Skinwalker Ranch: Signs & Wonders (Pt 4) New Evidence, UFOs, Ghosts, Monsters | The Basement Office

I think you could say that acquiring Skinwalker Ranch was part of a religious journey, or at least my spiritual journey.

I think most people on this planet, at some time or another, ask those long-standing questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
Where are we going?
Is there a higher power?
Is there a purpose to life?

And I saw Skinwalker Ranch as a living laboratory where you could potentially find some of the answers to those religious questions that so many people have — or at least prove that we’re not alone in the universe, or that our reality is not what it might seem.

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Where does faith fit into that? Because with spiritual and religious beliefs, faith is believing that something exists without seeing it. You have faith that it’s there, but you can’t see it. You can’t prove it.

So how does faith fit into a place like Skinwalker, where you want to know, you want to prove, you want to find?

People ask me all the time, “Do you consider yourself a believer?”
And my answer is that no, I’m not a believer — I’m an experiencer.

I’ve actually experienced things on this ranch.
I have witnessed things.
I have data supporting what I believe to be the fact that there is something truly extraordinary happening.

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Before I land at Skinwalker Ranch, you need to know something first.
I’m only here because the owner of Skinwalker Ranch, Brandon Fugal, accepted my request to come — but that almost didn’t happen.

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The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is an ongoing reality show on the History Channel. It documents the endeavors of scientists and investigators hunting for supposed paranormal activity on the ranch.

One of those scientists, and arguably the star of the show, is Dr. Travis Taylor. Publicly, Taylor has been very critical of my previous reporting for The Basement Office.

A few days before my visit, Brandon Fugal called me to say Travis Taylor didn’t want me at the ranch and he asked Fugal to cancel my trip.

To his credit, Fugal said no to Taylor.
“Bring it on,” he said.
“I’m not scared of anyone.”

So here I am.
And here we go.

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This is Brian Arnold, known by his nickname “Dragon.” He’s the ranch’s chief security officer on the History Channel show. He’s often seen holding assault rifles — not to shoot aliens, but to protect against wild animals like mountain lions, or to arrest human trespassers, which they say they’ve had a few.

Stephen, I’d like to introduce you to Eric Bard, principal investigator.

My pleasure.

This is Eric Bard, the ranch’s principal investigator and chief scientist — a physicist and technical guru. Bard is behind the vast installation of the ranch’s high-tech camera systems, monitoring devices, and other scientific equipment. He’s often the first one to point out potential paranormal activity.

And this is Thomas Winterton, the ranch’s superintendent. He manages the maintenance and upkeep of the property and assists in the team’s investigations. He claims to have had multiple paranormal encounters at the ranch.

Not present was Travis Taylor.

I sit down with the Skinwalker crew and bring up the first thing on my mind.

This place — you guys have been here for six years. The twenty years prior to that comes with a lot of written history. The books are right over there.

A lot of stories.

Yeah, Bigelow — but a lot of stories.

For twenty years, the ranch’s previous owner Robert Bigelow claimed the ranch was crawling with UFOs, ghosts, and all kinds of monsters. Bigelow associates released two books full of stories about horrifying creatures that stalked the ranch, including a bulletproof werewolf that couldn’t be killed no matter how many times they shot it.

So now that Brandon Fugal and his investigators have been there for six years, have they seen these things?

Have you guys ever — any of you — seen such a creature?

I can only speak for myself personally — no, I have not.
We have no data under our investigation that supports that.

What about the half-dinosaur, half-beaver creature the Bigelow team claimed to have seen?

Has the new Skinwalker crew ever seen the infamous dino-beaver?

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I can’t even ask the question.
Have you ever seen a dino-beaver?

No. I’ve never seen a dino-beaver. I wouldn’t even know what that is. That’s an interesting name to come up with. It sounds like the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

And what about the Bigelow claims of UFOs and scary creatures coming out of interdimensional tunnels and portals?

You’ve never seen a portal open up and a spaceship come out?

No.

I’ve never seen the creek creature reach out and pull itself out, drop to the ground, and walk off either. Never seen it.

