Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 354: Skinwalker Ranch Part III - The Investigation

Episode Date: March 2, 2019

On the conclusion to our series on Skinwalker Ranch, we extensively cover the eight-year investigation into the phenomenon that was done by NIDS, an investigation that included mysterious cryptids, cattle teleportation, Bigfoot portals, and much, much more. 

Hey everybody, Holden here. And I'm Jake. And we're here to tell you about the Wizard and the Bruiser podcast, a podcast in which we take any subject in nerd culture and in fandom. We talk about comic books, movies, anime, and we explain just what all the fuss is about. And this isn't just white guys talk about the stuff they write on the internet this week. It's not just that.

These are deep dives into the hidden histories of all these franchises that you think you know the story behind, but you have no idea how deep the whole gets. We cover Spawn, we cover Wonder Woman, we cover Dragon Ball Z, we cover The Thing. We're talking about the film, The Thing. And not the secret that we must never mention. So join us for Wizard and the Bruiser podcast on LPN. There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk.

On the left. Why? What's your glade? That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Wouldn't it be amazing to scam the government for twenty two million dollars twenty two million. Listen to this right because everyone's talking about rubber big little he's scammed the U.S.

government. His frivolous UFO research and it's like yeah the U.S. government in order to do his frivolous UFO research seriously it's our tax dollars. I would love if more of those tax dollars went to alien research. Yeah. Absolutely. Come on. I wouldn't spend most of my time turning our money into cash and to valuable gems that

I've been hiding in our in various locations like my financial horcruxes. All right. This is the last podcast on the left everyone. I am Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and then beautiful and sunny. I'm extremely jealous of Henry Zabrowski. Yeah.

Feeling tan. This is the tannest of Polish this is the tannish this is the most tannest. Tannest? You're the most tannest Polish person alive Henry Zabrowski. Which means what? I'm entirely fuchsia. Absolutely. I am very burnt today because I stood outside of an audition for fifteen minutes in direct

sunlight. That is true. Yes. Well that's great. But can you imagine that? Not only am I not paying the government any money, the government is giving me money to be me. It's welfare but for the very clever.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I think that's wonderful. I support it wholeheartedly. Okay. Today we are concluding our series on I mean honestly this has been a hit. Yeah.

This series has been a hit. I'm so mad that it's over. I'm mad that it's over. Well you know what we'll find another subject for you to chew on and you're going to love it. Oh my. All right we are on to Skinwalker Ranch part three. So when we last left the Gorman family the story that brought the Skinwalker Ranch story

to the world had just been published in the Deseret News and people had begun showing up at the ranch. It did the exact opposite of what the Gorman family wanted which is I mean of course it did. You just told the whole world what was happening over there. So every one of these fucks and by these fucks I mean me started showing up at the ranch. Well I mean once you get published in the Deseret News your life's about to change. Hey the Deseret News it's actually one of the biggest newspapers in Utah it's out of

Salt Lake City. It is one of the biggest newspapers in Utah. Your life's about to change. Judge Mental Jones today about the news of Nevada. Utah? One of the biggest in Utah. Well first two UFO investigators came knocking at Tom's door but because Tom didn't like the cut of their gym for whatever reason he turned him away.

Hey tell me you got any extra flying saucers in the Gorman? Oh no no flying saucers that's fine. Can I meet your son? Get. Oh dad dad I drew you a tag. Oh my goodness I mean can you imagine the cal what is it a calvocade? A cavalcade. A cavalcade of people going to his door that would be fascinating.

But others besides well wishers had also started to arrive. A woman opened up the gates of Skimwalker Ranch herself and showed up at Tom's homestead unannounced one day incoherent and fully admitting that she was extremely mentally ill. Yeah let's just start out of it. I'm not doing great today if you notice I'm wearing a bathroom and I'm not at a spa. I like that though she's up front with it. But as she was talking to Tom a nearby tree started violently shaking despite there being

not a hint of wind in the air. The woman responded by pointing at the tree and screaming that it was filled with legions of demons and monsters. I gotta tell you what you crazy woman you ain't wrong. No not wrong at all it's either legions of demons and monsters or those cute squirrels from the Geico commercial. Remember that the re-aerial the old Geico commercials and there's the one where the squirrel gets in front of the car and the car crashes and they high five that's murder

my friend. You little squirrel he really is but can you imagine Tom doing the same cattle man move on this woman where he grabs her and be like you need to stop touching me or I'm gonna hit you. That's his move. Oh poor Tom. So it's seen that Tom needed help more than ever but little did he know that there was a certain multi-millionaire paranormal enthusiast named Bob Bigelow trolling newspapers for hints

at the big score. You know Bobby Bigelow was getting newspapers from all over the world because of his far reach with the budget ins and sweets. Oh yeah. That's right Bob Bigelow made his money at the budget in sweets. Budget in sweets I love the budget in sweets because in the elevator they always have ads where it's like recently divorced or a real estate agency for you and they just have a sad man.

Oh yeah he knows what to do. Well Tom Gorman had given Bob exactly what he wanted. Out of everyone in the paranormal community Bob Bigelow is without a doubt the man who over the years has pumped the most cash into nuts and bolts research. And as it always goes this makes him a target for the conspiracy community. It's the UFO community who I love and will defend as much as possible until they become a liability. Well is that really true though Henry?

Didn't you attempt to go to a UFO meeting and then slowly walk out feeling horrified? It was not a welcoming scenario. It was in a very dark church. I was watching a man give another man a shoulder rub and there was nobody else in there. This is true. I just literally opened the door. I had like a UFO shirt on and my NASA hat on and I was ready to be it and it was just like poorly lit weird little church and just two men in the back of it.

And the meeting had supposed to start in five minutes. There was nobody there and I was like let me just get the notes since somebody messaged me. But the problem with the UFO community is very similar to one of the parties that we deal with politically in this fucking country of ours where even the biggest heroes of the party are vilified and destroyed by the entire community for the slightest little things. And Robert Bigelow is he was so important to you, mythology. And then we chased him out by conspiracy theories by using our own brains against him.

That ain't right. Leave Bigelow alone. It's been said that he's everything from a secret mobster to a government shill to a naked opportunist to a front man for the church of Scientology. Well, honestly, you cannot be a secret mobster. If you know a mobster, they're very proud of being a mobster and that's all that they are. No, because they always say the same term, eh, I know a guy.

Yeah, and they do know a guy. But in our estimation, Bob Bigelow just digs aliens. He seems to be, when I watch him talk, I watch endless hours of him talking and everything I could find. And he just seems to be genuinely into UFOs. And honestly, in this country, is there really anything wrong with being a naked opportunist if you have pants on? No, I think that's legal.

It's only legal. It's what our country is built upon. Built upon. Naked. Opportunity. Yeah, exactly. And now that we've come out in favor of Bob Bigelow, now we're gonna get called shills. Now we're getting called shills?

We've already been called shills before. We've gotten quite a few emails about our 23andMe sponsorship. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But both of you guys did it. I'm not the shill. I actually agree with those emails. I would never do it. I tell you what, man, as a true Satanist, I don't give a fuck what my clone is doing.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah, put him to hard work. I'll tell you what, Henry could use a little hard work because his hands are real soft. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's one of the major flaws in the new horror movie, Happy Birthday, to you. What's the other part of her doing? What's her clone doing in the other dimension? I didn't even know there was a clone or another dimension.

It's not really a clone as time travel is involved. I think it's one of those Sibian movies. It could be. I don't know what that is. Is that the machine that you sit on and then if you're a lady, it makes you feel really good? Yeah. How is it a Sibian movie?

I'm just saying that's what the other woman is, isn't the other parallel horrors doing is making one of those documentaries. Well, now that I think about it, movie theaters are struggling to get butts in the seats. We're thinking about butts. They got to think about fronts. Get the Sibian. Sibian chairs. You want to go on dildo seats.

We are far out, man. We have never had a show. We got to get back in. We're so good at this. We're so good at coming up with ideas. Well, Skimwalker Ranch was by no means Bob Bigelow's first rodeo. In 1994, Bigelow formed an alliance of three of the biggest UFO organizations, Mufon, Kufos, and Fufor.

Don't make fun. Don't you make fun. Fufor. Now, what does Fufor stand for? Fucked up for organizing reality. It's hard. I think it's the fun for UFO research. Okay, Fufor.

Fufor. All right. See, it was Bigelow's observation that the biggest problem behind UFO research was a lack of funding. Yeah. So, Bigelow formed his new organization known as the UFO Research Coalition and gave millions in funding. He only had one condition, work together.

All of you fucking nerds, need to get together and use my money. I don't know if he's even officially called the UFO Research Coalition because there were little programs and he did, like, we're kind of, if you're a full-on ufologist, just fucking bear with us. We're trying to explain this to as many people as humanly possible. But when it comes down to it, he really did try to unite the world of ufology and say, here's a fucking bunch of money, y'all go put it where your mouth is, let's do this. Actually, don't put it in your mouth because money's dirty.

