Ancient Aliens s15e10 Episode Script
The Mystery of Skinwalker Ranch
NARRATOR:
In a remote valley in Utah,
there is a ranch
that some say is evil.
GEORGE KNAPP: Bad things happen to people on that property.
There's danger there.
It's real.
NARRATOR: Terrifying creatures prowl the land.
TRAVIS TAYLOR: There's stories of cloaked beasts running out of the woods and chasing people.
This thing comes right up to this guy and roars.
NARRATOR: Ominous lights appear in the sky.
I have personally watched as portions of the mesa appeared to glow.
NARRATOR: Animals are found slaughtered.
They had prized cattle taken and mutilated.
NICK REDFERN: It's not just UFOs.
It's not just strange creatures.
It's not just animal mutilations.
It's everything.
TOM WINTERTON: There are things that have happened here that have shaken me to my core.
NARRATOR: What is behind the strange phenomena that takes place on Skinwalker Ranch? And could solving the mystery change our entire reality? JEREMY CORBELL: There is something profound that is going on at Skinwalker Ranch and it begs to be studied.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
(bird screeches) NARRATOR: Uintah County, Utah.
Nestled in a deep valley, surrounded by some of the highest mountain peaks in North America, is an infamous 512-acre patch of land known as Skinwalker Ranch.
The native Utes warn of a dark presence that exists in this area, where strange sightings in the sky, encounters with terrifying creatures, animal mutilations, and numerous other paranormal activities have been reported for centuries.
Skinwalker Ranch has become this nexus of activity where people are reporting strange things.
It's in an area in Utah that's very much like a desert terrain, and what's there now is high desert prairie, kind of, area.
Now what it actually is and what's going on there is a whole other question.
CORBELL: It's a very unique place in the world where the phenomenon expresses itself in dramatic form.
It's also the most scientifically studied UFO or paranormal hot spot in history.
NARRATOR: Native American legends say that there has been an otherworldly presence at Skinwalker Ranch for as long as humans have existed in the area, which, according to archaeological evidence, is at least 10,000 years.
And the very first European settlers to pass through this land in the late 1700s had their own bizarre experiences, which they recorded in their journals.
KNAPP: The first Europeans to cross the Uintah Basin, the, uh, Franciscan monks, reported seeing things over their campfires at night, really weird objects that we would call UFOs.
The Native Americans, the indigenous tribes have been there, have had these experiences for generations.
It has, for as long as humans have lived there, it's been the site of paranormal activity strange things in the sky, UFOs.
There are so many stories about Skinwalker Ranch that range from cattle mutilations going on.
There're stories that if you dig on the property, you'll get sick.
Even strange stories of cloaked beasts running out of the woods.
You've seen UFOs.
They have seen different creatures.
They have seen weird things happening up in the sky.
So you have all these different phenomena that happened on that ranch, so some have referred to it as a veritable Disneyland of the paranormal.
NARRATOR: The most notorious of the paranormal phenomena associated with Skinwalker Ranch is the creature for which the property is named.
The association of the skinwalker with this mysterious plot of land can be traced back to the mid-19th century.
In January of 1864, land disputes between Navajos, Utes, and the United States military in Utah and Arizona reached a fateful tipping point.
After decades of conflict, the military removed the Navajo people from the area, forcing them to make what became known as "The Long Walk" to New Mexico.
The Navajos blamed the Utes for helping the military, and so they cursed the land that the Utes lived on up there.
And it must've been a pretty strong curse because, even today, there are really interesting things that happen up there.
NARRATOR: Cursing the land, the Navajo witch doctors attempted to conjure an entity called a "Yee naaldooshii," or "skinwalker.
" The skinwalkers, they're sort of typically six to seven feet tall, very dangerous.
It's described as being wolf-like, but walking on two limbs.
So, inevitably, it sort of provokes imagery of a werewolf.
DOVER: The subject of skinwalkers is as serious as a heart attack.
This is not something to trifle with.
Even talking about them puts me in some danger.
The skinwalker is somebody who is evil.
They want to control people, communities, regions, and have that power over people, and they do this by fear.
JIM MORSE: The Utes, to this day, are very respectful.
They're very mindful.
Matter of fact, they stay at an arm's length, um, from the Skinwalker Ranch.
Uh, they firmly believe that this ground is cursed and that, not only the Uintah basin, but this concentration of this phenomenon, this host is on the Skinwalker Ranch.
NARRATOR: Could a monster known as the skinwalker really stalk the grounds of Skinwalker Ranch? And if so, was it conjured up by Navajo witch doctors? Or is it connected to the paranormal, and perhaps otherworldly, activity that has been reported on the property for centuries? Investigative journalist George Knapp was one of the first reporters to expose the strange stories at Skinwalker Ranch back in the mid-1990s, when he conducted extensive interviews with the Shermans, the family of ranchers that owned the property.
This guy shows up one day while the ranching family is still there.
He's built like Grizzly Adams, big burly guy with a beard, he said he'd been drawn to the property, and he talks to the rancher and says, "I just need "to meditate for a couple of minutes.
"I'm drawn here.
I need to do this.
Can you let me on the property?" The rancher kind of bemusedly says, "Okay, come on in.
" He lets the guy in.
The rancher and his son escort him to the middle homestead and the rancher and his son are watching the guy and just kind of chuckling to themselves.
They hear this thing in the brush, and then they look over and there's something moving.
And then it comes out of the brush, right up to where this guy is, and it-it looked like the creature in Predator with the camouflage, the opaque c-camouflage, the invisibility technology.
This thing comes right up to this guy and roars.
(roaring) KNAPP: Scares the hell out of this guy who opens his eyes, flies back, lands on his back.
The rancher and his son go rushing over to him.
He's petrified, grabbing them, won't let go.
They escort him off the property and he swears it's the devil, it's Satan, you're gonna burn for this kind of stuff.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the terrifying creature witnessed by both the ranchers and their mysterious visitor was what the Navajo call a skinwalker? Was it a being from another world? Even another dimension? Such stories have inspired countless curiosity seekers to make pilgrimages to the ranch.
But for those who have lived and worked there, like current ranch superintendent Tom Winterton, Skinwalker Ranch is not a place to be taken lightly.
I'd been warned not to dig on this ranch, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous.
Yeah, it's-it's a ranch, for crying out loud.
That's what you do.
You dig fence holes, you dig ditches.
And so I paid zero attention to it.
And whether it's related or not, I ended up getting this severe head injury that causes my head to swell up.
I had fluid that separated the fatty tissue from my skull, and to this day, my doctors still haven't come up with an explanation of what happened.
What they did say was that what happened to me just was not medically possible, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that there are things that have happened here that have shaken me to my core.
When we patrol the-the perimeter of the place, both on foot and with our vehicles, um, we are heavily armed.
And that's not necessarily because we're looking to hurt anybody.
