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[Music] skimwalker ranch located in utah is one  of north america's most mysterious locations  
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known for alleged cattle mutilations ufo  sasquatch and werewolf sightings many  
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investigators have claimed that the phenomenon  has followed them home after visiting the ranch   recently coined the hitchhiker effect
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[Music]
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investigative journalist george knapp and dr  collum culahaire program manager of the dia's  
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asap program and authors of skill workers at the  pentagon joins me to discuss dr color hair's 1998  
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private internal report for nids the national  institute for discovery science focused on  
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four possible hypotheses proposed explaining  the various phenomena reported at the ranch
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join us as we get rebelliously curious [Music]  george and column thank you for joining me on  
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rebelliously curious so recently i just came back  from a trip in the uinta basin myself with micah  
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hanks our editor-in-chief of the debrief and also  has a podcast called the mica hanks program and   we were talking to locals and doing some of our  own research around skinwalker ranch and what  
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the phenomenon that's been happening in the u into  basin so a lot of people think that you know blind  
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frog ranch and the skinwalker ranch are just where  the phenomenon happens but it really is throughout  
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the uintah basin so i would like to just start  off easy and ask both of you why do you feel that  
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you know utah and the uintah basin is attracting  the the paranormal and is such a hot spot for it  
Chapter 2: History of paranormal activity
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well um you know there are multiple different  hot spots in the united states um we we at  
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the national institute for discovery science we  focused a lot of our attention on the uintah basin  
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and as you rightly say it goes back you know  decades and decades junior hicks is sort of a  
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central player in that whole uh that whole sort  of scenario and he became a high school teacher  
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i believe in 1950 which is what 72 years ago i  recently passed but um he sort of became a sort  
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of an attractor for um gathering information from  the lo the locals in the united basin and sort  
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of 40 square miles around the skinwalker ranch  he collected enormous amounts of data that was  
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eventually published by professor frank salisbury  in the his book the utah ufo display i believe it  
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was called but that was all the way back in the  70s and you know we interviewed junior hicks a lot  
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and uh his his whole thing was he had gathered 400  reports from the locals over many years but um the  
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locals had actually told him over 4 000 reports  and you know he only took the top 10 percent and  
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the rest of it was sort of okay lights in the sky  and unusual phenomena in general but he kind of  
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funneled everything down into 400 reports that  that became the basis for frank salisbury's book  
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but i guess what i'm i'm i'm trying to say is that  the skinwalker ranch um is embedded in this area  
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that goes back you know prior to 1950 and you  know we originally george and i when we wrote  
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hunt for the skinwalker george did a lot of  research in terms of how far it really goes  
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back and and you know reports of these unusual  phenomena go all the way back to the 18th century  
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so um it's been sort of in this sort of  league for for centuries same goes with  
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the area in northern new mexico that national  institute for discovery science spent a lot  
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of time in that's the dulce new mexico area they  go of these unusual phenomena and very very high  
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parallels with the uintah basin those phenomena  go back decades also but you've also got yakima  
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in washington you've got the san luis valley in  colorado you've got you've got probably a dozen  
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areas in the united states that are scattered  and that um people have studied over decades  
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um so what's common to all of that i know that  from our perspective the the sort of common  
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common feature for skinwalker and delta new  mexico yakima were the presence of native  
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american reservations in in the vicinity um you  layer that on top of the uh the sort of the mormon  
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uh central focus in northeastern utah and maybe  you've got some sort of a perfect storm for  
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cultural acceptance of the unusual um that may be  part of it or there may be physical aspects of the  
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uh of the um the general topography in  northeastern utah i know uh during the nids  
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era we did a lot of sort of analysis of you know  unusual gravitation phenomena around the around  
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the skinwalker ranch we looked at electromagnetic  phenomena around the skin worker ranch we looked  
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at hallucinogens being carried by the wind to  see if people were actually ingesting peyote  
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and not really figuring things out uh the ned's  group all all the time you use bottled water we  
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never drank water from the locale because you know  just in case there were hallucinogens in the water  
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you know that were causing potentially people to  see things that um that normally they couldn't see  
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so i i suppose the bottom line is that there's a  a sort of a congruence of both physical parameters  
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but also cultural parameters that give rise to  these hot spots the needs guys did what they were  
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supposed to do when they went in there's no like  game plan how do you go investigate a ufo hotspot  
Chapter 3: Investigative approaches
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that's also a paranormal hotspot uh you know they  tried to do what scientists should do is look for   prozac explanations as columns said rule some  things out gravitational anomalies psychoactive  
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plants did basic science stuff but after that  what do you do you know they were attracted  
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by the ufo stories frank salisbury's book junior  junior hicks's work documented hundreds of cases  
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but both of those guys focused primarily on things  were flying in the sky uh orbs lights structured  
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craft a lot of really good cases a little really  well documented cases but all the other stuff the   peripheral stuff kind of got tossed to the side  by by both junior hicks and by salisbury certainly  
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even though they were reported there you know  there's no place like skinwalker ranch in the   world in terms of how intensively it has  been studied over a long period of time  
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past allen in norway has had an ongoing study but  again looking at lights in the sky as opposed to  
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the really strange phenomena that people  have been reported there for a long time   how do you go about what's the game plan to try to  investigate something like that these guys sort of  
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kind of made it up as they went along you know it  is the most intensely studied ufo hot spot in the  
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world the ranch but of course as the nids guys  learned when they came there to look for ufos   there's a lot more going on and it's not just  confined to the ranch itself it's throughout the  
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uintah basin why there you know i think at the end  by the time the needs part of the study was over  
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i remember talking to to column and eric davis  and they they sort of kicked around the idea what   what if we threw a dart in the map and put these  kind of resources into other locations just would  
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you find if you looked hard enough would you  find this everywhere and the answer might be   yes we don't know yeah it's it's unbelievable like  from reading both books and looking at different  
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reports and you touched column a little bit on  a report when you spoke about hallucinogenics  
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there was a port that a paper that you did um was  completing medical psychiatric explanations for  
