Inside Skinwalker Ranch – The Hotbed of the Paranormal

UFO sightings to cattle mutilations, a ranch in the UN Basin has been home to numerous bizarre and terrifying events.
>> Inside Skinwalker Ranch, [music] strange things didn’t just happen once, they keep happening. This remote Utah property became known as a hotbed for paranormal activity, attracting ranchers, scientists, and government interests alike.
>> Two guys are up on Skinwalker Ridge looking down. They’ve got infrared equipment watching and one of them with the infrareds sees what looks like a dirty snowball of light just hovering a couple of feet off the ground.
>> But what they encountered here raises a far more unsettling question. Why do so many unexplained events keep converging in the same place? Let’s find out.
Lights over the ridge inside Skinwalker Ranch. There is a whole host of mysterious phenomena. Lights appear without warning, hovering low over the ground or darting across the sky, fast enough to make experienced observers question what they’re seeing. Radios crackle. Instruments lose signal.
Animals refuse to cross invisible lines in the dirt. Whatever this place is, it behaves less like a single mystery and more like a crossroads. A hot spot where unexplained events keep colliding. This is not a story that begins with one family or one sighting. By the time cameras, scientists, and skeptics arrived, the land already carried a reputation. The ranch sits in northeastern Utah’s Uinta Basin, a region locals have whispered about for generations. Long before it was fenced off and guarded, people reported things they couldn’t explain. Lights in the sky, shapes in the distance, moments that felt wrong rather than dramatic.
What makes the ranch unsettling is not the size of any single claim, but the pattern of events. Events rarely repeat the same way twice. Activity flares when no one is prepared, then vanishes the moment attention turns toward it. One night brings strange aerial movement.
Another brings unexplained animal behavior.
Then sudden silence. The land seems active but not cooperative.
Investigators who have spent time here describe a sense of anticipation mixed with frustration.
Something happens, just not when or how it should. The ranch doesn’t offer clear evidence on demand. It offers moments fleeting, inconsistent, and difficult to capture, yet persistent enough that people keep coming back. Standing near the ridge at night, watching the darkness stretch across the basin, it becomes clear why this place earned its [music] reputation. Not because of one event, but because of how many different ones seem to happen here. And that raises the question that pulls the story backward in time. How far back do these occurrences really go? A basin that never looked away.
Long before the ranch had a name, the surrounding Uenta Basin was already known as a place where strange things were seen and quietly recorded. The land itself seemed to invite attention, especially from those who spent time watching the sky. In the 1950s, a local high school science teacher named Joseph Junior Hicks began doing something unusual. Instead of dismissing reports from neighbors and ranchers, he started writing them down. People told him about lights moving in unnatural ways, strange creatures crossing roads at night, and objects that appeared and vanished without sound. Hicks treated these stories as data, not folklore. Years later, he partnered with astronomer Dr.
Frank Salsbury and together they published a book in 1974 documenting decades of sightings across the basin.
Those accounts were not isolated to one property. They spanned ranches, towns, and open desert. This matters because it shows the pattern of strange events existed before fences, owners, or media attention. Even earlier records hint at the same thing. In 1776, Franciscan missionary Sylvester de Escalante [music] wrote about fireballs appearing over his camp. Long before modern aircraft or electrical infrastructure could explain them. As decades passed, reports never fully stopped. Locals grew used to the idea that strange things happened here, even if no one could explain why. The basin slowly earned a reputation among UFO researchers and pilots alike. Some would later nickname it UFO Alley, not because of one famous incident, but because sightings seemed unusually common. What stands out is how consistent the theme remained. Different eras described different objects.
Different witnesses used different words, but the setting stayed the same.
The wide basin, the surrounding ridges, the open sky. Something about the geography of the place seemed to draw attention upward. In the early 1990s, this long history was mostly unknown outside the region. There were no documentaries, no locked gates, no armed guards, just a quiet accumulation of stories. But that would all change when one family moved onto a ranch and found themselves at the center of everything the basin had been whispering about for generations.
When the ranch fought back, when Terry and Gwen Sherman bought the property in 1994, they were not looking for mystery.
They wanted a working cattle ranch, a quiet place to raise their family and make a living. What they encountered instead felt immediate, persistent, and deeply unsettling. Some of the first signs were small enough to dismiss.
Strange lights in the distance, animals behaving unpredictably.