It's more of we don't know what we're dealing with, - and it's a dangerous place - Morning.
MAN: Hey, Caleb.
How you doing, man? ARNOLD: Between the natural things that are here and then also the unknown.
NARRATOR: What could possibly explain so many incredible encounters being reported on a single 512-acre stretch of land and by multiple groups of people over a span of hundreds of years? Do the many accounts of UFOs point to an extraterrestrial connection? Perhaps further clues can be found by more closely examining the stories of the skinwalker and its connection to ancient gods.
The mid-1990s.
The current caretakers of the ranch, the Shermans, are entering their third month on the property when they begin to experience what they believe to be paranormal activity.
They give their accounts of the strange events to investigative journalist George Knapp.
So, the wife goes grocery shopping, she buys enough food for a couple of weeks.
She comes home, takes all this stuff out of the bag, puts it in the cabinets and goes out of the room, comes back, all the stuff's back in the bags.
She takes a shower in the morning, locks the door, has a towel and a hairbrush.
Gets out of the shower, the door is still locked, but the towel and the hairbrush are gone.
The hairbrush is found later in the freezer.
NARRATOR: Initially, it was only Mrs.
Sherman who witnessed the poltergeist activity on the ranch.
But it wasn't long before her husband had his own experiences.
The rancher's out using a post hole digger, digging this big, heavy piece of equipment.
He's digging holes to put fencing in.
He stops for a second, wipes his brow, looks around, the post hole digger is gone.
He finds it three weeks later, 75 feet up in a cottonwood tree.
NARRATOR: The Shermans' experiences, while bizarre, are not unique.
We're gonna pull some data up here that we took, - so lets take look at this.
- NARRATOR: Members of the team currently investigating Skinwalker Ranch have reported similar poltergeist-like phenomena on the property.
One of the weird experiences I've had is I was in my bedroom in the command center trying to go to sleep.
There was no one else around.
And it felt like someone came up and kneed the bed.
- (wood creaking) - And it jostles the whole thing.
I got up and wandered around to see if something happened.
There was nothing really that could've made just a big shake of the bed as if some individual had bumped into it.
WINTERTON: I've heard voices on multiple occasions.
I've had individuals with me that heard the voices, too.
The interesting thing is is that I have no idea whether that's an actual audible voice or something that's playing out in my head.
And there are specific places on the ranch where you walk into it and it's almost as if you're walking into a room of people.
You're, like, asking, "excuse me," as you walk through the space, 'cause you feel like you're gonna bump into somebody.
NARRATOR: But if paranormal activity really is occurring, what could be causing it? Author and researcher Lynn Picknett believes that all of the strange phenomena occurring on Skinwalker Ranch must be interconnected.
When you're looking at the phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch, you're looking at all sorts of manifestations.
But perhaps, really, you're looking at one phenomenon.
Certainly, one of the most dramatic type of phenomenon ever in paranormal is a poltergeist phenomenon meaning literally "noisy spirit," but a destructive haunting.
It's very likely that all of the various, multifarious, uh, paranormal incidents at the Skinwalker Ranch are caused by one entity or one source of energy, and it's not good energy and it's not a good entity.
NARRATOR: While paranormal researchers often attribute poltergeist phenomena to either a spiritual entity or telekinetic energy, according to the Navajo, it also fits the profile of the skinwalker, which is a shape-shifter and a trickster.
The, uh, idea of the skinwalker being a prankster comes from a lot of Navajo tales where they talk about the coyote being a trickster.
But the skinwalker doesn't always use the guise of a coyote, he'll use the guise of a wolf.
He'll use anything that he has the skin for.
Uh, it's said that they can change into owls, they can change into crows or ravens, um, they can change into bobcats if they have that skin.
Our view on it is that they're manipulating the DNA of their own body.
NARRATOR: Stories of beings like the skinwalker that change shape and deceive humans can be found in cultures throughout the world.
Sometimes identified as trickster gods, they are often described as coming from another world, or another dimension.
We have the Scandinavian stories of-of Loki, who's very much, uh, of a trickster.
We have Celtic stories of the-the fairies who are also tricksters.
We have stories of-of Krishna being also a trickster-type god who likes to make jokes on people.
So, throughout the world, we have these stories of trickster beings who can also shape-shift into other bodies.
This seems to be some entity, uh, an extraterrestrial, who's acting as a skinwalker.
Perhaps he's an alien who's caught in this interdimensional doorway and manifests from time to time and ultimately terrorizes this ranch.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the skinwalker is an extraterrestrial being that has crossed over from another dimension? A parallel universe? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that in addition to the stories of trickster gods, primitive rock art provides evidence of an otherworldly connection.
At Nine Mile Canyon, just 60 miles south of Skinwalker Ranch, mysterious-looking creatures abound with giant antennae and oddly-shaped heads.
For many members of both the Navajo and the Ute tribes, they represent ancient visitors from the stars.
When you see these figures, I have been told that these are star people, these are people from, uh, other worlds or other dimensions that have shown up and, uh, met and communicated with the, uh, ancient people that live there.
A lot of the rock writing that have what might be considered portals that are like a spindle are holes within the universe that allow you to go into different dimensions.
NARRATOR: Not far from Nine Mile Canyon are similar petroglyphs, at Sego Canyon, San Rafael Swell and Temple Mountain.
TSOUKALOS: They look like spacemen.
You have these strange creatures that, for all intents and purposes, seem to be floating up in the sky.
Hey appear to wear helmets.
Very strange.
CHILDRESS: These figures have vortex symbols around them.
You have to wonder exactly who is making these petroglyphs and what they were seeing, because they look like they're extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: Do the petroglyphs in the areas surrounding Skinwalker Ranch point to Utah being a place of ancient and perhaps even modern alien visitation? And do the spiral petroglyphs indicate that there could even be some sort of portal in the Uintah Mountains, opening to other dimensions? Fort Duchesne, Utah 17-year-old Larry Cesspooch is with his friends driving along an infamous stretch of road near Skinwalker Ranch.
As they approach a spot known as Dead Man's Curve, named for the high number of car crashes that have occurred there, they spot a bright object in the sky.
We were driving around, with a bunch of us, and we come around Dead Man's Curve and, uh, the driver looked in his rearview mirror and said, "Oh, what the heck is that?" It was a fireball, and that fireball was coming up behind us.
And so we told him to go faster, and this thing just flew over our head.
When I told my mother, she had talked about a similar incident when she was younger.
And other tribal members have seen that fireball.
NARRATOR: Other reports indicate that the local residents have been regularly witnessing similar strange events, both in and around Skinwalker Ranch, for decades.
The various accounts describe flashing lights, floating orbs and UFOs.
ARNOLD: In this entire area, there have been hundreds of reports of UFOs, you know, multiple people seeing the same ones.
This particular part of the area has kind of gotten the nickname of UFO Alley because of the number of those sightings that had been reported.
