Some have called it a supernatural place. Others considered it “cursed”. Terry Sherman was so horrified by the events at his new cattle ranch that 18 months after moving his family of four to the property known by many as the “Skinwalker Ranch” in northeastern Utah, he sold the 512-acre parcel away.
He and his wife Gwen shared theirs chilling experiences with a local reporter in June 1996: They had seen mysterious crop circles, the Shermans said, and UFOs, and the systematic and repeated mutilation of their cattle—in a strangely surgical and bloodless way. Within three months of the story's publication, Las Vegas real estate mogul and UFO enthusiast Robert Bigelow bought the property for $200,000.
Dubbed the National Institute of Discovery Science, Bigelow set up 24-hour surveillance of the ranch, hoping to get to the bottom of the paranormal claims. This surveillance yielded a book called Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confrontes the Unexplained on a remote ranch in Utah, in which several of the investigators claimed to have seen paranormal activity. But they were unable to capture any substantial physical evidence to support the Shermans' incredible stories.
The ranch was resold to Adamantium Real Estate in 2016.
Were the Shermans lying about what they saw? Or under the spell of a collective delusion? Without evidence, the stories they told are hard to believe, but they are far from unique. The Uinta Basin of eastern Utah was one such greenhouse of paranormal sightings over the years that some alien enthusiasts have dubbed it “UFO Alley.” “You can't throw a rock in Southern Utah without hitting someone who's been kidnapped,” said local filmmaker Trent Harris. Deseret News.
The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
Watch every season of the hit show The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. Available to stream now.
Indeed, according to Hunting the Skinwalker, strange objects have been spotted above since the arrival of the first European explorers: In 1776, the Franciscan missionary Silvestre Vélez de Escalante wrote of strange fireballs appearing above his fire in El Rey. And before Europeans, of course, indigenous peoples occupied the Uinta Basin. Today, “Skinwalker Ranch” adjoins the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation of the Ute Tribe.
Were the Shermans seeing things that nearby Native Americans had noticed centuries before?
Mysterious creatures
A fence surrounds the main buildings at Skinwalker Ranch.
Not everything the Shermans saw on their ranch was UFOs beamed into the sky. They also claimed to have seen mysterious large animals: most notably, a wolf three times the size of a normal wolf that Terry shot at close range several times with a rifle – to no apparent effect.
Then, on the night of March 12, 1997—after the ranch had been sold—biochemist Colm Kelleher, working with Bigelow's National Institute of Science for Discovery, claimed to see a large humanoid creature spying on the research team from a tree.
As he explained himself Skinwalker Hunt, the creature was about 50 yards away, watching the group safely from a tree perch 20 feet off the ground.
UFO Cattle Mutilations: Jergens Ranch
“The big creature that was sitting still, almost by accident, in the tree,” Kelleher said. “The only sign of the beast's presence was the piercing yellow light of its unblinking eyes as they stared steadily back into the light.”
After Kelleher shot the creature with a rifle, it disappeared. “It was then that I saw it—a single, conspicuous oval piece about six inches in diameter, embedded deep in the patch of snow…. It looked unusual: a single large print in the snow with two sharp claws protruding from the back of the mark it goes a few inches deeper. It looked almost like a bird of prey, perhaps a raptor print, but huge and, from the depth of the print, a very heavy creature.”
The 'Skinwalker' at Skinwalker Ranch
Repeated sightings of human-like creatures have led some to invoke the name “Skinwalker,” a shape-shifting character from Navajo tribal folklore. Among the Navajo, skinwalkers are like werewolves: evil witches who can transform into creatures of their choosing.
But Sherman's family ranch was 400 miles north of the Navajo Nation. It was adjacent to Ute territory. And when the Utes and Navajo interbred, it was a rocky relationship, explains historian Sondra Jones, author of Being and Becoming Ute.
“It wasn't friendly,” says Jones. “The Navajo were a more aggressive people. they took slaves, they had slaves in Ute. And there was immediate conflict when the Navajo tried to move up into Ute territory,” in modern Pagosa Springs and Durango.
Damn water, damn lights
A small river runs through the property at Skinwalker Ranch.
Although hikers do not appear in Ute religion, there are still aspects of the ranch that are meaningful within the context of Ute tradition.
Other strange sightings have occurred right next door, at Bottle Hollow – a 420-acre man-made reservoir on Ute land adjacent to the ranch, which was filled with fresh water in 1970 by order of the federal government. In 1998, a police officer saw a large light sink into the tank and then rise again, flying into the night sky. One evening in 2002, four young (non-Indian) men standing on the shore of the reservoir saw a blue-white ball enter the artificial lake.
According to Hunting the Skinwalker, the glowing ball fell into the water just a few feet from shore, then emerged seconds later in a new form: a shimmering, belt-shaped shaft of light. “After performing a brief aerial dance, the band of light zipped away at high speed, hugging the ground before disappearing below the top of Skinwalker Ridge.”
The emergence of the supernatural around Bottle Hollow makes sense within the context of Ute belief. According to Jones, among the Utes “springs and certain waterways were reservoirs of negative power. . . . There were evil spirits or evil spirits that would rise out of the water and drag you in.”