So it appears the ghouls and goblins of the Bigelow days are nowhere to be found in Brandon Fugal’s version of Skinwalker Ranch.

I’m not saying anything negative about our predecessors. I’m just saying that it sounds so ridiculous because it’s so far outside the scope of what we are investigating and documenting over the course of the last six years.

It’s obvious Fugal is trying to distance himself from the outlandish stories of the Bigelow era — calling some of them ridiculous.

However, on the History Channel show that he produces, he takes a very different tone.

In the early ’90s, Robert Bigelow bought Skinwalker Ranch. When his team conducted a very aggressive scientific investigation, the Bigelow team ended up having all sorts of strange things happen — with spooky music and dramatic effect.

The Bigelow stories of the past are used to amplify, support, and validate Fugal’s current endeavors.

The story of a bulletproof wolf creature, for example, is presented a few times in Fugal’s show with a very legitimizing tone.

A very large wolf came in off the plains.

The father then went inside, got a weapon, and came out and started shooting at it point blank — you know, right here — shooting at the wolf.

They encountered these giant wolf-like creatures that the Native Americans would refer to as Skinwalkers, and were literally impervious to gunshots.

As we previously reported, Robert Bigelow never presented any evidence at all to support any of his claims about wolf creatures or other monsters at Skinwalker Ranch. Beyond stories, neither does Fugal.

I’ve heard that this ground here is the gateway for these shape-shifters — are these Skinwalkers?

Yeah.

All that notwithstanding, there is one spooky thing from the Bigelow days that Fugal and his team openly claim to be true: the Hitchhiker.

A malevolent phenomenon that supposedly attaches itself to people, attacks them, and causes a wide range of injuries to their bodies.

The Hitchhiker phenomenon — according to you, is real?

We have data demonstrating that there is validity to those claims.

Illnesses and injuries have occurred at your ranch?

Absolutely.

This, of course, leads me to an obvious question. I have to ask this question.

Why are you guys here?

If that is a threat, and if that is a potential, and if that can happen at any moment — what are you doing here?

The best person to answer that question is sitting right here.

What are you doing here?

Yeah. In 2017, I suffered a head injury that nearly cost me my life.

Thomas says he felt pain in his head but had no idea what was causing it.

A doctor was preparing my wife and kids for the fact that I may not pull out of it.

People ask, “Well, why do you go back?”

I come back for several reasons. First being that something that almost cost me my life became very personal.

I’d like to get some answers.
I’d like to know what happened.

Thomas claims doctors ran dozens of tests on him but were left baffled as to the cause or source of his head injury.

When I was discharged from the hospital, they literally didn’t know what the diagnosis was.

I had to sign a paper on discharge where they stated they didn’t know what had taken place.

Really interesting — and difficult for me to process. That’s unique.

And it’s not the only case, from what I understand.

On the History Channel show, there are quite a few times when cast members appear to be afflicted by some kind of invisible force. Often, they end up in urgent care with various diagnoses.

To be sure, it is quite shocking to watch.

We have had numerous acute medical episodes occur with participants, unfortunately under my stewardship.

Okay — that’s why I had you sign the same liability.

I had to sign a health waiver.

The waiver of liability that Fugal required me to sign before coming to Skinwalker explicitly said I could be seriously injured — or worse — from paranormal phenomena at the ranch.

I personally didn’t feel scared at all because I didn’t believe it.

But deep down, I’ll admit, I wondered: What if?

It was time to take a tour.

Fugal asked me what I’d like to see first.
I told him I want to see where it all started.

This is the house where, in 2007, James Lacatski — then a scientist for the Defense Intelligence Agency — claims he witnessed a glowing paranormal apparition floating in mid-air.

Because of this experience, Lacatski approached Senator Harry Reid about creating an official Pentagon program to study UFOs and related phenomena, such as the ghostly object he claims to have seen.

Funded with taxpayer money, the AAWSAP program, among other things, investigated supposed paranormal phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch.

The program eventually ended up on the front page of The New York Times in a factually inaccurate article.

That erroneous article led to a viral media circus, which culminated with Congress spending more taxpayer money on UFOs.

