Welcome back to DEAD Time, where I explore the unknown through discussions with experts on the paranormal, personal experiences, and stories about high strangeness. I’ve always been fascinated by Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, because the ranch has been a hotspot for reports of UFOs, now referred to as UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) and other unexplained activity since the 1970s—It’s like a real-life X-File. Skinwalker Ranch is located in Uintah County, bordering the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and lies on land traditionally occupied by the Ute Tribe, but the term skinwalker comes from Navajo legend. In the Navajo culture, a skinwalker is an evil witch who has the ability to shapeshift and turn into an animal. Legend says that during a time of conflict between the Utes and Navajo, members of the Navajo cursed their enemies with the skinwalker, and the skinwalker is rumored to still walk the land today.
Gwen and Terry Sherman owned Skinwalker Ranch from 1994 until 1996. The Shermans reported seeing flashing lights and mysterious objects in the sky, cattle mutilations, and a bewildering encounter with a strange creature they thought was a wolf. When billionaire property magnate Robert Bigelow, who had an interest in space travel and the paranormal, read about what the Shermans had experienced, he bought the ranch from them in 1996. Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) and had a team set up monitoring equipment around the ranch. His team experienced the same baffling phenomena that the Shermans had reported. Bigelow then formed Bigelow Aerospace, which was funded by the U.S. government, and the results of their work have been kept highly confidential. In 2016, commercial real estate broker and Chairman of Collier’s International in Utah, Brandon Fugal, bought the ranch. In 2019, Fugal put together a team of scientists, researchers, and experts to try and solve the mystery of the ranch and decided to share the team’s findings with the television series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, which began airing on History Channel in 2020 and is now in its fourth season.
Television cameras had never been allowed on the property until The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch was being produced. The team investigating the ranch includes Travis Taylor, Ph.D., an astrophysicist who has over twenty-five years of experience in the aerospace and defense industry and has worked with NASA and the Department of Defense; Principal Investigator and Chief Scientist Erik Bard, who has installed a cutting-edge surveillance system on the ranch; Superintendent of Skinwalker Ranch Thomas Winterton; Chief Security Officer Bryant “Dragon” Arnold; Manager of Skinwalker Ranch Jim Morse, and caretakers of the ranch Kandus Linde and Tom Lewis. Over the past several years, the team has done countless experiments at the ranch and shared the mind-blowing data and other findings on The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.
Bloody Disgusting was delighted to have the opportunity to talk with Principal Investigator Erik Bard and Superintendent Thomas Winterton about their time on Skinwalker Ranch, the results of their experiments, personal experiences, and a lot more!
Read on to find out the secrets of Skinwalker Ranch…
Thomas Winterton, Bryant Arnold, Brandon Fugal, Travis Taylor, Erik Bard
Bloody Disgusting: Erik, you’re a Physicist and you have been the Principal Scientific Investigator at Skinwalker Ranch since 2016. When you began studying the phenomena at the ranch, what appealed to you most about this project and did you consider yourself to be a skeptic?
Erik Bard: Sure. I am a plasma and X-ray physicist. I am whatever I have to be in the present, or I am nothing. You ask about what appealed to me about the investigation or project—In one word, it was the mystery itself. That should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. The specific focus of my interest in the problem confronting us at the ranch has shifted substantially over the years, beginning in 2016. I began with a focus on the physical and phenomenological features of the ranch narrative, but I found myself drawn toward more abstract and epistemic questions. The initial appeal to me was just as it would have been to anyone else confronted with the widely, and wildly, varied reports made in connection with an odd-shaped postage stamp of only 512 acres near the center and lowest point of a more than six-million-acre Uintah Basin expanse.
Reports of UFOs or UAPs, of luminous so-called orbs that are said to move under intelligent control and of “portals” like windows in the sky or just above ground level and of mysterious ribbons of multicolored light, as well as creatures classified as cryptids, of disembodied voices and shadow figures, cattle mutilations of poltergeist activity and even physical and mental health effects seemed to me to be storyboard material for the old X-files series. The volume and diversity of it seemed so improbable and still does! It also seemed unlikely to withstand scrutiny. But reportedly, it had done just that for decades, most recently, under the stewardship of Robert Bigelow’s NIDS and BAASS teams of advanced degree-wielding scientists and other professionals. So, while I do not identify as a “skeptic,” since that’s usually just a euphemism for someone guided by a disbelief system, I expected only to find stories behind the stories, ultimately leading to a genesis tale that would have some basis in a much more modest reality but one that had spun out of control over the generations. So, the appeal, I suppose, was to search out that genesis story: an explanation that would bring unifying appeal, if not satisfying closure to the whole thing. Importantly, I was not emotionally invested. I did not care whether that genesis story would have any resemblance to the narratives, themes and memes now tagged under the heading “Skinwalker Ranch.”