Yeah, it's filthy. It's filthy. It's full of drugs. But guess what they did, Marcus and Kissel? What did they do? In the words of George Knapp, as he said in the documentary Hump for the Skimwalker, they fucked it up. They fucked it up.

Really? Fucked it up because Bob Bigelow said, like, listen, I have a private jet, I have millions of dollars, a UFO sighting happens, you guys can be on this private jet in an hour and a half, be out there, you can research all this shit, all you gotta do is work together. But since nobody could agree on who would be in control and since none of them could put their pride aside, as it always is with UFO Research, Bigelow pulled out. Honestly, we could replace the words, euphoologist, euphoologist. Euphoologist.

We could replace the word euphoologist with libertarian and this all makes total sense to me when I dabbled in that world. They go after Bigelow and they start saying, well, Bigelow's in the hands of the government. He's doing all this kind of shit. Bigelow is taking money from the government and giving it to you. You know what you do as a UFO researcher and what I've learned from entertainment? You just go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you cover your eyes, you stick your fingers in your ears and go blah, blah, blah, blah, thank you for this money and you go when you

find some fucking aliens. Yep. Well, there are people out there that euphoologists that completely deny any sort of government or military funding. Actually, Jacques Vallet, one of Henry's favorites, like is staunchly against taking any sort of government or military funding. Why? It's the only, the government is actually trying to give you something for something

cool. No. I understand if you actually have principles, that's where it comes down to is that you really want to question the source of your money. I am obviously being, I am a nude opportunist in many ways and understand that there's maybe a means to the ends and ends of the means and whatever you got to do. But I do understand why they are reluctant to work with the government, especially if you believe that the government has been against disclosure, that the government has

been covering up their research on UFOs. Why would you fucking trust the government? Oh my God. I mean, if you don't take it, it's just going to go to Pat Robertson once again from the 700 Club to keep him alive. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine how much government money that it takes to keep that poor skeleton alive?

Well, back when Bigelow was doing this coalition, he did not have access to government funds just yet. This was still his own money. This is Budget In's money. Yeah. This is Divorced Dad's money. Yeah. Honestly.

And these guys were not, they did not fuck this up because they didn't like where the money was coming from. They fucked it up because they could not work together. So instead of using established UFO networks who clearly couldn't get their shit together and cared more about getting credit than discovering the truth, Bigelow created his own investigative body from scratch. That was the National Institute for Discovery Science, most commonly known as NIDS. It's a good acronym, and I'm going to say this, if you are a billionaire looking to

put money into a UFO group, the first thing is the acronym. Yeah. Yeah. Because I want to do something called like SUDs. Oh yeah. That would be fun. I think SUDs is good when we have to work out what it is, sexy, underdevelopment doctor sandwich.

Yeah. Well, not really much to do with UFOs, but that's fine. NIDS sounds like humanoid creatures that kind of live in the sewers or a disease that can kill your toddler. If you're in the doctor and he's like, you've got NIDS, there's no way. It's like, that means you have extra strong semen. I got NIDS! I got NIDS, everybody!

You're guaranteed to be muscular and smart. The NIDS had some actual mainstream heavy hitters on their team science-wise, respected individuals in their field with real cred. Bigelow was totally done with dealing with straight up UFO nerds. From what Colm Kelleher, author of The Hunt for the Skinwalker says, or co-author of Hunt for the Skinwalker, what he says is that there were field guys and board guys. The field guys would go out, collect data, and present it to the guys on the board for review.

But there was a problem here. Mainstream scientists don't like to attach their name to paranormal studies of any kind or studies that could even be remotely considered paranormal. That's because the world of science is so stuffy that working on paranormal studies can turn into a huge black mark on one's reputation. Yeah, and it's the reason why I can't be an anesthesiologist. I really though, that is confusing to me. Black holes, you know, parallel universes, all that stuff is kind of science based, right?

I mean, now that black holes are science based, that's what I'm saying. But a lot of people would say... But what I'm saying is, if you're a scientist, paranormal studies seems like it's a relatively, you know, it seems like I'm the same footing to me. If you read the differences between the way people believe in UFOs, obviously we already know a lot of just all of this stuff, between cryptids and any sort of things in the realm of paranormal. If you're going to be pro it, you have to be very passionate like for it, right?

You have to like fight for the cause of the proof of the paranormal, because what we're witnessing with Skinwalker Ranch, a lot of it has to do with witness testimony, a lot of it's circumstantial evidence, so a lot of it has to do with the fucking kind of blind faith that it's real. And that's the exact opposite of what's how scientists work. Scientists are supposed to know the work and the world of repeated experimental factors. They're supposed to be able to set the whole shit up and do it again exactly the same way and get the same things out of it.

The problem with studying all of this wiggity shit is that no one can really figure out how to properly set up the experiments and actually get recordable results. So scientists play in this world, a lot of times become like Colm Keller, where I think there's a lot of people, like what people said about Jay Allen Heineck when he was working on Project Blue Book, is that he, a lot of people kind of question the fact that he switched into becoming a believer of UFOs over his time working with Project Blue Book. Colm Keller is the same way, as soon as he got involved in Skinwalker Ranch, he started this hardcore scientist saying, we are going to fucking map the world of ghosts and UFOs

at Skinwalker Ranch and we're going to do it for the fucking science papers and we're going to do it legit. And as soon as you start showing up and all of a sudden he starts saying words like, vibe, that's when all of a sudden scientists are out and so scientists don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Yeah, it's really interesting you say that because in Happy Birthday to You, it's actually, they're like sophomores in college and they came up with a time machine. Are you getting paid by Happy Birthday to You?

No, I actually thought the kills could have been better, but it is interesting from a science perspective. It's not even science in that movie. None of the science makes sense in that movie. No, there's an orb and then there's two spinny things going around it and then there's time travel. We've got to get to some scary stories here. Okay.

Well, because the world of science frowns on even a curiosity in paranormal studies, we don't actually know who most of the people on the NIDS board actually were and you might say how convenient and honestly, I got nothing to refute that. It is frustrating to not know who these people are and in fact, even the conspiracy world has its suspicions about NIDS. Some think that it's part of a secret organization called the Aviary. Oh, really? Yeah, complete.

It's got code names like the owl and the penguin and the Aviary's only purpose is to keep evidence of alien encounters a secret or at the very least control the flow of information about UFOs. Why wouldn't you want to control the flow of information though? Because if every boob in the world can get it, then the value of it decreases. Yes, sure. But regardless of who was involved with NIDS, there's no doubt that the man at the top was Bob Bigelow.

A few weeks after the Deseret News story hit, Bob took his private jet from Las Vegas and made a visit to Skimwalker Ranch. Once there, he spoke with Tom Gorman, heard the stories and made an offer on the spot to buy the ranch for $200,000. Ooh, good money. Tom, who was losing his shirt on all these mists and cattle, jumped at the chance and moved his family to another ranch 25 miles away. That's sick of buying new shirts.

That's sick of buying new shirts. I'm losing them. There was a very interesting interview with Eric Davis, who ended up being revealed as one of the NIDS team after Hunt for the Skimwalker was published. He did his interview with this self-styled, like, new female version of Art Bell. Her name is Erica Lukes that does a show out of Las Vegas that's pretty fun and she's trying to, like, put a new hip spin on ufology and all the research of the paranormal. But Eric Davis talks about it, how he read a newspaper ad and classified, saying, looking

for scientists to research in the paranormal. And he was a guy with a long list of, like, of credits. I don't know what the term is for scientists, but he showed up at a… Credentials. Credentials. They call them credentials. Credentials. They just have credentials.

This is all I know. I lived in a day. I see. And so Eric Davis said that who is Ray Stance in real life? He is him. So he sat down with Bobby and Bobby was like, what are we going to do? What are we doing here with all these zip-zap fucking orbs? Are we going to get these orbs?

Are we going to put them in a net? And Eric Davis was like, there's many ways that we can just do it. And he booked them on spot. He's like, you're in. You're my guy. You're my guy. And so they went to Vegas and he said, Eric Davis is just standing here and it all happened within, like, three days.

He got hired. He sat with Bob Bigelow. He walked in. He heard the story. He's like, that's all I need to hear. Is your money? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me them ghosts.

Send them ghosts. I want each one of them in a suitcase. Now they put ghosts in the suitcase. Is that right? Wow. But the thing was, even though Tom sold the ranch, he wasn't ready to give up the mystery just yet. And no, he didn't cotton all that saffa nonsense.

This man had lost a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of cows over the previous 18 months. Oh, my. And he was going to be goddamn if he was going to get out of the game without at least trying to figure out what had happened. That's the farmer's trifecta. You don't want that. So Tom stayed on as the official NIDS ranch manager because Bigelow purchased a few cows

as bait. Oh, yeah, I'll have that one. And Tom, he kept working the ranch. He even kept some of his own cows there. And that might sound dumb, but it's very possible that his new ranch just didn't have the area necessary to handle his whole herd. Oh, you got a lot of cows. It's hard to handle a whole herd.

