Bizarre phenomena have lured real-estate tycoons, scientists, TV producers—and the U.S. government—to Skinwalker Ranch. What are they looking for?
I have been warned. This much is clear within minutes of ducking out of a helicopter onto the high-desert oasis of Skinwalker Ranch in northeastern Utah one searingly bright October afternoon. As a visitor approaching the dark and inscrutable paranormal forces patrolling this property, I could be targeted.
The admonition has come in several forms. There was the prayer for safe deliverance given by chopper pilot Cameron Fugal, brother of property owner Brandon Fugal, as we approached the ranch. This didn’t necessarily rattle me, as I’d recently watched Cameron deliver a similar invocation on season one of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the hit History channel show that has generated mainstream attention for the property.
There was the surreal experience of being greeted on the helipad by about half the show’s cast, whom I felt I’d come to know during my hours of binge watching—standing stone-faced and shoulder to shoulder like some official tribunal ready to deliver grim news. Long-suffering ranch superintendent Thomas Winterton, looking typically Marlboro Man, shook my hand first, followed by glowering security chief Bryant “Dragon” Arnold. Erik Bard, the spritely scientist, and red-bearded security man Kaleb Bench chatted nearby. It was as if my arrival was the only thing holding up the start of the season five shoot. When we go inside, Winterton presents me with a liability waiver, which strikes me as highly unusual—there’s nothing on the day’s agenda beyond an in-depth conversation.
But what truly tweaked my antennae was a conversation I’d had an hour earlier, at the Fugals’ hangar in Provo. Brandon was on the phone, tending to his day job as a commercial real-estate titan, and Cameron and I were chatting amiably when he suddenly pivoted from a story about becoming a grandfather. “Every time we bring somebody new, the ranch interacts a little different,” he said. “Usually it’s been mostly mild. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” This struck me as a roundabout way of saying I should at least be a little worried.
“We’ve had some guys that are like, ‘This is so stupid—we’re gonna show those aliens who’s boss…’” he continued. “And it’s messed with them.”
“What happened to those guys?” I asked. “Something physical, or their cell phones wigged out, or—?”
It was indeed bodily harm, Cameron said. The previous owner, Robert Bigelow, was haunted by the place, both during his time there and after, when “all the negativity followed him home,” Cameron explained. This sounded a little like the aftermath of a bad Red Lobster meal, but I’d seen the entire series at that point, and I knew what he meant. I’d just never thought of it happening to me.
During the flight, as Brandon recounted the particulars of acquiring the 512-acre ranch, I mentally rifled through the catalog of hazards the show has intimated: unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, which is the modern term for UFO); cryptic messages transmitted through sound waves or electromagnetic interference; and, possibly most relevant, those weird injuries, including vertigo, nausea, temporary paralysis, hearing impairment, and disorientation, some of which led to hospitalizations.
Shortly after we arrive, I inquire about the ranch’s tendency to identify and punish skeptics. The crew immediately warms to the topic. The visitors with the most serious health effects, Winterton says, “are the ones that came—myself included—with kind of a cavalier attitude of, ‘There’s nothing here that’s gonna bother me.’”
It’s possible the group has inferred a certain skepticism from my request, a few weeks earlier, to camp overnight at the ranch—an inquiry that Fugal shot down, citing liability and safety reasons. Can the capricious forces patrolling the property intuit my thoughts? It sounds a bit fantastical, but after hearing about other skeptics’ experiences, I’m not so sure anymore.
But as with seasickness and combat, there’s no way to gauge in advance how you’ll fare until you’re in the thick of it. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m about to find out.
Prior to my arrival at the ranch, the most unnerving thing I’d experienced was Brandon Fugal’s driving. He had picked me up that morning in Salt Lake City in his Lamborghini Urus Performante. Soon we were hurtling south on I-15 at 90 miles per hour to his airport hangar, while he expounded on his skepticism over TSA screenings and Covid-era face masks.
Halfway to Provo, he explains that he acquired Skinwalker Ranch as an “open-minded skeptic. I believed that there was most likely a natural explanation for all that had been reported. I had never seen a flying saucer or anything of the sort.” The Lambo touched 99 as he veered right to blow by a car dawdling along at 90.
Just like on the show, Fugal wore a fitted suit with a crisp, white dress shirt, fancy cowboy boots, and trademark wire-rim glasses—Harry Potter meets Gordon Gekko. He leans into the narrative arc of the hard-charging business icon: He says he started in real estate at age 18 and sold his first office a year later, works 16- to 20-hour days, and has since reshaped Salt Lake City’s skyline. He reveres Elon Musk and frequently name-drops rock stars and politicians in his orbit. (He hired the band Air Supply to play at his 2021 wedding.) Fugal describes himself as a 1980s teenager in a 50-year-old body, and boasts a vast collection of rare books and film memorabilia, including a full-size exoskeleton from the set of Terminator 2. And, most relevant to Skinwalker, he uses his fortune to underwrite certain science-driven moonshots.
In 2009, Cameron had just landed his brother’s private jet when, on a whim, Brandon asked him: How old is the technology and the physics behind this jet-propulsion system? The answer—the 1940s—shocked him. Fascinated by the question of how science had stalled in that realm, Brandon began researching alternative forms of propulsion, which led to a brief partnership with a former client, Joe Firmage, an early internet entrepreneur and UAP aficionado. Firmage claimed he was on the cusp of breakthrough technologies that enable purported UFOs to move in unorthodox and physics-defying ways. The project cratered, but in the aftermath Fugal was introduced to Robert Bigelow, a maverick billionaire who used his Las Vegas real-estate fortune to build a private aerospace firm. Bigelow Aerospace developed an expandable habitat for astronauts on the International Space Station before shuttering operations in 2020.
Bigelow, who has also espoused the presence of aliens and UAPs, is largely responsible for putting Skinwalker Ranch on the map. Established as an agricultural homestead in 1905, for more than a century the ranch experienced reports of strange activity, and as a result had been named for shape-shifting witches of Navajo lore. As early as 1911, a newspaper reported locals hearing “strange noises” emanating from the property, and a string of subsequent owners reported UAPs or other strange activity. Bigelow purchased it in 1996 from ranchers Terry and Gwen Sherman, who had been so spooked by their experiences there—which included UAP activity, cattle mysteriously slain, dire wolf–type creatures, and glowing orbs they say vaporized their dogs—that they eagerly unloaded the place.
Around the time he purchased the property, Bigelow founded and bankrolled the National Institute of Discovery Science, with the goal of conducting serious scientific study of UFOs and other paranormal activities at Skinwalker and beyond. He quickly installed a network of investigators who reported their own paranormal happenings at the ranch. A book written by chief investigator Colm Kelleher and news anchor George Knapp describes one incident in which something had disgorged the wiring within a closed-circuit ranch video camera while another camera, trained on it, captured no activity. The team produced another report detailing the 1998 killing of a perfectly healthy three-year-old cow. There were no signs of struggle and no tracks found, but the animal was missing its left eye and part of its left ear. Additionally, its heart was shredded, but its pericardium—the sac that encloses the organ and its major vessels—was intact.
Read More – How This Remote Utah Ranch Became a Paranormal Activity Hotspot
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