JOHN ALEXANDER: We did see tears.
We had openings in the sky, voices, crafts coming through, orbs.
Is that E.
T.
? Uh, hard to say.
Reality of the events is absolute.
ERIK BARD: I have personally watched as portions of the mesa, as large as 500 to 600 feet, appeared to glow.
We may be looking at a terrestrial light source, or we may be looking at something far more interesting.
NARRATOR: In the 1990s, the owners of Skinwalker Ranch also witnessed strange orbs in the sky.
When they relayed their experiences to George Knapp, he found that the UFOs were tied to the other paranormal activity taking place on the property.
They start hearing heavy footsteps outside their bedroom window at night.
Then they start seeing these dark, humanoid shapes in the windows at night.
(creaking) Then they start hearing the footsteps inside the house.
(heavy footsteps) Then they wake up at night, and there's the thing at the bottom of their bed.
They would go out at night, they'd walk around, they'd start hearing disembodied voices in the sky above their heads, speaking some strange language, almost like mocking them.
They start seeing little orbs floating around, seemingly intelligently controlled, flitting around in the trees.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that reports of floating orbs, poltergeist activity, and the creature known as the skinwalker are not separate phenomena? Might they be better understood by considering them all together? Another story told to George Knapp by the Shermans may reveal yet another aspect to the Skinwalker Ranch mystery.
KNAPP: The first day they're on the property, they see an animal of some sort over on the brush line, and it starts coming toward them.
The men realize, "That's a wolf.
" It's huge.
The back of the wolf came up to the middle of his chest.
(snarling) They petted this thing.
It was a real, physical creature.
- Now, the calves are in the corral.
- (distressed lowing) They're all backed up against one side, scared of this wolf.
Except one calf makes the mistake of sticking its snout out between the bars of the corral.
- (growling) - The wolf sees it leaps in the air, like, 20 feet, chomps down on the head of this calf and is trying to drag it out of the corral.
His son grabs a .
357 out of the truck and brings it over, Dad pops a shot into this wolf.
No yelp, no blood, no anything.
Shoots it a second and third time.
Now this is the fourth shot they've put into this wolf, and then a fifth shot goes right into the chest, a chunk of flesh and fur comes popping off the side and falls on the ground.
And this wolf just casually turns around and starts walking away, he's had enough.
Five shots in this thing and didn't kill it.
NARRATOR: The Shermans say they pursued the wolf into the brush, following its tracks on the wet ground.
KNAPP: They get to a clearing beyond the brush, a muddy area, the tracks go all the way out into the middle of the muddy field and stop.
It's gone.
It's as if it had been sucked up into the sky.
NARRATOR: Later, when the Shermans told this story to a group of scientists that had come to investigate the ranch, they were shown a series of photographs and asked if any of them resembled the animal they encountered.
KNAPP: They have a lineup of different types of wolves, to ask each of the family members, show us what this looked like.
And the one that they all identified is what's known as a dire wolf.
Dire wolf, of course, has been extinct for 10,000 years.
NARRATOR: If a dire wolf is, in fact, what the Shermans witnessed, could it present another clue as to what is happening at Skinwalker Ranch? Many ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer is simple.
According to them, the ranch most likely contains some kind of interdimensional portal, one that would allow, not only travel from one dimension to another, but to various points in time and space.
And they also believe that the man who knows the truth is the eccentric billionaire who recently owned Skinwalker Ranch, Robert Bigelow.
NARRATOR: Skinwalker Ranch.
1996.
Following two years of non-stop paranormal and extraterrestrial phenomena, the Shermans are driven to sell the ranch.
The purchaser is a man almost as mysterious as the property itself.
The study of Skinwalker Ranch first began with private industry.
It was a man named Robert Bigelow.
And he put together a team of scientists to study the phenomenon and what was occurring at the ranch.
The ranch played the role of a living laboratory to really be able to focus scientifically and try to understand what is going on at this ranch.
NARRATOR: Billionaire Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow made his fortune in real estate.
But since then, he's turned to investing his money in aerospace, and the goal of searching for extraterrestrial life.
KNAPP: It came to the attention of Robert Bigelow, who's probably spent more money pursuing the UFO mystery than any person in history.
He flew up, met with the rancher, uh, took his team up there, heard the experiences himself and bought it.
He put a team of scientists on the property, cameras, scientific gear, so for the next seven years after he bought it, he had people on the property pretty much 24-7.
I was with, uh, Bob Bigelow the day he went up and, uh, physically bought the ranch.
I was the first one to spend the night on the ridge overlooking the ranch itself.
Bottom line is, some very, very strange things happened there that just defy description.
NARRATOR: The year before the purchase of Skinwalker Ranch Bigelow had founded the National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDS.
Staffed with personnel from a variety of different disciplines, NIDS was formed to study a wide range of unexplained events, from the supernatural to the extraterrestrial.
When Bigelow moved into Skinwalker Ranch, he took his NIDS scientists with him, mounted cameras and other monitoring devices over the entire property, and sought to study the paranormal phenomena up close and in person.
He even built a laboratory on the property.
He also protected the perimeter of Skinwalker Ranch with impenetrable security, and has kept his findings hidden from the public to this day.
TSOUKALOS: You have to ask yourself why would Bigelow throw millions and millions of dollars at that particular project? What's going on there? And interestingly, Robert Bigelow, after he sold this ranch, never came forward to release what he actually experienced.
He kept all this information to himself.
Okay, either he's not saying anything because it's so incredible, or because there's nothing there.
So because he's such an elusive figure, it's a question, which one is it? NARRATOR: While Robert Bigelow did his best to keep his investigation of Skinwalker Ranch off the public radar, he himself became front page news on December 16, 2017, when The New York Times ran an explosive story entitled "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious U.
F.
O.
Program.
" The article reported that in 2007, $22 million was allocated for a top-secret U.
S.
government to investigate UFOs, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.
The driving force behind this project was none other than Robert Bigelow, whose company Bigelow Aerospace conducted the bulk of the research from their headquarters on Skinwalker Ranch.
LINDA MOULTON HOWE: Bigelow Aerospace is the one who received most of the $22 million to do aerospace investigations.
All of the news that came out in mid-December, and nobody ask anybody, "What about the warehouse that has extraterrestrial artifacts in it?" NARRATOR: When questioned about AATIP, government officials have stated that it was meant to identify craft not from other worlds but from other countries.
However, this view is not shared by Robert Bigelow.
Did his investigation of Skinwalker Ranch convince him that extraterrestrials are present on Earth? Rumors include having found some exotic materials on the property.
There's talk of certain rods made up of exotic elements from the periodic table.
Some kind of base or perhaps an ancient alien artifact beneath the property.
The findings of Bigelow's team have never been fully disclosed.
There are all sorts of rumors and stories about things that happened while the Bigelow team was here on the property.