BD: Thomas, you’re the Superintendent of Skinwalker Ranch. What first appealed to you most about the ranch and the project the team is working on for The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, and did you consider yourself to be a skeptic in the beginning?
Thomas Winterton: What appealed to me most was the opportunity to work with Brandon Fugal and Jim Morse and the opportunity to meet some of the titans in the industry, as quoted from Brandon. I went in understanding that relationships are everything, and the chance for a small-town kid like me to meet and work with one of the greatest real estate brokers in the United States was too good to pass up. I came on to the ranch as a healthy skeptic. The paranormal was not anything that I had paid attention to or had on my radar up to the point of time I came onto the ranch.
Erik Bard
BD: Erik, some of the evidence your team at Skinwalker Ranch has collected includes sightings of several UAPs in the sky above the ranch. Did you have any personal experience with UAPs or UFOs prior to heading up the team at the ranch and if so, can you share one of those experiences?
EB: Prior to my involvement at the ranch, I had previously seen things that I would classify as unidentified in the skies above myself, usually witnessed while alone, so, strictly speaking, UAPs, but I did not regard them as having much evidentiary value in the discussion on the existence of UFOs or extraterrestrial life. My interest in those topics had run its course and ended with the conclusion that the discussion was less than useful and probably doomed, as early as during my elementary school years in the 1970’s. While, on the surface, the topics of UFOs, etc. offer a welcome vacation from the familiar and the mundane, I did not consider them to be anything more than a recreational fiction with almost mystical, religious undertones. Mind you, this was not because I consider the idea of extraterrestrial life or even of its intersection with the history of our planet and our species to be untenable fiction. Not at all. Quite the opposite.
From the perspective of a near-infinite universe with truly astronomical numbers of stellar and galactic systems out there, I considered it an obvious and inevitable truth that “ET” exists, countless times over, but I presumed the odds to be extremely low that any real “answer” would be found, or any substantive disclosure ever made about these in my lifetime. And, to put it bluntly, Michelle, I didn’t care. We are talking about 2016 and earlier, mind you. And to be completely transparent, I am in the minority who do not consider UFOs or UAPs to be the central question in my present work. They are just one part of it. I am just as pleased to explore any other clearly stated, testable, falsifiable hypothesis targeting other aspects. Even the purely “natural” ones. Afterall, as I like to say, nature’s got talent.
BD: Thomas, did you have any personal experience with UAPs or UFOs prior to joining the team at the ranch and can you share one of those experiences?
TW: I had two experiences prior to my time on the ranch that fall into the UFO category. I prefer the term UAP at this point because so many sightings cannot be definitively identified as an object. The first one happened when I was a kid at my house. I looked out my window facing the west late one night and saw what I thought was a brilliant orange half-moon, with the light portion on the bottom, dished up. I didn’t think anything about it until the next day when my mom showed me on the calendar that there was no moon that night. So, whatever it was I saw in the sky, it wasn’t the moon as I had thought. My second time was at a scout camp I attended with my son. We were camping in the Uintah Mountains, and due to the scout leaders having dogs in their tent, I opted to sleep in the cab of my mega cab pickup. I happened to see what looked like a satellite crossing the sky through the window, and just as it was about to go out of my line of site, it stopped, reversed, and then began a series of maneuvers that defied the behavior of any known aircraft. I watched it dart back and forth for quite a while, and then got out and woke up the scout leaders and had them look at it. They watched for a couple of minutes and then went back to bed. I watched it dart around the sky for more than 45 minutes. I had some binoculars, which seemed to help little due to the distance of the object.
BD: What are your thoughts on the interdimensional hypothesis, which proposes the idea that aliens and UAPs/UFOs are not from space, but from other dimensions that coexist alongside our own?
EB: I see the interdimensional hypothesis merely to be the generalization and rebranding of the “UFO” and “ET” idea, really. Sure, why not? On what bases can we even weigh these ideas, while our feet remain firmly planted on the ground, where we are born and will most likely die? Again, I am a physicist, so these ideas, conventional-dimensional or extradimensional, hardly seem to compete for bandwidth. They are nearly one and the same; the conventional UFO and ET hypotheses being only a subset of the larger set that includes interdimensional craft and beings, etc. It’s all so far out that the inclusion of an extra-dimensional possibility seems to be a requirement, just for completeness. Does that seem to dismiss the question? I hope not.
