Tales From Skinwalker Ranch - Part One

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From UFOs, wormholes, and cryptids, to cattle mutilations and poltergeists, a remote property in northern Utah has been described as a Disneyland of paranormal and supernatural phenomena.

A case that has turned the heads of even some of the most ardent of skeptics.

In this episode, we recount the tales from Skinwalker Ranch.

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It has been said that Utah, particularly northern Utah and the Uinta Basin, is one of the most active paranormal and supernatural hotspots on the planet.

Everything from unidentified lights in the sky to weird humanoid figures and even Bigfoot have been spotted in the region.

It has a long history of high strangeness, accounts of which date back to the earliest of human settlements.

Three out of every four people in this part of the state have experienced something out of the ordinary, and for many others just passing through, there is a palpable feeling that those dusty roads and bleak landscapes hide something of a dark secret.

Much of the strange activity is concentrated in and around the basin,

but some believe that within that radius, there is an epicenter from which all these bizarre phenomena seem to manifest.

A beautiful 512-acre ranch situated about 100 miles due east of Salt Lake City.

As with any other acreage, it traditionally adopts the name of the current owner, but over time, it has come to be known by another.

The Ute believe this ranch to be the focal point of a curse placed on them by the Navajo.

Tribe members were and still are forbidden from setting foot on this land, as they believe it to be in the path of the Skinwalker.

For this reason, it became known to the locals as Skinwalker Ranch.

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Skinwalker Ranch was owned by the Myers family.

For reasons unknown, they vacated the property in 1987, leaving it empty and unattended for over seven years.

In 1994, it was purchased by Terry and Gwen Sherman.

With their two children in tow, the couple believed that they had found their dream home.

The remote property was bordered to the north by a high ridge, which overlooked its sprawling green pastures, wild thickets of woodland, and its flowing creek to the south.

The entire estate exuded an almost tranquil beauty that was not lost on the Sherman family.

Terry was a high-end cattle breeder, and he hoped that the ranch would provide the space, privacy and security he needed to take what was not only his hobby, but his livelihood to the next level.

He had bought the ranch for an extremely favourable price, far less than what it was worth, and when he signed the paperwork, He accepted the deeds with an excited, disbelieving look in his eyes.

What he now held in the palm of his hand was his ambition, his prospects, his dream.

He could not have known that the land he had just purchased would almost destroy him, not just financially, but also psychologically.

When they had first viewed the property, Terry and Gwen had found the main homestead in a state of disrepair, which of course they had anticipated, given the length of time it had stood empty.

What they did not expect to find, however, was the sheer number of deadbolts securing the home, not just on the front and back doors, but on interior doors and all the windows too.

At the front and rear entrances, they also found heavy-duty chains attached to huge metal rungs, which were embedded into the walls.

It didn't take a genius to work out that these had been used to keep large, powerful guard dogs in place.

Although slightly unsettled by these peculiarities, Terry and Gwen dismissed them, believing that the elderly couple who owned the ranch before them had been paranoid and over-protective.

After all, they had seemed rather eccentric.

In the real estate contract, they had inserted a number of unusual clauses.

For instance, the Shermans were not permitted to dig on the land without prior approval from the previous owners.

These irregularities were overlooked by the family, but somewhere in the back of Terry's mind, he could not help wondering what had spooked them to the point of installing this level of security.

In time, of course, he would come to understand that this idyllic stunning acreage was haunting in more ways than just its serene beauty.

And in fact, the weirdness began almost straight away.

On the very first day of moving in, the Sherman family was unloading a truck in front of their new home when they spotted something on the far side of the pasture to the south.

As it closed the distance, they could see that it was a large wolf, which was loping gracefully towards them in a series of S-turns.

This immediately set Terry on guard, but it wasn't just the presence of the wolf that concerned him.

Scaling it against distant fence posts and bushes, he could see that this animal was at least three times the size of an average wolf, but its behaviour was oddly disarming.

It seemed nonchalant, friendly even, rather than aggressive.

slowing down and then stopping about 50 yards away.

It sniffed the air and gazed at the family with intelligent, piercing blue eyes before continuing, casually padding towards them without a care in the world.

It seemed entirely tame.

It wagged its tail as it approached, and Terry's father, who had been helping unload the truck, bravely reached out to stroke the huge beast.

Sherman Sr.

stood over six feet tall.

And even though he was a big man, its head easily came up to the top of his shoulder.

It quickly became apparent that despite the wolf's intimidating size and appearance, it seemed entirely domesticated and meant no harm.

The rest of the family relaxed and walked over to greet this strange visitor.

Maybe it's somebody's pet, Terry ventured.

glancing nervously at the corral about 70 feet to his left and wondering if it had been wise to move some of his herd onto the ranch so soon.

Inside the pen stood four of his breeding cows and as many calves.