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utah ranch data in 1998. there was a little bit of  this report that you didn't bring into either of  
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those books and i know you touched lightly on some  of them but you had four really strong hypothesis   that and and a fifth one as well that we'll  speak about but you you cite four off the hop  
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uh the first one being the brain tumor a temporal  lobe epilepsy hypothesis can we start and break  
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down all four of those and we don't have to  go full into depth because i know we only   have an hour but what you find was really the key  factor and what you found was so interesting and  
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why you chose four of these hypothesis and and  i'd love to start with the the brain tumor and  
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temporal lobe epilepsy hypothesis if you can  well is the the report that you're referring to  
Chapter 4: Ruling out medical hypotheses
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was a 1998 report you said and it was uh it  was published um where was it published i'm  
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1998 is now what uh 24 years ago so it is  brilliant yeah it says analyze full all utah ranch  
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data by 1998 and then it was kit green and it says  the purpose of this paper is the first to discuss  
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some of the um involved testing and hypothesis  that we're going on so there you've listed about  
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this this was given to me as well and i wanted  to speak with you on this and for sure what the   valid like if this is valid or not because this  is something obviously that is floating around  
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so when you're looking at you know digi or should  i ask you then did you look at the brain tumor and  
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epilepsy hypothesis like is that something that  you actually analyzed well we we did look at the  
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at the possibility um you know brain tumors  and temporal lobe epilepsy are are sort of  
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in intertwined with this whole field because um  there's uh there's a sort of a long history in  
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the science literature of correlations between  um temporal lobe tumors and the experience of  
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mystical mystical type experiences or people  saying uh seeing things that other people don't  
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see so we we definitely looked at that possibility  and that was very early in the in the midst days  
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when we only had a very very small number of  witnesses um i.e the gorman slash sherman family  
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that were that were sort of reporting all of  this but you know i mean here we are in 2022  
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uh 24 years after this paper you're talking about  was published um or was put out and um you know we  
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now have dozens and dozens of different  um different people from all walks of life  
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from scientific and engineering backgrounds  and from investigative backgrounds including  
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the united states government the dia sent five uh  five different people with with backgrounds in the  
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military uh two skin walker ranch um all five of  them encountered unusual phenomena so you know the  
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the more data that is accumulated over the the  decades since that report came out um the more  
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um the more unlikely temporal lobe not everybody's  walking around with the temporal lobe tumor  
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so so i mean we we are forced by circumstances to  rule out that um that hypothesis simply because  
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the overwhelming number of people um who have  reported unusual phenomena including you know the  
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team that uh brandon fugal is heading um who who  started that this um this new focus beginning in  
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march april of 2016. so i mean you literally have  dozens and dozens of of independent witnesses now  
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whereas in 1998 when these hypotheses were being  put out it was only a handful of witnesses right  
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that makes sense and we're seeing that the high  level though of brain tumors in the uinta basin is  
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extremely high when i was there i was speaking  with you know children with people and their   family members that were having consistent tumors  and you know to me i know you say that there might  
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not be as much validation to that but as time goes  on and you're seeing that these people are having  
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real issues um it's a concern obviously and what  is causing it and we'll get into maybe some of  
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those reasons later on but you know looking at  that and then talking to people like michelle  
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miners who uh formerly worked at the ranch and she  herself had an experience with thomas winterton  
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where she told me personally that they were in a  room together in one of the houses it wasn't one   of the homesteads i believe was one of the houses  that um somebody that somebody lives on currently  
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um and occupies it with their family and she  said that the entire room started to spin   and that thomas winterton and everyone felt this  and they felt they were in some kind of portal  
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or um like vortex and they were  standing still but their vision was   moving now isn't that possible that  could be some form of mental health  
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mass hysteria you know that that's happening  outside of something that's the phenomenon  
Chapter 5: The hitchhiker phenomenon
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um again i would go back to that was a that was a  valid um that was a valid hypothesis back in the  
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in the 90s when mid started this investigation  we we did list out a whole bunch of hypotheses  
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i believe paraphrenia was one of those hypotheses  but again um you know given the enormous number  
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of different people who are not indigenous to  northeastern utah who actually came from elsewhere  
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and then moved into the uintah basin for the  purposes of investigating and documenting  
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these phenomena um i again i would go back  to this um this uh story that not everybody  
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is walking around with a temporal load tumor and  you know there there are issues associated with  
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um being in close proximity to multiple phenomena  like this um there are medical issues that asap  
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documented in great detail and um you know  there's no denying that that there's been a long  
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history of um issues uh associated with these  phenomena um but again um i would not sort of  
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i would not put the phenomena the explanation for  the the phenomena in the basket of you know um  
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essentially uh mass hysteria or or tumors at the  time we're talking to you chrissy it's the 75th  
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anniversary of the birth of the flying saucer the  modern era the day after kenneth arnold's sighting  
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hits the newspapers and that term gets tossed  around it becomes a national sort of a furore  
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there were sightings all over the country 75  years later we still don't have answers to   the big questions what are these things where  they're from who's flying them uh what the the  
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intelligence if it isn't intelligence what  their interest is in us we've learned a lot   uh but we don't have answers to any of the big  questions despite a lot of resources from people  
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like nids the awesome program atep the uap task  force but i think there's another lesson in the  
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kenneth arnold sighting and one that column has  written about is kenneth arnold saw these things   floating around that wasn't the end of it he took  something home with him uh call it a hitchhiker  
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but there was an explosion of paranormal activity  in his home uh he saw it his family members saw it  
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and it stayed with him a long time you know we've  documented a lot of cases like that that happened   at the ranch but it's not limited to just the  ranch this mystery is bigger than just lights  
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in the sky objects in the sky we've come to the  conclusion that we're never going to solve it  
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just by studying uh radar returns and videos of  fuzzy objects flying around in the heavens you  
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got to look at the total picture and the total  picture is pretty darn weird yeah i agree it's  
Chapter 6: Investigating the environment
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it's so weird and it gets weirder and weirder um  as you know i dive deeper into the subject and   look into skinwalker and i always wonder  why skinwalker i'm so attracted to it  