TW: Because of my religious upbringing, my belief system of a spirit world, life after death, life before birth, etc., kind of already incorporated a belief that other dimensions coexist alongside ours. Before my time on the ranch, I had never given a single thought to UAPs/UFOs being from another dimension. After witnessing so many anomalies that can be seen with infrared cameras, things that cannot be seen with the naked eye and yet are easily seen with an infrared camera, I am convinced that there are many things around us that are just outside the spectrum of what we are able to witness with our eyes. It is not a far jump for me to think that it is very possible for things to be present even further up and down the spectrum, outside of what our current equipment can see or measure.
Erik Bard and Travis Taylor
BD: With the data you have collected at Skinwalker Ranch, including the 1.6Ghz radio frequency that accompanies high strangeness and UAPs that seem to just disappear, have you or anyone on the team theorized that Ultraterrestrials could be a possible explanation for the activity on the ranch?
EB: Yes, both. But the Ultraterrestrial conjecture does not rest on the 1.6 GHz signal, latched-onto as a result of the documentary work and so often spoken about since 2020. Can it be tied-in? Yes, of course. Especially if we start with an outlook that insists on it. But we haven’t rigorously done it. Not yet. Our speculative work, and that’s what it is, treats features like 1.6 GHz signals and flashes of light and radiation spikes and instrumentation errors on an equal footing. The data will self-assemble. But I will wager that, if Ultraterrestrials are part of the ultimate answer, it won’t be reached via any deductive pathway beginning with the data currently in hand. It will be reached, I think, through new elements in a growing set of givens. Any cosmic handshake with conjectured Ultraterrestrials, you might as well call them gods, will happen because they have extended a hand in our direction and not because we detect their passing-by. I suppose there might be a little bias on my part [laughs].
TW: I feel that after witnessing something strange, our entire team’s initial response is to search for a prosaic, mundane explanation for what we just witnessed. At some point, we sometimes start laughing among ourselves because in our effort to explain it away, we sound crazier than if we just assign it to some exotic origin. There have been many times at this point of the investigation where the mundane explanation sounds crazy, and the crazy explanation sounds logical. When we witness anomalies that seem to have an intelligence behind them, that seem targeted, pre-cognizant, and appear to operate on principles of physics beyond known human capabilities, it seems to be a natural leap to think that there could be a Ultraterrestrial behind it. I personally think that it is arrogant for mankind to think that in the vastness of the universe, we are the only living beings there are. It also would then seem arrogant to me to assume that mankind is the most advanced species out there.
BD: Have either of you had any personal paranormal or unexplained experiences not involving UAPs at Skinwalker Ranch that you can share?
EB: Yes, no shortage of them. I have shared them and will undoubtedly share them many more times, as the occasion arises, before all is said and done.
TW: The majority of my strange unexplainable experiences on Skinwalker Ranch have not involved UAP’s. They have ranged from seemingly harmless poltergeist activity to terrifying physiological episodes. I have shared many in my numerous podcast interviews as well as on the Skinwalker Ranch Insider Page. I have heard what I first interpreted as audible voices giving me commands, to realizing that the audible voice was in my head, to having many electronic failures, unexplained specific messages popping up on my electronics, both on the ranch as well as at my home, having many various incidents that affected my physical health, and so much more. It has been said many times among the team that it is like death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s also said that the ranch isn’t something that can be explained, it can only be experienced.
BD: Thomas, on the show, you’ve shared that you’ve had some health problems that might be related to the experiments your team has done at the ranch. Can you tell me a little bit about that, and do you think something at the ranch is still affecting you?
TW: For reasons none of us understand, I seem to be extra sensitive to certain energies on the ranch. It has been interesting to watch as some individuals are extremely affected by the ranch while other individuals standing right next to them feel nothing out of the ordinary. I would love to better understand what effects the ranch has on our physiology. Why me and not someone else next to me? Yes, I have experienced some very traumatic things, both physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I have not yet reached a point where I am comfortable sharing too many details. Maybe the day will come that I will, and maybe it won’t. Time will tell, I guess.