I will say too, this is where the timeline in the book gets pretty murky. Yes. They don't really kind of talk about. This is the kind of shit that's hard to track if you're wanting to say that all this stuff is real because Tom Gorman kind of stayed on even though he was really scared, right? Like he came in, he stayed in to be, but a part of it, I think, I don't know, I'm not a rancher, man. Yeah.

Do people feel an akinment to their land? I think they do. You can, but I think what it seems like to me, if I were to guess, he probably moved to a smaller ranch that just wasn't big enough to handle all of the, every head of cow that he had. I mean, he must love ranching. 200K, you got that in the bank. Sell all of your cattle and just go and move into a nice little condo.

Yeah. I mean, he's a cattle man. It's all he knows. Oh my goodness. What would you do, someone told you to just give up on, here's $200,000, give up on radio and everything. For $200,000? No, I wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't do it for $200,000. He loves the microphone too much, the smell. He loves the feel of the cylinder in his hands. Oh yeah. He presses it to his lips. I love the way that the spit shields, it smells like 10 years of talking. Oh yeah. Absolutely.

It smells good. 10 years. I got, Ed Larson was in here last night, so my spit shield smells like ham and beer. Oh right. But regardless of what Tom's business was, Skimwalker Ranch was perfect for the purposes of nids. These guys needed a full-on laboratory for paranormal research, a place where activity was guaranteed, and now they had it.

But here's the question. Oh. And it's a question that has plagued paranormal researchers, both professional and amateur, for decades. Is it, what are women thinking? What now? What are women thinking? What now?

What are women thinking? You have ufology, it's just the first, ufology magazine, what are women thinking? It's just several UFO guys with a map of a woman's mind that has UFOs inside of it. Here's the question. Is it possible to want it too bad? No. Furthermore, is it possible that observation ruins the experience? Damn.

This is where it's hard for scientists. Well, according to Tom Gorman, heavy handedness might have sunk this thing from the beginning, because he nids planned to come to the property with a trailer, command post, observation decks, cameras, the whole nine yards. Yeah, they wanted to fucking catch, they wanted to catch when orbs attack, they wanted to see the shit. That was the whole point. But Tom, he had spent a lot of time rolling around in the hay watching these orbs.

Do you remember that from last episode, where he literally discovered hiding in the hay, allowed him to see the orbs matter? So he became a Looney Tunes cartoon if you're into little binoculars, sticking out of the pile, watching things in the sky. He'd spent 18 months trying to capture this thing on it, because he said that there was one time where he did actually burrow into the hay with a video camera, trying to capture something on camera, but he could not do it, because what his perspective was is that this thing needed to be haunted like a wild animal, like intelligent game, because one thing we're

going to find out is that this thing, whatever it is, it's skittish when it comes to being recorded. And nids coming out with all this equipment, I mean, it's like building a cabin in the middle of the Serengeti, hoping to hunt lions from your front porch, it's just not going to work. Good luck with that. Yeah. Which is why you pay a guy to come drug the lions, and bring them over to the house and

then you shoot them in the head in the living room. Yeah, like a real brave hero. A real hunter. Interesting. So they wanted it too much, they just didn't understand, you got to be top secret about this stuff. Tom Gorman has developed a sort of personal relationship with whatever's happening on this ranch.

Again, if you believe him. So a part of it is that, which is what people have said time and time again about this type of phenomenon, is that he believes he's developed this communication, and so when these guys all show up with their clipboards and the video cameras, he's like, we got to sneak, man. We got to sneak and be real quiet. And Eric Davis like, I brought my photo camera, it's like stop yelling. Oh my goodness, so Gorman didn't like the technique.

He just thought that maybe they were going about it the wrong way. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that the experience has ended with the arrival of NIDS, far from it. In fact, some of the stranger and more fascinating stories in the Skimwalker Ranch saga are still to come, and some were experienced by NIDS scientists themselves. Well, I will give them credit because when the NIDS scientists first showed up, they spent the first, I want to say they spent the first month with no equipment.

They came and just did personal observation, which is where a lot of these first stories start happening, where they came and they wanted to get a lay of the land, and Robert Bigelow was out there because Eric Davis was like, you wouldn't even meet a more regular man than Bobby because Bobby, you know, he'd make you a tuna sandwich, and you know, he's a billionaire. He'd come in there and he'd say, you're hungry, and he'd pour you a bowl of cereal. And then I started thinking about like, what man pours a bowl of cereal? Well, you gotta put the milk in with the cereal in the box and pour it all out together.

That's how you do that. But no, but you know what I mean, it's just weird food to serve a friend. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But the fact remains that the NIDS field team was never able to capture proof that satisfied the review board or even themselves in a scientific sense. All we have is what these people saw with their own eyes, and it's up to you if you believe them.

So without further ado, let's explore some of the things those men saw during their eight years studying Skimwalker Ranch, a study that was by far the most intensive and expensive private investigation into the paranormal that there has ever been. That is eight years. Eight years. Yeah, I did. I did this show for nine, ten years. About nine, yeah.

I think it'll be ten years next summer. That is such a lot. I think about that. It's so long. Yeah. So much work, and then at least we can like have something to show for it. No, that's what's happening. I mean, that's what's fucked up about the story.

They didn't even get a single picture as far as we know, because then we'll get into whether or not they're holding on to that. Oh, you think they're holding on to the data. That's pretty much it. Oh. So in September of 1996, Combe Kelleher and a physicist and a veterinarian who did not want to be named moved into an observation trailer on Skimwalker Ranch and started watching. Why wouldn't the veterinarian want to be named?

No dog is going to be like, no, I don't want him operated on me. No, no, he likes ghosts. I think that veterinarians are a little like, you know, be like, I'm still a doctor. Oh, yeah. That's cute. Fly from your grave. Fly from your grave. Fly from your grave.

They figured they'd start off by examining the land for any natural explanation such as geological or magnetic anomalies. Furthermore, since they were well aware of the psychedelic nature of the sightings, they did full tests on the ranch's vegetation and drinking water to rule out hallucinogenic elements. Ah. Of course, both came back negative. Damn it.

Well, one guy was like, I really hope this is a fucking acid lake. I brought my own trumes. But it wasn't too long before the team spotted something. Tom, the two unnamed scientists and Colm witnessed a light hovering in the distance moving unlike any craft any of them had ever seen. Frustratingly though, as it always is, the object was too far away to be captured on video and the photos only showed something that put out about as much light as a bright star.

Colm described the sighting as quote, mundane. Yeah. Then, a month later, a whole team of scientists witnessed a silent yellow light fly a perfect circle above their heads, then the thing headed north into the distance. But it all happened too fast for them to film it. And for those of you thinking again how convenient, think of how often you've tried to just pull your phone out of your pocket and record something while it's happening and failed. Oh, absolutely.

Every time I see a celebrity, I just pull it out and I say, oh, I hope I can capture. Stop. Stop. T-swift. T-swift. Wait. Are you Dexter? Stop.

But now imagine you gotta unpack a cumbersome shoulder mounted tape recorder in the same amount of time. In other words, capturing this stuff isn't easy. And it absolutely was not easy in 1995. And for a while, those two sightings were the only things that happened. Months passed without the phenomena showing itself once. It seemed that either the phenomenon had gone into hiding or Tom had been telling a few tall tales.

Meanwhile, Tom is still opening doors with a gun. Like he's still just like, you know, aliens in the bathroom. Well, the team had even returned to Las Vegas for the winner as the you and Tobacin can reach temperatures of 30 below at its coldest. It is miserable out there. Damn. Now there was a slight mutilation of three calves who received eye and ear injuries, but it wasn't enough to kill them.

It wasn't really anything big. No, it was this weird shit where they found a calf would look like in a drill hole in its fucking eye and they didn't know what the hell it was, but they're still like, maybe it fell on a fence? Yeah, weird. Yeah, they brought a couple of vets out and one of them said like, I don't know what the fuck that is. And the other one was like, that's a cat.

That's a cat. Yeah. Yeah, a cat did that. Well, no, obviously you're not a very good veterinarian. That's a baby cow, sir. You idiot. Everything's a cat if you just think about it like it's a cat. But then on March 10th, the phenomenon returned with a vengeance.

On that day, Tom and Ellen were checking on the skim walker cow, which is they just kind of had a small herd out there and that herd included a cow and her newborn calf. They said they left the herd for about 40 minutes to attend to other business only a few hundred yards away. When they returned, they found a gruesome, horrifying scene. The mother cow had been injured and was limping away. But the calf looked as if it had been ripped apart and scooped clean. Three of its legs were splayed out on the grass as if in presentation while the fourth

leg had been torn away and thrown clear. The torso had been completely opened up and all that was left of the body cavity was a mangled cage of broken ribs. The most unnerving detail, however, was that despite all this, there was not a drop of blood anywhere. Oh my God, creepy. They said that it looked like something had actually vacuumed out all of the blood, pink and clean.