They were all clearly troubled by the wolf's presence, except for one curious youngster which was sticking its head out between the metal bars, watching the scene unfold.

Almost as soon as Terry had realised the danger, The wolf had bounded over the short distance and now had its huge jaws clamped around the calf's head.

The young cow bleated and thrashed wildly as the wolf tried to drag it out of the pen.

Meanwhile, Terry grabbed an axe handle from the back of his truck and rushed over, beating the huge animal's flanks and kicking at its hind legs.

But the wolf paid no attention and refused to let go.

Get my magnum, he shouted.

His son ran across to the truck, grabbed a 357 from the cabin and handed it to his father.

Terry quickly fired a shot at the wolf's abdomen, which rang out across the empty pasture, but it had no effect.

The huge animal did not react in any way.

It did not stagger or yelp.

It didn't even flinch.

It simply continued to ravage the poor calf.

In his desperation, Terry fired again.

Still the gun had no effect.

After a third shot, however, the wolf released its grip and slowly backed off about 10 feet.

The rancher could not believe his eyes.

Very few animals could have survived three shots from a.357 Magnum at point blank range, but this wolf was somehow not even wounded.

There was no blood anywhere on its coat.

Finally, he took a fourth shot right at the animal's heart, and it retreated another 30 feet or so.

There was something incredibly unnerving about the way it just stood there with an unconcerned look, seeming to contemplate attacking the calf a second time.

Terry sensed this and shouted at his son to get his 3006 rifle from the house.

which he did within a matter of seconds.

The wolf remained perfectly still as Terry took aim with the heavier firearm.

He almost felt sorry for the poor beast.

A deafening shot echoed across the wilderness as he pulled the trigger, and in that moment, he knew he had hit his target.

But instead of collapsing to the ground in a heap as it should have done, the wolf simply withdrew another two yards and stood looking at the increasingly unsettled rancher.

Terry quickly took another shot, and this time he saw a chunk of flesh detached from the animal, but even this did not put it down.

Instead, the wolf took a last unhurried look at the calf, then turned and trotted back in the direction it came from.

Terry was dumbfounded.

He knew that he could not allow a large predator to remain on his land if he intended to breed cattle, so he called to his teenage son, and the two of them them proceeded to go after it.

They must have followed the wolf for about half an hour, catching glimpses of it as it ran to the south between patches of cottonwoods and other trees.

The tracks led them through a copse of Russian olives, the other side of which was the flowing creek.

Emerging from the trees, They found themselves on a wide open mud bank.

They could clearly see the wolf's paw prints and immediately followed them, but the tracks abruptly stopped about 40 yards from the water's edge.

Terry and his son could not believe their eyes.

They were standing in a wide open expanse of sodden mud, yet the pawprints ended right in the middle of the bank.

Their only conclusion was that the wolf must have leapt an impossible 40 or 50 yards in either direction to avoid leaving any more tracks.

But But for all intents and purposes, it had seemingly vanished into thin air.

Returning to the homestead, Terry picked up the piece of flesh which had detached from the animal.

He noted that rather than being fresh and covered in blood, it looked and smelled rotten, as though it had been left out in the sun for a few days.

In quiet contemplation, he turned his head to the south and looked out over the pasture towards the horizon, wondering what on earth had just happened.

That was the first day.

The next few weeks were relatively normal, except for a few strange occurrences which happened around the homestead, all targeted towards Gwen.

She didn't report any of these things to her husband at first, as she genuinely thought she was losing her mind.

For instance, she would come home from shopping, unpack the groceries and put them away, then leave the room to attend to something else.

Moments later, she would return to the kitchen to find the groceries all back in the bags as if she'd never unpacked them.

In other occurrences, she would go to take her customary morning shower.

Locking the door behind her, she would place her towel and hairbrush on the side.

When she finished, she would step out of the shower only to find her towel and hairbrush missing.

They would disappear.

A few hours later she would find them in some random location elsewhere in the house.

Things continued like this for some time, and Gwen was getting increasingly worried about her memory.

That was until Terry came in one evening demanding to know who had taken his post digger.

He had been using it to repair a fence in the pasture and had turned away for a few moments to pick up his hammer.

When he turned back, it had gone.

Gwen explained that she and the children had been in the house all evening and proceeded to help him search for it.

However, it was nowhere to be seen.

A few weeks later, it was found hanging in a tree on the other side of the ranch, 75 feet off the ground, which was odd considering that this piece of equipment weighed over 40 pounds and that the only person who could have carried it up the tree was Terry himself.

By this time,

the Shermans were beginning to suspect that something was not quite right about the property they had bought.

About a week before they rediscovered the post digger, A nephew came to stay with the family and Terry took the youngster on a tour of the ranch.

His son accompanied them, and it was well after sunset when they decided to return to the homestead.