Thomas Winterton
BD: It’s not unusual for electrical equipment, and even rockets and drones, to malfunction or drain during experiments at Skinwalker Ranch. Do you have a personal theory for what could be draining the energy from these devices?
EB: I don’t know whether I have theories or whether the theories have me. I think it’s the latter. Ideas for why devices behave strangely and so often malfunction fall into what I have termed, sandboxes. Consider them schools of thought or explanatory models. It’s a spectrum, ranging from the prosaic or mundane on one extreme, to the mysterious but anthropogenic, left of center, to the natural and misunderstood, right of center, to exotic science-ultrafiction on the other far extreme. It’s a good exercise for those of us involved in the investigation, as well as for those who are following the work, to spend at least some time working in each of these sandboxes and taking inventory of how much actual sand or other support each of these contains.
TW: I do not. That is a question better left to our scientists. While I have witnessed and even experienced it probably more than a hundred different times, I do not know what could be causing it or what the scientific explanation could be.
BD: In recent news, a military whistleblower has claimed that a secret UFO retrieval program controlled by the U.S. has several intact and partially intact alien vehicles. What are your thoughts on these claims? Do you think it’s possible?
EB: Ok, I have no whistle to blow, so I may not ever be able to channel the motivations of a whistleblower, but I can say that, certain details aside, all of the whistle blowing hardly brings any new news to my attention, or what have I missed? My thoughts go to why any of us, myself especially, has any real reason to give new and greater heed to what is being said. What, really, does it mean to us? What does it add to what we know? Really? Do I think it is possible that the U.S. has intact or partially intact alien vehicles? Of course. But the wildcard is this word: possible. Of course, it’s possible, Michelle. I will meet your possible and raise you a plausible. But don’t forget to scrutinize why the whistle is being blown. Look at the time and circumstance, the context.
TW: After 7 years running Skinwalker Ranch, I am of the opinion that anything is possible.
BD: The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch has spawned a spinoff series called Beyond Skinwalker Ranch that follows a team investigating different locations to find out if the activity at Skinwalker Ranch is isolated. Do you believe there are other locations in the world with similar activity or do you think Skinwalker Ranch is unique, and why?
EB: Yes, the reported phenomenology in these other locations is nearly identical in some respects to what we see happening at the ranch. The overlaps and parallels are fascinating and, in some cases, cause concern. From the reports of UAPs and so-called orbs that seem to operate under intelligent control to stories of subjective experiences, even medically consequential outcomes, we get the sense that we are engaging with, or being engaged by, something much more widespread than I would have presumed prior to 2016. I don’t know what to make of it and I don’t know who really does. So, the picture is forming with the help of information brought to our table by our traveling colleagues. Personally, I am in contact with individuals across the continental U.S. and in Europe, for example Italy, Norway, and Germany, who have shared stories that could easily have been taken from the pages of the ranch narrative itself. So, yes, there are parallels. As for whether the phenomenology at the ranch is exclusive in certain respects, I can only say that it remains to be seen. Will the types of interference that we have seen with our instruments, with basic equipment, and even our surveillance assets, be replicated in the other locations? I think the answers are beginning to stream in.
TW: I think it is a well-documented fact that strange things happen all around the globe. I believe the real question should be if any of those spots have all the phenomena that Skinwalker Ranch has, and what is the common factor between them if there is.
BD: One of the things that makes The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch so intriguing is that your team approaches high strangeness with scientific methods, and you present the data in a way that everyone can understand. As a scientist, what’s the most compelling piece of evidence you’ve collected so far, and why?
EB: I can only speak to that question categorically. That is, there are certain things that have happened, certain kinds of “interference,” whose timing and circumstances are very suggestive of the presence of a volitional “other,” a “someone” and not just a “something,” that I find most puzzling. In these cases, I cannot help wondering whether the observer is a co-causal agent. My terminology may be unfamiliar or cumbersome. So, here’s the question, since we’re considering just about every question: Is there something about our attentive focus, our expectations, mental states, even our apprehensions, that somehow alters outcomes and so often frustrates our otherwise well-planned and provisioned exercises? Is there any degree of so-called “observer effect” on display?
TW: I’d have to say that it is the data that we have learned to consistently repeat. GPS anomalies are proving to be numerous, as is measurements taken by instruments that rely on accurate time to accurately record data such as Lidar. I think that it is the culmination of all the data that is compelling. I feel that we are starting to collect enough data that when we connect the dots a picture is starting to emerge. It’s still too early to tell what it is a picture of, but I feel we are making great progress.