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uh because it is it's wild the things  that are happening and going on   you know i want to go back to this report too  with you colin because you know we get into  
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things that you know sometimes we're  always trying to use science to prove   if what's going on is is actually happening and we  can prove it and what is this paranormal you know  
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one of the other uh hypothesis that you have is  the hallucinogen hypothesis and i found this was   really interesting because you did look at the way  that when currents were moving you looked at from  
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all different types of plants that were located in  the uinta basin and could that be possible can you  
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talk a little bit about that and then along with  did you ever look into the to the thoughts that  
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potentially there was um burning of some type of  bush we know we know that when you burn a bush  
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there could be some type of hallucinogenic that  would come off that was there any burning of   certain psychoactive plants potentially in that  area that might have caused certain hallucinations  
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well we we did as you mentioned uh we did  uh first of all look at um wind direction  
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um and we we looked at the the correlation because  we accumulated pretty rapidly over time dozens  
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of different anomalies that different  people on the property had experienced   so we already had a sort of a several dozen  to match against things like date and time  
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location on the ranch and so we were able to very  easily consult the weather data and and track wind  
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direction uh so so from a perspective of burning  uh burning of plants and also uh wind direction  
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of plants we were able to um essentially look uh  rule out the uh the idea that there was wind borne  
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hallucinate uh hallucinogens coming in because it  would have had to be from all four points of the  
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compass um they would have had to they would have  had to be blowing strongly nor from north south  
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east and west because all of the different  uh times and dates that we had accumulated  
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for the uh for the phenomena that had been already  experienced on the ranch and we're talking by 1998  
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when we had several dozen of these logged and  documented um there was really no correlation  
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between wind direction and uh and and the sort  of uh the performance of these anomalies now  
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one other aspect that we looked at i'm not  sure if it's in that report or or another one  
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that we wrote was that the seismic hypothesis  which was very very well documented by a usgs
Chapter 7: Physical evidence of phenomena
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scientist i think his name was durr dr durr and  he had started looking at the correlation between  
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earthquake lights and piezoelectric effects and  seismic activity um and his his his hypothesis  
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essentially was that seismic activity gave rise to  piezoelectric effects which caused ball lightning  
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um these unusual sort of ball structures  that float around and they have been well  
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documented and actually videoed um in in um  you know in concert with seismic activity  
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all around the world so we're not  talking about something that's   uh that's uh you know fake this is this is real  real stuff that has been documented but you know  
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what nids did was again with that sub that  relatively small data set of several dozen reports  
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we went to the university of utah seismic database  and the usgs seismic database we had two different  
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databases that we were correlating against and we  mapped out what the seismic activity uh within a  
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300 kilometer radius of the of the ranch was  and again we had times and dates to correlate  
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against and again there was no correlation  whatsoever and you know there's a lot of  
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subsequent hypothesis about uh potential seismic  activity and piezoelectric effects affecting  
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people's temporal lobes uh you know michael  persinger had done some some again a canadian  
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scientist who had done some uh some reports on  that and we looked at that possibility but in  
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the end we actually myself and eric davis wrote  a pretty comprehensive report on that hypothesis  
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and the bottom line in the in the paper was that  we had ruled out the seismic hypothesis also   also worth remembering remembering christie a  lot of the things that happened at the ranch  
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are physical they're not mental they're not  psychic or psychological these are physical   events that really did happen that left a mark  a measurable mark i mean animal tracks that were  
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left animal attacks cattle that were carved up  or would walk out into a snow bank and disappear  
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cats that were eviscerated there was one incident  that we described in the first book where these  
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bulls were crammed into a trailer somehow  and then the entire corral was magnetized   it stayed magnetized for a couple of days that was  measurable there were measurable physical effects  
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on equipment compasses that would spin around  batteries that would die all kinds of equipment   and cameras and failures and then the incident  where something invisible climbed up a telephone  
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pole and ripped the guts out of this camera that  was viewable from another camera whatever it did  
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it was invisible there were physical things that  happened there that were measurable that were real   that weren't in people's heads that weren't caused  by magic mushrooms yeah that's that makes makes  
Chapter 8: Data privacy and ownership
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total sense uh also the back to the story that you  were talking about with uh hunt for the skinwalker   when they were up in that telephone pole and  they were pulling out those chords and there  
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was video of that that there was nothing exactly  have you released any of that video coverage or  
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will you release any of that for people to see  or nids um or you know if brendan or sorry if um  
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robert bigelow will potentially release that well  you know that's a that's a tbd but you know um  
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that that's all privately owned data um by and  that's up to robert bigelow who owns that data  
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um i i can't speak for him about whether or not  that's going to be uh released but he's the he's  
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the owner of that data and he put you know several  million dollars into putting uh scientific teams  
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on the property um and accumulating putting a lot  of sensors on the property and accumulating that  
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data so that's a question for him i i'm not able  to answer uh whether or not that's going to be  
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released we tried christie by the way it's 2002.  so it's 20 years ago this year is when i wrote the  
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first article about their work at ned's work at  skinwalker and uh and i've been trying to coax and  
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cajole my friend robert um into releasing some of  this stuff ever since he's not so inclined i mean  
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you know if you've ever met him you know he's a  he's a pretty hard-headed guy set in his way so   um i don't think he cares whether the public gets  a look at it or not but i'd love to we'd love to  
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be able to show it to you yeah we'd love to have  it you know me too i'd love to campaign for that   let's go robert bigelow it's easy to release  that so we can see it uh you know there's we  
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talk about the you did talk about the seismic  energy hypothesis and that was one of the fourth   ones the last one i want to talk about is the  remote uh manipulation hypothesis that you have  
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and that talks a lot about remote energy weapons  and direct energy weapons potentially being used  
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you know this gets into really high conspiracy  thoughts around mk ultra potentially too  
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we're where can you talk a little bit about that  hypothesis and then how this might be connected   and where people might have taken this into a  conspiracy lane as well because when you connect  
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energy weapons to you know people automatically as  you know in the uap community are probably going  
