Life, and Other Stuff

Skinwalker Ranch –

I had long heard the name, and the many legends of the various supernatural phenomena that have allegedly taken place there, but I didn’t know until recently…that there is a reality TV show based on and filmed in the mysterious location. Forgive my cynicism, but this changes my perception of the whole thing by a fair margin. Like so many others, stories like the titillating tales that float from Skinwalker Ranch really get me. If I hear about holes in the space-time continuum, spirit-like entities, teleportation, UFOs, I am almost always, hooked.

There’s a certain romance to the whole sci-fi dripping story. The historied and spiritual grounds steeped in Native-American folklore, the good, honest, god-fearing folk battling with unknown forces on the frontier in the land of dreams, the succession of rich, powerful and eccentric owners that have tried to take the reigns over the years and crack the case, along with all of the out-branching conspiracies about their intentions, connections or cabals they brought with them.

I used to think it was one of the last great mysteries on the planet, that it might one day truly reveal something odd, mystifying and unreal, but that was when the whole situation floated on the distant periphery of my mind. I knew enough about the place to make it mystical and exciting, but not enough to ruin it for myself by investigating and stumbling across the floppy, boring and human reality of it.  Sadly, I think that the spooky and secret-sauced patch of land has floated too close.  Now that I have spent a few hours with the show, there’s a pretty fishy smell in the air.

There are a few things that give me the insidious, niggling feeling that I’m being had, regarding Skinwalker Ranch. First and foremost, is the presence of a reality TV camera-crew. But, pretending that wasn’t the most unsettling part of it, let’s look at it really simply.

For almost a century, Skinwalker Ranch has been a hotbed of inexplicable activity. You name it, its probably happened to someone there, apparently. Cattle mutilations, ghosts and poltergeists, abductions, visions, disembodied voices and sentient, telepathic orbs, werewolf-like creatures and portals to other worlds, this little dusty brown place has had it all. For longer than I have been alive, there have been otherworldly goings-on in the heart of Utah. The ranch has garnered such a reputation that it has been studied, numerous times. At one point, the owner of the ranch, was Robert Bigelow, an aerospace mogul and pioneer who was so deeply involved in the zeitgeist of conspiracy around aliens, ufos, and advanced technology being hidden from the general public, that he oversaw an agency contracted by the US government to study the entire phenomena of unidentified aerial phenomena. During this time, there were reportedly tens of millions of dollars spent ‘researching’ the various supernatural elements at play on the ranch. To what end? Who knows. Apparently, it was a waste of tens of millions of dollars, because Robert Bigelow and his crew refused to ever share any of the results of their fiddlings, before he sold the ranch, to a friend, another millionaire, who wanted to do some ghostbusting to. The next owner of the ranch, just like the last, apparently poured tens of millions of dollars of his money into the research. Again, the results would never be released.

Which leads to the obvious question, with all that activity, for such a long time with so many people watching, there must be some proof, a sliver of a photo, an audio recording, a grainy cell-phone video but no, there is not. This is because, according to a few notable figures in the sphere of the ranch, the ranch is sentient and knows when it’s being observed.

Unbelievable, right? Well, I used to find how unbelievable that was incredible, now I just find it…unbelievable. In a tacky, ‘Ancient Aliens’ tone. There are a mountain of non-disclosure agreements and contractual obligations attached to even visiting the ranch, though most would never even be considered. All of this seems somewhat suspicious now that I think about it more openly. This is all without the camera crew, now that they are in the picture…it gets weirder.

Partly, because they kind of do seem to find…evidence. If, small, insignificant technical difficulties, camera lag, computer glitches and wonky readings constitute evidence. There have been hundreds of tense, dramatic, built-up moments of discovery and revelation in the season of episodes I, quite happily, wasted my time with, but they never amount to anything glaring and grand. The evidence uncovered by the long-standing, televised investigation of the ranch has proven to be in the same vein of sensational, refutable and potentially produced exhibits of proof often seen in ghost-hunting shows, ‘here’s a small and contextual occurrence, you prove it.”

I am not a big TV person, which is why it took me so long to realise there was even a show, but one thing did immediately and forcefully raise a red flag for me, a member of their ‘expert team.’  I recognised one of their dedicated researchers, as Andrew Bustamante.

Before I had encountered him at Skinwalker Ranch, I had seen him floating in other corners of the internet, often waffling on about his experience as a totally cool and super successful ‘CIA asset’ to podcasters and youtubers. I hadn’t paid much attention to him when I encountered him in these contexts, because I felt like he was just another internet personality with a tall tale or two, but if I am wrong, and he really was a high-level intelligence operative, what does that say about the fact that he is now working on a show about supernatural events, at a site that is (through a few different tendrils) connected to the US government?

What I think, is that the connection that this whole mystery has to the world of the UFO is key. In the current state of disclosure, the theory seems to be, that a secretive cabal, embedded within the pentagon or the intelligence community, has secretly been syphoning tens of millions of dollars to research advanced non-human technology with no oversight or accountability.

Would they do that in many different locations? Would they need to ‘launder’ or legitimise the money in some way, such as real estate, or research? How would they keep that quiet?

In one hand, I want to say that it seems like a big smokescreen, scary stories and spooky readings that help obscene amounts of money disappear to who knows where. That the whole thing is a long con to help illicit money and research grants discreetly change hands. The most famous and mysterious front in American history.

On the other hand, the extent of the lore surrounding the place, not to mention the CIA spy that works there, makes me think that the whole thing has just been a red herring, or a distraction. If there really was anything world-changing going on at Skinwalker Ranch, the US government would know, because tangentially they supposedly studied it. If that was the case, would they really hand over the potential historical discoveries that could be uncovered there to a TV show, with their ex-employee who knows so much about psy-ops and subterfuge?