Travis Taylor, Erik Bard
BD: After conducting experiments and collecting extensive data at Skinwalker Ranch for the past few years, have your views of the paranormal changed? Do you consider yourself a skeptic now?
EB: That’s a question about outlook. I think I can best speak to that through a few phrases that I have woven into our discourse over the years as our principal investigator. These have almost become mantras for us. To begin, “Correlation is not causation,” but the contrapositive, “If there is causation, there certainly will be correlation,” is obviously true. In short, we should not, and in reality cannot, explain things away, as the result of overcorrection from “bias.” This may seem like a strange thing to say, but just as we are not justified in the dismissal of nonconforming data simply because they are outliers and for no other reason, we are not justified in prejudice against novel explanatory models that elegantly accommodate the outlier data. We just have to go through the exercise of vetting both the data and the models. It’s an iterative process. That’s a lesson taken directly from nature. The overwhelming majority of the time, I don’t hear thunder. Do you? Probably not. But that is not because there can never be extraordinary electric discharges in and from the sky, whether we understand or can predict them or not. I have seen so-called ball lightning, whereas few people ever have or will. I am sure Travis could state these positions in more relatable or succinct terms, but the gist is that I think I tend to begin my assimilation of any new data with the consideration of mundane causes and work my way toward the more exotic ones, just like anyone else; but I am just as happy to work the problem in reverse, if I have the resources and the mandate to operate that way. I have done it before. And so have you. Why not? Right?
There is another phrase: We are not led by an inherited narrative; we are led by the data. That’s something I’ve said for years. Brandon often repeats it. While our efforts will undoubtedly be a mixture of both well-executed and poorly executed visions and experiment plans, the takeaways that guide our thoughts and next steps will come from what we measure or observe, for better or worse. Data, not beliefs, at best. We will get some things right. We will get many things wrong. It’s all good. Brandon will often speak in terms of “deploying resources,” as led by the data, speaking of his own financial outlay. His commitment has historically followed some observation that seems to warrant the expense and time, but with no guarantees. Though we are sometimes criticized for what seems like an austere approach that delivers little closure fast enough to satisfy the entitled, who miss the point entirely, the fact is that each step in the advancement of our investigation is taken with deliberate reflection on what we have so far seen and heard or measured or otherwise experienced for ourselves. That’s what matters! To those who don’t like this approach, I pose the rhetorical question, “Will you have me follow your hunch? Or our data?” To the contrarian who insists on the former, I offer the challenge to go find a new venue and begin exploring and investing time and money and risking personal loss, as guided by whatever alternative set of principles they like.
Another ism from the Principal Investigator at Skinwalker Ranch is this: “We are not here to believe. We are not here to disbelieve. We are here to observe.” For whomever the meaning and validity of this is not obvious, I can probably do nothing. Or how about this: “Don’t trade a true mystery for a false ‘answer’ in service to a craven desire for closure, more than for truth.” Since your question about “skepticism,” and outlook in general, seems philosophical, let me volunteer another of my isms along those same lines: “Speculation in a vacuum is revelation about the self.” At best, it’s true.
Finally, I think I want to offer another saying from the godfather and creator of such series as Ancient Aliens and The Curse of Oak Island and the founder of Prometheus Entertainment, the production company that produces The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. This doesn’t come from me, it comes from the late Kevin Burns, a very interesting character and Hollywood heavyweight. He told me, “History tells, mystery sells.” Also from him, “Sip. Don’t gulp.” Both of these statements seem right on target. They, like the things I’ve tried to articulate on my own here, aren’t even revelatory. They are just succinct tokens of things we already know. Am I a skeptic? No. Hell no. But I have no special regard for the designation “paranormal.” Surprised?
TW: Yes. First and foremost is my reaction to the word “paranormal.” It meant nothing to me seven years ago. Now I cringe when I hear it. I believe that today’s “paranormal” will be tomorrow’s scientific discovery. A flashlight would have appeared paranormal a couple hundred years ago, the ability to turn “the sun” on and off with a flick of a finger. Yet, with our understanding of physics today it is no big deal. I believe that many of the things that we freak out about today will be common knowledge at some point in the future. My views have changed in the fact that I have come to accept that there is so much in the world around us that we just do not understand. We really don’t know what is possible and impossible. I am more open minded, slower to dismiss or ridicule.
You can watch all four seasons of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch on History Channel. Until the next DEAD Time, consider the words of Agent Fox Mulder: “When convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?”
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