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to scream mk ultra well yeah i mean that that was  certainly on the table as a as a hypothesis the  
Chapter 9: Government and military role
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idea that um there were uh you know either um  united states government contractors or united  
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states personnel or or some other uh organization  that may have been privately owned that were uh  
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testing quote unquote toys in the vicinity of the  uh of the the skin marker ranch and you know that  
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has been an undercurrent of um sort of concern  throughout all of the studies um ever since  
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you know we first got involved which was in in  august of 1996 so this is what now 26 years later  
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um it has been an undercurrent um there's  been rumors of people that were you know  
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encountered in the in the uintah basin that  did seem to be associated with the military but  
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very very sort of fragmentary um illusi  very elusive um reports and anecdotes  
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that cumulatively don't amount to an awful lot um  in my personal experience you know other people  
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maybe may have different viewpoints but um the  q the cumulative sort of force of all of these  
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um anecdotes over time uh has not  convinced me that that you know there are  
26:44
26 minutes, 44 seconds
um you know people from hill air force  base in utah for example that are testing  
26:50
26 minutes, 50 seconds
exotic weapons on unsuspecting united states  citizens in the uh in the uintah basin um i have  
26:57
26 minutes, 57 seconds
not seen enough evidence for that um to to take  that seriously but i am aware of the undercurrent  
27:04
27 minutes, 4 seconds
that has come through for you know two and a half  decades and obviously there's now a lot of sort  
27:11
27 minutes, 11 seconds
of speculation about the havana syndrome and the  overlaps between what people have experienced on  
27:19
27 minutes, 19 seconds
the skinwalker ranch and other other hot spots  regarding this uh this havana syndrome again  
27:28
27 minutes, 28 seconds
i have not seen the data a lot of the class a  lot of the medical data associated with havana   syndrome obviously is classified so i personally  haven't seen that data so i'm not in a position  
27:38
27 minutes, 38 seconds
to to draw those correlations here's what we  can say though nids did not conduct any secret  
27:45
27 minutes, 45 seconds
weapons experiments on their own employees  asap did not do any of this stuff over the   years as colin mentioned we get little bits  and pieces of stories of people who see  
27:55
27 minutes, 55 seconds
men in black types and government helicopters and  things of that sort in and around the ranch in the   basin that's happened that has happened and and  of course there would be government interest in  
28:05
28 minutes, 5 seconds
the in the ranch and and what was going on there  there are some national security implications   but nids and asap weren't doing this stuff there  were foreign governments that we've learned that  
28:16
28 minutes, 16 seconds
were expressed an interest in maybe partnering  at the ranch and finding out what's going on   there those entreaties were rejected but look  at it this way did uh you know this stuff's been  
28:26
28 minutes, 26 seconds
going on since the 17th late 1700s in the uintah  basin before the department of defense existed  
28:34
28 minutes, 34 seconds
they weren't shooting energy beams back when the  spanish missionaries were floating through the  
28:39
28 minutes, 39 seconds
uinta basin or in the 1930s when people were  seeing things on the ranch for the first time so  
28:45
28 minutes, 45 seconds
that we we never took that off the table and hunt  for the skinwalker so we sort of had the idea we   can't take that off the table of some kind of  military involvement it might have happened for  
Chapter 10: Cattle mutilation anomalies
28:55
28 minutes, 55 seconds
some of these instances or incidents but the vast  majority of the ones that were documented uh by  
29:00
29 minutes
nids and then by asap do not involve some foreign  government it's it's uh the activities been going  
29:06
29 minutes, 6 seconds
on throughout the basin for well over a century  and even before the department of defense ever  
29:12
29 minutes, 12 seconds
existed yeah it's true and as the i'm imagining  you've thought about this though too of any type  
29:20
29 minutes, 20 seconds
of manipulation or you know connected to cattle  mutilation because it really is unbelievable how  
29:27
29 minutes, 27 seconds
these animals are really just fully almost  dissected and there's no drops of blood or   anything else could that be used as some type of  energy beam that could be doing things like that  
29:36
29 minutes, 36 seconds
too is that even is that a consideration well you  know that going back to the the march 10th 1997  
29:44
29 minutes, 44 seconds
cattle emulation the the mutilation of the calf  on the on the property on the skinwalker ranch  
29:49
29 minutes, 49 seconds
that we wrote about in hunt for the skinwalker  i mean that was a a sort of a well-documented um  
29:57
29 minutes, 57 seconds
event that happened in broad daylight um with  two witnesses about 100 yards or less away they  
30:04
30 minutes, 4 seconds
you know that the ranching family had just or  that the two ranchers had just tagged these cabs  
30:11
30 minutes, 11 seconds
um with bright yellow ear tags 84 pound cats  that have been born the night before and they  
30:17
30 minutes, 17 seconds
were about 100 yards away when their dog started  acting weirdly and then suddenly um they were um  
30:26
30 minutes, 26 seconds
drawn back to the area uh where this this calf was  it was lying on the grass this cap that they had  
30:32
30 minutes, 32 seconds
literally tagged 45 minutes previously and again  it was 10 o'clock in the morning bright sunny day  
30:39
30 minutes, 39 seconds
in march of 1997 and this calf had absolutely no  internal organs it was lying perfectly positioned  
30:49
30 minutes, 49 seconds
with you know four legs out on the grass  its head uh you know pointing up and um  
30:56
30 minutes, 56 seconds
it its spine was you know white and sort of very  healthy looking and its entire abdominal cavity  
31:04
31 minutes, 4 seconds
was empty its entire a thoracic cavity was  empty i mean it had ribs jutting up into the  
31:10
31 minutes, 10 seconds
sky kind of thing but not a drop of blood on the  animal not a drop of blood underneath the animal  
31:17
31 minutes, 17 seconds
but you know we had two people within 100  yards of this thing um of this of this event  
31:25
31 minutes, 25 seconds
and uh the mother of the of the calf was acting  very very strangely was running back and forth  
31:31
31 minutes, 31 seconds
near the calf dragging one of its feet as if it  had been injured very very stressed and obviously  
31:40
31 minutes, 40 seconds
very perturbed but you know i go back to directed  energy weapons can only accomplish a certain  
31:46
31 minutes, 46 seconds
amount i mean the idea that all of the internal  organs have been removed silently in broad  
31:53
31 minutes, 53 seconds
daylight from this uh this calf and at the same  time no noise no no nothing no disturbance even  
32:02
32 minutes, 2 seconds
even the the dog which was alerted um originally  even the dog didn't notice what was happening  
32:10
32 minutes, 10 seconds
uh for the majority of this event and um  you know we thought that originally uh nids  
32:18
32 minutes, 18 seconds
were contacted in las vegas we were in in las  vegas we've took robert bigelow's private jet  
32:25
32 minutes, 25 seconds
up from las vegas to the ranch and  we were standing over that animal   within six to seven hours of the event so we went  through the whole thing we had a professional uh  
32:36
32 minutes, 36 seconds
veterinarian on staff we went through the entire  thing necropsy and and and i mean we we looked uh  
32:45
32 minutes, 45 seconds
we went through the histopathology we went through  forensic analysis and there were sharp instruments  
32:51
32 minutes, 51 seconds
used on this animal so we documented two separate  uh types of sharp instruments one was like a  
32:57
32 minutes, 57 seconds
machete type instrument and another was much  finer but bottom line this was a physical event  
33:05
33 minutes, 5 seconds
unlikely to have been caused by directed energy  weapons it was just too sophisticated and too  
33:12
33 minutes, 12 seconds
much of a you know physical interaction to  to um you know to be accomplished like that  
33:19
33 minutes, 19 seconds
on the mutilations the ned's team they had a  rapid response team that went all over the u.s  
33:25
33 minutes, 25 seconds
on the western u.s when they get reports of these  things get in there gather samples analyze it try  
33:31
33 minutes, 31 seconds
to figure it out some of these are truly anomalous  like the one column just described others column  
33:38
33 minutes, 38 seconds
can get into more detail but they found evidence  that maybe there was a second group of mutilators   humans who were tracking the spread of something  through the food chain and operating under the  
33:48
33 minutes, 48 seconds
umbrella of well weirdo uh cattle mutilations  nobody's going to take it seriously we can get  
33:54
33 minutes, 54 seconds
away with this to carry out our nefarious ends to  to cut up animals and leave them on the side of  
34:01
34 minutes, 1 second
the the pasture and nobody's going to really take  a look at it it's as if there were two different   operations one that's truly mysterious and one  that sounds all too human i want to get into  
Chapter 11: Non-human intelligence
34:12
34 minutes, 12 seconds
then your kind of last type fifth hypothesis that  you suggested and it's the intelligent in this non  
34:17
34 minutes, 17 seconds
or um sorry intelligence and non-human uh or maybe  eta hypothesis and then you talk about uh what can  
34:26
34 minutes, 26 seconds
you obviously break down that what it is and then  you chat about what your recommendations would be   around observation and communications because i'd  like to go in a little bit farther into that and  
34:35
34 minutes, 35 seconds
where we would see that today because i know  that you talk about it in your last chapter of   revolutionary science and where we need to go  but i'd first like you to talk about then the  
34:45
34 minutes, 45 seconds
fifth hypothesis that you uh that you suggested  column so when you suggest um intelligence that  