Then the pattern escalated. Cattle began turning up dead in open fields, sometimes in broad daylight. The body showed precise incisions, missing organs, [music] and an absence of blood. There were no tracks, no signs of predators, and no scavenging afterward. Veterinarians and investigators could not offer a clear explanation, and the mutilations kept happening. At the same time, the Shermans reported activity closer to home. Floating orbs of light appeared near the house and barns. Objects seemed to move on their own. Voices were heard when no one was present. Family members described the sense of being watched, not occasionally, but constantly. This was not one dramatic incident followed by silence. It was a steady accumulation of events that wore them down over time.
One encounter stood out above the rest.
Terry Sherman described seeing an enormous wolf near the ranch, far larger than any he had seen before. When the animal approached, showing no fear, he fired at it at close range with a high-powered rifle. According to his account, the bullets appeared to have no effect. The animal calmly walked away.
No body was ever found. What made the Sherman’s experience different from earlier reports in the basin was not just what they claimed to see, but how many different types of phenomena occurred in the same place. UFO sightings, animal mutilations, poltergeistike activity, and encounters with strange creatures were all reported within a relatively short span of time.
None of it followed a predictable schedule. Nothing repeated on command.
For 18 months, the family tried to endure it. They installed locks, kept weapons close, and attempted to continue daily ranch life as normally as possible. But the stress accumulated, [music] sleep became difficult. Anxiety became routine. Whatever was happening did not feel like a passing phase. In the summer of 1996, the Shermans finally spoke publicly. They shared their experiences with a local reporter, and the story spread quickly. The reaction was immediate. Some dismissed it outright.
Others recognized familiar patterns from decades of basin lore. Within weeks, the quiet ranch was no longer quiet. What followed was a turning point, not just for the family, but for the ranch itself. Their story caught the attention of someone with the resources to take the claims seriously and the means to investigate them around the clock. And once that happened, Skinwalker Ranch stopped being just another strange place in the basin and became something else entirely.
the point where everything converged.
Inside Skinwalker Ranch, the pattern finally became impossible to ignore.
When Robert Bigalow acquired the property in 1996, the ranch shifted from a private nightmare into a controlled experiment.
This was no longer just a place where strange things were reported. It became a site where unrelated phenomena repeatedly surfaced in the same confined space under observation over long periods of time. That concentration is what transformed the ranch into a true hotbed of the paranormal. Bigalow established the National Institute for Discovery Science and later Bigalow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies, placing teams on the ranch with one clear goal. Document what was happening using scientific tools rather than stories. Surveillance ran day and night.
Motion sensors, cameras, radiation detectors, and environmental monitors were deployed across the property.
Researchers logged events meticulously, hoping patterns would emerge. What they found was not clarity, but overlap. UFO sightings continued, including silent lights and fastmoving objects that change direction abruptly. At the same time, animal mutilations persisted in ways that defied conventional predator explanations. Poltergeist style activity was reported by personnel on site, including objects moving and equipment failing without a clear cause. There were also repeated claims of strange creatures, some animal, some humanoid, appearing briefly and then vanishing.
The unsettling part was not that these things happened, but that they happened together. Most locations associated with the unexplained are tied to a single category. A haunted house, a UFO sighting area, a crypted hot spot. Here, those categories blurred. The ranch produced aerial phenomena, physical traces, biological anomalies, and psychological effects, all within the same boundaries. One example came after the Shermans had already left. In March 1997, biochemist Colum Keller, working with Bigalow’s team, claimed to see a large humanoid figure watching researchers from a tree. He described glowing yellow eyes staring back into the light. When the figure disappeared, a single unusual track was found in [music] the snow. An oval impression with claw-like marks unlike known animal prints. It was logged, photographed, [music] and debated, but never conclusively explained. Despite years of monitoring, the most frustrating feature remained. The activity refused to cooperate. Events appeared when cameras failed or were pointed elsewhere.
Instruments malfunctioned during key moments. Predictable triggers never emerged. The ranch seemed active, but selectively so. After more than two decades of work, thousands of reports, and countless logged anomalies, one fact stood out. No single explanation could account for everything observed.
Environmental theories addressed some elements. Psychological stress explained others. Yet, none could fully explain [music] why so many different types of anomalies clustered here across generations and investigators.
That unresolved concentration is why the ranch gained its reputation. Not because anyone proved a supernatural cause, but because repeated documented attempts to reduce it to one explanation kept falling short. And that persistent failure to explain it quietly raised the stakes beyond private research.