And all the guts were gone and it was splayed open like a woman from one of those documentaries. That's interesting. Now that would be a great infomercial for the vacuum, for the one vacuum that can hold a bowling ball. And this story didn't just come from Tom. The state of this calf was confirmed by Colm Callagher who upon receiving Tom's call made use of Bigelow's resources and was on his way to Skimwalker Ranch in Bigelow's jet within an hour and a half.

And of course, he couldn't help but take a jab at the researchers who missed out on Bigelow's millions by writing this and the hunt for the Skimwalker. Quote. Most other scientists investigating the paranormal couldn't even afford to rent a car for the weekend. Dis! Wow, what is this, a roast battle? What is happening?

But you know what they say, mow money, mow problems. Roasty scientists, that needs to be a show. But Colm's smugness aside, he discovered even more upon examining the animal. Besides just being completely drained of blood and guts, the calf's left ear had been cleanly cut by something sharp and had been removed from the skull completely. It seems like this was the moment that the Phenomenon decided to show itself to the Nids team because that wasn't even close to the strangest thing that happened on March 10th. At about 11pm that night, Colm, the physicist, and Tom were startled by the sound of Tom's

dogs howling and barking. The three hopped in Tom's truck which Tom had set up with a strong spotlight, which strong spotlight essential tool for a cattle rancher. So the three sped off into the darkness to see what they can find, and soon saw something large that appeared to maybe be a cow standing in a shadow beneath a large tree. Ooh, if that's my wife, don't even say it. But this is very paranoid, because Tom Gorman has been saying this whole time, y'all still don't believe me.

Y'all don't believe me. Okay, so they're out there and all of a sudden you see this fucking shadow in the dark, and then these fucking orbs come shooting out of it. All right, suddenly two orbs of yellow light appeared in the branches, and as Tom and the others sped towards it, they saw a gigantic animal of some sort perched 20 feet up in the tree. So Tom, who'd been itching for something flesh and blood to kill, pulled out his rifle, aimed and fired.

The lights instantly went out upon the firing of the rifle, and Tom said that he saw the creature fall to the ground, but when they got back in the truck and drove closer, they found nothing. No blood, nothing at all. No big monster. No big monster. Oh man. Then Tom saw something else, a different creature.

He raised his rifle again and fired twice. Again, Tom was sure he hit something, but they found nobody and no blood. What they did find was a single oval track embedded six inches into the snow, and it appeared to them that whatever it was had two claws protruding from the back of its foot like a bird of prey, and another track of the exact same kind was found 20 feet away. And that was it. Whoa. Tom gets so fucking mad.

All he wants to do is shoot this fucking thing. Yeah. He hates the orbs, but he knows he can't shoot the orbs because he tried, and now he knows it's like that big wolf is there, but he already shot the wolf a couple times too and it did nothing. So I don't know what he's expecting now. You know, and it's sad that they had a footprint, but it's in the snow. You can't keep it.

You can't keep it. Oh, they took video. They took pictures. Oh, okay. That's great. Hi. This is my friend Ben. He is the most useless Native American I've ever met.

Yeah. Well, you know. You can't keep foot tracks in the snow. Anyway, I was, I did tell someone Henry's big foot track story the other day when we were at Comic-Con. I have one of the only ones left he had. So he was talking to this guy for like 10 minutes at Comic-Con, Henry was talking to the big foot hunter and the guy's like, this is the only one we have.

No, I know. It's very special. He was like, this is from Blue Hill Siding. It's really special. It's really, really unique. And I got to tell you this is the last one I got and I was like, all right. Wow. $65.

Right for a thing of fucking plaster palace and I bought it and I was like, I feel really good. I got something I know like, you know, Natalie will love me. Natalie will love this. Right. And then I turn around and I watch him look around and pull another one out of a big Tupperware underneath his table. That's a great little plaster cast of a big footstatt of a big foot foot.

It looks cool. It looks nice on your mantle. It does look cool. Well, these two creatures were by no means the last one seen on the ranch. Further into the investigation, Tom and Ellen were out on the ranch when they noticed a cloud of dust coming from the corral where Tom kept a couple horses. Even from a distance, they said they saw that the cows weren't alone, but all they could make out was a reddish brown blur.

As they got closer, a creature that defied explanation came into view. It was huge and heavily muscled with a red bushy tail like a foxes. It looked and moved like a hyena, but it had stubby little legs like a boar and the head of a dog. Hi, everybody. I'm Bonko, the everything dog. I wish somebody would come and pet me once, but everybody says I'm the scariest thing they've ever seen.

Oh, Bonko. But sometimes you can look scary, but you got a nice mind. Yeah. I think you're a great dog, an everything dog. That's me singing. That's you singing. Okay, Bonko. Okay.

The funniest thing is we don't even have to sing today. It's Tuesdays. It's no singing Tuesdays. Well, Tom was about 40 yards away when he began to run towards the corral, but the moment Tom fell into a sprint, the creature noticed him jump through the metal bars and headed up a slope, and by the time Tom got to the top, the creature was gone. The only thing left behind was the smell of wet fur and a few scratches on his horses. Strangely, this was one of the few phenomena that seemed to repeat itself, and this was

strange because one of the most frustrating things about Skimwalker Ranch from a scientific research perspective is that events rarely repeated themselves, which made measurement and comparison impossible. Another one of the scientists that got to be revealed as a part of the NIDS team is a guy named John Alexander who used to, who's also, he worked for the military and all this kind of shit, and his thing he always kept saying is, when you're on Skimwalker Ranch, you are not in charge. Yeah.

It is in charge. I think so. They tried to set these things up and they said, basically, they would see a phenomena and they're like, okay, so what we got to do is we got to set up cameras over here, we can do all this kind of thing, and then it would never happen ever again, or it would happen just to the right of the cameras or just to the left of the cameras, which is again another how convenient moment, but what do you do if it is happening? What do you do if it is happening?

And you're trying to fucking capture it. You go crazy. You want to get that panoramic view of it, Skimwalker Ranch, that's just full of Iggy Pop and Anthony Kitas, and you can join if your skin is just leathery and nice. Well, regardless, two more people reported seeing the bushy-tailed creature. A ranch hand saw it and another local saw it, and it wasn't just gigantic monsters that showed up on Skimwalker Ranch. At one point, dozens of tiny, bright red, almost tropical-looking birds just showed up on this

ranch in Utah. They stayed for a few days, fluttered around the trees, then took off, never to be seen again. Weird. And then there was the gigantic spider infestation. I would so much rather have the tropical birds back. Can I just say, like, if you have to choose one of these tropical birds, just put your sandals on, get you on a terrapina colada, feel like you're in Florida for a second.

Well, again, the spiders were there for a few days, and then they were gone. And locals were seeing things as well during this time. Things that sound a hell of a lot like the traditional Skimwalker legend. In October of 1998, a couple were driving just a few miles outside of Skimwalker Ranch at dusk when they looked out their window and saw a human-like figure sprinting across the field, keeping pace with their car. And it was running straight towards the ranch. Oh my god, is that Gary Busey?

Oh. Fear. What is it? False appearance. False expectations appearing real. Yes, he is the best. But lest you say that it was only non-scientists who experienced the strangest phenomenon when it comes to creatures, take this encounter that happened right in front of Comb Keller.

He and a colleague were out on watch one night when they were faced with a silent, brightly lit sphere about the size of a basketball glowing with bluish-white light. It hovered about 15 feet off the ground right in front of him, but just as Comb trained his camera on the object, it disappeared like someone had purposely flipped a switch. Of course. It was like, nope, not going to get it. Not going to get it? Not going to get it.

This is a really fun practical joke, perhaps, from the other side. So with their appetite wedded by the sighting, the pair kept searching the area. Oh, now that our appetite is wedded by the sighting. Let's keep on looking. Tell me, tell me my friend, my fellow scientist, are you ready to be a nude opportunist? I am. Strip. That's when the orbs will come.

Oh, interesting. Well, the colleague was using the night vision binoculars, looking at the treeline about 200 feet in front of him, when suddenly the colleague exclaimed, quote, Jesus. When Comb asked him what he was looking at, the dude fearfully said that he was watching a huge black thing right in front of him, moving north, something so large that he wasn't sure if it was in the trees or behind them. All he knew was that it was blocking out the stars. Holy shi-

Nike. He said that dude ended up being revealed to be Eric Davis. So a lot of the activity is centered around Eric Davis specifically. You listen to any one of his interviews, if you ever look him up on coast to coast or any of that kind of shit. He had a history of UFO sightings in his own life, also being a scientist. And they all said, all of the people involved with nids that would go to speak about the project later on said that the activity used to show up when Eric was out observing things.

And so they're sitting watching this shit. And Eric was such a, I mean, he's such a nice man. And he was kind of, I would say he was burdened with this, having to see UFOs all the time. Man, I just feel like I wished that it was now for them. Because I don't think that people are as lambasted as they used to be. No, not at all. And it would be on some show or something and yeah. This story isn't over just yet.

Because Eric was watching this thing, he was attacked, not physically, but psychically. Yeah, he's like, yeah, he started yelling, it's got me. It's got me. Yeah. It's got me. That's not good. Yeah. And it said that it was saying one thing directly into his mind over and over again.