34:51
34 minutes, 51 seconds
is non-human are you suggesting et's in this in  this case um not necessarily but but we we um  
35:01
35 minutes, 1 second
you know if we place the skinwalker ranch in the  context of the 75-year history like george was  
35:09
35 minutes, 9 seconds
saying um going all the way back to kenneth arnold  which is really sort of when the the media sort of  
35:15
35 minutes, 15 seconds
got got sort of around this topic so 75 years if  you put the skin marker ranch in the context of  
35:22
35 minutes, 22 seconds
of all of that you've got sort of thousands  hundreds of thousands of different cases um a lot  
35:30
35 minutes, 30 seconds
of different metallic craft that even back in 1947  were displaying um performance characteristics  
35:38
35 minutes, 38 seconds
that were so far beyond what human capabilities  are and that sort of evolved over time and then in  
35:45
35 minutes, 45 seconds
you know 2004 ossopp investigated the tic tac case  which was displaying the same sort of um you know  
35:53
35 minutes, 53 seconds
out of this world kind of uh performance of uh  of of crabs so one of our hypothesis of of the  
36:02
36 minutes, 2 seconds
performances that we were witnessing on skin  marker ranch was that that the capabilities  
36:08
36 minutes, 8 seconds
and the precision um as associated with  the performances on skin worker ranch  
36:14
36 minutes, 14 seconds
were potentially associated with um you know some  kind of an intelligence that was operating that  
36:21
36 minutes, 21 seconds
was not necessarily human now is that intelligence  uh extraterrestrial is it interdimensional  
36:28
36 minutes, 28 seconds
is it sort of a uh is it a sort of a a breakaway  civilization of humans is it i mean there are so  
36:34
36 minutes, 34 seconds
many different hypotheses floating around i mean i  can honestly convey confess that um the main focus  
36:43
36 minutes, 43 seconds
of the national institute for discovery science  and the main focus of the asop group uh boots on  
36:49
36 minutes, 49 seconds
the ground where it was gathering data because  what we're really sort of short on is data hard  
36:57
36 minutes, 57 seconds
data and you know we we have endless speculation  regarding what these possibilities are but you  
37:04
37 minutes, 4 seconds
know that the real key for any future ufo program  as we go forward in 2022 is to really put the ex  
37:12
37 minutes, 12 seconds
the gas you know press the gas on the process  of accumulating data because that's what really  
37:19
37 minutes, 19 seconds
we we need where we we have a lot of hypotheses  based on uh not too much really hard data and  
37:30
37 minutes, 30 seconds
that's really what separates the so-called science  of ufology from the rest of mainstream science  
37:39
37 minutes, 39 seconds
george did you want to add anything to that  oh as i said earlier we're 75 years from the  
Chapter 12: Advancements in documentation
37:45
37 minutes, 45 seconds
start of the modern ufo era we are no closer to  answering any of the big questions it's always  
37:51
37 minutes, 51 seconds
just seemingly a little bit out of our reach you  know who's responsible i mean the needs guys asap  
37:58
37 minutes, 58 seconds
brandon fugles team i think they've they've  clearly demonstrated there is an intelligence   operating on the ranch on or around the ranch  that some of these things happening or that's not  
38:06
38 minutes, 6 seconds
not natural phenomena they're directed it's it  plays mind games it messes with them it seemingly  
38:12
38 minutes, 12 seconds
knows what people are going to do before they  do it uh the one of the advantages of having   brandon and a tv show out there with his team is  they can document the kind of things that happen  
38:23
38 minutes, 23 seconds
to nids all the time that they weren't there  to produce a tv show they didn't have a camera   to show the compass is going crazy or you can  demonstrate that equipment fails the batteries die  
38:33
38 minutes, 33 seconds
all those little things that happen all the time  are now being documented on camera and that's  
38:38
38 minutes, 38 seconds
great but the answers to the big questions are  still seemingly impossible to get um what is the  
38:46
38 minutes, 46 seconds
intelligence where is it from crypto-terrestrial  ultra-terrestrial it felt to us like it has  
38:51
38 minutes, 51 seconds
been here a long time that maybe it lives here  it's not from somewhere else and it lives here   and uh but you know it's just guesswork  we don't know the answers to that stuff  
39:02
39 minutes, 2 seconds
moving forward though as you gather more data  as column said it's necessary to document what's   flying around in the sky but it's also necessary  to follow the evidence where it led which is  
39:11
39 minutes, 11 seconds
where it leads which is what asap did he got into  trouble sort of for it for following into some   very weird paths down some very dark alleyways but  you got to look at the whole picture you know you  
39:21
39 minutes, 21 seconds
can't just look at things that are flying around  and radar returns without looking at what happens   to people the physical effects the psychological  effects the ongoing hitchhiker type effects that  
39:32
39 minutes, 32 seconds
have been documented for a long time now yeah you  know and i personally have a um a few issues with  
Chapter 13: Challenges in scientific study
39:38
39 minutes, 38 seconds
history channel and the way that they are filming  and documenting this this scientific experiments  
39:46
39 minutes, 46 seconds
that they're saying that they're doing you know  and i have a lot of respect for dr travis taylor   personally i know georgie just came out recently  saying that he was the head scientist at you know  
39:55
39 minutes, 55 seconds
at atep or sorry um at the uap task force and he  wrote there was some report that came out um and  
40:01
40 minutes, 1 second
so i i have a lot of respect for what he's doing  and i think he's a wonderful man but i have some   questions when it comes to the way that they're  actually doing their experiments so for example  
40:10
40 minutes, 10 seconds
there was one moment within the history channel  where the cattle were i believe they put llamas  
40:16
40 minutes, 16 seconds
in and they didn't have proper documentation  they didn't have proper cameras on that pen and  
40:22
40 minutes, 22 seconds
apparently then it was if i was a pack of wolves  you know people they were kind of alluding as   television does to some form of skinwalker but  the science that they're doing there i find um  
40:33
40 minutes, 33 seconds
isn't as it could be a little bit better than  what they're they're working on now and i go  
40:39
40 minutes, 39 seconds
back to this report column because i think that  you've had some really great suggestions here   and when you look at observations and how things  should be observated and what type of camera  
40:49
40 minutes, 49 seconds
systems um that they should be putting in place  and where they should be doing this along with   then communication tactics that would have to that  are a little bit more in the revolutionary science  
40:59
40 minutes, 59 seconds
have you spoken to dr travis taylor column about  about this and then potentially what they could do  
41:07
41 minutes, 7 seconds
better because i personally think that nids might  have done a better job in looking at this compared  
41:12
41 minutes, 12 seconds
to what brendan fugle is doing right now and no  offense brendan but i just feel that and maybe  
41:18
41 minutes, 18 seconds
history channel is not showing us everything  obviously but i feel that there is something   here that that should be communicated towards uh  to dr travis taylor have you spoken to him about  
41:29
41 minutes, 29 seconds
where he could go back next with observations and  communications no i have not um i'm i'm sort of uh  
41:36
41 minutes, 36 seconds
i have not really focused a lot of my attention  on skinwalker ranch since george and i sort of  
41:43
41 minutes, 43 seconds
walked the property in the hours before it was  transferred before uh you know from robert bigelow  
41:51
41 minutes, 51 seconds
to brandon fugle um obviously i'm aware of of what  has happened uh since brandon fugal's team but you  
41:58
41 minutes, 58 seconds
know i i would also caution you that this it's a  500a for property and absolutely being on top of  
42:11
42 minutes, 11 seconds
a phenomenon that is not very doesn't  obey the scientific method very well  
42:19
42 minutes, 19 seconds
it does not sort of lend itself to reproducibility  um that was one of the that the factors that was  
42:26
42 minutes, 26 seconds
intensely frustrating to the knits team was that  um we would we would get data in a particular area  
42:34
42 minutes, 34 seconds
of the property and then we would set up based  on that we would set up a lot of focus including  
42:40
42 minutes, 40 seconds
sensors and personnel and then the next couple of  days we realized that um some major phenomena had  
42:47
42 minutes, 47 seconds
occurred on the other end of the property um as as  a result of neighbors sort of reporting stuff to  
42:54
42 minutes, 54 seconds
us so it was always this cat and mouse game that  is uh that is has been ongoing and i think this  
43:02
43 minutes, 2 seconds
uh the the current team are experiencing some of  that too that that you're always one step behind  
43:09
43 minutes, 9 seconds
something that is seems to be able to predict  what you're going to do and also maybe listening  
43:16
43 minutes, 16 seconds
into conversations that you're having and all  of this so it's a very challenging 500 acres  
43:23
43 minutes, 23 seconds
to cover and 500 acres is actually quite a lot of  ground to cover um you know in terms of continuous  
43:30
43 minutes, 30 seconds
uh observation and continuous recordings and all  of that so um i i guess and answer your question  
43:36
43 minutes, 36 seconds
no i haven't talked with travis taylor about this  but um i you know as president clinton used to say  
43:44
43 minutes, 44 seconds
i feel his pain yeah travis you know i've talked  to travis a lot more in the last year than i have  
43:50
43 minutes, 50 seconds
for the past the previous five years and he admits  you know when i first met him i think he felt that  
43:57
43 minutes, 57 seconds
the whole thing was a scam that nids uh had pulled  off some kind of a scam that they were either in   league with bad actors or other governments or  something that he was going to go in there and  
44:07
44 minutes, 7 seconds
expose it all and and show that it's all made up  he's learned otherwise you know but i think he and  
44:14
44 minutes, 14 seconds
the team have learned that it is confounding that  what you think is going to happen doesn't happen  
44:21
44 minutes, 21 seconds
and whatever plan you have going in doesn't  work the way you think it's going to the   duplication of efforts it's nothing ever comes  out quite the same whatever that intelligence  