Eventually, the attention shifted away from the ranch itself [music] and toward institutions that rarely involve themselves in unsolved mysteries. That is when Skinwalker Ranch stopped being just a scientific curiosity and started appearing on the radar of the United States government. When the ranch reached Washington, by the mid200s, the mystery surrounding Skinwalker Ranch had moved far beyond private research. What had started as a rancher story, then a scientific investigation, [music] quietly crossed into government interest. In 2007, officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency visited the property. Not long after, those same officials met with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, a senior figure with both political influence and a long-standing interest in unexplained [music] aerial phenomena. According to later reporting by the New York Times, Reed learned that intelligence officials wanted to launch a formal research effort into UFOs and related anomalies.
That request led to the creation of the advanced aerospace weapon systems application program, a classified initiative designed to study exotic science, unidentified aerial encounters, and other phenomena that did not fit conventional models. The contract was awarded to Robert Bigalow’s company.
Over the next 2 years, Bigalow’s organization received roughly $22 million in government funding. While the program did not focus exclusively on Skinwalker Ranch, the site was included as part of the research along with other locations believed to display unusual activity. Reports were written, data were collected, and classified assessments were generated. None of those documents was made public in full.
Then, just as quietly as it began, the program ended. Funding was cut. Attempts to renew it were denied. By 2011, Bigalow’s governmentbacked research came to [music] a close. The Pentagon’s attention shifted elsewhere, continuing its investigation of unidentified aerial encounters through a separate effort known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which focused on military sightings rather than specific locations. What makes this period unsettling is not what was revealed, but what wasn’t. Bigalow has never publicly detailed what his teams concluded about the ranch. Government agencies have released no definitive findings tied to it. There was no announcement, no resolution, no closure, just a withdrawal. Meanwhile, rumors filled the vacuum. Some claimed the ranch had been a testing ground for secret weapons.
Others whispered about underground facilities or non-human intelligence.
None of those claims were confirmed, but the silence surrounding the research only intensified speculation. By the time Bigalow sold the ranch in 2016, the mystery had hardened. rather than faded.
The investigation had escalated all the way to federal funding, and still no explanation emerged. What followed was not another government study, but a cultural shift, one that brought the ranch back into public view and forced a broader question about what people believe is really happening there. What still lingers after the investigations ended and ownership changed hands, Skinwalker Ranch did not fade into obscurity. Instead, it entered a different phase, one defined less by experiments and more by interpretation.
With no official conclusion and no shared data to settle the question, the ranch became a mirror, reflecting what different groups believed they had been seeing all along. For some, the explanation turned toward folklore. The name itself drew attention to Navajo traditions involving skinwalkers, though Navajo representatives have consistently said such stories are rarely discussed and cannot be casually applied to a specific location. At the same time, Ute leaders whose land borders the ranch have stated plainly that they have no tradition of a curse connected to the property. Their response complicates the popular narrative rather than supporting it, reminding outsiders that cultural stories do not neatly align with modern mythmaking.
Others looked to the land itself. Nearby bottle hollow reservoir built in 1970 on Ute land became part of the broader puzzle. Multiple reports described lights entering and exiting the water, changing shape, and accelerating away along the ridge near the ranch. Within Ute belief, certain waterways were considered places of negative power, thresholds rather than safe passage.
Whether symbolic or environmental, the connection added another layer to an already crowded picture. Skeptics remained unconvinced. They pointed to mice identified animals, stress, expectation, and the influence of reputation. Once a place becomes known for strangeness, people interpret events differently. That argument carries weight, yet it leaves gaps. Expectation alone does not explain decades of reports that predate publicity, nor does it explain why trained observers and instruments repeatedly recorded anomalies, even if those records never added up to proof. Today, the ranch is tightly controlled, inaccessible, and still active in the public imagination.
Documentaries have called it the most scientifically studied site in paranormal history. Yet science has offered no final answer. That contradiction is at the heart of its legacy. What remains is not evidence of one phenomenon, but the persistence of many. Lights in the sky, animals behaving strangely. Moments that resist explanation. [music] Each generation adds its own layer, then moves on. Skinwalker Ranch endures not because it proves anything, but because it refuses to settle into a single story. And as long as that remains true, the question will linger over the basin, waiting for the next observer to look up and wonder what they are really seeing.
If a single place keeps producing UFO sightings, strange creatures, and unexplained activity across centuries, cultures, and investigators, do you think the mystery lies in the land itself, or in how humans interpret what happens there? Let us know in [music] the comments. Thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for