled across these disused buildings, Roland was hesitant to enter them, partly because he knew he was trespassing, but mostly because there was something about their dark interior which unnerved him.

Nevertheless, the snow was getting much heavier, and after some persuasion, he agreed to take shelter inside the building nearest to them.

As he and his friends stood near the doorway, looking out at the rapidly thickening blanket of snowfall, they heard a scurrying nearby.

Initially, they assumed this was a small rodent which had been disturbed by their presence, but as time passed, the noise seemed to increase in volume.

Suddenly, they were startled by a loud crash from further back in the building.

When they went to investigate, they saw that some old tools had been knocked over.

Then there was another crash.

this time from over by the doorway.

A pile of old clay pots had tumbled and shattered just outside the building.

This stirred excitement in the two boys, as they now knew that whatever was scurrying about was bigger than a rat, and that it was probably a rabbit or a coon.

They hadn't had any success hunting upon the mesa, and they saw this as an opportunity to make good on their efforts.

Stepping out into the storm, They hurried around to the side of the building looking for tracks, but what they saw made them stop short.

Stretching out before them was a set of bare human footprints.

Scarcely had they time to consider just who would be running around in the snow without shoes, when they noticed that after some distance, the prints became indiscernible, before finally appearing to resemble those of a very large wolf or dog.

As they stood there contemplating this, a large wolf-like creature suddenly emerged from behind one of the outbuildings, standing upright on powerful hind legs and reaching a height of around eight feet tall.

It let out a low growl and pointed towards Roland, who in a sheer panic immediately opened fire along with his friend.

The beast emitted a deafening roar before turning and running off into the trees.

At the same time, the two boys, with no regard for the deteriorating weather, sprinted back up onto the mesa and headed straight for home.

That night, as Roland slept in his bed, he heard low growling noises outside his bedroom window, and even the sound of claws scraping along the exterior wood panelling of his house.

This torment would continue long after his encounter, and even now, 40 years later, whatever it is that haunts him seems to have no intention of letting him go.

As we have heard from these accounts, it wasn't just the Sherman family and Nid's team who experienced the multitude of strange and bewildering phenomena on the now infamous Skinwalker Ranch.

These experiences stretch back over decades and possibly even centuries, as people from all walks of life, including the Native American tribes which once resided there, have all shared their stories regarding this mystifying location.

These occurrences did not start with the Myers family, nor with the homesteaders who originally settled the land, and they certainly didn't end with the NIDS team either.

In 2016, Bigelow sold the ranch to Brandon Fugal, a millionaire real estate tycoon, on condition that investigations into the unexplained phenomena continue.

Since the purchase, Brandon has invited a number of scientists onto the property, including astrophysicist Travis Taylor, to study the strange anomalies which exist there.

This exercise has since evolved into a television documentary series titled The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, and it is from this show that some of the accounts in this episode have been retold.

Whilst the new team of scientists has failed to capture much in the way of conclusive video evidence, they have recorded, through other means, indications that there is indeed something extraordinary taking place on the ranch.

From unexplained spikes in background radiation, to anomalous magnetic fields and bizarre infrared signatures, Travis Taylor categorically states that all these things happening at once in such a focused area is something that just doesn't occur in nature.

A high-altitude survey revealed three separate points across the entire acreage with highly magnetic properties.

These points form a triangle, which Taylor believes intersects at a singular point either thousands of feet above the ranch or thousands of feet below, and that despite being highly sceptical of such things, this could potentially create a wormhole through space and time.

For his part, Taylor studied heat maps of major asteroid impacts over the last 100 million years, and found that one of the largest strikes to have hit the North American continent occurred around 10 million years ago.

What's interesting is that this asteroid in particular hit what is now modern day Utah, with the epicentre being situated directly over Skinwalker Ranch.

Strontium and barium were detected in the ground after a deep drilling operation, both of which have radioactive isotopes.

These materials were lumped in with other elements, such as manganese, iron, aluminium, sulfur, and silicon, all the building blocks of modern electronic devices.

Could something else besides an asteroid have splashed down in this region?

And could these materials go some way to explaining at least some of the strange anomalies occurring on the ranch?

Another theory which has come to light fairly recently and which we briefly touched upon in part two is that the ranch is somehow linked to Project Bluebeam, sometimes referred to as Project Skybeam.

Project Bluebeam is a conspiracy theory which postulates that at some point in the future, world governments will collude with each other to stage a fake alien invasion and use the crisis to eventually bring in a one-world government.

It's a fairly deep rabbit hole hole to go down, but it isn't beyond the realms of possibility.

Conspiracy theorists have talked about how the world is secretly controlled by a very small group of people who wish to reduce the world population to less than half a billion and bring the remainder under what they refer to as the New World Order.

a highly centralized system of government with total control over everything we do.

In order to achieve this, they would need to manufacture a number of crises, which would cause the masses to effectively seek protection from their governments and trade their liberty for safety.

Many conspiracy theorists, from Alex Jones to David Icke and many in between, have for many decades talked about the various emergencies they would use, from pandemics to world wars, financial collapses, food shortages, power outages, cyber attacks, solar flares, climate change and yes, even a fake alien invasion.

We've already had a pandemic and depending upon who you listen to, there may be a much worse one just around the corner.

But what are we seeing when we watch the news or read the papers?

We're practically already on the brink of World War 3.

Most Western nations are in spiralling debt and the US dollar is the weakest it's ever been.

There is constant talk of food shortages, blackouts, cyber attacks from Russia and China.

We're told the Earth is regularly under threat from huge solar storms, climate change is a constant concern and reports of UFOs and government officials stating that aliens are real seems to be a frequent occurrence.

So what has all this got to do with Skinwalker Ranch?

Well,

if the military-industrial complex really really intended to stage a UFO invasion using holograms, surely they would need somewhere to test the technology out.

A remote farmstead with just enough people to experiment on, but not enough to cause mass hysteria, would seem to be the perfect location.

And given what the remote viewers said about how the phenomena had links to the US military, This begins to make some sense.

On the other hand, as we have already stated, the high strangeness has been occurring at the ranch for centuries, before the military-industrial complex even existed.

Or at least, that's what we have been told.

Could all the historic stories be nothing more than fabrications to perpetuate the PSYOP?

Perhaps it's a combination of both real and fake paranormal occurrences, perpetuated by whatever sinister forces reside there, as well as the US government.

When all is said and done, there is still no conclusive video evidence which supports claims of strange phenomena.

And yet, despite this lack of proof, there is something highly compelling about the witness testimonies, which stretch back over hundreds of years, and which keep many of us in absolute awe of the place.

The Myers family didn't divulge anything about the weirdness which occurred on their land to the Shermans, and the Shermans themselves came from out of state, so were not party to any local hearsay concerning the property.

And yet the two families experienced very similar phenomena.

Many a sceptic has visited the acreage, only to come away with no explanation for what they have seen, and it seems almost a cop-out to simply dismiss every single story as mere fabrication.

Either you believe these accounts, or you don't, but none of us can rightly say that we know for sure, at least until we visit the ranch for ourselves.

In closing, it has often been said that Skinwalker Ranch is unique, that no other place like it exists on the face of the earth, but this does not seem to be the case, for there is another ranch just over the border in Colorado, which rivals and in some cases even surpasses, surpasses the weirdness which takes place here in Utah.

Make sure you join us for that story.

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