They talked about the side of the mesa opening up and a spaceship flying into some sort of underground base.
NARRATOR: Could Robert Bigelow's experiences confirm that Skinwalker Ranch is not only a place of extraterrestrial visitation but also contains a portal through space and time? Some ancient astronaut theorists suggest that there is something even more profound at work and that Skinwalker Ranch isn't only a special place on Earth but an important location for the universe.
NARRATOR: At Skinwalker Ranch, a number of strange happenings have been reported.
Everything from sightings of prehistoric beasts and poltergeist activity to shape-shifting monsters and mysterious orbs of light in the sky.
But one detail seems to be consistent: The manner in which these frightening phenomena suddenly come about, as if out of thin air.
Could it be that some sort of portal through space and time really does exist in this area, as many ancient astronaut theorists believe? And while most of Robert Bigelow's activities on the property have remained top secret, investigative journalist George Knapp was able to learn of at least one extraordinary encounter.
There was one night, the one of the most dramatic things that happened, there, two of the scientists these are PhD-level people.
They walk around the middle homestead and two guys are up on Skinwalker Ridge looking down.
They've got infrared equipment, watching.
And one of them with the infrared sees what looks like a dirty snowball of light just hovering a couple of feet off the ground and he walkie-talkies these guys down there, "Hey, do you see it?" "Yeah, we see it, it's kind of vague.
" Then he says, "Hey, something's happening, it's changing.
" Our guys are on the ridgeline looking down, and you see a light appear above the ground expand.
KNAPP: This ball of light was stretching out.
It became a tunnel of light.
Into this tunnel comes a humanoid figure.
Some kind of monster reached up, pulled his shoulders and come out.
KNAPP: Seven or eight feet tall, black, featureless.
When it gets out, the tunnel collapses into a ball again.
It was almost as if it was a dimensional tunnel, that it was coming from some other reality.
NARRATOR: According to both the Navajo and Ute tribes, such portals do exist.
You have to go back to the story of the emergence of the Navajo.
The story there is that they went through several underground worlds, and in coming to this world, through a hole in the ground, or through a portal, if you may.
CESSPOOCH: There are holes portals, if you want to call them that within the universe that allow you to go into different dimensions, and those have existed for eons.
So those who know about them can travel back and forth.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists point out that emerging scientific theories support the Native beliefs that other dimensions not only exist but that travel between them is possible.
REDFERN: Quantum physics, essentially, allows for the existence of multiple dimensions that coexist with ours.
What we're seeing at places like the Skinwalker Ranch are strange creatures, unusual entities coming through the portals and the doorways.
It's entirely possible that creatures and beings from other realms of existence could quite literally jump from their dimension into our world.
More and more, scientists are talking in these extraordinary esoteric terms about very powerful places where realities blend or blur together.
From the descriptions of Skinwalker Ranch, this could well be one of those bleed-over places.
NARRATOR: While the theory of a portal at Skinwalker Ranch may seem incredible, futurist Caroline Cory takes it even one step further.
CAROLINE CORY: We know that the physical universe is based on geometry.
We are now predicting that there is a matrix, a grid patterning system around the planet that is a web-like structure with specific entry and exit points that allow certain phenomena to happen that seem supernatural or paranormal.
If there are tears exactly at these locations, you're going to have all kinds of anomalies that would happen because of these tears.
You're going to perhaps, uh, see an anomaly in the sky or you could also see a prehistoric animal cross over because there's a tear in this fabric of space itself.
NARRATOR: A tear in the fabric of space? Could it be that Skinwalker Ranch is not only home to a portal, but some sort of cosmic tear through which entities from other dimensions, other parts of the universe and even other points in time could be entering our world? Local tales and traditions do, in fact, support this theory.
DOVER: A lot of our investigations have found that these things are coming in, uh, through unknown portals.
Whether the portals are in the sky or on the ground.
What we've seen from people describing this to us is they hear a loud pop.
That the sound actually travels through your body physically, and it jolts you.
NARRATOR: Could there truly be a scientific explanation for the various phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch? One that humans are not yet equipped to fully understand? Maybe a more important question is should we seek to get to the bottom of this mystery at all? Or are we better off just leaving Skinwalker Ranch alone? There are some who believe that while Skinwalker Ranch is a dangerous place, it may also hold the key to humankind's ultimate survival.
NARRATOR: After conducting a 20-year investigation, the NIDS team ceases all operations on Skinwalker Ranch.
Robert Bigelow has sold the property.
Robert Bigelow owned the property for 20 years, and in 2016, he sold it.
He'd had enough.
And one of the reasons that he and his team didn't want to have that property anymore is because there's danger there.
It's real.
Bad things happen to people and animals on that property.
NARRATOR: Fortunately, the person Robert Bigelow has sold the property to is committed to continuing with the investigation, Salt Lake City real estate entrepreneur Brandon Fugal.
MORSE: This new owner here, his obsession and his willingness to really put his money where his mouth's at, it's a new game.
- Tom.
Oh, my friend.
- Hey, good to see you.
BRANDON FUGAL: I was approached by several scientists that had worked with me on a past project, were close confidants of Bob Bigelow, and they saw an opportunity for Mr.
Bigelow to pass the torch to someone who not only had the bandwidth but the resources to really take the investigation and the scientific effort at Skinwalker Ranch to the next level.
It's the greatest science project of our time.
The team that I have handpicked all bring complimentary skill sets to the table, whether it be in areas of scientific investigation, physics, construction management.
I don't believe that there has been any investigation into the paranormal or supernatural that has ever brought to bear both the resources and the professionalism and the sophistication of equipment that we've brought to this effort and to this property.
The kinds of devices that we've deployed across the property include, of course, surveillance cameras with audio channels that allow us to both see and hear what's taking place at various locations on the property.
We also have geophones.
These are devices that sense the vibrations of the ground due to what may be activity taking place in beneath our feet here on this property.
We have devices that sense electromagnetic disturbances across a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
TAYLOR: What we want to do is we're gonna measure microwave and RF spectrum at altitude.
It's highly possible that there is something going on here.
We should have film cameras, infrared cameras, starlight cameras and visual observations going on all the time looking for things.
But we're gonna get to the bottom of it.
ARNOLD: Coming into Skinwalker Ranch makes you kind of scrub your preconceived notions about things and, you know, it makes you wonder, are we alone in the universe? Is there a higher power? It can be frustrating and exhilarating at the same time, trying to unravel these types of things.
NARRATOR: Will the new investigation already underway at Skinwalker Ranch finally provide some answers to the mysteries that have persisted for more than 200 years? And if so, will we wish we had left well enough alone? CORBELL: The implications of understanding our universe, our reality so much more it's an opportunity.
So Skinwalker Ranch poses to us this opportunity to confront these things that maybe even scare us.
This phenomenon is real.
It is happening, whether we like it or not, and it could alter the basic fabric of how we relate to the external world.