44:31
44 minutes, 31 seconds
is on that property and in the basin it calls  the shots and you know you can try all you want  
44:37
44 minutes, 37 seconds
to get a same kind of response each time you  try the same experiment and it'll be different   you know the transient radiation for  example travis was exposed to radiation  
44:46
44 minutes, 46 seconds
it caused some serious health things problems for  him and there have been health problems for others   but you know this the source of that radiation  that caused very definite physical uh problems  
44:57
44 minutes, 57 seconds
for him is gone it's there one minute and gone  the next it affects him but not somebody standing  
45:02
45 minutes, 2 seconds
right next to him so you know it's very confusing  it's very frustrating and there is no basic  
45:10
45 minutes, 10 seconds
scientific plan for how you attack a paranormal  hot spot and they're you know a lot of what   they're doing is let's try this and see what  happens it's almost like poking the bear to see  
45:20
45 minutes, 20 seconds
what happens poke a hole in the mesa and see if it  reacts sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't  
45:26
45 minutes, 26 seconds
yeah it's true it's it's so wild and you're right  how how do you look at this into a scientific um  
45:33
45 minutes, 33 seconds
explanation and i know that you say in  revolutionary science and column in the last   chapter of the book that people need to be more  open-minded and the science community needs to be  
45:41
45 minutes, 41 seconds
open-minded when doing this type of research and  maybe this isn't always for the science community  
45:47
45 minutes, 47 seconds
so i want to get into a little bit about your  revolutionary science approach you speak in this   too that you know and one of the suggestions  is to hire a psychic to work alongside the  
45:57
45 minutes, 57 seconds
with the knits team for a month to document um  and then also the next thing is the other part  
46:03
46 minutes, 3 seconds
as well as that you suggest that the knits team  should meditate and we obviously know if you've   read the book what happens when you meditate on  skinwalker ranch so it disturbs or reacts the  
46:14
46 minutes, 14 seconds
phenomena reacts the phenomenon reacts to it so  can you break down two of those reasons why you   feel that a psychic would be important and then  why collectively as a knits team you suggested for  
46:24
46 minutes, 24 seconds
them to meditate and then how would the science  community look at this uh as a suggestion yeah  
46:31
46 minutes, 31 seconds
and and again i i do emphasize that that report  was written um privately for for nids um and  
Chapter 14: Psychic and mental approaches
46:39
46 minutes, 39 seconds
um it was it was focused on um operational details  that we uh intended to to look at but um you know  
46:49
46 minutes, 49 seconds
we definitely had deployed remote viewers in  in context with the the skinwalker ranch we  
46:57
46 minutes, 57 seconds
uh it's a matter of public record that uh you know  joe mike monica has done um a few remote viewing  
47:04
47 minutes, 4 seconds
sessions on the property with very very accurate  results other other individuals have also done  
47:12
47 minutes, 12 seconds
remote viewing there have been sporadic  cases of psychics on the property  
47:20
47 minutes, 20 seconds
some of which are i think are reported  in the book and some of which are not   but the bottom line is that yes um there there  has been uh psychic uh focus on the property but  
47:32
47 minutes, 32 seconds
i would emphasize again and again that no matter  how strange and how bizarre that everything seems  
47:40
47 minutes, 40 seconds
to be on this uh on this property and elsewhere  investigating this phenomenon that the scientific  
47:46
47 minutes, 46 seconds
method is the bedrock of operational sort of going  forward operationally going forward because uh if  
47:54
47 minutes, 54 seconds
you abandon the scientific method um and that's  one of the things that knits and asap absolutely  
48:00
48 minutes
rigidly adhered to um you you tend to go down  tangents that are it's very difficult to come  
48:07
48 minutes, 7 seconds
back from that kind of thing uh once you deviate  from the scientific method so we did have science  
48:12
48 minutes, 12 seconds
advisory board uh on with national institute  for discovery science and we had every three  
48:18
48 minutes, 18 seconds
months we would have site visits from the science  advisory board and we would have to justify to the  
48:24
48 minutes, 24 seconds
science advisory board how we were operating  on this property um you know to mainstream  
48:31
48 minutes, 31 seconds
scientists basically and they poked holes in our  methodology they poked holes in our preparation  
48:38
48 minutes, 38 seconds
they probed they even poked holes on you know sort  of the idea that we couldn't capture enough data  
48:45
48 minutes, 45 seconds
um you know quickly enough so um but you know we  never deviated from the the scientific method and  
48:53
48 minutes, 53 seconds
i i do believe that no matter how strange  and bizarre things can uh can occur that  
49:02
49 minutes, 2 seconds
the scientific method as we go forward is  the basic bedrock on which we need to operate  
Chapter 15: Impact of media attention
49:08
49 minutes, 8 seconds
i'll tell you this i'll add this chrissy is that  during those days before nids got onto the ranch  
49:16
49 minutes, 16 seconds
uh during and after there were debates back and  forth some pretty heated debates by these giant  
49:22
49 minutes, 22 seconds
brainiacs who were on the science advisory board  and people like colin and eric who were working   with nids about the approach should we go in  there gangbusters and put cameras and sensors and  
49:33
49 minutes, 33 seconds
and equipment and personnel on the ranch or just  try to go in very quietly no equipment at all try  
49:40
49 minutes, 40 seconds
psychics try remote viewers try meditating just  sort of a softer approach and see if that works  
49:46
49 minutes, 46 seconds
to establish communications they had really pretty  ambitious plans to try to communicate with this  
49:52
49 minutes, 52 seconds
thing and and a couple of times during the nid  study they thought they were close to establishing   communication but it never quite worked out so  yeah even while they were there on the property  
50:02
50 minutes, 2 seconds
there's a debate about the approach which one  would have worked best and there are those who   are on that needs board who don't think we should  have ever made it public they're still mad at  
50:11
50 minutes, 11 seconds
column and i for writing the book that it should  have been kept pure and pristine so that wouldn't   be overrun by crazy ufo people and paranormal  enthusiasts or tv producers for that matter  
50:21
50 minutes, 21 seconds
you know yeah and george i'd love to ask you about  that too because you did write an article um in  
50:26
50 minutes, 26 seconds
the path of the skinwalker and i believe that was  in uh i think it was in a local paper in vegas and  
50:33
50 minutes, 33 seconds
it was a vegas mercury i believe if i'm right um  and yeah right and do you now regret potentially  
50:39
50 minutes, 39 seconds
doing that because it it went international you  know it was it was amazing putting a spotlight   what was going on but did you ever have a moment  where you thought maybe i shouldn't have done  
50:48
50 minutes, 48 seconds
that and how is this going to affect the research  that's being done and then potentially the local   community i if if i had that thought it was a  very fleeting thought and it didn't last very  
50:58
50 minutes, 58 seconds
long i mean that's my job i worked on trying to  get robert bigelow and colin to open up about what   was going on at the ranch for a couple of years  before i ever published anything and the really  
51:08
51 minutes, 8 seconds
the only reason they finally gave me permission to  do it is because a lot of activity at the property   had nosedived to the point where there wasn't  much for them to do i think they thought maybe  
51:19
51 minutes, 19 seconds
me visiting the ranch might stimulate something  i call them used me as bait on my first visit  
51:24
51 minutes, 24 seconds
there they also hoped that maybe by bringing some  attention to the property that was now you know  
51:30
51 minutes, 30 seconds
whatever the intelligence was didn't want to be  hunted anymore maybe it would stimulate some leads  
51:35
51 minutes, 35 seconds
of other hot spots that they could go investigate  instead no i don't regret it because so much  
51:42
51 minutes, 42 seconds
attention has now been focused on it people are  talking about it and there's a you know a new  
51:48
51 minutes, 48 seconds
ongoing television investigation it it was part  of the reason that asap was created it's because  
51:54
51 minutes, 54 seconds
of the activity that happened at the ranch if if  our our colleague jim lakotsky hadn't visited the  
52:00
52 minutes
ranch hadn't experienced and then talked to harry  reid and robert bigelow there would not have been   an asap and there probably wouldn't have been a  uap task force or congressional hearings no tic  
52:09
52 minutes, 9 seconds
tac investigation no new york times story none  of that would have happened without the things   that we did at the ranch so i'm pretty happy with  how it worked out you know and i think people see  
Chapter 16: Local community engagement
52:18
52 minutes, 18 seconds
it from all different perspectives what about the  local community and this can be to either of you   you know what if they've said because i've  spent time you know in vernal for about 10 days  
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and wonderful community like just unbelievable  anyone listening go to utah uh it's just  
52:35
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unbelievable the views and the community and  everything around it and you see that there   i don't know if i would say struggle but there  is this conversation about is what happening is  
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skinwalker real or not how did your research you  know column and then george you even reporting and  
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speaking of this how did it affect the internal  community and where kind of left them now
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i i know during the both the ned's days and  the um and the asap days you know knits being  
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1996 to 2003 say and also being 2008 to 2010 um  they were both at times when there was a lot of  
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activity on the property but you know in both of  those uh times we kept a very very low profile  