But the story, in many ways, started here — in this house at Skinwalker Ranch.

Candace Lin and Tom Lewis currently live in this house as the ranch’s caretakers.
They invite us inside to take a look.

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So you have the kitchen right there.

James was actually standing right here when he saw it.

Where you’re standing — right where I’m standing?

So this is strange.

The story is now different, because James Lacatski stated multiple times that he saw the object in the kitchen.

However, now that the Fugal team mistakenly thinks Lacatski had his experience in the foyer — almost like a game of telephone — they now have their own new spooky stories about the foyer.

This is a special spot in the house.
We’ve had multiple people witness something in front of this window — between the door and the window.

So it wasn’t only the military guy.

Kristen was standing right here, looking toward the same area James had been looking toward.

Suspended in the air was this grid-like structure.

Some other people who’ve been here won’t even sit in front of this window.

You do have a camera?

Yes, we do. That’s the only inside camera we have.

That’s exactly where I was going.

Have you ever captured anything?

We’ve captured — something.

I have it set up so it turns on if it gets any motion. It’ll turn on sometimes, but we haven’t yet seen anything.

We left the ranch house, and Fugal leads me toward a rocky hill where he says a mysterious symbol is engraved in stone.

Is this the trail?

Yeah — come on.

Oh, we’re going literally off the beaten trail.

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Brandon, do you ever dress ranch-appropriate?

This is me dressing down.
This is me casual.

The symbol carved into the rock is said to be over 200 years old and is apparently a symbol from Freemasons.

We’ve had a number of experts look at this symbol and determine that it is communicating:

“As above, so below.”

“As above, so below” is a historical phrase appropriated in modern times to describe the symbiotic relationship between Earth below and Heaven above.

It was above this exact rocky mesa where Fugal claims the first UFOs of his Skinwalker Ranch tenure appeared in June 2016 — two months after buying the ranch from Robert Bigelow.

A hired surveyor on the ranch called Fugal to say he had taken a photo of a UFO.

At the time, Fugal was back in Salt Lake City.

I told him, “Stop everything. Do not talk to anyone. Do not stop anywhere. I need you to come straight here.”

This is the photo the surveyor drove three hours to physically show Fugal.

And this is the supposed UFO.

It is a bona fide unidentified flying object.

And it zipped away.

The description of the object zipping off comes only from the hired surveyor.

Fugal would later have a falling out with this surveyor for becoming, in his words, unreliable.

After six months of owning Skinwalker Ranch, Fugal still had not personally seen anything strange or paranormal.

I was visiting every month — sometimes a couple of times a month.

I didn’t see anything unusual.
I didn’t feel anything unusual.

But this all changed with a phone call in October 2016 from Fugal associate and former CIA scientist Kit Green.

Green asked Fugal if a successful surgeon he knew and his entourage could visit the ranch.

Fugal agreed.

During their visit, Fugal claims the group felt sensations of dizziness and vertigo.

Their phone batteries inexplicably died.

One of the surgeon’s security guards supposedly blacked out unconscious.

It was after all this weirdness that Fugal says he finally saw his first UFO with his own eyes — above the rocky mesa right ahead of us.

Above the mesa, in broad daylight, within fairly close proximity, is a 40 to 50 foot silver-grayish disc-like object.

Fugal says the object began moving erratically back and forth before it darted off and disappeared.

And then, within a few seconds, it’s gone — like a bullet shooting off into the distance.

Since all of their phones were dead, photos and videos of this sighting don’t exist.

However, while reviewing photos taken earlier that day, they discovered a photo that allegedly shows a saucer-like UFO in the sky.

It looks strangely similar to what the three of us sighted above the mesa.

Later that day, the surgeon and his entourage left the ranch.

Fugal says he never saw them again.

But if he had been a skeptic before, this series of events converted him into a full believer.

It was a game-changing experience for me.
It changed my entire perspective relative to the ranch.

I felt a new urgency and imperative.

Fugal then increased his investment in Skinwalker Ranch, doubling his efforts to find the truth behind these supposed paranormal events.