We are watching you. We are watching you. We are watching you. We are watching you. Well, technically, you're talking to me. Then it was gone. You remember when this happened before in the Gulf Breeze incident? Yeah.

But we don't know if that was theatrically fake, but it was fun to watch him go, they're in my mind. That was the man who wore the underwear all the time. Yeah. Of course. Well, this was far from the only time that seemingly invisible forces had caused trouble on the ranch. Tom and Ellen said that one day, they'd seen their cows being herded by a completely unknown

force. They said that they saw a cow approaching a tasty salt lick. I think I'll just have myself a little lick. Yeah, you might as well just go ahead and call me a salt lick. But suddenly the cow stopped and began backing away as if it saw or sensed something threatening dead ahead. This wasn't the first time that Tom had encountered something like this, and he discovered that this particular phenomena could actually be tracked with a compass.

So Tom pulled out his compass and found that it was pointing straight towards whatever the cow was seeing. The cow then turned and ran towards the end of the pasture, but when he did this, the remaining cattle in the herd suddenly split in two, with one group run in east and the other going west, as if something was moving through the middle. And all the while, the needle of the compass followed. Tom and Ellen sat there and watched the needle follow whatever it was, until finally it began to point north again 11 minutes later.

What was really strange about this force, though, was that it was usually accompanied by a terrible smell. One time, Colm said he was out in the pasture when he was overpowered by a musky stench. What does that smell? It looks over and it's just Gerard Depardieu in the bush being like, I don't want to go anywhere. But Colm had spent enough time on the ranch by that time to know what various wild fauna smelled like.

You know what a skunk smelled like. You know what a fox smelled like. The nose nose. The nose nose. Did you see pickup animals that just start smelling them with their wines? You get used to the smells. Of course. You recognize the smells.

Sure, sure. On a city boy. Yeah, but this smell wasn't coming from any of those animals. Colm also felt that something was close and that something was watching him. It is still me. Do you remember my little green card in the McDonald's? She had such a nice, turn it white skin. Back to sleep.

And yet, even though Colm saw nothing, he said that this was one of the few times that he ever felt physically threatened while on the ranch. And Colm wasn't the only one who experienced this smell plus fear into it. Oh my. First comes the smell, then comes the fear. That's how it always is. But this is one of those weird stories that I'm like, I know he's looking for shit. So them being attacked by smells, to me, is one of the weakest defenses that's been

walking around. I think the smell plus fear thing is pretty good. For me, that's a pretty strong thing. Smell is a big sense. Yeah. It's a big sense. Well, a Canadian investigator who'd come along said that he had smelled it too. He smelled it too.

And he felt the fear as well. Well, but I tell you what, there is an old Canadian scientist model we have that it seems to be the person who smelled it. They seem to have dealt it. I know that. That's correct. But pretty much everyone smelled it, had a habit of showing up pretty much anywhere. Smell even showed up in the command center.

You tell me how that got in there, Henry Zabrowski. A smell in the command center. I got some duke on my shoe, I thought it was a joke. Well the smell would show up, it'd linger for a little while, and then it would go away. Honestly, the command center without that unique paranormal smell, that must have had a fun little order to it. I mean, honestly, ufologists are, I imagine, a musky bunch, and then they all just huddled together, sweating with fear, wondering if the orbs were going to come.

So you got spooky stories of an unknown fear, wild animals appearing, and cattle being torn to bits. And while these guys were on the job, they certainly were not staying quiet. These guys started talking, and pretty soon, rumors about Skimwalker Ranch started to circulate around the internet, and eventually rumors started spreading that two NIDS staffers had actually been found murdered on Skimwalker Ranch, and the Bigelow had covered it all up. Whoa, and this is like baby internet, so you know it's like green lettering on the black

background. When I was doing some of the, following the money research on NIDS, and I sent it to Marcus, there were several classic green on black websites. Oh yeah, when I was checking it out, like I clicked on the link, and it came up green on black, and I just, I felt comforted. Totally. Well, even though like my, I was like, well, time to put on the glasses, like even though that definitely happened, you know, I still felt like, ah, the good times.

Well, that's what I'm saying, you know, everyone says, oh, the internet is Google, Google is just a search engine, before we had freedom, and you can go to DuckDuckGo, as opposed to being good as well. We still have freedom. 90% of the internet is encrypted. Mm-hmm. Oh. Well supposedly, the person who spread this rumor about the murders said they heard it

straight from a NIDS board member, but Colm Kelleher assures us in hunt, there's no truth to this, and I couldn't find anything about murders on Skimwalker Ranch in particular. Okay. Quotation marks. I don't think anybody died. I think if somebody died, it was from the flu. Yeah. Yeah, it could be.

But regardless, weird shit kept happening on Skimwalker Ranch. In April of 1997, Tom had called up Colm to tell him that not only had another calf mysteriously disappeared, but another dog had gone missing as well. So Colm hopped on a plane and headed on out, but when he arrived, he found that he'd missed one of the most bizarre incidents of the entire investigation by just a couple of hours. Colm and Ellen had been driving by a corral that held four of their prized bulls, and Ellen had wistfully commented that she didn't know what she'd do if they lost a single one of them.

Really? Yeah. Dude, that's a lot of fucking money. Okay. That's a lot of semen. So, oh my, I see what she was getting at. That's a lot of cow, that's a lot of steer cum. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Now, no jealousy there. Steers do not produce cum. Steers and cum. I don't know. Whatever comes, bulls, bulls, bulls, and that's a strong marriage then. No jealousy by the part of the husband there. She is talking a lot about another man.

They're cows. They're bulls, they're bulls. They're men. Bulls. Yeah. So, they kept driving, counting cows as you do every single day. Yeah, you gotta go out, you gotta count the cows, and if there's not as many cows as there should be, you gotta go out and look for the missing cow.

Where's the cow? I don't know. Oh, it might be another hour, it might be another six, it might be another nine, but you gotta find the fucking cow. See, this is why I just like my outlaw country music, but with the amenities of normal life. No, you like your outlaw country music on your headphones in a Delta comfort seat. That is what we like. So yeah, they were counting the cows, but when they turned around and came back, they

found that the corral where four gigantic bulls had just been 45 minutes ago, the corral was empty. So, Tom got out of the truck and started frantically searching the ground, trying to see if there were any tracks to explain the disappearance, and that search finally ended at a locked trailer sitting next to the corral, and this trailer hadn't been opened in years. Tom looked inside the tiny shed and saw that all four bulls were packed tightly inside, frozen in their tracks, and barely conscious. It's like fucking David Copperfield.

Yeah, you would not be able to get four huge bulls inside a tiny little trailer in and then get them to just sit there. It's impossible. No, absolutely not, and David Copperfield, remember when he made the Statue of Liberty disappear? Yeah, it was with mirrors. Yeah, the thing went up and then the thing went down. They literally just changed the camera angle, and then they changed it back in mirrors.

It was horrible. So Tom yelled for Ellen and banged on the side of the trailer. The cow suddenly came alive, destroyed the interior of the trailer, kicked open the door and ran back outside. They were shaken, but otherwise completely unharmed. So when Tom told this story to Colm upon his arrival, they went to do an inspection. The trailer was indeed destroyed, as Tom said it was, and Colm knew that it had been fine the last time they were there because the command center was only about 20 yards away.

The strangest thing was, when Colm brought out his magnetic field detector, he found that the metal bars of the corral had become magnetized. Whoa. Yeah, that's a common phenomenon on Skinwalker Ranch, where these orbs would show up and then things would get magnetized, like legitimately, he's like, you could hold up a quarter or whatever it was. I don't know what can get magnetized. But he's like, you can hold up a piece of metal and it would just stick to the handle.

That is honestly. And it was especially magnetized in the region of the trailer. Really? Yeah. That's cool. I actually had a dream last night about Magneto. Oh, cool. From X-Men.

But I had a dream, and this is true. He was in like, I don't know, Florida or something like that. He was just on the beach picking up all the coins with his hand. Yeah. It's textbook, literally the most boring thing in the world to hear about somebody else's dream. Yeah. No, man, it's true.

Yeah, he was putting up forks and stuff. I had a dream last night that I was frantically searching for an actual paranormal experience and actual haunting and failed. I had a dream that Natalie and I were in Rome and we were attacked by a gang of Italian thieves with knives, and I beat one of them to death. Yeah? All right. Cool.

We've all got our things going on. We all have different dreams. Different dreams. But here's the problem. What the fuck does the magnetized corral mean? What does it mean? Yeah. What is there to test here?

What is there to observe? What does this get you other than an opportunity to say, huh, that's weird? It's so weird. It's weird. It's literally, that's all. That's all it is. That's all it is. Whoa.