There is something profound that is going on at Skinwalker Ranch and the surrounding area.
And it begs to be studied.
GEORGE KNAPP: Bad things happen to people on that property.
There's danger there.
It's real.
NARRATOR: Terrifying creatures prowl the land.
TRAVIS TAYLOR: There's stories of cloaked beasts running out of the woods and chasing people.
This thing comes right up to this guy and roars.
NARRATOR: Ominous lights appear in the sky.
I have personally watched as portions of the mesa appeared to glow.
NARRATOR: Animals are found slaughtered.
They had prized cattle taken and mutilated.
NICK REDFERN: It's not just UFOs.
It's not just strange creatures.
It's not just animal mutilations.
It's everything.
TOM WINTERTON: There are things that have happened here that have shaken me to my core.
NARRATOR: What is behind the strange phenomena that takes place on Skinwalker Ranch? And could solving the mystery change our entire reality? JEREMY CORBELL: There is something profound that is going on at Skinwalker Ranch and it begs to be studied.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
(bird screeches) NARRATOR: Uintah County, Utah.
Nestled in a deep valley, surrounded by some of the highest mountain peaks in North America, is an infamous 512-acre patch of land known as Skinwalker Ranch.
The native Utes warn of a dark presence that exists in this area, where strange sightings in the sky, encounters with terrifying creatures, animal mutilations, and numerous other paranormal activities have been reported for centuries.
Skinwalker Ranch has become this nexus of activity where people are reporting strange things.
It's in an area in Utah that's very much like a desert terrain, and what's there now is high desert prairie, kind of, area.
Now what it actually is and what's going on there is a whole other question.
CORBELL: It's a very unique place in the world where the phenomenon expresses itself in dramatic form.
It's also the most scientifically studied UFO or paranormal hot spot in history.
NARRATOR: Native American legends say that there has been an otherworldly presence at Skinwalker Ranch for as long as humans have existed in the area, which, according to archaeological evidence, is at least 10,000 years.
And the very first European settlers to pass through this land in the late 1700s had their own bizarre experiences, which they recorded in their journals.
KNAPP: The first Europeans to cross the Uintah Basin, the, uh, Franciscan monks, reported seeing things over their campfires at night, really weird objects that we would call UFOs.
The Native Americans, the indigenous tribes have been there, have had these experiences for generations.
It has, for as long as humans have lived there, it's been the site of paranormal activity strange things in the sky, UFOs.
There are so many stories about Skinwalker Ranch that range from cattle mutilations going on.
There're stories that if you dig on the property, you'll get sick.
Even strange stories of cloaked beasts running out of the woods.
You've seen UFOs.
They have seen different creatures.
They have seen weird things happening up in the sky.
So you have all these different phenomena that happened on that ranch, so some have referred to it as a veritable Disneyland of the paranormal.
NARRATOR: The most notorious of the paranormal phenomena associated with Skinwalker Ranch is the creature for which the property is named.
The association of the skinwalker with this mysterious plot of land can be traced back to the mid-19th century.
In January of 1864, land disputes between Navajos, Utes, and the United States military in Utah and Arizona reached a fateful tipping point.
After decades of conflict, the military removed the Navajo people from the area, forcing them to make what became known as "The Long Walk" to New Mexico.
The Navajos blamed the Utes for helping the military, and so they cursed the land that the Utes lived on up there.
And it must've been a pretty strong curse because, even today, there are really interesting things that happen up there.
NARRATOR: Cursing the land, the Navajo witch doctors attempted to conjure an entity called a "Yee naaldooshii," or "skinwalker.
" The skinwalkers, they're sort of typically six to seven feet tall, very dangerous.
It's described as being wolf-like, but walking on two limbs.
So, inevitably, it sort of provokes imagery of a werewolf.
DOVER: The subject of skinwalkers is as serious as a heart attack.
This is not something to trifle with.
Even talking about them puts me in some danger.
The skinwalker is somebody who is evil.
They want to control people, communities, regions, and have that power over people, and they do this by fear.
JIM MORSE: The Utes, to this day, are very respectful.
They're very mindful.
Matter of fact, they stay at an arm's length, um, from the Skinwalker Ranch.
Uh, they firmly believe that this ground is cursed and that, not only the Uintah basin, but this concentration of this phenomenon, this host is on the Skinwalker Ranch.
NARRATOR: Could a monster known as the skinwalker really stalk the grounds of Skinwalker Ranch? And if so, was it conjured up by Navajo witch doctors? Or is it connected to the paranormal, and perhaps otherworldly, activity that has been reported on the property for centuries? Investigative journalist George Knapp was one of the first reporters to expose the strange stories at Skinwalker Ranch back in the mid-1990s, when he conducted extensive interviews with the Shermans, the family of ranchers that owned the property.
This guy shows up one day while the ranching family is still there.
He's built like Grizzly Adams, big burly guy with a beard, he said he'd been drawn to the property, and he talks to the rancher and says, "I just need "to meditate for a couple of minutes.
"I'm drawn here.
I need to do this.
Can you let me on the property?" The rancher kind of bemusedly says, "Okay, come on in.
" He lets the guy in.
The rancher and his son escort him to the middle homestead and the rancher and his son are watching the guy and just kind of chuckling to themselves.
They hear this thing in the brush, and then they look over and there's something moving.
And then it comes out of the brush, right up to where this guy is, and it-it looked like the creature in Predator with the camouflage, the opaque c-camouflage, the invisibility technology.
This thing comes right up to this guy and roars.
(roaring) KNAPP: Scares the hell out of this guy who opens his eyes, flies back, lands on his back.
The rancher and his son go rushing over to him.
He's petrified, grabbing them, won't let go.
They escort him off the property and he swears it's the devil, it's Satan, you're gonna burn for this kind of stuff.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the terrifying creature witnessed by both the ranchers and their mysterious visitor was what the Navajo call a skinwalker? Was it a being from another world? Even another dimension? Such stories have inspired countless curiosity seekers to make pilgrimages to the ranch.
But for those who have lived and worked there, like current ranch superintendent Tom Winterton, Skinwalker Ranch is not a place to be taken lightly.
I'd been warned not to dig on this ranch, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous.
Yeah, it's-it's a ranch, for crying out loud.
That's what you do.
You dig fence holes, you dig ditches.
And so I paid zero attention to it.
And whether it's related or not, I ended up getting this severe head injury that causes my head to swell up.
I had fluid that separated the fatty tissue from my skull, and to this day, my doctors still haven't come up with an explanation of what happened.
What they did say was that what happened to me just was not medically possible, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that there are things that have happened here that have shaken me to my core.
When we patrol the-the perimeter of the place, both on foot and with our vehicles, um, we are heavily armed.
And that's not necessarily because we're looking to hurt anybody.
It's more of we don't know what we're dealing with, - and it's a dangerous place - Morning.
MAN: Hey, Caleb.