A few hundred yards ahead, Terry noticed a set of headlights moving along a distant fence line, well within the boundaries of his property.

He had seen these lights before and had assumed that someone had taken a wrong turn off the road to the east, but now, seeing them again, he suspected that these people, whoever they were, were hunting on his land without permission.

He decided that he would confront these trespassers, and immediately began marching towards them.

But as he picked up the pace, the lights began to move away from him.

His brisk walk turned into a jog, and as the boys followed suit behind him, he wondered why he could not hear any engine sounds.

They had gotten to within a hundred yards when the the lights suddenly lifted off the ground and floated up over some distant treetops.

Terry and the boys stopped in their tracks, bewildered, as they watched them silently continue up into the sky before disappearing out of sight.

During the autumn, these lights became a frequent occurrence, especially as Terry began transporting his prized Simon toll and Angus cattle onto the ranch.

The activity seemed to escalate with the arrival of this high-end livestock, and this is when things began to get serious.

As the winter months rolled in, severe snowstorms battered the region and Terry found himself out at all hours rounding up cattle that had wandered too far astray.

One late evening, He was out on horseback during a whiteout, searching for one of his prize Angus cows which had been missing for almost 24 hours.

He had covered the whole ranch, except for a dense area of woodland to the southwest.

As he approached the large outcropping of trees, he was relieved to see the unmistakable impressions of hoofprints in the deep snow, and he now knew that it was only a matter of time before he located the animal.

He paused briefly as he considered the tracks.

From the spacing, he determined she had been running at full tilt as she entered the tree line.

This was odd behaviour for a cow, especially during a snowstorm, unless of course she had been running from something.

It was unlikely for a predator to be hunting during this weather, but not impossible.

Regardless, he could only see one set of tracks.

He followed the hoofprints for 20 yards into the trees and soon reached a wide clearing.

The tracks continued out into the middle of the open space and then stopped dead.

The cow was nowhere to be seen.

A cold chill ran down his spine as he recalled how the wolf's tracks had stopped in a similar fashion, as if the animal had disappeared or had been sucked up into the air.

He searched for a while longer, but began to lose hope.

In the end, he turned back towards the homestead with a heavy heart.

The only thing Terry loved more than his cattle was his family, and to lose a single cow or bull was not only financially devastating, but it was also heartbreaking.

He had a profound sense of pride in the breeding and rearing of each of his animals.

Over the course of the winter, Four more of his prized cows and bulls would disappear in a similar fashion.

Terry began to spend many nights outdoors, sticking to the shadows and creeping around his property like a spectre, trying to get the drop on who was taking his cattle.

Unfortunately for him, whoever or whatever it was always seemed to be two steps ahead.

The lights seen on his land were now commonplace.

but he could only ever view them from a distance, never up close.

No matter how silently he tried to creep towards them, they would simply move away as if they knew he was there.

But then, in the early hours of one morning, after yet another fruitless night, he was making his way back towards the homestead when a movement in the periphery of his vision suddenly caught his attention.

To his utter shock, He saw a black mass hovering over the ground about a hundred yards to his left, silhouetted against the pale white snow.

Immediately, he hunkered down and quietly observed the strange object as it moved across his land.

To his eyes, it looked like a slightly smaller snub-nosed version of an F-117 Nighthawk.

However, he knew that it couldn't have been an F-117.

because this thing was completely silent, floating about 20 feet off the ground as if defying gravity.

Coloured lights shone from its hull, flitting over the snow as if it was searching for something.

Terry was able to observe it for around 15 minutes as it made its way over to the west before turning back and heading east again.

Sitting still in the cold, Terry's arms were beginning to go numb and his joints cracked as he stretched out his limbs.

In the deathly silence, the sound seemed impossibly loud, but in reality, it was so insignificant that it wouldn't have been heard by anyone standing beyond a distance of six feet.

Nevertheless, the lights on the strange craft suddenly went out.

It then stopped and turned in his direction.

For a few tense moments, Terry's heart thumped in his chest as the object seemed to glare at him.

But to his relief, it turned and silently floated off to the north, out of sight.

In the new year, as the spring rains began to lash the ranch, the family would lose even more cattle, but now they began to reappear, sometimes dead from no apparent cause, other times extensively mutilated.

The nature of these mutilations was bizarre.

Huge chunks of flesh and skin were carved out of the animals, yet there was no blood.

The wounds always seemed to be cut with precision instruments, displaying an almost surgical quality rather than the savage tearing of animal predators.

The Shermans were feeling the stress caused by these losses.

Throughout 1995, The strange activity only intensified.

Events took place that were were frankly, beyond bizarre.

The lights appeared over the ranch almost every night.

More poltergeist activity was experienced in the homestead.

Black featureless entities began to appear, looking in through the windows and later, even entering the house and standing at the ends of beds.