Okay. Wow. Wow. Great. You get nothing. And after the incident with the bulls, nothing was just what they got on the ranch for months on end. I mean, you could always put little funny magnets on there like, oh, they say, they say, it de-magnetized

after they said about 48 hours later, the magnetism was barely detectable. It faded. Oh. Yeah, the only thing that happened within the next few months was that, uh, poltergeist kept opening the doors to the dogpins. Mmm. And that may seem small, but Colm claimed in Hunt that this happened nine dozen times. Oh my God.

That's a pain in the ass. And he knows, because I guarantee you, they wrote down every single time it happened. Yeah. Yeah, dude. This is what, because at this point, the one thing I will say, their observations at this point, I imagine, are tuned all the way up because they are scanning for whatever it is that they can pile together because, number one, Bobby Bigelow is hammering money. Like he's just paying them all, just doing whatever.

They are starting to get a little bit of the, hey, where's the proof, you foes. And so they are desperate, trying to like, cobble together what they can, but it's all this fucking wackadoo shit. Uh-oh. But what does the poltergeist activity prove? I mean, nothing was ever seen on surveillance, nor were there any tracks. There was nothing. And since there was nothing, all they had was the experience.

And the thing is, that's all that matters, Marcus. It really does. It really does. Because this is what I was telling you, we were talking about this on the phone, right? Yeah. You can get a picture. I mean, you can have proof, you can have a, you can have video of it, but when it comes down to it's like, do I need proof to tell you what, I'm so happy to dance with my future

daughter at her wedding. You know, do I need proof? Right, right. Well, I'm just happy you think your daughter's going to get married. That's wonderful. No, that's good, but you do need some proof though. You can't just, you know, you've got to have some cameras on. You do need some proof.

And this problem of experience versus evidence was probably most pronounced on the night of August 25th, when two investigators reported seeing one of the strangest incidents ever described by paranormal investigators. I think there was a paranormal investigator kissing a girl, he kissed a girl. Oh yeah. Awesome. Take a picture. Take a picture.

He kissed a girl. I will know. So one of these guys, I don't know if it's Jim or Mike, it's the guy on the infrared camera is Eric Davis. Okay. Oh. Well, that night two men, known as Jim and Mike, were about six hours into their watch sitting on a bluff overlooking a field on Skim Wonka Ranch.

And this was a night that they'd given their all. One of them had started the watch with a meditation session. Eric was the one who did that? That was Eric, yes. Yeah. Because Tom, remember that story from the last episode? When the stranger came out and the predator beast came and yelled at him? How could I forget?

Of course. Well, these guys hoped that meditating might draw the phenomenon out of hiding. But by 2.30 a.m., nothing was happening. So they decided to give up for the night. But as they were breaking down their equipment, Jim noticed a faint track of dirty yellow light about 150 feet below. He pointed it out to the other guy and as they watched, the light began to grow. So Jim started unpacking the camera again to see what he could capture while Mike grabbed

the night vision binoculars to get a better look. And still, the light kept growing. Finally, Mike whispered one thing. It's a tunnel. Yeah, dude. Now, Jim, who didn't have the advantage of night vision, only saw the light. But he did see that the light was getting bigger and bigger. Yeah.

So he's just watching this and being like, okay, whatever. And while the other guy's starting to fucking bug out, he's like, oh, man, oh, man, it's fucking getting bigger, man. Oh, it's growing, the light is growing about two feet in height, but there's something happening, man. There's something happening with it. Yeah. Finally, when the light had grown to about two feet in height, Mike saw something through

the binoculars. He said that he clearly watched as a black six foot tall creature with no face crawled out of the tunnel on its hands and knees, stood up and walked away. And it's literally the scene from Ace Ventura with nature calls with the big foot where it's like, oh, man, oh, man. Oh, my goodness. Coming out of the hole. Like, oh, yeah.

It is sliding out. And he's just go, because apparently he's freaking, this is Eric Davis, because he's going like, oh, and it's breech, man. Oh, the pearl's dilated. Oh, it's a boy. It's a boy. And as he was coming through, because the guy with the binoculars is like, okay, nice, let me see the camera.

Yeah, yeah. Let me see the infrared camera. And he's like, no, no, he won't let him do it, because he's locked in to see it. And it's fucking, it popped out of the hole and then just walked away and disappeared simultaneously. Yeah. Very cool. And then the light just blinked out of existence.

Now, the two of them immediately ran down to where the light had been, but all they found was the smell. Oh. Yeah. The musky scent. Oh, he got him. Oh, he got him. Very good.

Fucking smegma, dude. Another great practical paranormal joke. Yeah. And they tried taking readings. They took out a machine. No shit. They used a machine called a NART alert. Check for radiation.

That's what a NART alert does. Check for radiation. Oh my God. Definitely. That's kind of what I got going on, because I accidentally, I got myself a little bit of a little snip on my balls from trying to clean up some of my ball hair. I slipped and I cut a little bit. I am dealing with a NART alert.

Yeah. If you want more on that, you can listen to this week's side stories. Henry goes in depth, which I thought was really fun. But they don't have a script on that show. No script at all. The NART alert found nothing. And again, the pictures that Jim took, except as he starts pointing it at himself and then whee, whee, whee.

Uh-oh. This thing keeps roasting me. And again, the pictures that Jim took showed only a light that could have been anything. And the frustration with surveillance continued after this. For example, take the story of the security cameras. This is my favorite story. I love this one. Because this story has been verified by several members of the team that came forward and

said that they would like, this is legit and it is weird. Yeah. And NIDS had set up a series of six surveillance cameras in the area where Tom had claimed to see the most mutilations, orbs, and the famous orange structures in the sky. The idea was that the cameras were sure to catch something of note, but they'd been up for a year and it caught nothing. Okay. So what they decided to do, right, was because of this problem they've been having, right,

which is this concept of, which I, that's not part of me that makes me buy it a little bit is that they say they got so sick of it happening just outside of frame. They're like, you know what we're going to fucking do, we're going to take these cameras and we're going to point them at the other cameras. And literally in the most like, they just added cameras, so they'll see what's behind these cameras. They'll see what's the sides of these cameras. This is like, this was in the area, the homestead area where all of the worst shit was happening.

Right. They have cameras watching the cameras. I like it. And the pattern of seeing nothing changed in July of 1998, but not quite in the way they expected. See, Tom noticed that three of the cameras had stopped recording. So he walked out to the cameras to take a look see. When he got there, he found that the wiring had been completely and meticulously ripped

out. They see the way that they look, look that they were cut. They were also covered in duct tape, right. And the duct tape disappeared. And so they were like, okay, somebody vandalized this, but we got the camera watching these fucking cameras. And so it was like, the NART alert was fucking blaring. Very cool.

They all hopped in the plane. They all just got done eating soup or whatever you apologize is doing there. Fucking downtime. And they're like, put down the left because we've got to go. Yeah. I ate some soup last night. Good. Yep.

Very good. That was actually vegetable soup and I just, it just doesn't help the show. But I actually mixed it with split pea and it turned out to be really tasty. Well, anyway, Tom called up the team in Vegas. They all hopped on the jet and they came to survey the surveillance. They found that all three cameras had lost power simultaneously at 8 30 PM the night before, but nothing was caught on the cameras in the lead up. That's when they realized we got them cameras pointed at the cameras.

We got cameras pointed at the cameras. Yeah. Now we're definitely going to get it. And so they legitimately thought that they were going to just see like a big foot with a ladder coming up in there with bonko, the everything dog. Maybe we put the camera on me, I could show them, I could do a little dance, sing a little song. Now, bonko, I got to dismantle this camera system and he put it up with a screwdriver

and all that kind of shit and he waved at the camera, gave him the finger. Honestly, Sasquatch and bonko, I would watch that if it was a series, I would watch the series over a movie and watch the movie. So would they catch Marcus? Nothing. Nothing. Good God almighty. Come on.

So the other cameras were about 200 feet away and they watched the footage, 8.30 came and went, nothing showed up. All they saw was that the red lights, the camera were on prior to 8.30 PM and at 8.30, all three just blinked off at the exact same time. Were they on a timer? This is not a timer issue, this is not a power fail because remember the wiring had been ripped from all three, that's what turned them off, the wiring had been ripped out. And it wasn't ripped, it was severed, right?

It's this thing where they, and they don't know, so they caught none of that. It looked like nothing had changed on the cameras on video, but in person, the cameras were, had been physically fucked with. But you know, that was the one where John Alexander, that is the example he keeps saying, he's like, that's the only thing I truly saw that was like, what, what is this? And it's technically the only proof that we have. I'm gonna, something anomalous has happened. You know, the non-evidence is also evidence though, because you don't see it, you don't

see Gorman going up there risking his life cutting off the power, you don't see anything. No, but it's definitely, non-evidence is also evidence that there nothing happened. Yes, but also not, you didn't see anybody going up there and snipping the wires. That is true. So that's good. That is true. Well, after that, things started to wind down. The incident with the bushy tail creature did happen after that, and there were a couple

of minor incidents, but nothing of note, and people had even started living on the Gorman Homestead in 1999, and they saw nothing. By the time Colm Keller left NIDS in 2004, nothing had really happened on Skimwalker Ranch for years. And as such, that's where the tale is told in Hunt for the Skimwalker Ends. But that's not the end of Skimwalker Ranch. And this is when things get pretty goddamn complicated, so we're going to do our best to try to parse everything that's happened since Kelleher left.