How you doing, man? ARNOLD: Between the natural things that are here and then also the unknown.
NARRATOR: What could possibly explain so many incredible encounters being reported on a single 512-acre stretch of land and by multiple groups of people over a span of hundreds of years? Do the many accounts of UFOs point to an extraterrestrial connection? Perhaps further clues can be found by more closely examining the stories of the skinwalker and its connection to ancient gods.
The mid-1990s.
The current caretakers of the ranch, the Shermans, are entering their third month on the property when they begin to experience what they believe to be paranormal activity.
They give their accounts of the strange events to investigative journalist George Knapp.
So, the wife goes grocery shopping, she buys enough food for a couple of weeks.
She comes home, takes all this stuff out of the bag, puts it in the cabinets and goes out of the room, comes back, all the stuff's back in the bags.
She takes a shower in the morning, locks the door, has a towel and a hairbrush.
Gets out of the shower, the door is still locked, but the towel and the hairbrush are gone.
The hairbrush is found later in the freezer.
NARRATOR: Initially, it was only Mrs.
Sherman who witnessed the poltergeist activity on the ranch.
But it wasn't long before her husband had his own experiences.
The rancher's out using a post hole digger, digging this big, heavy piece of equipment.
He's digging holes to put fencing in.
He stops for a second, wipes his brow, looks around, the post hole digger is gone.
He finds it three weeks later, 75 feet up in a cottonwood tree.
NARRATOR: The Shermans' experiences, while bizarre, are not unique.
We're gonna pull some data up here that we took, - so lets take look at this.
- NARRATOR: Members of the team currently investigating Skinwalker Ranch have reported similar poltergeist-like phenomena on the property.
One of the weird experiences I've had is I was in my bedroom in the command center trying to go to sleep.
There was no one else around.
And it felt like someone came up and kneed the bed.
- (wood creaking) - And it jostles the whole thing.
I got up and wandered around to see if something happened.
There was nothing really that could've made just a big shake of the bed as if some individual had bumped into it.
WINTERTON: I've heard voices on multiple occasions.
I've had individuals with me that heard the voices, too.
The interesting thing is is that I have no idea whether that's an actual audible voice or something that's playing out in my head.
And there are specific places on the ranch where you walk into it and it's almost as if you're walking into a room of people.
You're, like, asking, "excuse me," as you walk through the space, 'cause you feel like you're gonna bump into somebody.
NARRATOR: But if paranormal activity really is occurring, what could be causing it? Author and researcher Lynn Picknett believes that all of the strange phenomena occurring on Skinwalker Ranch must be interconnected.
When you're looking at the phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch, you're looking at all sorts of manifestations.
But perhaps, really, you're looking at one phenomenon.
Certainly, one of the most dramatic type of phenomenon ever in paranormal is a poltergeist phenomenon meaning literally "noisy spirit," but a destructive haunting.
It's very likely that all of the various, multifarious, uh, paranormal incidents at the Skinwalker Ranch are caused by one entity or one source of energy, and it's not good energy and it's not a good entity.
NARRATOR: While paranormal researchers often attribute poltergeist phenomena to either a spiritual entity or telekinetic energy, according to the Navajo, it also fits the profile of the skinwalker, which is a shape-shifter and a trickster.
The, uh, idea of the skinwalker being a prankster comes from a lot of Navajo tales where they talk about the coyote being a trickster.
But the skinwalker doesn't always use the guise of a coyote, he'll use the guise of a wolf.
He'll use anything that he has the skin for.
Uh, it's said that they can change into owls, they can change into crows or ravens, um, they can change into bobcats if they have that skin.
Our view on it is that they're manipulating the DNA of their own body.
NARRATOR: Stories of beings like the skinwalker that change shape and deceive humans can be found in cultures throughout the world.
Sometimes identified as trickster gods, they are often described as coming from another world, or another dimension.
We have the Scandinavian stories of-of Loki, who's very much, uh, of a trickster.
We have Celtic stories of the-the fairies who are also tricksters.
We have stories of-of Krishna being also a trickster-type god who likes to make jokes on people.
So, throughout the world, we have these stories of trickster beings who can also shape-shift into other bodies.
This seems to be some entity, uh, an extraterrestrial, who's acting as a skinwalker.
Perhaps he's an alien who's caught in this interdimensional doorway and manifests from time to time and ultimately terrorizes this ranch.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the skinwalker is an extraterrestrial being that has crossed over from another dimension? A parallel universe? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that in addition to the stories of trickster gods, primitive rock art provides evidence of an otherworldly connection.
At Nine Mile Canyon, just 60 miles south of Skinwalker Ranch, mysterious-looking creatures abound with giant antennae and oddly-shaped heads.
For many members of both the Navajo and the Ute tribes, they represent ancient visitors from the stars.
When you see these figures, I have been told that these are star people, these are people from, uh, other worlds or other dimensions that have shown up and, uh, met and communicated with the, uh, ancient people that live there.
A lot of the rock writing that have what might be considered portals that are like a spindle are holes within the universe that allow you to go into different dimensions.
NARRATOR: Not far from Nine Mile Canyon are similar petroglyphs, at Sego Canyon, San Rafael Swell and Temple Mountain.
TSOUKALOS: They look like spacemen.
You have these strange creatures that, for all intents and purposes, seem to be floating up in the sky.
Hey appear to wear helmets.
Very strange.
CHILDRESS: These figures have vortex symbols around them.
You have to wonder exactly who is making these petroglyphs and what they were seeing, because they look like they're extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: Do the petroglyphs in the areas surrounding Skinwalker Ranch point to Utah being a place of ancient and perhaps even modern alien visitation? And do the spiral petroglyphs indicate that there could even be some sort of portal in the Uintah Mountains, opening to other dimensions? Fort Duchesne, Utah 17-year-old Larry Cesspooch is with his friends driving along an infamous stretch of road near Skinwalker Ranch.
As they approach a spot known as Dead Man's Curve, named for the high number of car crashes that have occurred there, they spot a bright object in the sky.
We were driving around, with a bunch of us, and we come around Dead Man's Curve and, uh, the driver looked in his rearview mirror and said, "Oh, what the heck is that?" It was a fireball, and that fireball was coming up behind us.
And so we told him to go faster, and this thing just flew over our head.
When I told my mother, she had talked about a similar incident when she was younger.
And other tribal members have seen that fireball.
NARRATOR: Other reports indicate that the local residents have been regularly witnessing similar strange events, both in and around Skinwalker Ranch, for decades.
The various accounts describe flashing lights, floating orbs and UFOs.
ARNOLD: In this entire area, there have been hundreds of reports of UFOs, you know, multiple people seeing the same ones.
This particular part of the area has kind of gotten the nickname of UFO Alley because of the number of those sightings that had been reported.
JOHN ALEXANDER: We did see tears.
We had openings in the sky, voices, crafts coming through, orbs.