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uh we did begin to interact with the the local uh  ute tribe in uh near skinwalker ranch and we had  
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very good relations with the youth tribe and  we talked to members of the tribal council and  
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a lot of it had to do with you know their um  their experiences around around the under basin  
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and their experiences on different  properties apart from skin worker ranch   so you know we did establish but it was all  subrosa and it was not we were not talking  
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to reporters in the under basin at all we were  talking to uh the local people uh the neighbors  
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from the perspective of what they had experienced  and both during the needs era and also during the  
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asap era we did methodically interview neighbors  in the environment of the skinwalker ranch and  
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we did accumulate a lot of data to show  that skin marker ranch was not unique at  
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all that it was just in as a part of a  much bigger picture in the uintah basin  
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to be honest i have not followed a lot in  detail since the uh the asap program closed down  
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in in december of 2010 i have not followed a lot  of the activity in the under basin um since then  
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so i don't know what the ultimate effects of the  these you know these i think george could probably  
54:58
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um answer that question a lot better than i could  it's been a mixed bag since the beginning you know  
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when i was first allowed to visit the property  after those guys had been there for a few years   and i was given the okay to go ahead  and start working on a documentary  
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and fan out into the community to try to get  people to speak to us i had no problem finding  
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others who had had anomalous experiences around  the ranch or in the throughout the basin it was  
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problematic to get them to speak to me there was  suspicion of outsiders there was suspicion of news   media of course justifiably so and there was a lot  of suspicion about bigelow and nids what are those  
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guys up to remember this is before all the stories  about what nids had investigated and experienced  
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on the property before all that came out before  terry sherman the gorman family's experiences were  
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widely known so it was tough it was a tough nut  to crack in one sense but when you could get them  
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to open up the people who lived there i found no  shortage of people that had their own experiences  
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sightings ufos paranormal activity if you could  get them up to open up to you they they'd speak  
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i would also add this that asap you know column  and i have reported with jim lakatsky as much  
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as we can about what happened in that program  took us 14 months to get our book through dobson  
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through the pentagon center process there's a lot  more that has not been made public including what  
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happened at the ranch it was what happened during  osap at the ranch wasn't really at the ranch it   was the environment around the ranch they they had  investigators fanning out to win the confidence  
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of people who lived near the property get them  to open up and the stories they heard are are   mind-boggling scare the hell out of you those kind  of things that they saw once they would open up  
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and were assured that their names would not  be made public and that they could trust the   investigators they told them some stories that  we have not been able to make public yet but  
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that we hope will someday be released you spoke  about working with locals like junior hicks is   is one of them that worked and did about over  you said a thousand but i remember reading 400  
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different observations and he was a local science  teacher too which some people might not know   uh and unfortunately has passed away but was  there other people you do mention in the report  
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that pete pickup was somebody that was working  a live song junior hicks was any of the locals  
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working with nids um quietly and investigating  this uh and was pete pick up one of those people  
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yes we had uh pete pickup was on the staff  of ned's uh for for a few years and he did a  
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really good job he was a retired police officer  and also a retired marine and he had very very  
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good rapport with with the local people so  yeah he interacted with a lot of the locals  
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he found out in in the community in a completely  separate sort of direction than what we were doing  
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in terms of um we were methodically interviewing  people around the immediate area of the property  
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but people had a lot much bigger uh range of  people that he was talking with and he accumulated  
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over time many many um interesting reports of of  unusual phenomena that were much more far-flung  
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from the uh the immediate property so yes i mean  he was part of the uh accumulation of the large  
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data set that comprised the u into the uh basin  so uh junior hicks obviously like like i mentioned  
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um his 400 reports have been called from 4 000  reports and he as george mentioned eliminated  
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a lot of the paranormal associated reports from  uh from what he was doing his only interest was  
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in the quote-unquote nuts and bolts uh reports  that were happening in the u.n debates and so  
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his 10 report of of the full scope of what  was happening in the uintah basin were all  
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focused on nuts and bolts craft shiny metallic  objects that peop local people were seeing  
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but you know that he threw out 90 of that  data on uh the the um much more disturbing  
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paranormal effects that were going on in  parallel with these nuts and bolts crap   i would add this about pete pickup i interviewed  him i think i saw him the first couple of times  
Chapter 17: NIDS program abrupt end
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i was at the ranch and then interviewed him on  camera in 03 sitting around a campfire he was at  
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the property while he was an active police officer  there were reports of things in the sky and then  
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animal catapult mutilations that he investigated  as a cop uh his wife had experiences at the ranch  
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saw something over the ranch uh a structured craft  so he had experiences before he worked for nids  
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and then gathered a lot of other additional  information as a police officer about strange   things that had happened in in the basin and  then again while he was active with nids got more  
1:00:06
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information so he was a a great resource and a  credible guy in addition there were tribal police  
1:00:12
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officers that the nids guys interviewed details  of which have never really been made public yet   it took a long time to break through and gain  their trust but the stories that they shared  
1:00:21
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were incredible and then the last names i want to  mention are richard and jean dietz they lived they  
1:00:27
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were the caretakers on the property through  nids through ossap into brandon fugle's era   they lived on the ranch longer than anybody they  they had experiences they never talked because  
1:00:38
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they're under a non-disclosure agreement that mr  bigelow had them uh signed but they live with it  
1:00:43
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every day uh they they saw some really strange  stuff and finally sort of learned to live with  
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it uh you know they had no choice if they're  gonna live there they had to learn how to get   along with whatever it was they're amazing right  it's unbelievable and you know the locals i think  
1:01:01
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unfortunately in in both shows from blind frog  ranch and skinwalker ranch because if somebody   doesn't know they are about 30 minutes from each  other on either sides of i believe east or west  
1:01:11
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um and they're very close to each other and  both have apparent phenomenons or alleged   phenomenons happening but you know i think the  local people do play a really big part in this  
1:01:22
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so with that said you know where what would you  change you know what would you do different than  
1:01:29
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both yourself and george uh and before my last  question i asked you but what would you have  
1:01:33