So NIDS eventually folded, but it didn't really go away. Rather, it evolved into BASS. BASS. Into BASS. BASS. BASS. BASS. Kick his ass.

Kick his ass. Which is Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. Now, it seemed to be Bigelow had gotten connections to various members of the DIA. There was a man of the DIA that heard tale about Skimwalker Ranch. He wanted to come visit. So at some point, some guy from the DIA came and visited Skimwalker Ranch, and they told him all the stories. He left.

NIDS closed. BASS. Well, I'm probably might be completely butchering the timeline, but I'm not sure, right? I just know that there are some facts that are connected here. Bass was one of the first coordinations between Bigelow and the US government, where they went and they took some DIA money and then continued their studies. They don't know if they actually did it at Skinwalker Ranch because they also had a spot in Dulce or Dulce, I don't fucking know, in New Mexico. But they had another place that they were also dumping some money into. Okay, multiple places.

And Bigelow's new focus seems to suggest that he learned something from those eight years at Skinwalker Ranch. I would hope so. Public statements say that Bass's new methodology was based on the fact that the UFO phenomenon was capable of manipulating and distorting human perception, therefore making eyewitness testimony, quote, increasingly untrustworthy. Uh-oh. That's not to say that eyewitness testimony is useless. They're just saying that as a tool for scientific study, what we're seeing may not be what's actually there. Because if you can't get footage from eight years on Skinwalker Ranch, you're not getting it anywhere.

Well, there was just a commercial for someone who had, I think it's MS or Parkinson's, and they say that you start hallucinating with it. And then you can take drugs to stop hallucinating, or don't. Yeah, let it ride, let it ride. Yeah, why not? Well, instead, Bass aimed to approach the human body as a readout system for dissecting interactions with UFO phenomenon. Because if cameras can't capture it, and if the UFO experience truly is a personal one, then maybe the answer is in the figurative eye of the beholder. Now, this statement was leaked to George Knapp, who wrote about this for the eye team in Las Vegas, right? So George Knapp, who's always had a personal relationship with Bob Bigelow, which is how he got the story in the first place,

which is why he was allowed access to Skinwalker Ranch, because Bigelow knew him and trusted him. So he gave him the statement from Bass saying, essentially, a part of it is to measure the human body's reaction to anomalous phenomena, because they also, a part of it is straight up saying, we don't trust the motives of the anomalous phenomena as well, which is just a lot of paranoia. In one, because it's don't trust the eyeballs, also don't trust the UFOs dancing for the eyeballs. But we don't really know how they meant to go about researching that. Well, yeah, that's tough not to trust anyone. The other difference when it came to Bass was that, unlike Ned's, as we said, Bass was not a solely private enterprise. Remember, Bob Bigelow is a Vegas man, and all you UFO enthusiasts might remember a certain senator from Nevada openly discussing UFOs a couple of years ago.

That man was Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. To make a long story short, Harry Reid was friends with George Knapp. Ooh! Harry Reid read Hump for the Skinwalker. He met Bigelow. Bigelow donated $10,000 to Reid's re-election campaign, and Reid brought Bigelow into the governmental fold to work on A-Tip. Now, A-Tip is interesting, all this kind of interesting, and you want to say, oh, he bought this, but it's true, this is what lobbyists do, right? This is how it works.

But also, if we're going to have a lobbyist, let it be for UFO research. Why not? Is that not bad? I don't understand, but you know. Well, A-Tip stands for the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. And it was a very real government effort that was outlined in an extensive article in The New York Times less than two years ago. I mean, this gets very fucking complicated. This gets very fucking complicated, because technically, they say that A-Tip was the fake name that Luis Elizondo was working under who released, who basically leaked all this to Tom DeLong of To The Stars Academy.

Technically, the real name of it is supposed to be ASAP, which is the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. Now, what they say is the reason why the names are important was because within the names, with Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which is what advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which is what A-Tip stands for, it is this kind of vague concept that anything that's in the sky, that's not ours, could be possibly a perceived threat, and we need to research what it is. But that's kind of way more wiggy and way more fucking wiggly in terms of trying to validate why you're spending money. The ASAP is talking about it as we are going to take what we learn from studying these subjects and we can apply them to weapon systems. We can toss all that information over to R&D, which then gets really fucking complicated because who's lying to who? Is it true that ASAP went ahead and essentially they were supposed to be kind of researching far out science, but supposed to be using it for weapons, but instead are they kind of doing UFO studies on the side, which is what A-Tip possibly was.

A-Tip might have been a more informal group within that group of just dudes looking at UFO footage together at desks, but we're not really sure. But in all this is connected back to Tom DeLong with the Two The Stars Academy who worked with another guy, Harold E. Poodoff, who was also maybe a member of NIDS, who happened to be connected to Project Stargate, which is the CIA program in order to create telekinesis, who also happened to be an OT8 in the Church of Scientology, which is why they say Bob Bigelow is now a shill for Scientology because Harold Poodoff said, I learned how to get remote viewing at OT8. Alright, alright, there it is, there it is. Well, regardless. I don't know if that helps anybody. I don't know what that does for any reason. Very interesting though, the government program stuff.

Very interesting, and whatever the truth is, it was stated in the New York Times article that the biggest contributor to this program outside of the U.S. government was Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. Bass. Yes. That was in the New York Times, and Harry Reid himself said in an interview that Skimwalker Ranch was a part of this research effort, or at the very least Skimwalker Ranch and its studies inspired this research effort. Skimwalker Ranch was definitely tied into this. Okay, Harry Reid coming in hot. Oh yeah, I mean he was Senate Majority Leader.

That's a big deal. He did some bad stuff. He did some really shitty things. That's 51, the super majority of it. But that's fine, whatever. But just regardless, high-ranking government official. Oh no, this is right. It's a lot of power, and a lot of budget power.

Well, what did they end up delegating to a financial? 22 million. 22 million, yeah. Which is out of a $600 billion covert ops budget, it's really not that much more. No, I know, but it's something anyway. Yeah, and they contributed black money to it. But it is showing that the U.S. government in some way, so they are then trying to distance themselves saying,

well, they either went rogue and were supposed to be doing research on UFO. They were supposed to be doing more legit quote-unquote science and went rogue and were investing in UFOs, and we didn't want that. They tried to distance themselves from, which I think is really interesting, because I think it shows they don't want really people to know that on some level of the government, they are having one finger still. On UFO studies. I am sure that they do.

Sure of it. Well, again, nothing happened. No. And the program died a slow death. Even though the man was at Luis Alazando, is that his name? Yes. Yeah, even though Luis Alazando, the guy in charge, he was extremely concerned that we were choosing to ignore

what he thought were possible and credible threats to national security. At the very least, we need to know what this shit is, idiotic that we are choosing to not study it. But I still wonder if they are. I think that they probably are. The problem is it just depends on, I mean, who knows? Who really knows? Because then Alazando, was he really working for ATIP?

Was ATIP really a thing? Was ATIP a thing or a bunch of nerds at the Pentagon called themselves? Like, is that true? Is all of this unofficial? Or is it so, so, so official that they have to sink it? That they have to make sure that nobody thinks about it? Fucking tell me. You fucking tell me.

Tell Henry. No, absolutely. They probably, with the military budget, I'm sure of it. Yeah. And it seems like Bigelow gave up on all this as well. Yeah. A few years ago, he sold Skimlock a ranch to a mysterious company called Adamantium Real Estate LLC.

Adamantium? Mm-hmm. Okay. It's just so like, it's just so on the nose. Yeah, that's creepy. But thankfully, we do know that this buyer bought it for the explicit purpose of further paranormal research. Okay.

And we don't know for sure who this guy is, but the owner of the Adamantium Group, who owns Adamantium Real Estate, is a Spaniard named Manolo Rueda. Well, according to... Oh, they think so. They think it is. They think it is. They think it is. Well, he, I mean, it's on the Adamantium Group side that's like Manolo Rueda,

like this is, he's the guy. And according to that website bio, he has a distinct interest in cosmology, quantum mechanics, energies, and ancient civilizations. Honestly, that... But they're definitely distancing themselves from this project. Yes. It's interesting because they don't want... Because he appeared in Hump for the Skinwalker with his face blocked out.

Yeah. Well, whoever it is that actually owns it appeared in Hump for the Skinwalker with his face blocked out. And whoever would... And also had his voice disguised. And he did not sound like a Spaniard. Well, they had it disguised. Yeah, but it was one of those...

Maybe he was a smoker. You want to be really careful. Well, this is what this guy actually said. He has, quote, Vast empire of business interest that I cannot allow to be compromised by any disclosure of my involvement in this effort. But that is the power of a Spaniard. That voice was being covered up there.

But now that a Spaniard's on the scene, I think that alien UFO hunting is so hot. It's sexier now. It's sexy. Because he's got his shirt on. Yeah, his butt down. He's out there. He's got his pulpo.