Is that E.
T.
? Uh, hard to say.
Reality of the events is absolute.
ERIK BARD: I have personally watched as portions of the mesa, as large as 500 to 600 feet, appeared to glow.
We may be looking at a terrestrial light source, or we may be looking at something far more interesting.
NARRATOR: In the 1990s, the owners of Skinwalker Ranch also witnessed strange orbs in the sky.
When they relayed their experiences to George Knapp, he found that the UFOs were tied to the other paranormal activity taking place on the property.
They start hearing heavy footsteps outside their bedroom window at night.
Then they start seeing these dark, humanoid shapes in the windows at night.
(creaking) Then they start hearing the footsteps inside the house.
(heavy footsteps) Then they wake up at night, and there's the thing at the bottom of their bed.
They would go out at night, they'd walk around, they'd start hearing disembodied voices in the sky above their heads, speaking some strange language, almost like mocking them.
They start seeing little orbs floating around, seemingly intelligently controlled, flitting around in the trees.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that reports of floating orbs, poltergeist activity, and the creature known as the skinwalker are not separate phenomena? Might they be better understood by considering them all together? Another story told to George Knapp by the Shermans may reveal yet another aspect to the Skinwalker Ranch mystery.
KNAPP: The first day they're on the property, they see an animal of some sort over on the brush line, and it starts coming toward them.
The men realize, "That's a wolf.
" It's huge.
The back of the wolf came up to the middle of his chest.
(snarling) They petted this thing.
It was a real, physical creature.
- Now, the calves are in the corral.
- (distressed lowing) They're all backed up against one side, scared of this wolf.
Except one calf makes the mistake of sticking its snout out between the bars of the corral.
- (growling) - The wolf sees it leaps in the air, like, 20 feet, chomps down on the head of this calf and is trying to drag it out of the corral.
His son grabs a .
357 out of the truck and brings it over, Dad pops a shot into this wolf.
No yelp, no blood, no anything.
Shoots it a second and third time.
Now this is the fourth shot they've put into this wolf, and then a fifth shot goes right into the chest, a chunk of flesh and fur comes popping off the side and falls on the ground.
And this wolf just casually turns around and starts walking away, he's had enough.
Five shots in this thing and didn't kill it.
NARRATOR: The Shermans say they pursued the wolf into the brush, following its tracks on the wet ground.
KNAPP: They get to a clearing beyond the brush, a muddy area, the tracks go all the way out into the middle of the muddy field and stop.
It's gone.
It's as if it had been sucked up into the sky.
NARRATOR: Later, when the Shermans told this story to a group of scientists that had come to investigate the ranch, they were shown a series of photographs and asked if any of them resembled the animal they encountered.
KNAPP: They have a lineup of different types of wolves, to ask each of the family members, show us what this looked like.
And the one that they all identified is what's known as a dire wolf.
Dire wolf, of course, has been extinct for 10,000 years.
NARRATOR: If a dire wolf is, in fact, what the Shermans witnessed, could it present another clue as to what is happening at Skinwalker Ranch? Many ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer is simple.
According to them, the ranch most likely contains some kind of interdimensional portal, one that would allow, not only travel from one dimension to another, but to various points in time and space.
And they also believe that the man who knows the truth is the eccentric billionaire who recently owned Skinwalker Ranch, Robert Bigelow.
NARRATOR: Skinwalker Ranch.
1996.
Following two years of non-stop paranormal and extraterrestrial phenomena, the Shermans are driven to sell the ranch.
The purchaser is a man almost as mysterious as the property itself.
The study of Skinwalker Ranch first began with private industry.
It was a man named Robert Bigelow.
And he put together a team of scientists to study the phenomenon and what was occurring at the ranch.
The ranch played the role of a living laboratory to really be able to focus scientifically and try to understand what is going on at this ranch.
NARRATOR: Billionaire Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow made his fortune in real estate.
But since then, he's turned to investing his money in aerospace, and the goal of searching for extraterrestrial life.
KNAPP: It came to the attention of Robert Bigelow, who's probably spent more money pursuing the UFO mystery than any person in history.
He flew up, met with the rancher, uh, took his team up there, heard the experiences himself and bought it.
He put a team of scientists on the property, cameras, scientific gear, so for the next seven years after he bought it, he had people on the property pretty much 24-7.
I was with, uh, Bob Bigelow the day he went up and, uh, physically bought the ranch.
I was the first one to spend the night on the ridge overlooking the ranch itself.
Bottom line is, some very, very strange things happened there that just defy description.
NARRATOR: The year before the purchase of Skinwalker Ranch Bigelow had founded the National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDS.
Staffed with personnel from a variety of different disciplines, NIDS was formed to study a wide range of unexplained events, from the supernatural to the extraterrestrial.
When Bigelow moved into Skinwalker Ranch, he took his NIDS scientists with him, mounted cameras and other monitoring devices over the entire property, and sought to study the paranormal phenomena up close and in person.
He even built a laboratory on the property.
He also protected the perimeter of Skinwalker Ranch with impenetrable security, and has kept his findings hidden from the public to this day.
TSOUKALOS: You have to ask yourself why would Bigelow throw millions and millions of dollars at that particular project? What's going on there? And interestingly, Robert Bigelow, after he sold this ranch, never came forward to release what he actually experienced.
He kept all this information to himself.
Okay, either he's not saying anything because it's so incredible, or because there's nothing there.
So because he's such an elusive figure, it's a question, which one is it? NARRATOR: While Robert Bigelow did his best to keep his investigation of Skinwalker Ranch off the public radar, he himself became front page news on December 16, 2017, when The New York Times ran an explosive story entitled "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious U.
F.
O.
Program.
" The article reported that in 2007, $22 million was allocated for a top-secret U.
S.
government to investigate UFOs, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.
The driving force behind this project was none other than Robert Bigelow, whose company Bigelow Aerospace conducted the bulk of the research from their headquarters on Skinwalker Ranch.
LINDA MOULTON HOWE: Bigelow Aerospace is the one who received most of the $22 million to do aerospace investigations.
All of the news that came out in mid-December, and nobody ask anybody, "What about the warehouse that has extraterrestrial artifacts in it?" NARRATOR: When questioned about AATIP, government officials have stated that it was meant to identify craft not from other worlds but from other countries.
However, this view is not shared by Robert Bigelow.
Did his investigation of Skinwalker Ranch convince him that extraterrestrials are present on Earth? Rumors include having found some exotic materials on the property.
There's talk of certain rods made up of exotic elements from the periodic table.
Some kind of base or perhaps an ancient alien artifact beneath the property.
The findings of Bigelow's team have never been fully disclosed.
There are all sorts of rumors and stories about things that happened while the Bigelow team was here on the property.
They talked about the side of the mesa opening up and a spaceship flying into some sort of underground base.