We walk down from the rocky mesa and get inside Jurassic Park–type Jeeps to take a Jurassic Park–type tour of the 500-acre ranch.

Here are the property’s borders as seen from above.

This is the ranch headquarters, known as Homestead One.

This is the rocky mesa where Fugal showed me the mysterious Masonic symbol carved in stone.

We drive along this dirt road and to our left see the first of three observation towers — or bait pens — from the Bigelow days.

You call them the bait cage?
Bait pen, yeah.

You’d have animals — livestock or dogs — as biosensors to draw the phenomenon.

Bigelow would place animals in these pens as bait, and then ranch investigators would wait for a predator, ghost, or monster to show up — maybe attack the animal or something.

By the way, when I say “predator,” I literally mean predator entities that were cloaking their presence, much like you see in the motion picture Predator from decades ago.

Further down the road, we enter the Triangle — a location never really mentioned by the Bigelow team, but which has suddenly become a center of supposed paranormal activity during Fugal’s tenure.

This is a point on the ranch where you’ve decided something is centered, or happens more often here?

There is a high-frequency pattern, yes.

There is a high frequency of unexplained activity, including electromagnetic anomalies, that occur right here.

Fugal’s team believes there is some kind of spooky invisible anomaly in the air above the Triangle.

We’ve been talking about the area over the Triangle being some sort of anomaly — potentially a portal, one end of a wormhole, something.

Yeah. Gateway.

What if that’s the other end of the wormhole?

Past the Triangle, within a small patch of trees, is Homestead Two — arguably the most iconic location on the ranch.

It’s a group of abandoned and desolate buildings where families used to live nearly a hundred years ago.

Fugal tells me Homestead Two is possibly the most haunted spot on the ranch — a nexus of all kinds of paranormal activity.

Unexplained phenomena, for whatever reason, seems to be focused — or at least more intense — in this area.

According to the stories of the Bigelow era, this place was supposedly the site of shocking paranormal things:
monster spiders,
portals to another dimension,
poltergeist activity.

And this is the location where Bigelow investigators claim they saw the infamous dino-beaver.

Fugal and his team haven’t seen any monster spiders or dino-beavers.

They do say they’ve recorded strange unknown anomalies on various scientific devices — like the time they brought out the rabbi from Ancient Aliens to say a prayer in front of Homestead Two.

They noticed the temperature changed a little bit as the rabbi said the prayer.

The rabbi said it was a chant that’s supposed to open up a portal.

I don’t know.

I guess I was secretly hoping for monster spiders.

We step outside Homestead Two, and I ask the team if they’ve ever encountered ghostly voices from invisible entities like previous Bigelow investigators claimed.

Have there ever been moments of disembodied voices?
Telepathic voices?

Yes.
Three times on this ranch.

Thomas tells me a story where he and his wife went to the ranch headquarters alone in the middle of the night to troubleshoot a technical problem with one of the surveillance cameras.

He says the moment they arrived, they felt uneasy.

It was not a good feeling that night.

You know — the hair starts standing up on your arms.

While troubleshooting at a computer, they heard strange sounds, but nothing was there.

Then, he says, a voice spoke to them.

It sounded like a male voice standing between my wife and I.

We both heard it at the exact same time.

It just said:
“You need to leave now.”

My wife and I looked at each other.

She said, “Did you hear that?”

How loud was it?

About like that.
“You need to leave now.”

I thought it was auditory.
We both thought we were hearing it with our ears.

I reached forward for the mouse — and we heard it a second time.

“You need to leave now.”

Frightened, Thomas and his wife did leave.

He says he would hear a similar disembodied voice on the ranch on two other occasions.

At this point, having been raised very religious — the Holy Ghost, the still small voice — that’s what I assigned it to.

Thomas grew up in the Mormon religion.

The Holy Ghost in Mormonism is described as a “still small voice” — a real spiritual entity that comforts you, guides you, and sometimes literally talks to you.

I also grew up Mormon.

I would often hear church members tell stories about a voice that spoke to them — usually a warning.

Don’t go down that alley.
Don’t go to that party.
Don’t get in that car.

For Thomas, the message was simple:
“You need to leave now.”