He's eating his... He's drinking orange wine with a scarf on. And he's just like, Orbs come and they go. They come and go. No. No, it's so cool. One thing we do know is that a trademark was filed for the words

Skinwalker Ranch in a deal that was brokered by a lawyer named Brick Power. That is not a lawyer. That is not a real lawyer. No, I looked it up and Brick Power is a lawyer in Nevada. What does the name Brick mean? Brick G Power. He is a lawyer at Durham Jones and Penneger. Of course.

Yeah, okay. Brick G Power. I mean, and he specializes in patents and he specializes in intellectual property rights. This guy exists. But as far as the identity of the buyer, we only have guesses. Some think it might even be British pop star Robbie Williams. Really?

I haven't heard of Robbie in a long time. Yeah, because Robbie Williams, inexplicably and without warning, shows up on Skinwalker Ranch itself in the documentary, Haunt for the Skinwalker to talk about the paranormal. It literally makes no fucking sense. It is literally, the whole documentary goes and like, whatever you want to think about Jeremy Corbill, I think he's a character.

But they're sitting there and they're all smoking cigars and it's like, it's George Knapp who's talking about it. And he's like, I still like beer. And then you see Jeremy Corbill, he's smoking a cigar and then the camera just pans and just nonchalantly, Robbie Williams is just there doing whatever. Just being like, yeah, ghost, huh? Ghost told me to dance.

And the people who now work on the ranch say that they do have evidence. They're just not showing it to us. Give it to us. Or they say that they got it, but they've been sworn a secrecy. And the people they gave and the evidence told them the stories, they can't tell

because they've been sworn a secrecy. Now, was it a pinky swear? Because if it's a pinky swear, they can't break that. Well, the truth is, I doubt we'll ever really know what's happening on Skinwalker Ranch in our lifetime. I mean, most likely we will remain as the pigeon standing on the newspaper for another few hundred or even another few thousand years

before we really understand what's actually going on. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying. And God willing, maybe one day we'll find money in our national budget once again for studies in the paranormal, and maybe we'll get a hint of what's going on at Skinwalker Ranch. USA!

USA! USA! No, absolutely. I love it. I wish this story ended on more like I wish we had a picture of a UFO. It's really sad. It's definitely like, you know, at the end of this whole thing

where they spend all this money and you're just hoping it comes from. But then again, why are we looking for proof so hard? Why are we doing this when we can really just, you can just think it. You can just make it up. Robbie Williams hit song, maybe you guys will know it, speaking of paranormal entities, Angels.

Angels. How does it go, Ben? It's an angel! It's got wings and a nose. You're an incredible singer. Thank you. You're so good. I never knew.

I know. It's got nose and toes. It's an angel. It's very good. Yeah, you know, it's disappointing. But I have a fun time reading about it. I had a great time reading about it and talking about it. Like, it's just, it's so much fun to get into paranormal stuff

and it's so much fun to talk about this stuff again and so much fun to read about it again. There's no timeline. You never know what's going to happen here and maybe they are sitting on a whole bunch of evidence. They might. You never know. And there were some pictures shown in the Haunt for the Skinwalker documentary

that were very compelling. Like, just like, wow, that is, that's fucking weird. That's cool. But, you know, but it doesn't, it doesn't prove anything. Something's there. Something's there. Something's there. Skinwalker Ranch.

That concludes our series on Skinwalker Ranch. That was very illuminating and exciting. Thank you. Yes, indeed. Very good work, Marcus. Oh, very good work. We did a lot of research into some thick ass shit. Yeah.

Which was nice. It was nice. I'm happy. It just seems like everyone is happier than talking about Joseph Mengele. I think that makes me happier. I am thankful that Mengele is out of my brain, yes. But he's never not, though, now. I mean, it's like he has a permanent little spot.

Oh, yeah. Like somewhere in the back. No, I think about him whenever I see a traffic cop. Just be like going left, going right. Don't tell me where to go, traffic cop. That's what I say. So the books that you would, The Haunt for the Skinwalker. The Haunt for the Skinwalker, I read it.

The Haunt for the Skinwalker is by Dr. Colm Kelleher and George Knapp. It's a really fun book. It meanders at times. There's a whole chapter on Bigfoot that doesn't really need to be there. But overall, it's a fucking great book. And his section at the end on theories, possible theories, is really fascinating, really cool. He talks about some possible parallel universe stuff and lays it all out scientifically in a way that you can understand it.

And it's really fucking cool. I would definitely, definitely recommend reading it. Speaking of parallel universes and laying that theory out very well, Happy Death Day to you. Now they actually do a fairly good job. We're not even being paid to do anything. I know, I'm just saying they do explain it. I liked it better than the first one.

You did? I did. Oh, I liked the first one much better. I really liked the first one. No, I had fun with it. We laughed our asses off. No, it is very fun. I just thought the kills were better than the first one.

Well, yes, the kills were better, but I felt like this was a better movie. I didn't even know you watched it. Yeah, then why don't you back me up with all my Happy Death Day to you conversation? Well, because I'm just trying to stick to the episode and all the research that we did, all the work that we did for the show. No, I know it's you. All the research we did, all the work, all the work that was done. No, I understand.

I want the documentaries on YouTube. This shit. Happy Death Day for you, or Death Day to fucking shithead McGee. It's got a fucking, it's got fake science in it. It's all fake. Yeah, but I, what, it definitely tied into the episode very well. Very well. Like rope around a steak.

All right. Well, we got shows coming, don't we? Yeah, we got a lot of shows coming. Yeah, we do? Yeah, oh, we absolutely do. We have to travel again this year? I'm excited to travel this year. I'm really excited.

I've missed being out on the road. I'm excited to get back out there. And we're about to announce like a gigantic, gigantic slew of dates here very soon. But until then, we definitely have a few of these booked. We are coming to Nashville on the 19th of March. That one sold out. Thank you very much, everyone, for buying tickets to that. We can't wait to see you.

We're also going to be in Cincinnati on March 20th, Cleveland on March 22nd, and Pittsburgh on March 23rd. And those shows are definitely like, we got the ticket counts. We're definitely going to sell out. So get your tickets now if you want to come see us live. And should we mention the Pittsburgh website, the little blip? Yeah. We also know what's happening.

The Pittsburgh website is saying that the show is sold out, but I don't know if we have no clue. We're having discrepancies with our people with the venue and website. We're trying to get that fixed. Yeah, we're trying to get that fixed. It looks like it's not sold out in Pittsburgh quite yet. So the tickets are still there. So don't plan anything for that week.

I couldn't go. No, I think it's going to be fine. Well, as soon as we figure out what's going on with Pittsburgh, we'll announce something on our Twitter at LP on the left and probably on our Instagram too also at LP on the left. Watch those if you want to come see us in Pittsburgh. And of course, you can still go to last podcast live.com and watch us from last year live in Chicago. It is such a great special.

I think you'll love it. So get out there. It's only $6 and 66 cents and prepare you for because this is a whole different show. Yeah. So it won't ruin anything. Yeah. This is going to be completely new. Light of candle for Luke Perry.

He had a stroke this morning. Well, Perry did from 90210. Yep. No. Yes. A stroke. Oh, it's from, oh, Fred. Yep.

Sorry, everyone. Fred Andrews. That's not good. Actually from Riverdale. He's one of my favorite characters. Well, I hope he's okay. You know, there was just a fellow that was given leniency on his death row sentence because he suffered so many strokes.

They said he had too many strokes to even be sent to death. He had too many strokes to be killed. Yeah. That is great. That is really fun. So it's a blessing for some. Yeah. Patreon if you wanted that.

Give us money. Yes. Please give it to our patron. Thank you so much. We have some great content out there. Henry and I do a little interview series and we're going to be interviewing some big guests coming up. We're really excited about that.

Yeah. And thanks for supporting all the shows here on the network. You're probably hearing the ads sporadically throughout all the shows. We're trying to integrate everyone together and make it one big last podcast family. That's right. That is a great little fun political show. Not over it. It won't bang you on the head.

No. No. Because we don't, there's enough of Hanley's out there in the world. And Wizard of the Bruiser and you know, just all the shows. All the fucking shows. Yes. Movie sign with the man. You know the shows.

You know the shows. Go ahead and listen to them. Go to lastpodcastnetwork.com. Also the story must be told. Yes. With Andrew and Reed and Adam Ward. Those are some of our good friends. It's a trippy show.

It is really, really funny. Yes. It's totally trippy. Hail Satan. Hail yourselves. Hail you. Hail me. And next week, double side stories week.

So don't forget, Marcus Parks is going to be with us. Real excited to just kind of start that tradition. Yeah. It's going to be cool. Yeah. Starting next week. Yeah. Double, double side story.

Yeah. That I won't be criticized for bringing up happy death day to you. We can do the whole episode. No. Because that's where you are in a safe space. That's the price. You are allowed to do that. You know what?

I have a cute dog. That's all I know. Goodbye. Good day. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.