NARRATOR: Could Robert Bigelow's experiences confirm that Skinwalker Ranch is not only a place of extraterrestrial visitation but also contains a portal through space and time? Some ancient astronaut theorists suggest that there is something even more profound at work and that Skinwalker Ranch isn't only a special place on Earth but an important location for the universe.
NARRATOR: At Skinwalker Ranch, a number of strange happenings have been reported.
Everything from sightings of prehistoric beasts and poltergeist activity to shape-shifting monsters and mysterious orbs of light in the sky.
But one detail seems to be consistent: The manner in which these frightening phenomena suddenly come about, as if out of thin air.
Could it be that some sort of portal through space and time really does exist in this area, as many ancient astronaut theorists believe? And while most of Robert Bigelow's activities on the property have remained top secret, investigative journalist George Knapp was able to learn of at least one extraordinary encounter.
There was one night, the one of the most dramatic things that happened, there, two of the scientists these are PhD-level people.
They walk around the middle homestead and two guys are up on Skinwalker Ridge looking down.
They've got infrared equipment, watching.
And one of them with the infrared sees what looks like a dirty snowball of light just hovering a couple of feet off the ground and he walkie-talkies these guys down there, "Hey, do you see it?" "Yeah, we see it, it's kind of vague.
" Then he says, "Hey, something's happening, it's changing.
" Our guys are on the ridgeline looking down, and you see a light appear above the ground expand.
KNAPP: This ball of light was stretching out.
It became a tunnel of light.
Into this tunnel comes a humanoid figure.
Some kind of monster reached up, pulled his shoulders and come out.
KNAPP: Seven or eight feet tall, black, featureless.
When it gets out, the tunnel collapses into a ball again.
It was almost as if it was a dimensional tunnel, that it was coming from some other reality.
NARRATOR: According to both the Navajo and Ute tribes, such portals do exist.
You have to go back to the story of the emergence of the Navajo.
The story there is that they went through several underground worlds, and in coming to this world, through a hole in the ground, or through a portal, if you may.
CESSPOOCH: There are holes portals, if you want to call them that within the universe that allow you to go into different dimensions, and those have existed for eons.
So those who know about them can travel back and forth.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists point out that emerging scientific theories support the Native beliefs that other dimensions not only exist but that travel between them is possible.
REDFERN: Quantum physics, essentially, allows for the existence of multiple dimensions that coexist with ours.
What we're seeing at places like the Skinwalker Ranch are strange creatures, unusual entities coming through the portals and the doorways.
It's entirely possible that creatures and beings from other realms of existence could quite literally jump from their dimension into our world.
More and more, scientists are talking in these extraordinary esoteric terms about very powerful places where realities blend or blur together.
From the descriptions of Skinwalker Ranch, this could well be one of those bleed-over places.
NARRATOR: While the theory of a portal at Skinwalker Ranch may seem incredible, futurist Caroline Cory takes it even one step further.
CAROLINE CORY: We know that the physical universe is based on geometry.
We are now predicting that there is a matrix, a grid patterning system around the planet that is a web-like structure with specific entry and exit points that allow certain phenomena to happen that seem supernatural or paranormal.
If there are tears exactly at these locations, you're going to have all kinds of anomalies that would happen because of these tears.
You're going to perhaps, uh, see an anomaly in the sky or you could also see a prehistoric animal cross over because there's a tear in this fabric of space itself.
NARRATOR: A tear in the fabric of space? Could it be that Skinwalker Ranch is not only home to a portal, but some sort of cosmic tear through which entities from other dimensions, other parts of the universe and even other points in time could be entering our world? Local tales and traditions do, in fact, support this theory.
DOVER: A lot of our investigations have found that these things are coming in, uh, through unknown portals.
Whether the portals are in the sky or on the ground.
What we've seen from people describing this to us is they hear a loud pop.
That the sound actually travels through your body physically, and it jolts you.
NARRATOR: Could there truly be a scientific explanation for the various phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch? One that humans are not yet equipped to fully understand? Maybe a more important question is should we seek to get to the bottom of this mystery at all? Or are we better off just leaving Skinwalker Ranch alone? There are some who believe that while Skinwalker Ranch is a dangerous place, it may also hold the key to humankind's ultimate survival.
NARRATOR: After conducting a 20-year investigation, the NIDS team ceases all operations on Skinwalker Ranch.
Robert Bigelow has sold the property.
Robert Bigelow owned the property for 20 years, and in 2016, he sold it.
He'd had enough.
And one of the reasons that he and his team didn't want to have that property anymore is because there's danger there.
It's real.
Bad things happen to people and animals on that property.
NARRATOR: Fortunately, the person Robert Bigelow has sold the property to is committed to continuing with the investigation, Salt Lake City real estate entrepreneur Brandon Fugal.
MORSE: This new owner here, his obsession and his willingness to really put his money where his mouth's at, it's a new game.
- Tom.
Oh, my friend.
- Hey, good to see you.
BRANDON FUGAL: I was approached by several scientists that had worked with me on a past project, were close confidants of Bob Bigelow, and they saw an opportunity for Mr.
Bigelow to pass the torch to someone who not only had the bandwidth but the resources to really take the investigation and the scientific effort at Skinwalker Ranch to the next level.
It's the greatest science project of our time.
The team that I have handpicked all bring complimentary skill sets to the table, whether it be in areas of scientific investigation, physics, construction management.
I don't believe that there has been any investigation into the paranormal or supernatural that has ever brought to bear both the resources and the professionalism and the sophistication of equipment that we've brought to this effort and to this property.
The kinds of devices that we've deployed across the property include, of course, surveillance cameras with audio channels that allow us to both see and hear what's taking place at various locations on the property.
We also have geophones.
These are devices that sense the vibrations of the ground due to what may be activity taking place in beneath our feet here on this property.
We have devices that sense electromagnetic disturbances across a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
TAYLOR: What we want to do is we're gonna measure microwave and RF spectrum at altitude.
It's highly possible that there is something going on here.
We should have film cameras, infrared cameras, starlight cameras and visual observations going on all the time looking for things.
But we're gonna get to the bottom of it.
ARNOLD: Coming into Skinwalker Ranch makes you kind of scrub your preconceived notions about things and, you know, it makes you wonder, are we alone in the universe? Is there a higher power? It can be frustrating and exhilarating at the same time, trying to unravel these types of things.
NARRATOR: Will the new investigation already underway at Skinwalker Ranch finally provide some answers to the mysteries that have persisted for more than 200 years? And if so, will we wish we had left well enough alone? CORBELL: The implications of understanding our universe, our reality so much more it's an opportunity.
So Skinwalker Ranch poses to us this opportunity to confront these things that maybe even scare us.
This phenomenon is real.
It is happening, whether we like it or not, and it could alter the basic fabric of how we relate to the external world.
There is something profound that is going on at Skinwalker Ranch and the surrounding area.
And it begs to be studied.