Strange sounds would emanate from the ground.

almost as if there was machinery or railroads operating beneath their feet.

Their neighbours would hear this too.

They also heard disembodied voices, speaking in strange languages, coming from the sky.

One morning, Terry woke to find huge cookie-cutter-like holes dug into his land, with no resulting piles of earth anywhere to be seen.

Somehow, Hundreds of pounds of soil had been silently removed from his property in the dead of night.

In addition to this, strange creatures were spotted walking across the land, from humanoids which resembled Bigfoot to bizarre canine hyena hybrids with razor-sharp claws that would attack his livestock.

There was also an invisible entity that was often witnessed, not the being itself, but the effects of its presence.

Livestock would part and move out of the way as if something big and unseen had run through the middle of the herd.

Water in the canal would be displaced as if large invisible feet were stomping through it.

A smaller creature was also witnessed, which seemed to be shrouded in some sort of cloaking device, much like the alien entity from the movie, Predator.

Stationary orange lights were seen in the sky, which differed from the other ones Terry often witnessed moving in the distance.

The first time he saw one of these anomalies, he was sitting out on his porch on a warm summer evening, when something suddenly appeared in the sky about a mile away from his position.

He had been stripping down his rifle earlier in the day and his high-powered scope was detached nearby.

He grabbed it and proceeded to view the object through the telescopic sight, and what he saw left him in a state of consternation.

The orange object looked like some sort of portal, and at its centre he could see an opening.

On the other side of that opening was a blue sky, even though the sun had long since set.

In his mind, it looked like a gateway to another place.

These anomalies became a frequent occurrence above the ranch, and Terry would later describe seeing odd-shaped craft entering and exiting these openings on several other occasions.

The most disturbing of all the phenomena, though, were the orbs.

They were not as common as the lights or portals, but when they did appear, they were far more obvious, zipping in and out of nearby trees and harassing the livestock.

These were mostly about the size of a tennis ball and had a blood-red colour, but every so often, larger blue ones would show up, and these were bad news.

Nicknamed the Blue Meanies,

these orbs somehow instilled intense fear in those who got too close to them.

Perhaps it was a certain vibration or signal they gave off, which stimulated extreme anxiety.

Terry and Gwen were never sure, but they feared the blue orbs more than anything else they had seen on the ranch.

One evening, Terry was out on his porch again, observing the lights over his property as he often did, when he spotted an ominous blue glow coming from the tree line in front of the house.

He was immediately on guard as one of the blue orbs emerged from the thicket and slowly made its way towards him.

Three of his best hunting dogs were sitting by his side, and the moment they saw the orb, they began to growl and bark.

Without even thinking about it, Terry set them loose, and they proceeded to chase it back into the trees.

Whatever fear it was able to stimulate in human beings did not seem to affect the dogs, and Terry felt his spirits lift as he considered that a small battle had been won.

But then suddenly, Out of the darkness came three pained yelps, and then nothing.

He waited for a couple of hours, but his dogs never returned.

He was far too unnerved to venture out and look for them, but in the morning, he and his son went to search the cops of trees he had last seen them approaching.

Accounts differ somewhat regarding what became of his dogs, but on the ground they found either three quarterised piles of flesh smouldering in the cool morning air, or three flattened carcasses, which looked as if they had been crushed into the ground under an intense pressure.

This was all that was left of his canine companions.

This would prove to be the last straw for the Sherman family.

They had endured much more than they could physically take over the last two years.

They were not getting any sleep.

The kids were doing poorly at school.

Gwen had lost her job at the bank in town, and the whole family had taken to bunking in the same room because of the strange phenomena which was now regularly entering their household during the night.

On top of this, they had lost 14 head of cattle, along with family pets, and they were now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Seeing the remains of his dogs, It was now becoming clear just how much danger his family was in.

Terry had previously contacted a local newspaper about the strange activity taking place on his ranch, and although roundly ridiculed, the story was picked up by other publications.

By chance, it caught the attention of Robert T.

Bigelow, a billionaire businessman who had recently invested a significant amount of money in setting up a scientific team whose purpose was to investigate events of high strangeness.

He offered to purchase the ranch from the Shermans, who were only too happy to accept, and by July of 1996, Terry and his family had vacated the property.

Bigelow's research team were ready to move in by September that same year, and would in fact remain at the ranch for nearly a decade, studying in detail various instances of bizarre activity.

They would ultimately walk away with their own stories to tell, and what they encountered there was every bit as intriguing and downright terrifying as what the Sherman family had experienced.

For the time being, at least, whatever had been tormenting Terry and his family over the last two years was about to receive some unwelcome attention.

It was about to come face to face with a fearless, highly equipped, and well-funded team of investigators who were aware of its alleged presence.

The Hunter was about to become the hunted

is for it.