It’s hard not to notice how religion plays a role at Skinwalker Ranch — specifically Mormonism.

Does Mormonism, directly or indirectly, play a role?

That’s a valid question.

When you have so many participants with a similar cultural background or cultural programming —

Everyone in the Skinwalker crew that I met that day had, at one point, been involved with the Mormon Church.

I was curious.

Is everyone here either current Mormon, grew up Mormon, Mormon heritage — culturally?

I would say yes.
We’ve all had experiences.
We’re all in different places with that.

That’s how I met him.

I was his mission trainer.

You were his senior companion?

That’s correct.

He’s my father.

Fugal and Arnold met on a Mormon mission in Hawaii in 1992.

As someone who also served a Mormon mission and was once actively involved with the church, it’s hard not to notice the religion’s subtle influence here.

Mormon theology provides a compelling roadmap for understanding our place in the universe.

I love my faith.

I was raised to believe that we’re not alone in the universe — that there are worlds without number, that there is a higher power, that there is a divine inspired nature to our existence.

“Worlds without number” comes directly from Mormon theology.

The church teaches multiple dimensions of reality separated by a spiritual fabric of space-time called the veil.

Within these dimensions are worlds without number — worlds full of people alien to our Earth.

Travel between these dimensions is possible through the power of God — and through the power of Satan.

It should be noted that Harry Reid — the late U.S. senator who believed there was something paranormal at Skinwalker Ranch and sponsored the Pentagon program — was also a lifelong Mormon.

When asked how he reconciled his Mormon beliefs with paranormal research, Reid said this:

Anyone who’s looked at Mormonism understands we believe there are other worlds.

Joseph Smith claimed this knowledge came from divine intervention.

He was right, and others are wrong.

There’s no question there are other worlds — but proving that scientifically has been elusive.

Proving there’s an afterlife, other dimensions —

At Skinwalker Ranch, we truly have accomplished what no one else has accomplished.

We’ve proven there is more to our reality than meets the eye.

Fugal’s claim intrigues me.

I’d heard many emphatic claims and compelling stories — but I hadn’t seen anything myself.

So I ask them to show me.

We enter the ranch command center — once Robert Bigelow’s bedroom.

Now it’s a high-tech headquarters filled with computers, monitors, and scientific devices.

That in particular — that’s a $30,000 supercomputer.

What am I looking at here?

Satan One.

It’s an acronym:
Sentinel Assignment Telemetry and Notification.

Eric Bard has named equipment Cain, Adam, Eve.

I’ve got something to show you.

This is brand-new evidence.

A crystalline material found near Homestead Two.

It reflects light on the surface of the ground.

It could be natural — but it raises questions.

Is it only found there?
Is it related to the phenomenon?
Is it geological?

Next, I ask about video evidence.

With cameras running 24/7 for years, what’s the best paranormal footage?

This is what they show me.

My first impression?

A bug.

A spider hanging from a web in the wind.

The clip is only 20 seconds.

Not enough context.

Is it conclusive?

No.
But it’s interesting.

On the History Channel show, the clip is edited to appear as if it materializes from thin air.

Another clip.

Looks like a moth.

But it’s winter.

That’s a problem.

The object appears to shrink as it recedes.

Fun to imagine a craft zipping away — but there’s not enough data.

The final video:

Two glowing objects floating near an abandoned building.

A bird approaches — then flies away.

Possible explanation?

Caterpillars.
Silk worms.

Why should anyone care?

Because of the question:
What would happen if?

That question defines UFOs.
The paranormal.

All of it.

Fugal leaves for Salt Lake City.

He allows me to camp overnight — alone — at Homestead Two.

Thomas and Eric try to talk me out of it.

People have been injured.

There’s no cell service.

They ask to stay nearby.

I refuse.

I agree only to carry a walkie-talkie.

Eric says my presence is an experiment.

I’m the bait.

As I drive out, the ranch feels like a 500-acre church.

Believers saw miracles.

I saw nothing.

Was I missing something?

As the sun sets, my night at Skinwalker Ranch begins.

I wasn’t afraid — but I wondered:

What if?

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