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done differently now if you had to look back  um i guess for from the perspective of awesome
1:01:47
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it was really unfortunate that the asap program  was terminated abruptly in uh at the end of 2010  
1:01:57
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because the original intent was to go forward with  a five-year five-year program that would you know  
1:02:05
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accumulate all of this data over time um you  know there was an enormous amount of logistical  
1:02:13
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issues uh that went into the asap program setting  up all the security clearances for everybody  
1:02:21
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setting up the security infrastructure which  is the kind of thing that normally takes  
1:02:25
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years that were accomplished in months hiring  50 full-time people for asap normally takes a  
1:02:32
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couple of years we accomplished it in for four to  five months so we were on a very very fast track  
1:02:40
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and we had um we had essentially contracted  with a lot of different laboratories  
1:02:47
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in order to do everything from metallurgical  analysis to dna analysis to tissue analysis  
1:02:55
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right across the board setting up those contracts  is not trivial and setting up those relationships  
1:03:00
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with laboratories is not trivial so by the  time the end of the asap program um suddenly  
1:03:07
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the doors came down at the end of 2010 we were  a well-oiled machine with 50 full-time people  
1:03:15
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were dedicated 100 of their time to uh working on  on this problem uh both uh not only by the way on  
1:03:24
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skinwalker ranch but we were deploying people in  montana we were deploying people in california  
1:03:29
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we'd employ people in texas in in new york state  uh we we deployed two separate teams over to  
1:03:38
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brazil you know fortaleza brazil and brasilia  so we we were covering um we were covering  
1:03:46
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national and international cases and you know we  were we were moving very very quickly when the  
1:03:53
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the doors shut um when when the uh the program  was not renewed so i guess my perspective is that  
1:04:03
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that the asap program if it had been allowed to  continue for another three years and accumulated  
1:04:10
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the kinds of data that we were you know truncated  after two years if we had been allowed to do that  
1:04:16
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for another three years for a total of five years  i think we would have gone a long way to really  
1:04:23
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having um a lot of pristine robust data that might  have even attacked this whole reproducibility  
1:04:30
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problem in this field you know i mean we also  accumulated a very very large data warehouse  
1:04:37
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again over two years but if we'd been allowed to  extend that for another three years we had a lot  
1:04:45
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of plans for artificial intelligence interrogation  of different aspects of the data warehouse  
1:04:52
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that never came to fruition because the doors  uh shut down so i guess you know if the if it  
1:04:58
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was possible to do something different i would  advocate for a program like asap that was running  
1:05:06
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on all four cylinders to be allowed to run for  five years uh as opposed to two years right and  
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again as my suggestion as i mentioned already is  you can't just study nuts and bolts craft and get  
1:05:20
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answers to these ultimate mysteries you have to  follow the evidence where it leads which is the   great the great strength of what asap was doing  they went there looking for ufos possible national  
1:05:31
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security implications technology can we duplicate  this stuff can we uh you know figure it out  
1:05:37
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but they also followed the evidence of all this  other weird stuff that happened on the periphery   you need to figure to look at the big picture to  figure it all out uh you know i i'm interested  
Chapter 18: Environmental concerns
1:05:47
1 hour, 5 minutes, 47 seconds
in what it is that's flying around and how that  technology works but i'm not a scientist uh i i  
1:05:53
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get access to people with big brains like column  and can and can pick up information from them on  
1:05:58
1 hour, 5 minutes, 58 seconds
what will work asap would have worked they were  looking at the big picture if there's a way to  
1:06:04
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improve it it might be in the sense of reporting  it how it goes up the chain because as we wrote  
1:06:11
1 hour, 6 minutes, 11 seconds
in our book you know the the the skin walkers at  the pentagon it caused some problems this stuff  
1:06:17
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is pretty weird and if if it's not packaged  in the right way it can cause problems for  
1:06:23
1 hour, 6 minutes, 23 seconds
the survivability of the budget and the program  people were worried about getting embarrassed   you know or and it ended up on the coverage of  the front page of the new york times so maybe  
1:06:34
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uh how it's reported up the chain to higher ups  could be improved so that the emphasis isn't on  
1:06:40
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the weird stuff it's more on the technology and  the provable national security implications but  
1:06:46
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you need to look at the whole picture uh whether  it's going to freak people out or not yeah exactly  
1:06:52
1 hour, 6 minutes, 52 seconds
and looking at if we've opened up pandora's box  is a scary thought my last question i'm going  
1:06:59
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to ask you as well to both of you is this whole  concept of again i go back to the local community  
1:07:05
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because i think it's really important that they  are spotlight there's a spotlight on them because   they are wonderful and they do play a really  important part i think in both blind fog watch and  
1:07:16
1 hour, 7 minutes, 16 seconds
ranch and skin walker ranch stories but there  is this conversation of a potential cover-up  
1:07:21
1 hour, 7 minutes, 21 seconds
and so we know that there's been lots of  phenomenon that's happening but we also have   major still birth rates are really really high in  utah you know there are major amounts of tumors  
1:07:31
1 hour, 7 minutes, 31 seconds
that are going on there's one of the largest  methane leaks in the world right now well sorry   methane at least in north america right now that's  happening in utah are these actually things that  
1:07:40
1 hour, 7 minutes, 40 seconds
are affecting and we have corporate companies and  potentially government using climate and policy  
1:07:47
1 hour, 7 minutes, 47 seconds
pollution issues and using the paranormal and  saying that this is paranormal and it's covering  
1:07:52
1 hour, 7 minutes, 52 seconds
up those actual issues that need to be addressed  because there are problems that are happening in  
1:07:58
1 hour, 7 minutes, 58 seconds
in vernal and around in the community that haven't  been talked about that people are getting affected   but are they using paranormal to cover this up  and would you either of you agree or disagree  
1:08:08
1 hour, 8 minutes, 8 seconds
with that i'll tackle that first those two are not  mutually mutually exclusive you can investigate   the paranormal and investigate environmental  crimes at the same time you know there are some  
1:08:17
1 hour, 8 minutes, 17 seconds
interesting questions i i've done a lot of stories  about the downwinders the effects of nuclear   testing that took place here in nevada and all  the tumors and cancers and deaths that it caused  
1:08:28
1 hour, 8 minutes, 28 seconds
both in rural nevada and in and then all over  uh uh utah those those effects were long-lasting  
1:08:34
1 hour, 8 minutes, 34 seconds
you've got dugway proving ground that has you know  has been the repository for all kinds of really  
1:08:39
1 hour, 8 minutes, 39 seconds
bad stuff over the years could that have gone into  the water you have physical effects environmental  
1:08:45
1 hour, 8 minutes, 45 seconds
effects of of decades and decades of of mining and  oil drilling and things of that sort in that basin  
1:08:52
1 hour, 8 minutes, 52 seconds
did hydrocarbons has got into the water has  that caused long-term health problems all of   those things can and should be investigated but  it's not mutually exclusive to diving into the  
1:09:02
1 hour, 9 minutes, 2 seconds
paranormal aspect as well there's no reason  you can't do both and if anybody's trying to   to present it that way they should be exposed  for that interesting i agree colin what's your  
1:09:12
1 hour, 9 minutes, 12 seconds
thoughts on that i i agree with george i  i think they're not mutually exclusive and  
1:09:18
1 hour, 9 minutes, 18 seconds
if if there are organizations using the paranormal  um you know the paranormal sort of stigma to to  
1:09:28
1 hour, 9 minutes, 28 seconds
limit uh investigation into these other aspects  then i definitely all for um exposing that too  
1:09:37
1 hour, 9 minutes, 37 seconds
that's great awesome thank you guys so i have so  many other questions but our time we are over time   and our time is up and i always say to everybody  thank you so much for being rebelliously curious  
1:09:47
1 hour, 9 minutes, 47 seconds
with me today on the show thanks chrissy we'll  do it again thank you that's i love that [Music]