The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch | Travis Taylor | Jay Stratton | SDCC

Here at S Pons with Travis Taylor and J Stratton. Um, can you tell me a little bit about what Skinwalker Ranch is? That’s what… yeah, right, well, um, Skinwalker Ranch is this 512-acre property in the middle of Utah. It’s about a three-hour drive due east of Salt Lake City just to give you some references to where it is. And for more than a century, people have reported, in recorded history, strange phenomena occurring there, including seeing balls of light and even metallic objects flying into and out of the Mesa.

We know now that we found a petlift that’s been dated to be 600 to 1,000 years old that depicts something very similar to what this place has been known for, you know, since recorded history. Effectively, in North America, strange phenomena have occurred there, which include shape-shifting creatures, weird booming noises—like the voice of God, so to speak, coming to people—and I don’t mean God specifically, but that kind of phenomenon. UFOs and orbs of light chasing animals, cattle mutilations, animal mutilations—all sorts of really weird things. All the weird things you can think of, mix them in a pot, and you’ve got Skinwalker Ranch.

This is a real scientific investigation we’re performing there to get to the bottom of it and see what’s really happening there. It’s not your typical, you know, chasing and trying to get a picture of Bigfoot or whatever. I’m not sliding those guys, but I’m saying this really is a lot of scientific instruments, scientists, and visiting scientists as well, coming to the investigation. It stems not just from the present era but Jay, with the US government and DIA, and he can tell you all about it. But he had an interest in Skinwalker Ranch back in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. So, Jay, you want to—?

Yeah, so Skinwalker Ranch is a unique spot on the planet, but definitely in the United States. As Travis said, in the 2000s, the Defense Intelligence Agency started a new UFO program to really dive into the topic again because things were being seen, things were being reported, but not being dealt with. In that process, we let a contract and had one bidder on that contract, and it was a company called Bigelow Aerospace, which is a Las Vegas-based company. Robert Bigelow, a billionaire in the aerospace industry, was our prime contractor, and he owned Skinwalker Ranch at the time.

As an analyst inside the intel community, you’re trained to look at traditional topics. You see aircraft, ships, submarines—those things you can see. You can go to air shows and see these aircrafts and other things, but what do you do if you’re the UFO guy? Where do you go to see these things? Robert Bigelow said, “Hey, one place in the country where you can go see these things is Skinwalker Ranch.” And we went out to Skinwalker Ranch, and on my first day there, I saw something. So, it’s real. It’s there. The investigation we’re conducting to this day is finding new things, and every bit of this is based in reality but also with a lot of questions.

The trend is the phenomena we see at Skinwalker Ranch is tied to the phenomena. Anytime we’ve got a pilot reporting UAPs, UFOs, you know, it’s all linked. They’re reporting the same kinds of things. The different things that we pick up at the ranch—we get them anytime you’re near these objects from any other military platform, etc. It’s all tied together and still somewhat of a mystery as to what’s going on and why. The key is that there is no government funding source in this country to study and investigate UAPs. While there’s Arrow now, they’re not funding actual research into it. And the best way to get funding to do this is through entertainment.

What better way to do a research project like this than if you can get the public to believe you? If you don’t get the public to believe you, then you’re not going to keep the interest of potential donors and funders. Research is expensive. I mean, you’ve got to feed your family, for one. You’ve got to have a day job, right? Well, this is our day job. Then, you also have to buy equipment, pay people to come and do things. Visiting scientists—you have to pay them, or they don’t do things for free. That’s just how it works.

We discovered that both China and Russia have been taking this very seriously and have had big programs for decades, but the United States won’t take it seriously for whatever reason. So, this is our effort to take it seriously.

Now, the property—right now—is it owned by an individual or business? It’s owned by Brandon Fugal, a Salt Lake City real estate mogul. He’s the person who bought it from Bob Bigelow when Bob was done with the ranch. I think it was so confusing and frustrating for him that he finally threw in the towel and sold the property. Brandon is really interested in learning about it. He was originally very skeptical that there was anything to it. But as Jay said, on his first day there, Brandon went out physically, and they saw some phenomena that were life-changing for him. So, Brandon then started pushing to have a real scientific investigation done on the property.

Any reports of military bases near the property? Any magnetic offsets in the earth? Anything that could scientifically explain some of this? We’ve been looking for all of that. We’ve asked everyone. I was a civil servant with the US Army for 28 years. Jay was in the Air Force and Navy for 33 years. We were part of the teams, and we know all the people. We’ve called everybody. Everyone claims it’s not them, it’s not us, we’re not doing it.

It’s really interesting, though, because there have been times where we’ve had military-style aircraft come over and seem to be collecting intelligence over the ranch while we’re there. I find that intriguing and interesting, and we can’t get anyone to own up to it. Whether it was some guys doing training or sightseeing, or someone doing something nefarious without a FISA warrant, somebody needs to own up to it and let us know what they were doing.

You asked about magnetic anomalies. Yes, the entire ranch is one big electromagnetic anomaly. GPS clocks don’t work right on the ranch. Other precise clocks we’ve used fail—lose time, gain time randomly. Data cards and cameras—sound bags—all those things, data cards are randomly missing pieces of data. At moments when something significant was happening, if we had just the right angle on it with this particular camera, the camera would turn itself off, or it was on but recorded nothing but zeros.

We see this all the time—something hacking into our electronic systems. We even had one instance where I was looking at our live feeds on my phone at home in Alabama over the weekend. I was seeing physical phenomena occurring on the phone’s live feed. I called the ranch and had Eric Bard, the principal investigator, go outside and look at that spot. Nothing was happening. But I was watching it live on the camera. Something was hacking through our camera system. No one’s ever been able to prove who it was or how it was done. But we have that kind of thing happen all the time.

So the question would be, from me to you guys: besides aliens, UFOs, and government interference, do you think it could be anything supernatural? Do you think it could be ghostly, demonic?

I don’t like the idea or the words “paranormal” or “supernatural” because they suggest something that can’t be understood. If we put it in that box, then it’s in a box that can never be understood. That doesn’t do us any good. But I’ll tell you this: Rabbi Ariel once pointed something out to me. I had him out to the ranch because he saw a Navajo ritual that looked very similar to a Hebrew ritual. We had him perform the Hebrew ritual, and some really interesting phenomena occurred when he did.

He said, “Well, what’s the definition of an angel or a demon or a god? They’re not of this earth—that makes them an extraterrestrial.” So whatever’s going on, be it something from the afterlife or spiritual, could be part of the universe we just don’t understand yet. I put it in that box as opposed to it being something that can’t be understood. We’re looking at it from what we can understand and developing a better understanding of the universe. I think the ranch has really given us an opportunity to do that.

We just had the season five finale, and I had some of the last words on that final episode. I was asked, “What’s next?” Well, something is trying to communicate. It’s how we understand it. You know, call it whatever you want to call it, but something does seem to be communicating or attempting to.

If we can get to the point where we can understand that, maybe it’s a life-changing message or maybe it’s somebody’s shopping list. Who knows?